"Assignable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poem. Their composition apparently extended over a considerable time, which may be fairly estimated as not less than four years. Read literally they seem to portray thoughts, modes or experiences fairly assignable to such a period. Though variable and sometimes light and airy in their movement, the greater portion appear to reveal deep and intense emotion, the welling and tumultous floods of the inner life of their ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... wild desire to rush about from wall to wall, shrieking and waving his arms. Over and over again he exclaimed, "Oh, what is the matter with me?" The strangeness of the thing was what unsettled and unnerved him. He had all the sensations of terror, but without any assignable reason, and this groundless fear became in the end the cause of a new fear: he was afraid of this fear that was afraid ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... turn backward and forward before the door. The vaguely terrible suspicion which had risen in his mind at the terminus had forced itself by this time into a definite form which was abhorrent to him. Without the shadow of an assignable reason for it, he found himself blindly distrusting his wife's fidelity, and blindly suspecting Mr. Bashwood of serving her in the capacity of go-between. In sheer horror of his own morbid fancy, he determined to take down the number of the house, and the ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... in the British Museum. It represents the Moon-god seated on a throne,—as is but meet for the king of the Moon-god's special city—with priests presenting worshippers. No definite date is of course assignable to Ur-ea and the important epoch of Chaldean history which he represents. But a very probable approximative one can be arrived at, thanks to a clue supplied by the same Nabonidus, last King of Babylon, who settled the Sargon question ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... of Vienna, especially to the Hungarian Majesty, this wonderful reconquest of Bohemia, without battle fought,—or any cause assignable but Traun's excellent manoeuvring and Friedrich's imprudences and trust in the French,—was a thing of heavenly miracle; blessed omen that Providence had vouchsafed to her prayers the recovery of Silesia itself. All the world was crowing over Friedrich: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the poet's undying art, would, night after night for many hours, debar the inroads of sleep. The number of schools which I have particularised as having attended may occasion some surprise at the deficiency of my scholarship. For this, various reasons are assignable, all of which, however, hinge upon these two formidable obstacles—the inconveniency of local position, and the thoughtless inattention of youth. In remote country places, long and rough ways, conjoined not unfrequently with wild weather, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... assignable to one of the three following causes, or a combination of these: First, hereditary or inborn weakness; second, unfavorable conditions of food, surroundings, etc.; third, ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... a merino sheep and a crossbred sheep each cost the same sum, say, for convenience, L10, to rear and maintain; and that there are no special costs assignable to the wool and the mutton respectively, as, of ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... if we have no prostitutes from the free class of society among ourselves. I answer, in no assignable proportion. With general truth, it might be said, that there are none. When such a case occurs, it is among the rare evils of society. And apart from other and better reasons, which we believe to exist, it is plain that it must be so, from the comparative absence of temptation. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... recaptured from the bark Pons; the defeat of the resolution creating the rank of Lieutenant-General; and the act founding a Military Asylum for the relief of disabled soldiers. The French Spoliation Bill, the bill making Land Warrants Assignable, the bill granting ten million acres of the public lands to the states for the relief of the indigent insane, and all the proposals for new steamship lines, as well as Mr. Collins's application for an additional appropriation to his Liverpool ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... geologists of merit have endeavoured to arrive at positive dates, or an exact estimate of the minimum of time assignable to the later age of stone. These computations have been sometimes founded on changes in the level of the land, or on the increase of peat, as in the Danish bogs, or on the conversion of water into land by alluvial deposits, since certain lake-settlements in Switzerland ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... then to another, and backing his horse among the people, and prancing, and curvetting, and shouting in a most alarming manner, and making himself very hoarse in the voice, and very red in the face, without any assignable cause or reason whatever. Officers were running backwards and forwards, first communicating with Colonel Bulder, and then ordering the sergeants, and then running away altogether; and even the very privates themselves looked from behind their glazed stocks with an air of mysterious ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... extant authority. On the other hand, seventy-six passages differ both from the Hebrew and LXX where the two are together, ninety-nine differ from them where they diverge, and besides these, three, though introduced with marks of quotation, have no assignable original in the Old Testament at all. Leaving them for the present out of the question, we have a hundred instances of agreement against a hundred and seventy-five of difference; or, in other words, the proportion of difference to agreement is ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... prejudice, philosophy, and persecution; and in three centuries took nearly undisputed possession, amongst many nations, of the temples of the ejected deities. He must farther believe that the original performers, in these prodigious frauds on the world, acted not only without any assignable motive, but against all assignable motive; that they maintained this uniform constancy in unprofitable falsehoods, not only together, but separately, in different countries, before different tribunals, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... in close sequence with chap. viii. 12; and we are assured that we are put in possession of the text as it came from the hands of its inspired Author. Nor, (it must be admitted), is any difficulty whatever occasioned thereby; for there is no reason assignable why the two last-named verses should not cohere; (there is no internal improbability, I mean, in the supposition;) neither does there exist any a priori reason why a considerable portion of narrative should be looked for in that particular ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... tell me that, so far as you know, your husband capriciously struck you out of his will, without assignable reason or motive for doing so, and without other obvious explanation of his conduct than that he acted in this matter entirely under the influence of Mrs. Lecount, I will immediately take Counsel's opinion touching ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets, he would say, there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word; and I well remember that, availing himself of the synonymes to the Homer of Didymus, he made us attempt to show, with regard to each, why it would not have answered the same purpose; and wherein ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... that the reader may understand if he will, but that he must understand whether he will or not. The more you read the greatest Authors the more you will see that, as Coleridge says, 'there is a reason assignable not only for every word, but for the position ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... new demand on the carpenter's part, the proprietor of the Seven Gables was even more thunder-struck than at the cool proposition to surrender his house. There was, at least, an assignable motive for the first stipulation; there appeared to be none whatever for the last. Nevertheless, Matthew Maule sturdily insisted on the young lady being summoned, and even gave her father to understand, in a mysterious kind of explanation,—which ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... But when we find that it is not universal; that in two closely-allied species one will possess it and the other not; and that it is common in such widely-separated orders as gallinaceous and passerine birds, in pigeons, ducks, and waders, it becomes plain that it is not assignable to community of descent, but has originated independently all over the globe, in a vast number of species. Something of the beginnings and progressive development of this instinct may be learnt, I think, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... numerically the relative frequency of the variations. He specifies above a dozen characters which may be found varying even on the same branch, sometimes according to age or development, sometimes without any assignable reason. Such characters are not of course of specific value, but they are, as Asa Gray has remarked in commenting on this memoir, such as generally enter into specific definitions. De Candolle then goes on to say that he gives the rank of species to the forms that differ by characters never varying ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... constantly-fleeting clouds, to take their altitudes, perhaps preying on my mind, kept me many whole nights consecutively without obtaining even as much as one wink of sleep—a state of things I had once before suffered from. But there really was no assignable cause for this, unless weakness or feverishness could create wakefulness, and then it would seem surprising that even during the day, or after much fatigue, I rarely felt the slightest inclination to close my eyes. Now, on returning, without anything ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... as reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a disarranged checker-board. And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within me a feeling for Old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be content to call affection. The sentiment is probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family has stuck into the soil. It is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since the original Briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered settlement ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Lloyd whistled to him, and instantly he answered, cocking his head sideways. She whistled again, and he piped back an impudent response, and for quite five minutes the two held an elaborate altercation between tree-top and window-ledge. Lloyd caught herself laughing outright and aloud for no assignable reason. "Ah, the world was a pretty good place ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... of the evidence assignable for the belief that organisms have been gradually evolved, Mr. Spencer holds that the belief would have a warrant higher than is possessed by many beliefs which are regarded as established. As a matter of fact, however, the evidence ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... under the eyes is a common feature. Sudden flashes of heat may be noticed passing over the patient's face. He is liable also to palpitations. The pulse is very variable, generally too slow. Extreme emaciation, without any other assignable cause for it, may be set down as another very ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... he should not hail them before they got farther away from us; frankly confessing, as he put the question, that his horse was nothing like equal to the pace of the horse ahead. Mechanically, without assignable purpose or motive, I declined his offer, and told him simply to follow at any distance he could. While the words passed my lips, a strange sensation stole over me: I seemed to be speaking as the mere mouthpiece of some other voice. From feeling hot, and moving about restlessly the moment before, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... congenial duties with a good will and energy that would have amazed him a year before; but all to no purpose. The Senior Manageress, who had selected him for appointment and conferred various small marks of favour upon him, suddenly changed in her manner, declared for no assignable cause that he was stupid, and dismissed him at the end of six weeks of salesmanship. So Denton had to resume his ineffectual search ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... consider the drops as composing the stream. The question is, What laws can we assign which will determine the process of composition? The phrase 'association' admittedly expresses some general and very familiar truths. Innumerable connections may be established when there is no assignable ground of connection in the ideas themselves other than the fact of a previous contact. One idea not only calls up the other, but in some way generates a belief in an independent connection. We hear thunder, for example, and think of lightning. The two ideas ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... postulating that satisfactions grow pari passu with our approximation to such reality. [Footnote 1: Say, if you prefer to, that DISsatisfactions decrease pari passu with such approximation. The approximation may be of any kind assignable—approximation in time or in space, or approximation in kind, which in common speech means 'copying.'] If my critics challenge this latter assumption, I retort upon them with the former. Our whole notion of a standing reality grows up in the form of an ideal limit to ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... anything approaching it. It comes nearer to, in fact almost seems identical with, the frequent vividness and intensity of dreams. But where do dreams come from, whether in sleep, or in a waking "dream state" like that of Foster and many other sensitives? They don't come from any assignable "sitter." This present scribe dreams architecture and bric-a-brac finer than any he ever saw, or than any ever made. Yet he is no architect, or artist of any kind. Where ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... number of new settlers is very inconsiderable; and for several past years the number of deaths has nearly doubled that of the births. There appears no reason to doubt that this decrease of population will continue; because, as will presently be seen, the causes to which it is assignable cannot be checked, inasmuch as they are intimately blended with the character of the nation. Most of these causes operate not only in the capital, but over the whole country; indeed, in the latter their influence is in some instances much greater; for example, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... cannot be guarded against. Eunice, age 31, mentally 2, is a low-grade imbecile. There is not in the whole family, for generations back, a single case of feeble-mindedness, nor of disease that would undermine the nervous organization. Close scrutiny does not reveal a single assignable cause. She came, as an accident, to blight an ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... sleepy, he naturally anticipated a good night's rest. In the thoroughly healthy state of his nervous system, he slept as well in a bed abroad as in a bed at home. Without the slightest assignable reason, however, his just expectations were disappointed. The luxurious bed, the well-ventilated room, the delicious tranquillity of Venice by night, all were in favour of his sleeping well. He never slept at all. An indescribable ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... Production than Actually Employed in it. 3. Examination of Cases Illustrative of the Idea of Capital. Chapter IV. Fundamental Propositions Respecting Capital. 1. Industry is Limited by Capital. 2. Increase of Capital gives Increased Employment to Labor, Without Assignable Bounds. 3. Capital is the result of Saving, and all Capital is Consumed. 4. Capital is kept up by Perpetual Reproduction, as shown by the Recovery of Countries from Devastation. 5. Effects of Defraying ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... shall produce in favour of his innocence. His education, his character, his understanding, are all in his favour. The Count Laniska must be much below the common standard of human virtue and capacity, if, without any assignable motive, he could have committed an action at once so base and so absurd as this of which he is accused. His temper is naturally or habitually open and impetuous, even to extreme imprudence. An instance ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... sometimes the asperities of a cynic. His attachments were warm, but fickle both in choice and duration. He would frequently part from one, with whom he had lived on terms of close intimacy, without any assignable cause; and his enmities, once fixed, were immovable. There was, indeed, a kind of venom in his antipathies; nor would he suffer his ears to be assailed, or his heat to relent, in favour of those against whom he entertained animosities, however ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to which the public domain has been exposed within the past thirty or forty years. Among these the project of Land Bounties to soldiers has been conspicuous. Of the millions of acres disposed of by the Government through assignable land-warrants in the pretended interest of the soldiers of the Mexican War a very small fraction was appropriated to their use. The great body of the land fell into the hands of monopolists, who thus hindered the settlement and productive wealth of the country, while ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... proprietor of a farm on the banks of the Charles River, in Massachusetts, possessed a flock of fifteen ewes and a ram of the ordinary kind. In the year 1791, one of the ewes presented her owner with a male lamb, differing, for no assignable reason, from its parents by a proportionally long body and short bandy legs, whence it was unable to emulate its relatives in those sportive leaps over the neighbours' fences, in which they were in the habit of indulging, much ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... transportation of the mails. The freight of a barrel of flour, weighing 200 pounds, is about fifty cents. Of course, the equitable price of ten thousand letters added to any given mail, which would not weigh so much as a barrel of flour, would make no assignable difference in the cost upon a single letter. As both sailing ships and steam packets are becoming multiplied, individual competition may now be relied on to keep the price of transportation of mails from ever rising above its present standard. The increase of the ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt
... during, menstruation. Many patients have a rapid heart action with the slightest increase in temperature and in any fever process. Some have a rapid heart action after the least exertion without any cardiac lesion or assignable excuse for such rapidity. Others have a rapid heart with mental activity and excessive excitement. Therefore in deciding that a heart is abnormally rapid one must individualize ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... to permanent forms. M. Broussonnet, who resided so long at the Canaries, asserts that the variable plants are not more common there than in the south of Europe. May it not to be presumed, that the polymorphous species, which are so abundant in the isle of Bourbon, are assignable to the nature of the soil and climate rather than to the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... double the value of my shoes; four times the value of my gloves; one twentieth of the value of this watch. Of these several relations of value, what is the sufficient cause? If they were capricious, no such science as that of Political Economy could exist; not being capricious, they must have an assignable cause; this cause—what ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... direct cause of invention, great or small, the imagination acts without assignable determination; in this sense it is what is known as "spontaneity"—a vague term, which we have attempted to make clear. Its appearance is irreducible to any law; it results from the often fortuitous convergence of ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... in the dog. I have seen it under medical treatment, and without medical treatment, perfectly disappear for a while, and soon afterwards, without any assignable cause, return. There is a breed of the Blenheim spaniel, in which this periodical goitre is very remarkable; the slightest cold is accompanied by enlargement of the thyroid gland, but the swelling altogether disappears in the course of a fortnight. I am quite assured ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... gallant venture, sir, but it would be certain to fail; the service would lose another brave man, and I should seem to have been wanting in decision for no just or assignable cause." ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... the girl; and, laughing, she ran to the glass to admire herself. 'Barnes said I looked sweet this morning;' and five minutes after she was tossing her head nervously, declaring she was miserable, and often she burst out crying for no assignable cause. Mrs. Barton consoled and flattered gaily; but the sweet placid countenance was sometimes a little troubled. As the girls left the breakfast-room one morning she said, as if asking ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... restrictions—and yet why should they? The Japanese people had submitted to the prohibition of the marriage of the unfit, but they loved children; and, with their virile outdoor life, the instinct of procreation was strong within them. True, the assignable lands in Japan continued to grow smaller, but what reason was there for stifling the reproductive instincts of a vigorous people in a great unused world half populated by ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... preached and prayed, thousands of priests and laymen flocked to hear him, and so supreme was his influence that under his direction the people gladly undertook extensive works of bridge building and road making. Like Shotoku Taishi, his name is associated by tradition with achievements not properly assignable to him, as the invention of the potter's wheel—though it had been in use for centuries before his time—and the production of various works of art which can scarcely have occupied the attention of a religious zealot. By order ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... simultaneously recall differences of form, number, colour, and the like. Neither is such a distinction applicable at all to our internal bodily sensations, which give no sign of themselves when unaccompanied with pain, and even when we are most conscious of them, have often no assignable place in the human frame. Who can divide the nerves or great nervous centres from the mind which uses them? Who can separate the pains and pleasures of the mind from the pains and pleasures of the ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... written in these few words. Edward FitzGerald adds to this his own note: "Miss Ridout I remember—an elegant spinster; friend of my mother's. About 1825 she had been at Sidmouth, and known Crabbe." The son quotes some very ardent verses belonging to this period, but not assignable to any particular charmer, such ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... which he is conscious. He professes therefore that he has no evidence, arising from his observation of what we call matter, of the actual existence of a material world. He looks into himself, and all he finds is sensation; but sensation cannot be a property of inert matter. There is therefore no assignable analogy between the causes of his sensations, whatever they may be, and the sensations themselves; and the material world, such as we apprehend it, is the mere creature of ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... Knibbs. To these two authors, as well as others who have permitted me to make use of their work, the grateful thanks of the collector are extended. As will be seen, almost one-half of the selections have no assignable authorship. I am equally grateful ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... get into the worst fishing-boat?-There is no assignable reason for that, but very often you will find that certain men who have ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... began to raise its voice in a song, and by the time that was over, and the bells had burst out from the Abbey towers, a rumour had somehow made its entrance that Felsenburgh was to be present at the ceremony. There was no assignable reason for this, neither then nor afterwards; in fact, the Evening Star declared that it was one more instance of the astonishing instinct of human beings en masse; for it was not until an hour later that even the Government were made aware of the facts. Yet the truth remained ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... the constituent parts of the mineral bodies as "de lames infiniment minces;" but who is it does not see, that these infinitely thin plates are no other than bodies of three dimensions, contrary to the supposition; for, infinitely thin, means a certain thickness; but the smallest possible or assignable thickness differs as much from a ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Jean Jacques.[363] (4) When Rousseau first came to London, his reception was a distinguished triumph for the victim of persecution from so many governments. England was proud of being his place of refuge, and justly vaunted the freedom of her laws and administration. Suddenly and for no assignable cause the public tone changed, the newspapers either fell silent or else spoke unfavourably, and Rousseau was thought of no more. This must have been due to Hume, who had much influence among people of credit, and who went about boasting of the ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... general and special knowledge. And in terms of a critical empiricism so defined, it is one of the problems of philosophy to define and appraise the generating problem of science, and so to determine the value assignable to natural laws in ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... grasp the romantic criterion with which Alice was wont to measure action. Her mind was single, impulsive, narrow and direct in all its movements. She loved, hated, desired, caressed, repulsed, not for any assignable reason more solid or more luminous than "because." She adored Rene and wanted him near her. He was a hero in her imagination, no matter what he did. Little difference was it to her whether he hauled logs for the English or smoked his pipe in idleness by the winter fire—what could it matter ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... philosophers who are trying to materialize all science, to eliminate the distinction between the physical and the intellectual and moral, to declare for nought the free action of the human will, and to resolve the whole story of the fates of mankind into a series of purely material effects, produced by assignable physical causes, and explainable in the past, or determinable in the future, by an intimate knowledge of those causes, by a recognition of the action of compulsory motives upon the passively obedient nature of man. With such, language will naturally pass, along with the rest, for ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... high lands brought down to the ocean. But, taking into account the internal forces of the earth, which, upheaving the sea bottom, give rise to new land, he thought that these operations of degradation and elevation might compensate each other; and that thus, for any assignable time, the general features of our planet might remain what they are. And inasmuch as, under these circumstances, there need be no limit to the propagation of animals and plants, it is clear that the consistent ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... or homestead lease, or any interest thereunder, is not assignable by way of mortgage nor is the same subject to attachment, levy or sale on any process issuing from the Courts of the country. Neither the whole nor any portion of the ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... awaking from his vision, Chaucer takes leave of the reader with a resolution already habitual to him—to read more and more, instead of resting satisfied with the knowledge he has already acquired. And in the last of the longer poems which seem assignable to this period of his life, he proves that one Latin poet at least—Venus' clerk, whom in the "House of Fame" he behold standing on a pillar of her own Cyprian metal—had been read as well as ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... our earth— springing irrepressibly out of the facts, like the Djin from the jar which the fishermen so incautiously opened; and like the Djin again, being vaporous, shifting, and indefinable, but unmistakably gigantic. However modest the bases of one's calculation may be, the minimum of time assignable to the coal period ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of trees is strongly inherited in some cases, and, without any assignable reason, feebly in other cases. I have selected this character as an instance of capricious inheritance, because it is certainly not proper to the parent-species, and because, both sexes being borne on the same tree, both tend to transmit ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... nature pertained unto the elevens was about the waist that pertained unto the twos, and at the moment of discovery, as well as could be judged by certain sinuosities of lines below, there was a distance between the two pairs of lips less than any assignable quantity. ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... their places; the assimilation with falling bodies was the solution. But, say many persons, is not gravity itself a mystery? We say No; gravity has passed through all the stages of legitimate and possible explanation; it is the most highly generalised of all physical facts, and by no assignable transformation could it be made more intelligible than it is. It is singularly easy of comprehension; its law is exactly known; and, excepting the details of calculation, in its more complex workings, there is nothing to ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... those letters which are ascribed to him. And what is meant by its being a matter of history? why, that it has ever been so believed, so declared, so recorded, so acted on, from the first down to this day; that there is no assignable point of time when it was not believed, no assignable point at which the belief was introduced; that the records of past ages fade away and vanish in the belief; that in proportion as past ages speak at all, they speak in one ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... and painful phenomenon to the unhappy person who is the object of it, and more especially if he have incurred it by no one assignable reason. Why it happens that no heart can be so generous, no life so self-denying, no intentions so honourable and pure, as to shield a man from the enmity of his fellows, must remain a dark question for ever. But ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... camels. The city is situate on the south-east side of the plantations of palms and gardens, not in the central part of the oasis. I asked the talebs the meaning of some of the names of the gates, but they could not tell. Many proper names of places and persons, amongst them as with us, have now no assignable meaning ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... through the woods and over the vine-slopes, I wandered in the valleys, I read, I lounged, I {34} worked in the garden, I gathered the fruits, I helped at the indoor work, and happiness followed me everywhere. It was in no one assignable thing; it was all within myself; it could not leave ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... those who too zealously urged his claims were unaware that so much had been written on the subject, but when we find even Mr. Wallace himself as profoundly ignorant on this subject as he still either is, or affects to be, there is no limit assignable to the ignorance or affected ignorance of the kind of biologists who would write reviews in leading journals thirty ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... that this great tactical advance was introduced by Anson during the War of the Austrian Succession, and (2) that the older set of Additional Fighting Instructions was then in existence. Another improvement probably assignable to this time was Article IV. (of Boscawen's set) for battle order in two separate lines. Articles V., VI., VII., for extended cruising formations certainly were then issued, for in his despatch after his defeat of De la ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... innumerable attributes which have no discoverable connection with one another, and which must therefore, provisionally at least, be regarded as standing in the relation of inseparable accidents to any particular attributes which we may select for the purposes of definition. There is no assignable reason why a rational animal should have hair on its head or a nose on its face, and yet man, as a matter of fact, has both; and generally the particular bodily configuration of man can only be regarded as an inseparable accident of his nature ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... had a surprising result—a result that normally would not have happened. Yet, on this particular day, it could not have happened differently. It had been a red-letter day from the beginning, from no assignable cause an exciting joyous day, and the thrill of the hard fast game, the shower, the rub, the walk, had brought her up to what engineers speak of ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... has been set forth in the preceding chapter, all mental states are effects of physical causes, it follows that what are called mental faculties and operations are, properly speaking, cerebral functions, allotted to definite, though not yet precisely assignable, ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... and, in their proximate efficient cause, the arbitrary productions of the human mind. We are not yet acquainted with the laws which necessarily influence the stability of that kind of work made by that kind of agent. There is not in the physical order (with which they do not appear to hold any assignable connection) a distinct cause by which any of those fabrics must necessarily grow, flourish, or decay; nor, in my opinion, does the moral world produce anything more determinate on that subject than what may serve as an amusement (liberal, indeed, and ingenious, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... done, all the majesty of which that idea is susceptible. It ascends into the unknown recesses of the past, embraces the manifold present, and descends into the indefinite and unforeseeable future, forming a collective Existence without assignable beginning or end, it appeals to that feeling of the Infinite, which is deeply rooted in human nature, and which seems necessary to the imposingness of all our highest conceptions. Of the vast unrolling web of human life, the part best known to us is irrevocably ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... lots of them there are! What is called affectation in a girl prevails to quite as large an extent in the shape of endless peculiarities among boys. A certain Dick (his name is Adolphus, but he is universally, and for no assignable reason, known as Dick) rejoices in endorsing Darwinism by looking and acting like a human gorilla. Dick is no fool, but assumes that virtue though he has it not. To see him mumbling his food at meals, or making mops and mows ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... stood for some moments trembling for no assignable reason, as he saw in front of the range a fat German hired girl sitting in the lap of a ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... which the mind unhindered feeds upon its own delusions, was the assignable cause of her gradual ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... the law of gravitation; so it may be possible to interpret this law of progress, in its multiform manifestations, as the necessary consequence of some similarly universal principle. As gravitation was assignable as the cause of each of the groups of phenomena which Kepler generalized; so may some equally simple attribute of things be assignable as the cause of each of the groups of phenomena generalized in the foregoing pages. We may be able to affiliate all these varied evolutions ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... exceptions to the universal contempt for females even among cannibals. Thus it is known that the Peruvian Casibos never eat women. It is natural to jump to the conclusion that this is due to respect for the female sex. It is, however, as Tschudi shows, assignable to exactly the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... not had time to transcribe; I now send it you, because it somewhat varies from MR. SPURRELL'S, and yet so much resembles it as to show that the same formula is preserved. Both show that the presents are considered as debts, transferable or assignable to other parties. Is this the case in all districts of Wales where the custom of bidding prevails? I think I have heard that in some places the gift is to be returned only when the actual donor "enters into the matrimonial state." It ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... terminus, or between two equally agreeable modes of passing a leisure day or hour? Yet this choice, made without motive, may be a fruitful cause of motives that shall have a large influence in the future. Thus, on the route which one chooses without any assignable reason, he may encounter persons or events that shall modify his whole plan of life. The instances are by no means few, in which the most decisive results have ensued upon a choice thus ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... articles that adapt themselves to a variable scale of uses, so as to be capable of substitution for others, according to the relations of price, it is often possible enough that, in the event of any change which may lower their price, the increased demand may go on without assignable limits. For instance, when iron rises immoderately in price, timber is substituted to an indefinite extent. But, on the other hand, where the application is severely circumscribed, no fall of price will avail to extend the demand. Certain herbs, for instance, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... less valuable. Hence the Cape de Verd salt is constantly imported, and is mixed with that from these salinas. The purity of the Patagonian salt, or absence from it of those other saline bodies found in all sea-water, is the only assignable cause for this inferiority: a conclusion which no one, I think, would have suspected, but which is supported by the fact lately ascertained, that those salts answer best for preserving cheese which contain most of the deliquescent chlorides. (4/3. Report of ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... placed to the productions of the earth; they may increase for ever and be greater than any assignable quantity, yet still the power of population being a power of a superior order, the increase of the human species can only be kept commensurate to the increase of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity acting as a check ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... whether we respect external causes, or consider the nature of our own minds. He that now feels a desire to do right, and wishes to regulate his life according to his reason, is not sure that, at any future time assignable, he shall be able to rekindle the same ardour; he that has now an opportunity offered him of breaking loose from vice and folly, cannot know, but that he shall hereafter be more entangled, and struggle for ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the effect either of extraordinary accidents, or of the destruction, ever slower and slower, of the vital forces? May we not believe that the duration of the middle interval between birth and this destruction has no assignable term? Man will never become immortal, but is it a mere chimera to hold that the term fixed to his years is slowly and perpetually receding further and further from the moment at ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... who reverently visited it. Southwards still, over the hills of Parnassus, which remained for the inspired women of Boeotia the centre of his presence, he comes to Thebes, and the family of Cadmus. From Boeotia he passes to Attica; to the villages first; at last to Athens; at an assignable date, under Peisistratus; out of the country, into ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... in France. This interesting narrative, intitled "An Account of the State of the Prisons at Lyons during the Reign of Terror," bears a character of truth and feeling, which bespeaks him an eye-witness of the horrors he describes. Torn from his family without any assignable cause, and imprisoned in the hourly expectation of death, his own apprehensions seem at no time to have absorbed his interest in the fate of his suffering friends; and to their merit and misfortunes he does justice in the verses before alluded ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... not at the moment; for there was certainly not one word said by the Earl which could give him any assignable cause of offence, and yet he was grieved and offended. It was the tone, the manner, the cold haughtiness of every look and gesture that pained him. He was not moved by any boyish conceit; he was always willing, even in his own mind, to offer deep respect to high rank, or high station, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... to the hearts of a whole generation. His narrative is a delight to literary students; not a volcanic outburst to shake the foundations of society. Nearly all that he has to tell us is that he ran away from school, spent some time in London, for no very assignable reason, in a semi-starving condition, and then, equally without reason, surrendered at discretion to the respectabilities and went to Oxford like an ordinary human being. It is no doubt a proof of extraordinary literary power that the facts told with De Quincey's ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... of poetry or of painting, if scenery and such accidental circumstances are to be regarded as every thing, and original character as nothing. But it may reasonably be doubted if ever natural scenery has any assignable influence on the productions of genius. The idea has probably arisen from the impression which the magnificence of nature makes on persons of cultivated minds, who fall into the mistake of considering the elevated emotions arising in reality from their own associations, ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... instance, to say nothing of the absence of any rational assignable motive which could induce frontier merchants—men of rank and influence among their own people—men of wealth and consideration among their neighbours—with everything to lose and nothing to gain, to conspire together to commit ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... philosopher, over and above the real Giorgione and his authentic extant works, there remains the Giorgionesque also—an influence, a spirit or type in art, active in men so different as those to whom many of his supposed works are really assignable—a veritable school, which grew together out of all those fascinating works rightly or wrongly attributed to him; out of many copies from, or variations on him, by unknown or uncertain workmen, whose drawings and designs were, for various ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... often quite inexplicably. Thus, the linnet and partridge have failed to establish themselves in New Zealand. This may ultimately throw some light on the disappearance of native forms; for these have at times declined without any assignable cause. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... (whether arising from contract or tort), it was termed a legal chose in action; where the chose was recoverable only by a suit in equity, as a legacy or money held upon a trust, it was termed an equitable chose in action. Before the Judicature Act, a legal chose in action was not assignable, i.e. the assignee could not sue at law in his own name. To this rule there were two exceptions:—(1) the crown has always been able to assign choses in action that are certain, such as an ascertained debt, but not those that are uncertain; (2) assignments valid by operation of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Keawe seems to have served as a sort of Jack among the demigods of the Hawaiian pantheon, on whom was to be laid the burden of a mongrel host of virtues and vices that were not assignable to the regular orthodox deities. Somewhat in the same way do we use the name Jack as a caption, for a miscellaneous lot of functions, as when we speak of ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... self-government. Such is the fundamental basis and essential justification of the rule now maintained in Rome, under the protection of foreign bayonets. This is a conquered city, virtually if not nominally in a state of siege, without assignable period. The Pope's guards are partly Swiss and partly native, that is, chosen from the families of the Nobility; but the "power behind the throne" is maintained by the thousands of French soldiers who garrison the city, and the tens of thousands of Austrian, Spanish and Neapolitan ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... carried on progressively above any assignable limits."—Kames, El. of Crit., i, 296. "To crowd in a single member of a period different subjects, is still worse than to crowd them into one period."—Ib., ii, 27. "Nor do we rigidly insist for melodious prose."—Ib., ii, 76. "The aversion ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... sometimes the metaphysical principle that the quantity of existence is unalterable, sometimes the logical principle that nothing can happen without a reason, sometimes the practical postulate that in the absence of any assignable difference you must call a thing the same. This law is one vast vagueness, of which I can give no clear account; but of his special vaguenesses "mental force" and "social ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... conquer the population but so to speak built fortresses and left garrisons. It is probable that the Buddhism of Andhra, Kalinga and the south was represented by little more than such outposts. They included Amaravati, where portions of the ruins seem assignable to about 150 A.D., and Ajanta, where some of the cave paintings are thought to be as late as the sixth century. But of neither site can we give any continuous history. In southern India the introduction of Buddhism took place under the auspices of Asoka himself, though his inscriptions ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... wrong.'—'You think so?' he would reply calmly, at the same time asking for my reasons, which he would listen to with great patience, and openness to conviction. Indeed, it was evident that the firmest opposition, so long as it rested upon assignable grounds and principles, won upon his regard; whilst his own nobleness of character still moved him to habitual contempt for timorous and partial acquiescence in his opinions, even when his infirmities made him most anxious for ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... words were ludicrously applicable to his own condemnation and his own frame of mind. These settings-up of a wholly arbitrary canon of mere taste, these excommunicatings of such and such a thing as "low" and "improper," without assigned or assignable reason, are eminently Gallic. They may be found not merely in the older school before 1830, but in almost all French critics up to the present day: there is perhaps not one, with the single exception of Sainte-Beuve, who is habitually free from them. The critic may be quite ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... if our first parents had keipt their state of innocence whither they would have procreat their children in that same faschion that man and woman does now. It seims that they sould have copulated carnally, since theirs no other raison assignable whey God sould have made distinction of sex, since these sould have bein in wain: at Deus et Natura nihil faciunt frustra. On the other hand I dare not say they sould have copulate carnally when I consider the brutality and filthinesse of the act which does no wayes agree wt the ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... of past ages. He must check the natural but misguiding tendency of the human mind to imagine that in national affairs when anything goes wrong you can always, or indeed generally, lay your finger upon some definite assignable wrong-doer, that is, upon some man or some men who can be held responsible for political calamities or errors, as a murderer may be held guilty of murder, or a robber of theft. A calm critic should also reflect on the profound truth of the dictum (attributed ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... can be exhibited as a show are discovered and appreciated accordingly. But wisdom and virtue, which are to the mind what breath is to the body, have no part assigned or assignable to them on such a stage. A man may pass a life in London without an occasion arising by which his neighbours can learn whether he is an honest fellow or a rogue. The consequence is, that a good deal of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... examined from 10 mi. S and 1 mi. W Gruver, Hansford Co., in the Panhandle of Texas, the one adult is clearly assignable to aztecus as is the specimen from 9 mi. E Stinnett, Hutchinson Co., Texas, that was referred to dychei by ...
— Geographic Variation in the Harvest Mouse, Reithrodontomys megalotis, On the Central Great Plains And in Adjacent Regions • J. Knox Jones
... the parts of the flower.—The only circumstance that needs especial mention under this section is the great lengthening that sometimes takes place in the carpels, sometimes as a result of injury from insects or fungus, at other times without assignable cause. ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... and with his hackles trimmed, would be accepted as readily as a male retaining all his natural ornaments."[126] Evidence is adduced that a female pigeon will sometimes turn antipathy to a particular male without any assignable cause; or, in other cases, will take a strong fancy to some one bird, and will desert her own mate for him; but it is not stated that superiority or inferiority of plumage has anything to do with ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... nevertheless, the very thought of death is fraught with all manner of terrors. As some are naturally afraid in the absence of light, and tremble with fear at being alone in a dark and lonely dwelling, or spot, or place, so there are many who, without assignable reason, other than a native tendency, are appalled at ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... Mrs. Abel, the Rector's wife. None of us knew her origin—I doubt if she knew it herself: beyond her husband and children, assignable relatives ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... as they sometimes betrayed the flights of a madman and sometimes the asperities of a cynic. His attachments were warm but fickle both in choice and duration. He would frequently part from one with whom he had lived on terms of close intimacy, without any assignable cause, and his enmities once fixed were immovable. There was indeed a kind of venom in his antipathies, nor would he suffer his ears to be assailed or his heart to relent in favour of those against whom he entertained ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... think this a very tidy ghost story; and I am bound to add, as a proper commentary on it, that I have never inhabited a house which affected me with a sense of such intolerable melancholy gloominess as this; without any assignable reason whatever, either in its situation or any of its conditions. My maid, to the present day, persists in every detail (and without the slightest variation) of this experience of hers, absolutely rejecting my explanation ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... power of proportion considered as a natural cause; and these, if he thinks them just, I request the reader to carry with him throughout the following discussion; whilst we inquire, in the first place, in what things we find this quality of beauty; next, to see whether in these we can find any assignable proportions in such a manner as ought to convince us that our idea of beauty results from them. We shall consider this pleasing power as it appears in vegetables, in the inferior animals, and in man. Turning our eyes to the vegetable creation, we find nothing there ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... said Hood, "it makes a saloon license assignable. That creates a property right that can hardly ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... experience, indispensable to the establishing any nexus between the different parts and successions of our whole train of notices, we include an accessary notion of necessity, which yet has no justification or warrant, no assignable derivation from any known or possible case of human experience. We have one idea at least—viz. the idea of causation—which transcends our possible experience by one important element, the element of necessity, that never can have been derived from the only source of ideas recognised ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... all men everywhere believe in the existence of a supreme Being or beings to whom they are morally responsible, is a strong argument in favor of its truth. So universal an effect must have a cause as universal, otherwise we have an effect without any assignable cause. Certain is it that this argument makes the burden of proof to rest upon those who deny ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... a project or draft of a treaty, which possibly the Dutch would never have completed. So far as they knew, he said, it might be merely a "speculative essay," or a "contemplative prospect;" and therefore it was no justifiable or assignable ground for going to war with them. These were arguments, however, for party purposes; opposition conceived that the declaration of war between England and Holland was setting the seal to Lord North's political embarrassments, and therefore they adopted this line of argument in order to suit their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Government has in several cases fulfilled her promises in this particular by making adequate reparation for damage done to our commerce. It seems obvious to remark that a right which is only to be exercised under such restrictions and precautions and risk, in case of any assignable damage to be followed by the consequences of a trespass, can scarcely be considered anything more than a privilege asked for and either conceded or withheld on the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... lands and revenue of the country according to his own pleasure; and as he had seized the lands without our knowing why or wherefore, so the portion which he took away from some persons he gave to others, in the same arbitrary manner, and without any assignable reason. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... are neither rich nor poor, taking into consideration their habits and needs; they live in much content, despite social imperfections and injustices, despite the ills of nature. Above and below are classes of extreme characterisation; I believe the happiness assignable to those who are the lowest stratum of civilisation is, relatively speaking, no whit less than that we may attribute to the thin stratum of the surface, using the surface to mean the excessively rich. It is a paradox, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... life of varied fortunes and many experiences. It seems to us incredible that any man of even average thoughtfulness could, after so many years, find life without God, without immortality, without definite meaning or assignable goal, "worth living," and that "to be born in a civilized country in the nineteenth century is a boon for which a man can never be sufficiently thankful." [2] [Thankful to whom? one might ask parenthetically.] In other words, he is a bland optimist, and has nothing ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... poetry, in their extemporary comedy, and their Improvisatori; but an instance not yet accounted for of this national levity, appears in those denominations of exquisite absurdity given by themselves to their Academies! I have in vain inquired for any assignable reason why the most ingenious men, and grave and illustrious personages, cardinals, and princes, as well as poets, scholars, and artists, in every literary city, should voluntarily choose to burlesque themselves and their serious ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... age, or in a stage approaching to superannuation? The idea of Kant presupposed a certain average duration as belonging to a planet of our particular system; and supposing this known, or discoverable, and that a certain assignable development belonged to a planet so circumstanced as ours, then in what particular stage of that development may we, the tenants of this respectable little planet Tellus, reasonably be conceived ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... a temporary precedence over other major-generals not so assigned, and in like manner for the commander of an army. [Footnote: Our system was essentially that of the first French Republic and the Consulate, under which any general of division was assignable to an army command in chief.] If these were relieved, they lost the precedence, and thus there was a sort of temporary rank created, giving a flexibility to the grade of major-general, without which ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... philosophy to have been pleasure, and not instruction. Aristotle held that it streamed by connatural result and emanation from God, the infinite and eternal Mind, as the light issues from the sun; so that there was no instant of duration assignable of God's eternal existence in which the world did not also coexist. Others held a fortuitous concourse of atoms—but all seem jointly to explode a creation, still beating upon this ground, that the producing something out of nothing is impossible and incomprehensible; incomprehensible, indeed, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... But Lord Brougham had not been speaking or thinking of G—-; "there had been nothing to call him to my recollection," he says. To give his logic any value, he should constantly when (as far as he knew) awake, have had dreams that "shocked" him. Then one coincidence would have had no assignable cause save ordinary accident. ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... the subject of the remarks before us will seem to most persons as little worthy of credit as any that could be offered. The falling of large stones from the sky, without any assignable cause of their previous ascent, seems to partake so much of the marvelous as almost entirely to exclude the operation of known and natural agents. Yet a body of evidence is here brought to prove that such events have actually taken place, and we ought not ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... defined as the everlasting habitations of departed souls, have been successively driven, as dissipated visions, from their assumed latitudes and longitudes, one after another, by progressive discovery, until now the intelligent mind knows of no assignable spot for them. Since we are not acquainted with any fixed locations to which the soul is to be carried, to abide there forever in appointed joy or woe, and since there is no scientific necessity nor moral use for the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... reflection, was by no means so exultant as the worthy shoe-mender. The odd mode of packing away a deed of such importance, with no assignable motive for doing so, except the needless awe with which Sowerby was said to have inspired his feeble-spirited client, together with what Caleb had said of the shattered state of the deceased's mind after the interview with Mrs. Warner's daughter, suggested fears that Sowerby ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... under which he wrote obliged him to weigh every word; his themes were lofty, his substance grave, his manner nobly plain and serious. "Quis eo fuit unquam in partiundis rebus, in definiendis, in explanandis pressior?" In "The Prince," it may be truly said, there is reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word. To an Englishman of Shakespeare's time the translation of such a treatise was in some ways a comparatively easy task, for in those times the genius of ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... atrophied remains of these testes could be discovered. The sterility of the wife was due, without any question, to the absolute impotence of the husband, and so far as the history of the case would suggest, there was no other assignable cause of this impotence than the eight years ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... "cup of Praeneste" claims a high place among the works of art probably or certainly assignable to the Phoenicians. The relief is high; the forms, especially the animal ones, are spirited and well-proportioned. The horses are especially good. As M. Clermont-Ganneau says, "their forms and their movements are indicated with a great deal of precision and truth."[786] ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... present question, sir, there is very little room for fallacy; nor do I see what remains to the decision of it, but that those gentlemen who have been acquainted with military operations, inform us, what degree of superiority is conferred by any assignable number of officers; that we may compare their service with the price, and discover whether the same money ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... and painful phenomenon to the unhappy person who is the object of it, and more especially if he have incurred it by no one assignable reason. To Eric it was peculiarly painful; he was utterly unprepared for it. In his bright joyous life at Fairholm, in the little he saw of the boys at the Latin school, he had met with nothing but kindness and caresses, and the generous nobleness of his character ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar |
