"Guesswork" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... foreshore I might descend. From the bank where I stood I had the whole ridge in view above the dense foliage, and could select the most promising point to make for; but this would sink out of sight as I approached the first belt of trees, and beyond them I must find my way by guesswork. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... are lucky, and avoid any stray rocks, we should see daylight before we reach the coast. That is our sole hope. The ship is in a powerful tidal current, and it is high-water at 5.30 A.M. At a rough estimate, Hanover Island is twenty knots distant. Now you know all. The outcome is mere guesswork." ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Crawshay said, "that this is more or less guesswork, but I suspect every one with whom ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... south-east, was partly in his favour. One of the disabilities which he, in common with all airmen, suffered, was the impossibility of ascertaining the velocity of the wind when he was fairly afloat. He had to make allowance for it by sheer guesswork, unless he was prepared to slow down or even to alight. He had reckoned that, even with the slight assistance of the wind, he could hardly hope to reach the head of the Persian Gulf before six o'clock, which would be past nine by the sun; but he thought he might reasonably expect to reach ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... criticism based on guesswork and even on malicious falsification of fact. Such criticism creates doubts and creates fears, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that at the outbreak of the war the various Powers possessed a total of 4980 aircraft of all sorts. This sounds like a colossal fleet, but by 1917 it was probably multiplied more than tenfold. Of the increase of aircraft we can judge only by guesswork. The belligerents keep their output an inviolable secret. It was known that many factories with a capacity of from thirty to fifty 'planes a week were working in the chief belligerent lands, that the United States was ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... of history. But what of Ballin, Heineken, von Gwinner, Gutmann, Thyssen, Rathenau, and other captains of industry and finance? Some of them have expressed opinions in interviews, but what do they really think? I am not going to indulge in any guesswork on this matter. I am simply going to disclose some important statements made at a secret meeting attended by many of the business directors of the German Empire. The meeting was for the purpose of discussing actual conditions in a straightforward manner, therefore ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... some time before he recovers sufficient coolness to reflect—then only with vague comprehensiveness; nothing clear save the fact that he has completely lost himself, and his way. To go on were mere guesswork. True, the moon tells him the west, the direction of Coyote creek. But westward he will not go, dreading to again encounter that ghostly thing; for he thinks it was ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... "Now—now—neighbor—that's guesswork," remonstrated the miller, in behalf of Tanglefoot Cove repudiating the responsibility. Perhaps the semi-mercantile occupation of measuring toll sharpens the faculties beyond natural endowments, and he began to perceive a certain connection between cause and effect inimical ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... "It's still all guesswork and uncertain, and you stand to lose a lot of expense. I know I promised not to talk business with you, but couldn't you consider a proposition to ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... memory and some guesswork by now. Some ten minutes out of powered flight at the time of collision, coasting up to station orbit where a quick boost from the jets would have made up his lost velocity to orbit standard. But there would be no boost ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... they rode for the mere sport, keeping in a body, their mouths full of laughter, waving their hats as they came on, and crying (as the fancy struck them) "Tally-ho!" "Stop, thief!" "A highwayman! A highwayman!" It was other guesswork with Bellamy. That gentleman no sooner observed our change of direction than he turned his horse with so much violence that the poor animal was almost cast upon its side, and launched her in immediate and desperate pursuit. As he approached ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... information thus supplied, without which, indeed, much of our subsequent legislation on poor-laws, corn-laws, and all matters relating to rating and taxation, would have been impracticable or the merest guesswork. ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... of white, and thus we fought, foot to foot, among the myrtle-trees. We could not see so much as our swords unless they clashed more than usually hard, and a spark struck from them. We fought by guesswork and feel, and in the end luck served me. I drove my sword through his chest until the hilt rang ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... reconcile the statements of the reports as to the time they became engaged. General Williams says they were engaged before seven o'clock. [Footnote: Id., p. 476.] General Meade says they relieved his men not earlier than ten or eleven. [Footnote: Id., p. 270.] It seems to be guesswork in both cases, and we are forced to judge from circumstantial evidence. Ricketts thinks he had been fighting four hours when he retired for lack of ammunition, and the Twelfth Corps men had not yet reached him. [Footnote: Id., p. 259.] Patrick, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... years before the Basel group of 1529 was painted. It may well have been that some serious misunderstanding between them was at the bottom of that otherwise inexplicable departure in 1517, and the two years' absence in Lucerne and still more southern cities. Of course this is mere guesswork; so is every hypothesis until it is proved. But all the simple commonplaces of first love, estrangement, separation, and a renewed betrothal after Elsbeth's early widowhood with one child, could easily have run a natural course between 1515 and their marriage, ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... The connection with Greek philology consists in the imitation of its defects more than of its excellences; for instance, the basing of etymologies on mere similarity of sound both in Varro himself and in the other philologues of this epoch runs into pure guesswork and often into downright absurdity.(39) In its empiric confidence and copiousness as well as in its empiric inadequacy and want of method the Varronian vividly reminds us of the English national philology, and just like the latter, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... through it all, some inner strain kept trying to tell him he was not dead. This was his own world, all right, and essentially unchanged. What had happened to it was beyond the pale of mere guesswork. But this one thing began to be clear: This was a world in which change or motion of ...
— The Day Time Stopped Moving • Bradner Buckner
... Crowley and Miss Elsham when they reported in from the north country. They were voluble in their own behalf, but their talk was slippery, so the chief felt. They were also voluble in regard to Lida Kennard, but Mern found himself more than ever enmeshed in his guesswork about that ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... juice by guesswork, with the inevitable result that her ears, chin, and nose were stained as deeply ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... control of the municipal government and the municipal moneys. In fact, San Francisco's boss-ridden condition was due in greater degree to Daylight's widespreading battle than even San Francisco ever dreamed. For the part he had played, the details of which were practically all rumor and guesswork, quickly leaked out, and in consequence he became a much-execrated and well-hated man. Nor had Daylight himself dreamed that his raid on the steamship companies would have ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... occurring all over the charred field where men were working with pick and axe and lifting out the poor, shattered remains of human beings, nearly always past recognition or identification, except by guesswork, or the locality where they were found. Articles of domestic use scattered through the rubbish helped to tell who some of the bodies were. Part of a set of dinner plates told one man where in the intangible mass his house was. In one place was a photograph album ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... rooms were empty, some further glimmering knowledge had stirred her benumbed consciousness. She may have flung herself on the bed in a paroxysm of weeping, heedless of the overturned night light and the havoc it caused. That, of course, is sheer guesswork, though the glass dish which held the light was found later on the charred floor, which was protected, to some extent, by a ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... shock that could conceivably have come to him. But he set himself to find out. By the next morning, partly through inquiry, partly through patching two and two together, he had worked out a theory. Guesswork, of course, was rather dangerous in a delicate matter such as this; but the doctor's report after breakfast had been the very worst yet. Peter never faltered. He picked up his hat from the study table, in front of which he had been ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... signals. That they were all harmless traders I will not affirm; but none of them offered to chase us. Yet could I have been sure of a ship, I should have been glad to speak. My longitude was little more than guesswork; my latitude not very certain; and my compass was out. However, I supported my own and the spirits of my little company by telling them of the early navigators; how Columbus, Candish, Drake, Schouten and other ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... quarter of an hour after this conversation she was a little uneasy. He was a clever boy, Henry; he did watch people. But then he was very young, It was all guesswork with him. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... distrusted. I sent Watkins to the cabin for a roll of charts, and spreading these out, endeavored as well as I could, to make clear our probable position and the nearest point of land. This was largely guesswork, but I approximated distances and made the situation fairly clear. When I had completed the explanation, and stood before them awaiting decision, it was Haines ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... us a long time to work around the islands and draw in close to Anoroc. In the leisure afforded we took turns working on our map, and by means of the compass and a little guesswork we set down the shoreline we had left and the three islands with ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and Tony were only card-room acquaintances, and it seemed unlikely that the latter would have confided in him. Yet Brett certainly spoke as though his cognisance of how matters stood betwixt herself and Tony were based on something more substantial than mere guesswork. ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... Westgate very soon after. As it opened near the church, it is surely more likely that Erkenwald rebuilt it than the northern gate; but the history of this bishop is so overlaid with monkish legend that we do not require any guesswork. ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... was not guesswork. He had organized his campaign by school districts. His canvass system was perfect, his canvassers were as penetrating and careful as census takers. He had before him reports from every voting precinct in the State. They were corroborated ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... that here, perhaps, was evidence of design; that this very difficulty had been deliberately caused by Mr. Coburn with the object of keeping himself and Merriman under observation and rendering them harmless. This, he recognized, was guesswork, but still it might ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... basis of his celebrated work, "Experiments in Aerodynamics." Yet a critical examination of the data upon which he based his conclusions as to the pressures at small angles shows results so various as to make many of his conclusions little better than guesswork. ...
— The Early History of the Airplane • Orville Wright
... few old maps that exist, it is difficult to determine precisely in what measure the members of the expedition are responsible for the charting; some of it is certainly the guesswork of geographers, based, it must be acknowledged, on the best information then available, for we must bear in mind that the accounts of Mendana's expedition were only known from a few extracts, the actual narratives being lost at the ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... from his pocket that had not been wound for many days, wound it mechanically, set it by guesswork—it was not far from eight o'clock—and replaced it in his pocket. Carefully then, one at a time, he examined his fingers, long, slim, sensitive, tapering fingers, magical masters of safes and locks and vaults of the most intricate and modern mechanism—no single trace of grime remained, they ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... British way of measurement made the frigate 43 tons smaller than the American way did; actually the difference was nearer 290 tons. James' statements as to the size of our various ships would seem to have been largely mere guesswork, as he sometimes makes them smaller and sometimes larger than they were according to the official navy lists. Thus, the Constitution, President, and United States, each of 1,576, he puts down as of 1,533; the Wasp, of 450, as of 434; the Hornet, of 480, as of ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... his burden of responsibility grow heavy indeed and doubts began to assail him as to the wisdom of the course he was pursuing. After all, there was yet time to retreat. He had only to say the word and his companions would willingly follow. His plans in remaining were built largely on guesswork and theory. If they worked out as he had reasoned, the Indians would be warned. With their aid the convicts could be surrounded, captured, and sent back to a coast town under guard. Some blood would likely be shed but not as ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... nearly half an hour in this sort of conjecturing. I began to perceive that it could serve no purpose. It would be only guesswork, at best, and it was evident I could not tell what quality of metal the mine contained, until I had first ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... is not guesswork, not looseness, and not error. The process of approximation is as exact and correct at every point as that by which an absolute result is secured; the result only fails of exactness because of some inherent difficulty in the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... any one good-hearted unless they can't find nothin' else good to say of 'em, for it stands to reason as any sensible person'd rather have anythin' else about 'em good before their heart, for it's way inside an' largely guesswork what it is anyhow. ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... adversaries with their horses, it was a matter of small amount whether, at the moment when the onset occurred, sabres, lances, or revolvers were used; while in the subsequent melee I believed the revolver would outclass cold steel as a weapon. But this is all guesswork, for we never had ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... of his mind, strong, without precision. That they were written by Johnston, who seconded them, was only the rumor of the day, and very possibly unfounded." Works, vi. 484. In the face of all this tissue of rumor, guesswork, and self-contradiction, the deliberate statement of Patrick Henry himself that he wrote the five resolutions referred to by him, and that he wrote them "alone, unadvised, and unassisted," ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... anywhere for a woman's hand? Say a woman who bit her nails. If it were really such there would be a pair of feminine feet also to be concealed, and boards would do it very nicely—but this is all guesswork, and must not be allowed to affect any subsequent conclusions. If you will excuse me a few minutes I will use the microscope a little on the sill of the east window before we are interrupted by our friends the officers, who will be sure to be ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... guesswork. But I fancy that Cayley was thoroughly upset about the key business. He suddenly realized that he had been careless, and he hadn't got time to think it all over. So he didn't want to commit himself ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... other great changes that happen, as they say, at the turn of ages, the art of divination, also, at one time rises in esteem, and is more successful in its predictions, clearer and surer tokens being sent from God, and then again, in another generation declines as low, becoming mere guesswork for the most part, and discerning future events by dim and uncertain intimations. This was the mythology of the wisest of the Tuscan sages, who were thought to possess a knowledge beyond other men. Whilst the Senate sat in consultation with the soothsayers, concerning these ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... effect on the lungs than any they had yet given us. It had started to rain and the darkness was black, but we reached the guns within scheduled time, and under great difficulty we exploded our shells; but most of our work in that discharge was guesswork. ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... say. Perhaps I might hazard a guess, but it's no use talking of guesswork. To-day I ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... word; for I knew she was so proud and particular, that, if she mistrusted any thing of that kind to have been done, she would flounce in a minute. No, I never hinted it to her, or anybody else, and it was guesswork, after all," replied the abashed wife, in a deprecating tone,—she having been tempted, by the unusual mood which her stern husband had manifested for discussing his private affairs with her, to venture to speak much more freely than ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... silence of it all, like the darkness, was thick, had a quality which you discovered only by the soft close touch of it upon your cheeks and eyes. It seemed to clog the ears, and made breathing a deeper exercise. The further in they went the greater the guesswork of the going. Lord Considine went in front, to keep the ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... take place, and where,—for everything is kept in a charming condition of perfect uncertainty, from the want of any public newspaper or journal, or other accurate means of information. So everybody asks everybody, and everybody tells everybody, until nobody knows anything, and everything is guesswork. But, nevertheless, despite impatient words, and muttered curses, and all kinds of awkward mistakes, the battle goes bravely on. There is terrible fighting at the door of the Sistine Chapel, to hear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... hardly doubt that it is to some extent. But what its results are—whether it mainly favours immunity from certain diseases, or the capacity for a sedentary life in a town atmosphere, or intelligence and capacity for social service—is largely matter of guesswork. How, then, can we say what is the type to breed from, even if we confine our attention to one country? If, on the other hand, we look farther afield, and study the results of race-mixture or "miscegenation," we but encounter fresh puzzles. That the half-breed is an unsatisfactory ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... Guesswork is no longer necessary in the sizing up of strangers. You can know them better than their mothers know them if you will get these nutshells of facts clearly in your ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... which is what the enemy of mankind wants; this I am led to believe by observing that the ape only answers about things past or present, and the devil's knowledge extends no further; for the future he knows only by guesswork, and that not always; for it is reserved for God alone to know the times and the seasons, and for him there is neither past nor future; all is present. This being as it is, it is clear that this ape speaks by the spirit of the devil; ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... their Celtic aspect and become Americanised.... To say that 'spontaneous variation,' increased by natural selection, can have produced this effect, is going too far." Unfortunately for Mr. Spencer, he was basing his conclusions on guesswork. It is only within the last few months that the first trustworthy evidence on the point has appeared, in the careful measurements of Hrdlicka who has demonstrated that Spencer was quite wrong in his statement. ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... condition, presupposition, hypothesis, blue sky hypothesis, postulate, postulatum[Lat], theory; thesis, theorem; data; proposition, position; proposal &c. (plan) 626; presumption &c. (belief) 484; divination. conjecture; guess, guesswork, speculation; rough guess, shot, shot in the dark [coll.]; conjecturality[obs3]; surmise, suspicion, sneaking suspicion; estimate, approximation (nearness) 197. inkling, suggestion, hint, intimation, notion, impression; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Usually the tusks of the male are heavier and thicker, but except for this distinction there is very little noticeable difference between the two. Of course, an elephant with gigantic tusks is at once known to be a bull, but if he has small tusks it is a matter of considerable guesswork. ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... guesswork which is called "woman's intuition" told her that Ste. Marie would come to her on this afternoon, and that something in the nature of a crisis would have to be faced. It can be proved even by poor masculine mathematics that guesswork, like other gambling ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... Tuscany, and a member of the Academy del Cimento, addressed himself in 1668. He had seen the maggots of putrefying flesh, and reflected on their possible origin. But he was not content with mere reflection, nor with the theoretic guesswork which his predecessors had founded upon their imperfect observations. Watching meat during its passage from freshness to decay, prior to the appearance of maggots he invariably observed flies buzzing round the meat and frequently alighting on it. The maggots, he thought, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... money with it there for awhile, while he was working it out. Almost had me convinced, but I told him, "Get it to working first, Carter, and then show me what you can do with it better than I can do without it. I'm doing pretty well as is ... pictures selling good, even if I do make 'em all by guesswork, as you call it." That's what ...
— Vanishing Point • C.C. Beck
... Mescal. What Snap might have done if you had married him is guesswork. He might have left drink alone a while longer. But he was bad clean through. I heard Dave Naab tell him that. Snap would have gone over to Holderness sooner or later. And now he's a rustler, if ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... joy, my friend! When it comes, I shall call on you for fifty. Meanwhile I tell you to keep your eye lifting. The battalion's raw, yet. About the order, it's only my guesswork, and before we sail you ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... time, nothing was done towards the decoration of the door. I suspect some imprudence of Mr. Franklin's on the Continent—with a woman or a debt at the bottom of it—had followed him to England. But that is all guesswork. In this case, not only Mr. Franklin, but my lady too, for a wonder, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... which lay before him. In considering this typical case, it must also be remembered that the metal-cutting machines throughout our machine-shops have practically all been speeded by their makers by guesswork, and without the knowledge obtained through a study of the art of cutting metals. In the machine-shops systematized by us we have found that there is not one machine in a hundred which is speeded by its makers at anywhere near the correct ...
— The Principles of Scientific Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... come to? A professional man, bound to give medical opinions to all comers, is consulted about you, and says he thinks you are insane: you turn out sane. Well, then, he was mistaken: but not more than he is in most of his professional opinions. We lawyers know what guesswork Medicine is: we see it in the witness-box. I hate suing opinions: it is like firing bullets at snipes ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... So, we divine, it played before we came . . . What do you know of me, or I of you? . . . Little enough. . . . We set these doors ajar Only for chosen movements of the music: This passage, (so I think—yet this is guesswork) Will please him,—it is in a strain he fancies,— More brilliant, though, than his; and while he likes it He will be piqued . . . He looks at me bewildered And thinks (to judge from self—this too ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... and the reasonings by which that attitude is reached and mediated. A philosophy, as James Ferrier used to tell us, must indeed be true, but that is the least of its requirements. One may be true without being a philosopher, true by guesswork or by revelation. What distinguishes a philosopher's truth is that it is reasoned. Argument, not supposition, must have put it in his possession. Common men find themselves inheriting their beliefs, they know not how. They jump into them ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... wouldn't savvy a few things about my own business," said the sheriff. "Some of it's guesswork, but the main features ain't. Now, when we go farther, we got to do straight guessin'. Who was this bunch that come in here where the two men was already camped? My guess is that it was this here Dade ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... youth could do was to attempt to follow the route that Fred had taken when he set out to place himself on the other side of the game. It was guesswork to trace his footsteps, but the elder youth made the effort. When he had progressed half the distance, however, he paused, convinced that his labor was utterly useless. He called to Fred, repeated their familiar signals and fired ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... misty and drizzling; the long sour-grass, the branches of the scrubby trees, everything we touched and saw was dripping with the night dew, as we rode up a 'gap' between two stiffish hills. We had been riding all night from track to track, sometimes steering by guesswork. Jim seemed to know the country in a general way, and he told us father and he had been about there a good deal lately, cattle-dealing and so on. For the last hour or so we had been on a pretty fair beaten road, though there wasn't much traffic on it. It was one of the old mail tracks once, but ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... is a mystery and cannot be solved by any evidence that we have. Almost every one who has written of it seems to have indulged in mere guesswork. One popular theory is that Miss Allen was in love with some one else; that her parents forced her into a brilliant marriage with Houston, which, however, she could not afterward endure; and that Houston, learning the facts, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... won't be any guesswork if I leave 'em here for the Huns," he reasoned. "I've got to help ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... group on the same principle. As we have seen, Roman scholars themselves explained Nerio Martis as equivalent to Virtus Martis; Herie Iunonis probably means something of the same kind; the others are not so easily explained, and guesswork about them is unprofitable. But I hope I have said enough to show that there is absolutely no good ground for supposing that these combinations of names in nominative and genitive indicate a relationship of any kind except a ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... little by little. You're getting your results every day; you see your mistakes and your successes. You're making something, creating something; there's something going on all the while that isn't guesswork. I think that's what I want to say. You won't order me to be a ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... criterion of the preservation of an equilibrium between indefinable forces; and to make the ultimate end of government the maintenance as long as possible of a balance resting on no ulterior principle, but undoubtedly pleasant for the comfortable classes. Nothing is left but the rough guesswork, which, if a fine name be wanted, may be called Baconian induction. The 'matchless constitution,' as Bentham calls it, represents a convenient compromise, and the tendency is to attach exaggerated importance to its ostensible terms. When Macaulay asserted against Mill[118] that ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... girl. Even though Rutter had declared she would be at Walsh, I wasn't prepared to believe it was Lyn Rowan. Sometimes five years will work a wonderful change in a woman; or is it that time and distance work some subtle transition in one's recollection? She didn't give me much time to indulge in guesswork, though. While I wondered, for an instant, if there could by any possibility be another woman on God's footstool with quite the same tilt to her head, the same heavy coils of tawny hair and unfathomable eyes that always met your own so frankly, she ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... far as the signature, to have been in Latin, and this is my guesswork rendering: the reader may perhaps improve ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... a bright fan over the square, the men in gay costumes, red, green, blue, yellow, purple, brown, and white, their legs particoloured in halves and quarters, so that when looking at a group it was mere guesswork to match the pair that belonged to one man; women in dresses of one tone, mostly rich and dark, and often heavily embroidered, for no sumptuary laws could effectually limit outward display, and the insolent vanity of an age still almost ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... or window? They would have given years of their lives to know at which to aim, and they felt now what guesswork ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... off as early as possible through the thorn scrub on a compass bearing that we hoped would bring us to a reported swamp at the head of the Swanee River. The Swanee River was one of the sources of the Tsavo. Of course this was guesswork. We did not know certainly the location of the swamp, its distance from us, nor what lay between us and it. However, we loaded all our transportable vessels with water, and ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... Possibly in the end Bishop of Crotona, or a Defensor of the Roman Church, since we find a Jordanes in each of these positions; but this is mere guesswork, and to me neither ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... followed him. It is a dead certainty he did not meet the Vick girl. I would have witnessed any such meeting. The fact that he lived at her father's house for several weeks may have something to do with the case,—but that's guesswork. What we want is facts. This much is certain. I did not see Miss Crown go into that house,—but I did see her come out. I never was so paralysed in my life. It is clear, therefore, that she was in there before either I or Thane came upon the scene. Now the question is, was she there to meet ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... leave no doubt. I may at once add here another argument. The good results stop entirely when Beulah is blindfolded. Even when both her mother and sister were sitting quite near her, her mind-reading became pure guesswork when her eyes were covered with a scarf. Again, she liked to make the experiment under this condition and was not aware that her knowledge failed her when she did not see her mother or sister. Her delight in being blindfolded spoke very clearly for her naive sincerity, but her failure ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... etc., to W. Thompson, who is fierce for the law of priority, and he gave it up in such well-known names. I am in a perfect maze of doubt on nomenclature. In not one large genus of Cirripedia has ANY ONE species been correctly defined; it is pure guesswork (being guided by range and commonness and habits) to recognise any species: thus I can make out, from plates or descriptions, hardly any of the British sessile cirripedes. I cannot bear to give new names to all the species, and yet I shall perhaps do wrong ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... a high place, has attempted to restore the palace of Sennacherib such as he imagines it to have been, from the hints furnished by the excavations. He has produced a striking and most effective picture, of which, however, an entire half is simply guesswork. The whole nether part—the stone-cased, battlemented platform wall, the broad stairs, the esplanade handsomely paved with patterned slabs, and the lower part of the palace with its casing of sculptured ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... guesswork on her cousin's surmise. She relied too much on Owen's sense of propriety to entertain the idea that he could be forwarding a pursuit so obviously insolent, but a still wilder conjecture had been set afloat in her ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when a dozen shells fall harmlessly in a field; when they send their missiles toward objects which may not be worth shooting at; when no one sees where the shells hit and the amount of damage they have done is all guesswork; and helpless without the infantry to protect them, the aeroplanes and the observers ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Quadratus was consul in A.D. 142; and then, by the aid of the dreamer Aristides, he has tried to show that he probably became proconsul of Asia about A.D. 154 or A.D. 155. His calculations are obviously mere guesswork. Even admitting their correctness, it would by no means follow that Polycarp was then consigned to martyrdom. The postscript of the Smyrnaean letter is, as we have seen, justly suspected as no part of the original document. Dr. Lightfoot ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... side of his subject; the horror and disgust with which he, one of the greatest of geographical innovators, regards a younger rival theory, the exodist innovation of Dr. Heinrich Brugsch-Bey. The latter is the first who has rescued the "March of the Children of Israel" from the condition of mere guesswork described by the Rev. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... we're still on the right track, or have strayed away from it. We've been going by guesswork long enough; but, if I don't greatly mistake we'll there see something to tell us whether our guesses have been good or bad. If the redskins have come up the river at all, it's pretty sure they also have crossed the riacho at this very ford, and we ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... the current was merely guesswork. It might be twenty, and it might be no more than ten miles. Mr. Bell agreed with me on the former figure, while Washburn and Ben Bowman insisted that it was not more than ten at the present time. If I "split" the difference between the two estimates, it would leave just ...
— Up the River - or, Yachting on the Mississippi • Oliver Optic
... Ocean and περι μετεωρων {peri meteôrôn}. He made a new but faulty calculation of the circumference of the earth (240,000 stades). Per contra, in a separate tract on the size of the sun (in refutation of the Epicurean view that it is as big as it looks), he made assumptions (partly guesswork) which give for the diameter of the sun a figure of 3,000,000 stades (39-1/4 times the diameter of the earth), a result much nearer the truth than those obtained by Aristarchus, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy. In elementary geometry Posidonius ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... It is possible, though there is no record of the fact, that it received a settlement of discharged soldiers somewhere about 30 B.C. and was then laid out afresh. But here, as throughout this inquiry, more light is needed if the inquirer is to pass from guesswork to proven fact. ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... enthusiasts, knowing nothing of the world save by guesswork, and full of an inborn belief in the existence of perfection, Gilbert dreamed of realizing the harmony of two opposites—the religious life and the life of the world. Such dreams seemed not so wild in those ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... with them outside, and obtained husbands, which is less likely. I should think it was more probable that young boys and girls would be kidnapped, and brought in here from time to time. All this is pure guesswork, of course, but nevertheless there may be people here, and it is just as well to take a look round from above before we ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... their intuitions oftener they would not go wrong so often, perhaps, since their best reasoning is only guesswork, after all. It was not going to be destiny that brought Davidge and Marie Louise together again so much as the man's hatred of leaving anything unfinished—even a dream or a vague desire. There was no shaking Davidge off a thing he determined on except as you shake off a snapping-turtle, ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... time he recognised a world of phenomena, or, as he expressed it, a world of guesswork or opinion ((Greek) doxa). As to the origin of things within this sphere he was ready enough to borrow [90] from the speculations of his predecessors. Earth and water are the sources from which we spring; and he imagined ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... the subject cannot be manipulated by the performer, in which case it is purely guesswork; even in such cases, however, I stand one chance in six of succeeding; and if I make a second trial on failing (not uncommon with mediums), I stand one ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... it!" is the muttered remark exchanged between Wilder and Cully. For they know that the deflection of a single point upon the prairies—above all, upon the Staked Plain—will leave the traveller, like a ship at sea without chart or compass, to steer by guesswork, or ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... to include music, which, as I was saying just now, is full of guesswork and imitation, ...
— Philebus • Plato
... fluently among them. They met on the common ground of English, but not one of them could speak it well, each one translated phrases of her own tongue quite literally, and the meaning of the whole talk was largely a matter of guesswork. What they did understand was nature's language of motherhood. They were content to sit for hours on the veranda or in the grove or behind the house, preparing vegetables for Moya, chattering about their babies and explaining ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... position by a comparison of the depths obtained with those shown on the chart, but even then the eccentricity of the tidal currents and, let it be said, the erratic and most unladylike behaviour of the Rapier's standard compass, made navigation a matter of some conjecture and a good deal of guesswork. ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... orders to the very letter, as long as he visits you. Make on a slip of paper a note of his directions. Make a brief record of exactly what to do, the precise time of giving medicines, etc. This should always be done in serious cases, and by night watchers. Then there is no guesswork. You have the record before you for easy reference. All such things are ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... take special training in guesswork at library school. They call them 'teasers'. They say they're good ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... students who had eschewed delight and lived laborious days for knowledge and art which had been overthrown by war's brutality. All classes and types of life in Paris were mixed up in this retreat, and among them were men I knew, so that I needed no guesswork for their stories. For weeks some of them had been working under nervous pressure, keeping "a stiff upper lip" as it is called to all rumours of impending tragedy. But the contagion of fear had caught them in a secret way, and suddenly their nerves had snapped, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... distinctions of synonyms have been carefully pointed out. It is not expected, intended, or desired that the questions should be answered or the blanks in the examples supplied offhand. In such study nothing can be worse than guesswork. Hence, leading questions have been avoided, and the order of synonyms given in Part I. has frequently been departed from ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... here that most of the assertions about the morals of the Israelites which are to be found in the Erotica Biblon of Mirabeau are either false or pure guesswork. It is a bizarre method of judging the morals of a people, that of taking their legal code and inferring that the people were accustomed to break all the laws which are forbidden by that code. Nevertheless, that is the method which the author of the Erotica Biblon adopts for portraying ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... between good and bad, between Jew and Gentile? Some people thought the kingdom would be in Jerusalem; others said it would be in heaven, and added that the Jews will look down and see the Gentiles in hell—something worth seeing at last. But, after all, it was still guesswork— "perhaps" was the ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... children slain I understood, and tremble. Aye, my brain Reels at these visions, beyond guesswork true. But after, though I heard, I had ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus |
