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Irreconcilable   Listen
adjective
Irreconcilable  adj.  Not reconcilable; not able to be reconciled or brought into accord; implacable; incompatible; inconsistent; disagreeing; as, irreconcilable enemies, statements.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Irreconcilable" Quotes from Famous Books



... began again, sententiously, "is one of the bits of human wreckage that have drifted down to us from the pre-revolutionary days of French society. Her grandfather, the old Comte de la Ferronaise, belonged to that order of irreconcilable royalists who persist in dashing themselves to pieces against the rising wall of democracy. I remember him perfectly—a handsome old fellow, who had lost an arm in the Crimea. He used to do business with us when I was with Hargous in the rue de Provence. ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... where he comes from. Abner, too, professes entire ignorance; and when David appears before the king, "with the head of the Philistine in his hand," he is asked, "Whose son art thou, young man?" It has been thought that here we have an irreconcilable contradiction with previous narratives, according to which there was close intimacy between him and the king, who "loved him greatly," and gave him an office of trust about his person. Suppositions of "dislocation of the narrative," the careless adoption by ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren

... apprehension the desirability of harmonising them is involved in the very effort to realise them together. If attention and imagination are steady enough to face this implication and not to allow impulse to oscillate between irreconcilable tendencies, reason comes into being. Henceforth things actual and things desired are confronted by an ideal which ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... affected by the event and its concomitants. Friendships were broken, and even more tender relations were disturbed, if, indeed, their further existence were not to be terminated. By the open, and as was supposed irreconcilable, quarrel between Mark Elwood and the terribly vindictive Gaut Gurley, their children, Claud and Avis, who were understood to be under mutual engagement of marriage, were placed in a position at once painful and embarrassing in the extreme. And Claud, especially, although he had carefully abstained ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... evidence was taken by the Committee on the Judiciary, and it had special reference to the charges that had been made against President Johnson. At that time, the separation between Mr. Stanton and the President had become irreconcilable, but there are no indications of hostility in the answers given by the Secretary. Indeed, he assumed, without reserve, full responsibility for acts that had been charged on ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... of Massachusetts, 1764, declared, "That the imposition of duties and taxes, by the Parliament of Great Britain, upon a people not represented in the House of Commons, is absolutely irreconcilable with their rights." A pamphlet entitled "The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted," was sent to the agent of the Colony in England, to show him the state of the public mind, and along with it an energetic letter. "The silence of the province," ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... averse to this new kind of humanity and this new kind of world. The eternal vision of those invisible "sons of the universe," the proof of whose existence is a deduction from the encounters of all actual souls with one another, would seem to be entirely irreconcilable with any new complex vision whose nature had been ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... only intrench himself, but gall them with frequent Ambuscades, by which they must inevitably lose a Number of Men; and, if they were forced to retire with Loss, raise the Courage of the Mohilians, and make them irreconcilable Enemies to the Johannians, and intirely deprive him of the Advantages with which he might now make a Peace, having twice defeated them: That he could not be always with them, and at his leaving Johanna he might expect the King of Mohilia would endeavour to take a bloody Revenge for the late ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe

... blow to the Ottoman Empire, which was at last conquered in the long struggle, sustained on both sides with so much prowess and glory, with so much mutual deference between opponents as magnanimous in their truces as irreconcilable in ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... touching story of Savage had won the heart of the Queen, and she had extracted from the King the promise of the Laureateship for its hero. But in the Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, Savage had an irreconcilable opponent. The apprehension of exciting powerful enmities, if he elevated the "Bastard" and his wrongs to so conspicuous a place, had, no doubt, an influence with the shrewd statesman. Possibly, too, so keen and practical a mind could not but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... in the midst; for it was announced everywhere, and even by criers in some parts, that the procession would take place and would end at Temple Bar. My Lord Shaftesbury, who had lately lost the presidency of the Council, had rendered himself irreconcilable with the Duke of York, and his only hope (as well as of others with him) lay in ruining His Highness. All this, therefore, was designed to rouse popular feeling against the Duke and the Catholic cause. So this ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... could esteem Edward as much as ever, however they might be divided in future, her mind might be always supported. But every circumstance that could embitter such an evil seemed uniting to heighten the misery of Marianne in a final separation from Willoughby—in an immediate and irreconcilable ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... excruciated philosophers and divines, beyond any other. I did not press it further, when I perceived that he was displeased[306], and shrunk from any abridgement of an attribute usually ascribed to the Divinity, however irreconcilable in its full extent with the grand system of moral government. His supposed orthodoxy here cramped the vigorous powers of his understanding. He was confined by a chain which early imagination and long habit made him think massy and strong, but which, had he ventured to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... themselves through the concepts of the understanding, with a refutation of rational psychology, rational cosmology, and rational theology. It shows that the first is founded on paralogisms, and the second entangled in irreconcilable contradictions, while the third makes vain efforts to prove the existence ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... himself, the most absolute of sceptics, considers the existence of ghosts, and their frequent apparition, as facts so undeniable that he endeavours to account for them at the expense of assenting to a class of phenomena very irreconcilable to his general system. As he will not allow of the existence of the human soul, and at the same time cannot venture to question the phenomena supposed to haunt the repositories of the dead, he is obliged to adopt the belief that the body consists of several coats like those of an ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... but he absolutely approved of the policy of his rulers, and had no scruple in carrying it out. It was the only thing that could be done, and it had better be done thoroughly; the sooner the turbulent and irreconcilable Covenanters were crushed and the country reduced to peace the better for Scotland. And it must be remembered that, though they were only a fraction of the nation, the hillmen were a very resolute and harassing fraction, and kept the western counties in a state of turmoil. No week passed without ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... Plato; and mistakes of fact, as e.g. about the Thirty Tyrants, whom the writer of the letters seems to have confused with certain inferior magistrates, making them in all fifty-one. These palpable errors and absurdities are absolutely irreconcilable with their genuineness. And as they appear to have a common parentage, the more they are studied, the more they will be found to furnish evidence against themselves. The Seventh, which is thought to be the most important of these Epistles, has affinities with the ...
— Charmides • Plato

... Darwin's suppositions when thus applied might lead to irreconcilable and contradictory conclusions, from which the erroneousness of the suppositions might be inferred. If Darwin's opinions are false, it was to be expected that contradictions would accompany their detailed application at every step, and that ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller

... Charles Edward with the care of the only hope of the House of Stuart to leave in his will, and that will, too, executed in the year of his death, a flat denial of the royal birth of his illustrious ward? The fact is utterly irreconcilable with the existence of such a secret, and appears absolutely conclusive. There was no occasion for the admiral stating in his will whose son Thomas Allen was. He might have left him L100 without any allusion to his parentage; but when he deliberately, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... time the king of Acheen in Sumatra, an irreconcilable enemy to the Portuguese, sent a fleet of sixty vessels against Malacca with 5000 soldiers, among whom were 500 men called Orobalones or the golden bracelets, from wearing that ornament in distinction of their bravery; but the principal force consisted of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... squeeze into the small room, while others, crowding the staircase, caught up an erroneous edition of the story, and transmitted it still more inaccurately to those beneath, who again sent it forth to the vulgar without, in a fashion totally irreconcilable to the real fact. Athelstane, however, went on as follows, with ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... death, there was again some talk of her marrying him, which was quickly quelled by a reopening of the question of how Amy died. Between these two, between the fulfilment of her desire and his ambition, stood the irreconcilable ghost of his ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... as belonging to the science, it will be impossible ever to determine in what estimation the study of it ought to be held; for all that has ever been urged either for or against it, may, upon such a principle, be proved by reference to different authorities and irreconcilable opinions. But all who are studious to know, and content to follow, the fashion established by the concurrent authority of the learned,[4] may at least have some standard to refer to; and if a grammarian's rules be based upon this authority, it must be considered the exclusive privilege of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... stewards of the games, ought to be considered the authors of the mishap. And, besides this, Stesimbrotus tells us that Xanthippus put about that scandal about his father and his own wife, so that the father and son remained irreconcilable enemies until Xanthippus's death, which happened during the plague, by an attack of that disorder. At the same time Perikles lost his sister and most of his relations, especially those who supported his policy. Yet he would not yield, nor abate his firmness and constancy ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... land of elephants and tigers; of fields of rice and groves of palm; of treasuries filled with chests of gold, heaps of pearls, diamonds, and incense. But, above all, it is the land of unintelligible systems of belief, of puzzling incongruities, and irreconcilable contradictions. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... than just past the threshold of life, before a single power of his nature has put itself forth, but at the moment when he is bound to his parents by ties of love which never afterwards would be stronger—is struck dead? We can give no account of it. It is irreconcilable with the hypothesis of an intelligent and good Providence. It has all the features of chance upon it. A god could not have done it unless he had been the god of Tartarus. Dark Pluto might, or the avenging Furies, were they supreme. But away with all such dreams! The slaves who were his ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... and high ability could make a good public servant, he fully carried out his purpose. In Parliament, the "addled Parliament" of 1614, in which he sat for the University of Cambridge, he did his best to reconcile what were fast becoming irreconcilable, the claims and prerogatives of an absolute king, irritable, suspicious, exacting, prodigal, with the ancient rights and liberties, growing stronger in their demands by being denied, resisted, or outwitted, of the ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... anything used for educational purposes acquires an evil—or at least an unappetising—reputation. In some cases they have been messed and meddled in usum vulgi. But their worst enemy recently has been, it may be feared, the irreconcilable opposition of their spirit to what is called the modern spirit—though this latter sometimes takes them up and plays with them in a fashion of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... Bernard's conception of a bishop as "the seed" of his predecessor (Sec. 34). But the first of a series of coarbs, of which Murtough was the fifteenth, was Maelcoba, the second predecessor of Joseph. So that, even on Colgan's hypothesis, St. Bernard's two statements are irreconcilable. Yet it is difficult to believe that an error so manifest was in his source. I suggest that he wrote "fifteen" in error for "twelve": in other words his document had xii, and he misread it xu. The confusion of u with ii is very ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor

... the profound importance of these embryological facts in favour of the monistic philosophy than is afforded by these efforts of its opponents to get rid of them by silence or denial. The truth is that these facts are most inconvenient for them, and are quite irreconcilable with their views. We must be all the more pressing on our side to put them in their proper light. I fully agree with Huxley when he says, in his "Man's Place in Nature": "Though these facts are ignored by several well-known popular leaders, they are easy to prove, and are ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... less than four pounds of our money, though the value of this sum was much greater then—proves that there must have been another motive. The traditional conception is inconsistent with Christ's choice of him to be a disciple; and it is irreconcilable with the tragic greatness of his repentance. His view of Christ's enterprise was no doubt of a material cast: he expected Christ to be a king, and hoped to hold a high place in His court: but these ideas were common to all the disciples, who to the very end were waiting ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... six or seven others would probably prove irreconcilable; but the vehemence and rancour shown by the great Nehemiah during the summer in the pursuit of his anti-Wharton campaign had to some extent defeated themselves. A personal grudge in the hands of a man of his type is not a formidable weapon. Wharton would have felt perfectly ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... or cemetery, was built in 1278. In the thirteenth century, when architectural industry was so active, numerous high brick towers were built in Florence for purposes of defense. Some of them remain "to recall the bloody feuds of the irreconcilable factions of the nobility. In these conflicts, the strife was carried on from tower to tower, from house to house: streets were barricaded with heavy chains, and homes made desolate with fire and sword." Churches and great public ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... crushed by the unexpected blow which had befallen him. Since his marriage, he had opposed a forced indifference to his sister's irreconcilable attitude, finding compensation in the glowing moments of his passion for Diane. Nevertheless—since living in an atmosphere of disapproval tends to fray the strongest nerves—his temper had worn a little fine beneath the strain; and with Diane's faults and failings thrust ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... modern historical criticism, ... it is not surprising to find that the famous embassy of John the Grammarian to the court of Baghdad must be rejected as a fiction irreconcilable with fact.'—Prof. Bury in the English Historical Review, April 1909. But he was ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... incompetent tribunal, an unprincipled advocate never finds any difficulty in buying false testimony; and even where justice is uprightly and skilfully administered, it is not rare to encounter between equally credible witnesses such flagrant and irreconcilable contradictions as to leave no room for any hypothesis other than perjury on one side or both. Perjury in transactions with the national revenue and with municipal assessors is by no means unprecedented among ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... loudly emphasized: the reasons, more powerful in their effect, were less plainly and directly proclaimed. The former related to questions of public policy and to differences of opinion which would hardly have been irreconcilable: the latter sprang from personal disappointments and involved the rivalry of personal interests, which throughout history have been the pregnant source of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... two irreconcilable monarchs, who show each other up so admirably for our edification, make any question as to which had right on his side seem comparatively trifling. Tushratta was evidently much distressed that he dared not venture to send ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr

... little or no dispute. But with the territory north of the Ohio River it was very different. Four states laid claim either to the whole or to parts of this territory, and these claims were not simply conflicting, but irreconcilable. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... not quite alone, because it was evident that Mary Crawford's wishes, though politely kept back, inclined the same way: but his determinateness and his power seemed to make allies unnecessary; and, independent of this great irreconcilable difference, they wanted a piece containing very few characters in the whole, but every character first-rate, and three principal women. All the best plays were run over in vain. Neither Hamlet, nor Macbeth, nor Othello, nor Douglas, nor The Gamester, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... seem to agree with each other; but there is a pride which is not irreconcilable with the humblest station. This pride of character finds an illustration in ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic

... respect to the late hostilities with Spain. Mere literal truth of narrative cannot yet be attained, even in the always limited degree to which historical truth is gradually elicited from a mass of partial and often irreconcilable testimony; and literal truth, when presented, needs to be accompanied by a discriminating analysis and estimate of the influence exerted upon the general result by individual occurrences, positive or negative. I say positive or negative, for we are too apt to overlook the ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... transpired." "I shall not speak of it, monsieur le duc," replied I, much moved, "unless you or madame d'Egmont set me the example." "In that case the affair will for ever remain buried in oblivion; but, madame, I will not conceal from you, that my daughter has become your most bitter and irreconcilable enemy. " "The motives which have actuated me, monsieur le marechal, are such as to leave me very little concern upon that subject. I flatter myself this affair will not keep you away from me, who would fain reckon as firmly on your friendship as ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon

... of this divine necessity—not to forgive, but to forgive in a way which shows that God is irreconcilable to evil, and can never treat it as other or less than it is—it is the recognition of this divine necessity, or the failure to recognise it, which ultimately divides interpreters of Christianity into evangelical and non-evangelical, those who are true to the New Testament and ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney

... in this part of the world, can appreciate the transcendental reasoning that makes an impostor half divine, or a cheat holy. 'Good faith and imposture,' to quote our author, 'are words which, in our rigid conscience, are opposed like two irreconcilable terms,' though, he says, it is not so in 'the East,' from which our religion came, and was certainly far from being so with our Teacher! We cannot admire M. Renan here. The writing is very fine. He exhausts himself ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... most unflattering opinion of the man who will thieve a dog, but between him and the man who will keep one, the moral difference is not so great as to be irreconcilable. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... always been treated with such respect and liberality; and the offensive distinction which was implied, between his civil office and the hereditary rank of his colleague seems to have made Edecon a doubtful friend and Orestes an irreconcilable enemy. After this entertainment they travelled about one hundred miles from Sardica to Naissus. That flourishing city, which had given birth to the great Constantine, was levelled with the ground; the inhabitants were destroyed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... property, much less the honor of an eminent citizen, or the title to an object of so much desire as a seat in the Senate. This evidence is not only unworthy of respect or credit, but it is in many instances wholly irreconcilable with undisputed facts, and Mr. Kellogg has met and overthrown it at ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... theory put forth by Darwin, I venture to affirm that, so far as my knowledge goes, all the ingenuity and all the learning of hostile critics have not enabled them to adduce a solitary fact, of which it can be said, this is irreconcilable with the Darwinian theory. In the prodigious variety and complexity of organic nature, there are multitudes of phenomena which are not deducible from any generalisations we have yet reached. But the same ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley

... energy, carrying the Gospel to the uttermost parts, stands for the white man; John, the man of love, leaning on his Master's bosom, is typical of the black. The white man and the black are contrasts, not contraries; complementary opposites, not irreconcilable opponents. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... would be impossible to remove Sir James without a public enquiry, Sir James must certainly stay where he was. Probably the Duke was right; but the fact that the peccant doctor continued in the Queen's service made the Hastings family irreconcilable and produced an unpleasant impression of unrepentant error upon the public mind. As for Victoria, she was very young and quite inexperienced; and she can hardly be blamed for having failed to control an extremely difficult situation. That was clearly Lord Melbourne's task; he was a man of ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey

... were the Filipino field forces and widening as was the area of peace, the result of the island campaign was still uncertain. It rested upon two unknown quantities. The first was the nature of the Filipinos. Would they remain irreconcilable, ever ready to take advantage of a moment of weakness? If such were to be the case, we could look for no real conquest, but only a forcible occupation, which the people of the United States would never consent to maintain. The second unknown quantity was the American people themselves. ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish

... interview, from which they both departed discontented: he procured a second, which only convinced him that the feud was irreconcilable: he told them his opinion, that all was lost. This denunciation was contradicted by Oxford; but Bolingbroke whispered ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... be more in this than either thy wit or mine is able to fathom. This maiden and one of her attendants wear a dress belonging to the Varangian Imperial guard. They have perhaps been intrusted with a message from the Emperor, and it is not irreconcilable with Alexius's politics to send it through such messengers as these. Let us, therefore, convey them in all honour to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... twenty-eight days, holding withal the rotation of the sun upon his centre; and all are so confident, that they have made schemes and tables of their motions. The [3127]Hollander, in his dissertatiuncula cum Apelle, censures all; and thus they disagree amongst themselves, old and new, irreconcilable in their opinions; thus Aristarchus, thus Hipparchus, thus Ptolemeus, thus Albateginus, thus Alfraganus, thus Tycho, thus Ramerus, thus Roeslinus, thus Fracastorius, thus Copernicus and his adherents, thus Clavius and Maginus, &c., with their followers, vary and determine of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... the river now called Albemarle, which was then considered as part of Florida, where he built a fort, for the security of himself and followers, and called the country Carolina. By this time the Spaniards had incurred the irreconcilable hatred and resentment of the Indian nations by their cruelty and treachery in the heart of the continent. Ribaud found means of acquainting the Indians that he was an enemy to the Spaniards, and of consequence ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... Montbazon. "I think," says he, "that the Duke's design did not spring from his own particular sentiment, but from the persuasion of the duchesses de Chevreuse and de Montbazon, who exercised entire sway over his mind and had an irreconcilable hatred to the Cardinal. What makes me say so, is that, whilst he was under that resolution, I always observed that he had an internal repugnance which, if I mistake not, was overcome by some pledge which he may have given to ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... inherent in human nature and contains the truth. But this truth was made known to people who considered that a community could only be kept together if some of them restrained others, and so it appeared quite irreconcilable with the existing order of society. Moreover it was at first expressed only fragmentarily, and so obscurely that though people admitted its theoretic truth they could not entirely accept it as guidance for their conduct. Then, too, the dissemination ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy

... and, after my graduation, for a time in the same regiment. Then we served together in the Mexican War. I had known Bragg in Mexico, and met him occasionally subsequently. I could well understand how there might be an irreconcilable difference between them. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... perfectly smoothed for her, in imagining the management of Clementina at the dance: neither child nor woman, neither servant nor lady, how was she to be carried successfully through it, without sorrow to herself or offence to others? In proportion to the relief she felt, Mrs. Milray protested her irreconcilable grief; but when the simpler Mrs. Atwell proposed her going and reasoning with Clementina, she said, No, no; better let her alone, if she felt as she did; and perhaps after all she ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the official acts of the Southern Conventions inspired by a spirit of apparently irreconcilable hatred of the Union, but the popular manifestations in the South were for more decided in the same direction. A sense of official propriety, no doubt, in some degree governed the conduct and modified the language of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... excess and fought for him furiously. And, above all, they both came to hate each other with a deadly hatred. Differing completely in character and education and obliged to live together because neither was willing to forego the advantage of her possible maternity, they lived the life of irreconcilable enemies who can never lay their weapons aside.... I grew up in the midst of this hatred and had it instilled into me by both of them. When my childish heart, hungering for affection, inclined me to one of them, the other would seek to inspire ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... that be so, inference may as well be interpreted as presumption. For if we say that we know that wherever there is smoke there is fire, and then perceive that there is smoke in the hill, but no fire, then the existence of the smoke becomes irreconcilable, or the universal proposition of the concomitance of smoke with fire becomes false, and hence the presumption that there is fire in the hill. This would have been all right if the universal concomitance of smoke ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... word-painting, I am going to tell you of an affair that occurred in Washington a few years ago. It has to do with a well-known society girl, an irascible father, a bad Chinaman, and a high collar—seemingly irreconcilable elements, I'll admit, but I will do my best to mix 'em in. I had the story in sections from most of the parties concerned; a wide acquaintance with the police and an intimate knowledge of the Chinese quarter helping out considerably. The odds and ends, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... unholy; as the pure differs from the impure; as the kind and charitable differ from the unkind and the uncharitable. It is just at this point that all the theological juggling comes in, in the effort to reconcile contradictions and irreconcilable paradoxes, under the designation—Mystery, Miracle, and Faith. Few theologians would admit that it is desirable, even if possible, that the mystery and miracle should disappear, and that wisdom and understanding should take their place. In other ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... imperious nature; her soul was strong and full of energy; she knew how to brave danger and public opinion; the boldest projects did not frighten her, and her ambition was unbounded." Such is the picture that one of her most irreconcilable enemies has drawn of her, and we shall see that the principal traits were faithfully described. But to complete the resemblance one must first of all plead an extenuating circumstance: Madame de Combray was a fanatical royalist. Even that, however, would ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... mighty agency, the warp that a mind has received in childhood, come to reinforce the enthusiasms and ambitions of youth, and urge Larry to assent. That other and nobler Spirit of the Nation woke, and the passionate, irreconcilable voice, that had first spoken to him when he was a little boy, woke and uttered itself again, shouting to him its wild summons at a moment when the tide of life was running fiercest in him, when every emotion was at highest pressure and ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... the ally of colonial Germany. Were it not for Alsace-Lorraine, we should be the most ardent disciples of the noble, truly humane, and admirable work of disarmament undertaken by the Emperor Nicholas II. Alsace-Lorraine has made us the irreconcilable enemies of Germanism and at the same time the faithful, devoted and ever loyal friends of every ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam

... Cassation, and was one of the original members of the Institute. A moderate statesman, he was elected secretary and finally president of the Tribunat, but with other of his colleagues he was expelled for his irreconcilable attitude towards the establishment of the civil code. On his retirement he again turned to write for the stage, producing Le Tresor and Moliere avec ses amis in 1804. He became librarian to Joseph Bonaparte and to the Senate, was professor of grammar and literature ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of the house was the wife of a steamboat captain, but owing to some irreconcilable difference of sentiment, she refused to live with him, and she was miserably poor. In pity to her sad case, her husband had sent, by my father, some articles of clothing which he hoped might be of use to her, and this errand served ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... further proof of Bode's solicitude for Yorick's moral reputation. Yet the retention of the episode "Les Gants d'Amour" in its entirety, and of parts of the continued story of the Piedmontese, may seem inconsistent and irreconcilable with any absolute objection on Bode's part other than a quantitative one, to this loathesome element ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... unfounded, of the late king's returning kindness to Monmouth, the consequences of which could not easily be calculated; whereas, every occurrence that had happened, as well as every circumstance in James's situation, seemed to make him utterly irreconcilable with the Whigs. Besides, after the reproach, as well as alarm, which the notoriety of Charles's treacherous character must so often have caused them, the very circumstance of having at their head a prince, of whom they could with any colour hold out to their adherents ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox

... such as belonged to the people and the plebs went before one of these two bodies and were announced: this is the same practice that is followed at present, intended to produce at least an appearance of valid election. In case there was ever a deficiency of candidates or they became involved in irreconcilable strife, a smaller number was chosen.—The following year, in which Servius Galba (that later became emperor) and Lucius Cornelius held the consular title, fifteen praetors held office. This went on for many years, so that sometimes sixteen and sometimes ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... and even in Jeremiah when compared with the older prophets); only, we must set aside the idea of a really different reading,—a reading resting on the authority of good Manuscripts, inasmuch as such an idea would be irreconcilable with the deviations of the LXX. elsewhere, and with the unanimity of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the passage before us. The assertion of Olshausen, however, that, in the Hebrew form, the passage would not have been suitable for the purpose, and that therefore it is probable that, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... subsidiary lights, but were other worlds larger and perhaps superior to ours, where was man's place in the universe? and where were the doctrines they had maintained as irrefragable? I by no means assert that the new doctrines were really utterly irreconcilable with the more essential parts of the old dogmas, if only theologians had had patience and genius enough to consider the matter calmly. I suppose that in that case they might have reached the amount of reconciliation at present attained, and not only have ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... limp, whose little heart beat no more. I have wept over the feebleness and deformity of a child, lame, or born blind, or, worse still, mindless. If I had the genius of Thomson, I, too, could depict a "City of Dreadful Night" from mere touch sensations. From contrasts so irreconcilable can we fail to form an idea of beauty and know surely when ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... unfavorable circumstances that Chester A. Arthur assumed the office of President; the people's passion over the death of the second President of the United States, to fall by an assassin's hand, was intense; factional feeling in his own party was bitter and apparently irreconcilable; when the popular mind was filled with dreadful forebodings as to the future; but he exhibited a gravity, a reticence, an affability, and a firmness which commanded the respect of conservative men of all parties. Not only was he the most successful—perhaps ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... shuddered and grew sick. And now, having taken the alarm, his thoughts became active in a new direction, and penetrated beneath surfaces which hitherto had blinded his eyes by their golden lustre. Facts and statements which before had appeared favourable and coherent now presented irreconcilable discrepancies, and he wondered at the mental blindness which had prevented his seeing things in ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur

... these eight witnesses concur but in one single point,—that Tecumseh was killed in the battle of the Thames. As to the nature of his wounds, the mutilation of his body, the time when, the spot where, and by whose hands, he fell, these various statements are wholly irreconcilable with each other, and leave the main question involved in additional ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... natural bodies." Let us look for a minute at Kant's Cosmogony, or, as Haeckel says,[27] Kant's Cosmological Gas Theory: "This wonderful theory," says Haeckel, "harmonizes with all the general series of phenomena at present known to us, and stands in no irreconcilable contradiction to any one of them. Moreover, it is purely mechanical and monistic, makes use exclusively of the inherent forces of eternal matter, and entirely excludes every supernatural process, every prearranged and conscious action of a personal creator." Compare ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott

... here would on this hypothesis be as nothing in comparison with the pains of Hell. Only it must be admitted that such a view of religion is incompatible with any faith in the goodness of God, and seems quite irreconcilable with ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... apparently irreconcilable, are really organic, and come of position, climate, diet, and slowly amalgamated races of men. Herne's oak in Windsor Forest and the monarchy in Windsor Castle grew on the same terms. Branch after branch the oak has fallen, till on the last day of the summer of 1863 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... The same irreconcilable spirit of the Reformation, which would not tolerate any saint's image in the places of worship, also destroyed the liking for Miracle Plays. The tendency of the time was to turn away from mysteries and abstract ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... encountered in every attempt to present the life and work of Jesus according to the evidence of his own words preserved in the sources is the sharp, irreconcilable contradiction between the so-called "fire and sword" sayings on the one side, and the beatitudes on the peacemakers and the meek, the prohibition to kill, to be angry, to resist wrong, and the command ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... action to the word, "we must instantly insist upon its being laid in some other one." At the same time Bonaparte, across the Channel, was illustrating in almost identical phrase the indomitable energy that was common to these two men, the exponents of the two opposing and irreconcilable tendencies of their age. "If the British ministry should intimate that there was anything the First Consul had not done, because he was prevented from doing it, that instant he would do it." "You have proved yourself too true a prophet," ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... He declared war not only against Darwin but even against men like Asa Gray, Le Conte, and others, who had attempted to reconcile the new theory with the Bible: he insisted that "evolutionism and the scriptural account of the origin of man are irreconcilable"—that the Darwinian theory is "in direct conflict with the teaching of the apostle, 'All scripture is given by inspiration of God'"; he pointed out, in his opposition to Darwin's Descent of Man and Lyell's Antiquity of Man, that in the Bible "the genealogical links which ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... being found out; but conscience was the traitor within the gates; it fought in each heart the battle of society, and caused the individual to throw himself, a wanton sacrifice, to the prosperity of his enemy. For it was clear that the two were irreconcilable, the state and the individual conscious of himself. THAT uses the individual for its own ends, trampling upon him if he thwarts it, rewarding him with medals, pensions, honours, when he serves it faithfully; THIS, strong only in his independence, threads his way through ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... replied; "this man's conduct cannot be explained upon any rational principles—but he is one of the Glonglims, of which I have spoken to you; and examples are not wanting on our planet, of conduct as irreconcilable to reason. This man is making an article which is scarce, as well as useful, in this country, where gravity is less than it is with us: the force of the wind is very great, and the metal is possessed but by a ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... further allowed the unquestionable truth "that, though inconceivable, a motiveless volition would, if conceived, be conceived as morally worthless."[13] I say this is very instructive, because it shows that in Hamilton's view each theory was alike irreconcilable with "the deliverance of consciousness," and that he only chose the one in preference to the other, because, although not any more conceivable a solution, it seemed to him a ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... let me have another look at that gentleman's organs." Keats and I hurried Lamb into the painting-room, shut the door and gave way to inextinguishable laughter. Monkhouse followed and tried to get Lamb away. We went back, but the comptroller was irreconcilable. We soothed and smiled and asked him to supper. He stayed though his dignity was sorely affected. However, being a good-natured man, we parted all in good-humour, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... the bitter strife for personal welfare, and, by a fatal consequence, how destructive these things are of individual happiness. A society in which each member is preoccupied with his own well-being, is organized disorder. This is all that we learn from the irreconcilable ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... give empty promises, or affect any excessive interest, but she could always be depended on; she never distressed or humiliated any one. Having been trained from her infancy to court life, she was a kind mistress, for she had learned to combine two qualities that are often irreconcilable—dignity and gentleness. All who were thrown into her society agree in this. Sometimes, according to Madame Durand, when she was in company her face had a melancholy expression inspired by the demands of etiquette that were made upon her; but "when she ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... not until the committee on resolutions had accepted what the editor himself dictated was the knotty point finally settled. "Recognising," said the platform, "that there are in our midst honest but irreconcilable differences of opinion with regard to the respective systems of protection and free-trade, we remit the discussion of the subject to the people in their congressional districts and to the decision of Congress thereon, wholly free from executive ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... depart from iniquity, as persons in wrangling fits depart from one another; to wit, for a time, but when the quarrel is over, by means of some intercessor, they are reconciled again. O! Satan is the intercessor between the soul and sin, and though the breach between these two may seem to be irreconcilable; yea, though the soul hath sworn it will never give countenance to so vile a thing as sin is more; yet he can tell how to make up this difference, and to fetch them back to their vomit again, who, one would have thought, had quite escaped his sins, and been gone. (2 Peter ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... declare that the Papacy and liberty cannot live side by side? You ask Victor Hugo to point out to you an idea which has been worshipped for eighteen centuries. It is that idea which you have declared irreconcilable with the Papacy, and which was breathed into humanity by God; the idea which has withdrawn from Catholicism the half of the Christian world, the idea which has snatched from you Lammennais and the flower of the intellects of Europe, the idea of Christ, that pure, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... Nova Scotia, a feeling of uneasiness was naturally created by the presence of a large and increasing population who were naturally in sympathy with the French, and had assumed an attitude quite irreconcilable with the security of English interests on the Atlantic coast of eastern America. It must be admitted that the position of the Acadians was one deserving of sympathy, tossed about as they were for many years ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot

... covering their retreat by just such excuses as have been suggested. Was he wiser and more conscientious than they? A refusal to accept the proffered olive branch now meant,—he knew it well,—the irreconcilable enmity of the Buchanan faction. And he was not asked to recant, but only to accept what he had always deemed the very essence of statesmanship, a compromise. His Republican allies promptly evinced their distrust. They fully expected him to join his former ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... four-legged animal, with one leg longer than the others. The globe is inevitable. The cross is arbitrary. Above all the globe is at unity with itself; the cross is primarily and above all things at enmity with itself. The cross is the conflict of two hostile lines, of irreconcilable direction. That silent thing up there is essentially a collision, a crash, a struggle in stone. Pah! that sacred symbol of yours has actually given its name to a description of desperation and muddle. When we speak of men at once ignorant of each other and frustrated ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... important questions that he discusses. Completeness of statement is rarely to be obtained upon any of the deeper topics of life. If the golden side be displayed, the silver side is likely to be hidden. The same man holds various, though not irreconcilable opinions upon the same subject, according to the different lights in which he views it or the different phases it presents. The most honest man must sometimes appear inconsistent for the sake of truth; and the clearer a man's own convictions, the wider will be his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... the Multitude. No Protestant Clergy have wrote better in Defence of the Reformation than ours; but others have certainly gone greater Lengths in it, as to Worship and Discipline in outward Appearance. The Difference between the Roman Catholicks and us seems to be less irreconcilable, than it is between them and the Reformed Churches of the united Netherlands and Switzerland; and I am fully persuaded, that the Mother Church despairs not of bringing back to her Bosom this run-away Daughter of hers, and making this Island one Day or other repay with Interest ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville

... to present my estimate of expenses for the fiesta," he began. "We can't allow it," commented a consumptive old man, who was an irreconcilable conservative. ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... Wills are thwarted, individuals sacrificed. What does that mean to progress? She goes her way, and the blood of those who fall enriches the soil whence spring her new shoots. The Dominicans themselves do not escape this law, and they are beginning to imitate the Jesuits, their irreconcilable enemies." ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... was strong to reply with an affirmative. If she believed his father to be utterly irreconcilable, there could be no excuse for lingering; yet his nobler self prevailed, to her no word ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... whole science of astronomy, and even to forbid men to look at the sky lest they might see Mars and Venus at very varying distances from the earth, and discover Venus at one time crescent, at another time round, or make other observations irreconcilable with the Ptolemaic system. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... had never been able to make her explain satisfactorily that first single relationship with Gardner Knowles, which she declared had ended so abruptly. Since then he had doubted, as was his nature; but this girl was so sweet, childish, irreconcilable with herself, like a wandering breath of air, or a pale-colored flower, that he scarcely knew what to think. The artistically inclined are not prone to quarrel with an enticing sheaf of flowers. She was heavenly to him, coming in, as she did at times when he was alone, with bland eyes and yielding ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... virtue for the moment out of the question—might be brought into fruitful relation with it. It would be a bigger thing if a better mind were projected upon it—projected without sacrificing the mind. So he lent his young friend books she never read—she was on almost irreconcilable terms with the printed page save for spouting it—and in the long summer days, when he had leisure, took her to the Louvre to admire the great works of painting and sculpture. Here, as on all occasions, he was struck with the queer jumble of her taste, her mixture of intelligence ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... the Labor party organ "Le Peuple" issued the following statement: "Why do we, as irreconcilable antimilitarists, cry 'Bravo!' from the bottom of our hearts to all those who offer themselves for the defense of the country? Because it is not only necessary to protect the hearths and homes, the women and the children, but it ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... lips: "Woe to him! woe to him! when he forgets what I have suffered for him; woe to him, if he does not remove the shame which crushes me! woe to him, if he despises me as others do! Then will Dorris Eitter be his irreconcilable enemy, and she will take vengeance so true as there is ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... sour him with cares. Let him tell your uncle that both his brother's children loathe the fruit of the self-sacrifice of a lifetime. Transgress your grandmother's wishes; condemn that poor man to a desolate, objectless, covetous old age; make the breach irreconcilable for ever; and will James be the better or the happier for your allowing his evil temper ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... him the definite opinions of his generals. Thereupon Paterno returned to the rebel chiefs, some of whom still tenaciously held out, whilst others were willing to capitulate, subject to Aguinaldo's approval. Paterno's mission was daily becoming more perilous, for the irreconcilable leaders regarded him as an evil genius sent to sow discord in the camp. After many delays the principal warriors assembled at Biac-na-bato on October 31 and held a great meeting, which Paterno, who is a fluent speaker, attended and ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... and soon, with her quick perception and uncommon powers of direction and persuasion, she reduced the complicated tangle to order, and then retired to a house of her own, where she was free from the annoying devices of her irreconcilable mother-in-law, and could devote herself to the education of her children, the perfecting of her own education, and the visitation of ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... even like him. She was grateful to him, of course, for his help and friendship; but that was all. Beyond this, he would not have been surprised to learn from her own lips that she actually disliked him: for there was something irreconcilable about their two natures. And never, for a moment, had she considered him in the light of an eligible lover—oh, how that stung! Here was she, with an attraction for him which nothing could weaken; and in him was ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... As for the two women, Mesdames Charlotte de Brebian and Josephine de Bartas, or Lolotte and Fifine, as they were called, both took an equal interest in a scarf, or the trimming of a dress, or the reconciliation of several irreconcilable colors; both were eaten up with a desire to look like Parisiennes, and neglected their homes, where everything went wrong. But if they dressed like dolls in tightly-fitting gowns of home manufacture, and exhibited outrageous combinations of crude colors upon ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... tell what he knows to be false, or urge measures he believes to be harmful. This is a far different thing from telling all the truth all of the time, or urging all the measures he regards as good for mankind in season and out. That is the attitude of the irreconcilable, and the irreconcilable is as ineffectual in journalism as he is in church or state. Thus "The Ladies' Home Journal" has not as yet taken any part in furthering the great woman's suffrage movement which is sweeping over the world, and ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt

... screwed his mouth into a form irreconcilable with humming or whistling, and looked ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... against free will is that it is irreconcilable with God's knowledge. If man alone is the master of his choice, God cannot know beforehand what he will choose. And if God does know, the man cannot but choose as God foreknew he would choose, and what becomes of his freedom? This may be ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... one was given the sense of its unreality, its distastefulness. So marvellously was one made that one sickened at its contact, and yet, if one separated oneself from it, one drooped and languished in a morbid gloom. The burden of the flesh! The frailty of the spirit! The two things seemed irreconcilable, and yet one endured them both. The world so full of beauty and joy, and yet the one gift withheld ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... master; for it had been expected that he would at least behave politely and be grateful for such decrees.[78] Caesar himself had no design in the act, which was merely the consequence of distraction or thoughtlessness; but it made the senate his irreconcilable enemies. The affair with the tribunes, moreover, had made a deep impression upon the people. We must, however, remember that the people under such circumstances are most sensible to anything affecting their honor, as we have seen at the beginning ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... dissolve the present parliament, and remove from him all evil counsellors. With a clouded brow the king in reply pronounced the contents of this memorial to be disrespectful to himself, injurious to his parliament, and irreconcilable to the principles of the constitution; and he asserted that he had ever made the law of the land the rule of his conduct, that he esteemed it his chief glory to rule over a free people, and that he had a right to expect from them a steady and affectionate support. The city deputation withdrew, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... of Boston to use all efforts against the plan of parliamentary taxation. It was resolved "that the imposition of duties and taxes by the Parliament of Great Britain upon a people not represented in the House of Commons is irreconcilable with their rights." A committee of correspondence was appointed in Massachusetts to communicate with other colonial assemblies, and the idea of union for the common defence began to take firm hold on the public mind. ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... burlesque, is chiefly accidental, and results not from too much care, but from too little. The most irreconcilable of Irish landlords are beginning to recognize that we are on the eve of the dawn of a new day in Ireland. 'On the eve of' is a dead metaphor for 'about to experience', and to complete it with 'the dawn of a day' is as bad as to say, It cost one pound sterling, ten ...
— Tract XI: Three Articles on Metaphor • Society for Pure English

... occasioned them. The turns and vicissitudes of courts frequently make friends of enemies, and enemies of friends; you must labor, therefore, to acquire that great and uncommon talent of hating with good-breeding and loving with prudence; to make no quarrel irreconcilable by silly and unnecessary indications of anger; and no friendship dangerous, in case it breaks, by a wanton, indiscreet, and ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... preferred acknowledged fiction. This inconsistency, however, is probably rather apparent than real. Experience has taught me that the greater the fairy-story the less the truth; and contrariwise, that the greater the truth the less the fairy-story. In other words, the artistic graces of romance are irreconcilable with the crude straightforwardness of fact. The idealism of childhood, believing that all that is most beautiful must on that very account be most true, clamors accordingly for truth. The knowledge of maturity, which has discovered ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... theory here again is divided. Two utterly irreconcilable ideas of the origin of life claim our belief—the theories of Biogenesis, and of Abiogenesis, the one says all life is from the egg, and has always been so; and so we have an eternal begetting of finite creatures; the other alleges the spontaneous beginning of plants and animals; a fact, if it ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... for independence shift their ground and plead for absolute independence, but there is no such thing as qualified independence; and when we abandon the simple name to men of half-measures, we prejudice our cause and confuse the issue. Then there is the irreconcilable—how is he regarded in the common cry? Always an impossible, wild, foolish person, and we frequently resent the name and try to explain his reasonableness instead of exulting in his strength, for the true irreconcilable is the simple ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... opposed within the Republic. Neither fully understood the other. Each had a social ideal that was deeper laid than any theory of government or than any commercial or humanitarian interest. Both knew vaguely but with sure instinct that their interests and ideals were irreconcilable. Each felt in its heart the deadly passion of self-preservation. It was because, in both North and South, men were subtly conscious that a whole social system was the issue at stake, and because on each side they believed in their own ideals with their whole souls, ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... the grounds upon which he rejected it from the canon of the New Testament, are presented in this passage. He was too impatient of the seeming contradiction between Paul and James upon the subject of faith, and too hastily concluded that they were irreconcilable. A careful consideration of the scope of the argument in the Epistle of James, removes the difficulty, as may be seen at large in later commentators. There is no historical reason for casting discredit ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther

... easily understand, when some of our poets rhyme "clear" to "idea," and a Clerkenwell Green orator prefers "obstropalous" to "obstreperous." On some such grounds alone can excuse be found for some anomalous expressions in the Annals; they are irreconcilable to the common rules of grammar; and what may seem strange to the reader, though to me it is quite natural, the very same improprieties that occur in the Annals of words and phrases not according with the ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... story upon a quaintly attractive theme. Her hero, Eddy Oliver, is a type new to fiction. Eddy saw good in everything to such an extent that he allowed himself to be persuaded into active sympathy with the aims of practically everyone who was aiming at anything, however mutually irreconcilable the aims might be. "He went along with all points of view so long as they were positive; as soon as condemnation or rejection came in, he broke off." Consequently, as you may imagine, his career was pleasantly involved. It embraced the Church, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various

... night between the 14th and 15th of December the two irreconcilable friends were occupied in observing the lunar disc. J.T. Maston was, as usual, saying strong things to the learned Belfast, who was getting angry too. The Secretary of the Gun Club declared for the thousandth time that he had just perceived the projectile, adding even that Michel ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... serve to explain the apparent contradictions, the irreconcilable discrepancies, between the statements of contemporary Christian bishops, locally at a vast distance from each other, or (which is even more important) reporting from communities occupying different stages of civilization. There was no harmonizing organ of interpretation, in Christian ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... should or should not be put under instruction—such is the question before us. Of all those which we have discussed this is the only one which has two extremes and admits of no compromise. Knowledge and ignorance, such are the two irreconcilable terms of this problem. Between these two abysses we seem to see Louis XVIII reckoning up the felicities of the eighteenth century, and the unhappiness of the nineteenth. Seated in the centre of the seesaw, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... omitted many curious incidents and exploits characteristic of a deadly struggle between antagonists representing the collision of archaic with modern societies, the clash of two religions eternally irreconcilable, the deadly wrestle of assailants and defenders unlike in everything but their tenacious intrepidity. The story, until Mr. Baddeley wrote it, has hitherto been little known in England. Yet Englishmen should be interested in this ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... prospect before him, to be indifferent to the subject; but, though he was now prepared to make sacrifices, from which but two years before he would have recoiled with horror, he had still resolved never to subscribe to conditions irreconcilable with his honour and conscience; and in ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... as the two great archetypal universities, and this description does not depend upon mere priority of date or upon the impetus given to thought and interest in Europe by their teachers or their methods. Bologna and Paris were two Studia Generalia with two different and irreconcilable types of Universitas. The Universitates of the Studium of Bologna were guilds of students; the Universitas of the Studium of Paris was a guild of masters. The great seats of learning in Medieval Europe were either universities of ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait

... Who were the Romans? p. 12, where, among other remarkable statements, Janus is confidently said to have been introduced at Rome by the Sabine Numa, and therefore to have been a Sabine deity, an assumption quite irreconcilable with those of Dr. Frazer and Mr. Cook. In striking contrast with such speculations is a sensible paper on Janus in M. Toutain's Etudes de mythologie et d'histoire, p. 195 foll. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... the counterpart of Milton in thought,—a heroic nature struggling with irreconcilable elements. Each is confronted by a situation as difficult as Hamlet's; but though they cannot fully master it, they deal with it ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... beautiful dream—"E Pluribus Unum"—one out of many. The Union had yet to be realized as an historical fact. The discordant elements out of which our Constitution had been strangely wrought had fought their way at last into two irreconcilable hostile sections, the very structure of whose civilization rested on antagonistic conceptions ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... impetuosity which seem always to have made half measures impossible to him, Mr. Durant declared that so far as he was concerned, the Law and the Gospel were irreconcilable, and gave up his legal practice. A case which he had already undertaken for Edward Everett, and from which Mr. Everett was unwilling to release him, is said to be the last one he conducted; and he pleaded in public for the last time in a hearing at the State House in Boston, some years later, ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse



Words linked to "Irreconcilable" :   reconcilable, inconsistent



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