"Impossibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... otherwise as the accursed poets; in the club of hashish-eaters he had dreams and visions brought on by using narcotics. Besides, he saw many other rare and peculiar things; but he was ever hampered by slender financial means and the need of incurring great debts; and was irritated by the impossibility of finding anything which could satisfy him permanently, or, at least, for a long period. He felt satisfactions, but brief ones. Everything of which he had dreamed seemed less after he had attained it—more common, weaker ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... melancholy and disheartening, though holding fast by my hope and belief that good will be the end, as it always is God's end to man's frenzies, and that all we observe is but the fermentation necessary to the new wine, which presently we shall drink pure. Meanwhile, the saddest thing is the impossibility (which I, for one, feel) to sympathise, to go along with, the people to whom and to whose cause all my natural sympathies yearn. The word 'Liberty' ceases to make me thrill, as at something great and unmistakable, as, for instance, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... engineer, charged with the fortification of the Colony, a man of Vauban's genius in the art of defence. Had the schemes which he projected, and vainly urged upon the heedless Court of Versailles, been carried into effect, the conquest of New France would have been an impossibility. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... proved by a charter to her of her jointure lands of Kincardine, etc. (see Particular Register of Sasines Invss., vol. ix. fol. 9). He married, secondly, Margaret, daughter of Urquhart of Craighouse. The absolute impossibility is at once obvious of George of Kildun - who only married his first wife in 1661 - having had a son, John Mackenzie of Gruinard, in a position to have obtained a charter in his favour of the lands of Little Gruinard, etc., in 1669 - within eight years ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... failed in every attempt to obtain even the rank of lieutenant. With scarcely the means of existence, he retired to La Planche with his family. There he lived for some years, suffering the grief and the many annoyances caused by the sudden change from opulence to want, and by the impossibility of supplying all the requirements of his numerous family. A short illness terminated his distressed existence, and his mortal remains were deposited in the cemetery of Vertoux. My mother, a pattern ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... it be understood that a thoughtless person is not one without Thought. A human being without Thought is an impossibility. Most, if not all, idiots think. It is the lack of coherency, purpose, and effort in Thought that induces the habit of mind commonly known as thoughtlessness. Without Thought, Imagination, and Affection, one could not be a human being. Mankind differ from each other, not in kind, but in degree. ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler
... in most parts so wet and swampy that we could with difficulty travel; and that, had we not returned before the end of the third week, we should probably have been prevented doing so for some time, by the impossibility of crossing the ravines without great danger of being carried away by the torrents, an accident that happened to our hunting parties on one or two occasions in endeavouring to return with their ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... which is manifested in all nature, and consequently the author of that design—the primordial and final cause of all; hope with me that our monade, which reasons on the great eternal Being, may be happy through that same great Being. There is no contradiction in this. You can no more demonstrate its impossibility than I can demonstrate mathematically that it is so. In metaphysics we scarcely reason on anything but probabilities. We are all swimming in a sea of which we have never seen the shore. Woe be to those who fight while they swim! Land who can; but he that cries ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... to catch the active little fellows; he was so big and clumsy, and they were so quick in their movements, that it was an utter impossibility for him to get his ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... significance was attached to this fact through the very insignificance and "impossibility" of that individual;—a lanky, red-haired youth, incapacitated for manual labor through lameness,—a clerk in a general store at the Cross Roads! He had never been the recipient of Judge Piper's hospitality; he had never visited the house even ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... strain this young man wrote on trying to demonstrate the utter impossibility of his ever loving the lovable unfortunate, until the midnight tolling of the cathedral clock sent him ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... the impossible must be justified by reference to artistic requirements, or to the higher reality, or to received opinion. With respect to the requirements of art, a probable impossibility is to be preferred to a thing improbable and yet possible. Again, it may be impossible that there should be men such as Zeuxis painted. 'Yes,' we say, 'but the impossible is the higher thing; for the ideal type must surpass the reality.' To justify the irrational, we ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... was she that Avery found further formality an absolute impossibility. She put her arm round the little woman and begged her ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the origin of the heat and light which come from the apparent ruler of the skies. The myth is preserved through the ages, and the child in the school perceives its beauty, while he understands as well as his teacher its impossibility. ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd
... Each year took its toll in money and men to make this home of Louis the Magnificent. "The King," wrote Madame de Sevigne on the twelfth of October, 1678, "wishes to go on Saturday to Versailles, but it seems that God does not wish it, by the impossibility of putting the buildings in a state to receive him, and by the great mortality among the workmen." But the work had continued, as the King commanded, and when he finally entered into possession of his new palace in 1682 with all his Court, thirty-six thousand men and ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... been, can no more be determined, than whether it originated from communication with plague patients, or from other causes; but thus much is certain, that it did not break out until after the commencement of the Black Death. In consequence of this murrain, and the impossibility of removing the corn from the fields, there was everywhere a great rise in the price of food, which to many was inexplicable, because the harvest had been plentiful; by others it was attributed to the wicked designs of ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... one like it, before often, often. And it seemed as though I had known him just as he stood there, years and years ago, on the other side of the world. I was almost certain it was so, and yet he seemed barely twenty. It was an impossibility, and yet as I looked I grew every moment ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... recited with appropriate gestures, intended to imitate the walk of the hero of the piece and his various features. The people in front turned their heads to look at the performance and take in the words. Not to laugh was almost an impossibility, but the dominie succeeded in doing the impossible, and frowned heavily. He felt that his unworthy friend was bringing disgrace upon the causes of poetry and pedestrianism. When her laughter subsided, Miss Halbert said: "There is one thing I want to ask you seriously, Mr. Coristine." ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... earth wondering after the Beast, amazed at his majesty and power, exclaiming at the impossibility of withstanding it, and celebrating its superiority to everything. He beheld, and the Beast was speaking great and blasphemous things against God, blaspheming His name, His tabernacle, even them ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... of Impartiality, impossibility of Incendiarism, of Commune of 1871 Inequality, craving for Inquisition, the Islam ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... attendance at mass. Accordingly, I disguised myself as a boy, when I went to church, to escape observation. My disguise was found out, and the jokes against me were redoubled. Upon this, I began to think of the words of the Gospel, which declare the impossibility of serving two masters. I determined to abandon the service ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... back-slidings and falls were so frequent that some of them, thus enfeebled, might find it to their advantage[194] to become incarnate, at times, in highly-developed animal bodies. But that was always an exception, and the exception has long ago become an impossibility. ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... in all our lives seen so many flies as at Ladysmith. We had to hurry over our meals as they made eating almost an impossibility to us. Fortunately, I was only a short time there, as towards the end of January, 1900, part of our commando, including my brother and myself, was sent to the Tugela as reinforcement. We had a distance of four and a half hours to ride, and we had to ride hard, as the enemy were determined ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... country in the spring of 1834, and represented to me the utter impossibility of carrying my instructions into effect. Meantime, the Committee, having learned by despatches from York Factory that the vessel intended for the business of the district had been lost, and the other, in which I made my passage, placed in so critical a ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... come to less harm without you than with you," Mijnheer retorted; and Rawson-Clew, seeing as plainly as Julia had yesterday, the impossibility of making the position clear, did ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... first glimpse of him squatting there in the small cleared space it came to her what her course should be. She realized that if it was an impossibility for her to go to him, she could at least let him know she had been there—let him know that he had not been entirely alone while he waited. She even smiled to herself—smiled with wistful, half-sad, elfen tenderness as she, too, huddled down without a sound, there in the wet bushes ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... impossible," said Sam coldly, "I was referring to the impossibility of the possibility.... I mean, that it was impossible that I could possibly ... in other words, father, I can never ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... reason deprive ourselves of the only man able to resist him? Harold hath taken an oath! God wot, who among us have not taken some oath at law for which they have deemed it meet afterwards to do a penance, or endow a convent? The wisest means to strengthen Harold against that oath, is to show the moral impossibility of fulfilling it, by placing him on the throne. The best proof we can give to this insolent Norman that England is not for prince to leave, or subject to barter, is to choose solemnly in our Witan the very chief whom his frauds prove ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suppose, that by some synchronizing miracle, the constellation had been then specially called into existence at the very moment when the first Christian procession, bearing a cross in their arms, solemnly stepped on shore from the vessels of Christendom. We Protestants know better: we understand the impossibility of supposing such a narrow and local reference in orbs, so transcendently vast as those composing the constellation—orbs removed from each other by such unvoyageable worlds of space, and having, in fact, no real reference to each other more than to any other ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... independent of any mirthful attribute—that to this day I am doubtful whether I ever saw a Chinaman laugh. A theatrical representation by natives, one might think, would have set my mind at ease on this point; but it did not. Indeed, a new difficulty presented itself—the impossibility of determining whether the performance was a tragedy or farce. I thought I detected the low comedian in an active youth who turned two somersaults, and knocked everybody down on entering the stage. But, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... extent that every other one seemed insufferable to him. On his former journey, the cliffs and mountains of Tyrol had interested, yea, delighted him, and now, on his return to the fatherland, he felt terrified, as if he were being dragged through the Cimmerian portal and convinced of the impossibility of continuing ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... embrace. Sir Dominick was very dumb, but he was terrible in his dependence, and Peter would not have encouraged him by so much curiosity nor reassured him by so much deference had it not been for the young man's complete acceptance of the impossibility of getting out of a tight place by exposing an individual. It didn't matter that the individual was dead; it didn't matter that he was dishonest. Peter felt him sufficiently alive to suffer; he perceived the rectification of history so conscientiously desired by ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... penitentiary; dramatic announcement of fall of Vicksburg; rejoices in return of 9th army corps; Halleck's unjust treatment of; concentrates forces and advances into E. Tennessee; captures General Frazer and 2500 men at Cumberland Gap; impossibility of co-operating with Rosecrans; congratulated by President and Halleck; asks to be relieved; organizes and arms E. Tennessee volunteers; directed to move toward Chattanooga and support Rosecrans; inability ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... and the great length of the boundary line included in the objects of their commission would have rendered it impossible to have completed the task assigned them within the limits of a single season. In addition to this physical impossibility, the work of the present year was entered upon under circumstances very unfavorable for making any great progress. The law under which they have acted was passed at the last period of a protracted session, when nearly half of the season during which working parties can be kept in the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... of the work—embracing, as it does, the whole field of literature—imposes other and more difficult conditions. Originality, in any primary sense, was of course an impossibility; a single lifetime would not suffice even for the most cursory examination of original materials on so grand a scale. It was necessary, therefore, to select and make use of the best authorities, critical and historical, those whose researches have been most valuable and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... My very blood runs cold within me at the recollection of seeing Softdown's as it spurted from beneath the monster's foot; whilst the crunch of his bones almost petrified me with horror. At length, however, recollecting the impossibility of restoring my beloved brother to life, and the danger of my own situation, I, with trembling feet and palpitating heart, crept softly back to my remaining two brothers, who were impatiently expecting me behind the closet. There I related to them the horrid scene ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... finished in a few days, Bolingbroke returned to England, and Prior remained as resident at the court of France. The states-general breathed nothing but war; the pensionary Heinsius pronounced an oration in their assembly, representing the impossibility of concluding a peace without losing the fruits of all the blood and treasure they had expended. The conferences at Utrecht were interrupted by a quarrel between the domestics of Menager and those ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... him alone with his child. The excitement had not passed away: it had only reached that stage when the keenness of the susceptibility makes external stimulus intolerable—when there is no sense of weariness, but rather an intensity of inward life, under which sleep is an impossibility. Any one who has watched such moments in other men remembers the brightness of the eyes and the strange definiteness that comes over coarse features from that transient influence. It is as if a new fineness of ear for all spiritual voices had sent wonder-working vibrations ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... this. What had been pastime to me was going to be misery to her. I had to show her the impossibility of my keeping her; then she said she would drown herself. Altogether it was not a very comfortable meeting apart from the fucking, which was as good as usual I dare say, though I don't recollect ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... lightly of the resources of human reason; and it is the pert, superficial thinker, who is generally strongest in every kind of unbelief. The deep philosopher sees chains of causes and effects so wonderfully and strangely linked together, that he is usually the last person to decide upon the impossibility of any two series of events being independent of each other; and in sciences, so many natural miracles, as it were, have been brought to light,—such as the fall of stones from meteors in the atmosphere, the disarming ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... Leopard," resumed Coeur de Lion, "thou hast shown that the Ethiopian may change his skin and the Leopard his spots, though clerks quote Scripture for the impossibility. Yet I have more to say to you when I have conducted you to the presence of the ladies, the best judges, and best ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... aware that he stood on the spot where he had turned his ankle the night she had come to him from the water's edge, and his thoughts were choked in the furrows of his brain. He seemed to hear her voice again as she had spoken that night of the impossibility of his love. He looked about. Far up the peninsula he recognized her. She was coming to him as straight as the line of the beach permitted. He started in her direction. She waved him back. He waited. On she came. ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... the hill towards the south-east, preceded by the mysterious horseman. The light was too feeble for enabling them to ascertain the course they took; but it seemed probable that Norton was away over the hills with the unknown messenger. Their first impulse was to follow; but the impossibility of overtaking the fugitives, and the near approach of night, would have rendered it a vain and probably a perilous attempt. Looking anxiously down the dark ravine where Norton had so strangely disappeared, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... place at the close of the fourteenth century, they divined this movement of the Italic races to resume their past, and gave it all encouragement. To be a prince, and not to be the patron of scholarship, the pupil of humanists, and the founder of libraries, was an impossibility. In like manner they employed their wealth upon the development of arts and industries. The great age of Florentine painting is indissolubly connected with the memories of Casa Medici. Rome owes her magnificence to the despotic ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... for a quarter of an hour or so, and then I launched forth upon my theme. I had exhausted her beauty and goodness, and was well into my own feelings—the madness of my ever imagining I had loved before, the utter impossibility of my ever caring for any other woman, and my desire to die breathing her name—before he made a move. I thought he had risen to reach down, as usual, the "Commonplace Book," and so waited, but instead he went to the door and opened it, and in glided one of the largest and most beautiful black ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... they were probably not different in spirit from many other resolutions passed by like bodies. On July 8, 1775, Congress sent its last formal petition to the Crown. In it "Your Majesty's faithful subjects" set forth "the impossibility of reconciling the usual appearance of respect with a just Attention to our own preservation against those artful and cruel Enemies who abuse your royal Confidence and Authority for the Purpose of effecting our destruction." Congress was determined to wait until the ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... convinced that the parliament could prudently have stopped in their pretensions. They still plead the violations of liberty attempted by the king, after granting the petition of right; without considering the extreme harsh treatment which he met with after making that great concession, and the impossibility of supporting government by the revenue then settled on the crown. The worst of it is, that there was a great tang of enthusiasm in the conduct of the parliamentary leaders, which, though it might render their conduct sincere, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... no!" cut in Dorothy. "My—my affliction makes that an impossibility. You must do ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... yet with a little touching air of hesitation, and accused him, in a serious low voice, of having forgotten her. That, he returned, was ridiculous, an impossibility. Pictures of her were in all the magazines. Close by her he recognized that the sweetness was far from sugary; there were indications of a determination that reached stubbornness; already there were faint lines—skilfully covered—at the corners of her eyes, and she was palpably, physically, weary. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... did this conviction cling to him that he became intensely nervous and restless, and was scarcely able to sleep in his bed at nights. He would bolt and bar himself in his chamber so securely that it was a matter of perfect impossibility to effect an entrance, and then, still doubtful, he would be wakeful and uneasy during the long, weary hours of the night, until from sheer exhaustion he would fall into a troubled sleep, which lasted late into ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... significance. The dream hidden so closely in her heart: that there might yet be a reconciliation—the dream finally killed when she perceived that Ironsyde had fallen in love with Estelle Waldron—was no dream in her son's mind. What she knew was impossible, till now represented no impossibility to him. He actually declared it as a thing which, in his moral outlook, ought to be. Only so could the past be retrieved, or the future made endurable. But to that matter they did not immediately come. She dined at the farmer's table with Abel and three men. Then he was told ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... have moved the entire country in a singular manner. There remained in every one's mind a disquietude, a vague fear, a sensation of mysterious terror, springing not merely from the impossibility of discovering any trace of the assassin, but also and above all from that strange finding of the wooden shoes in front of La Roque's door the day after the crime. The certainty that the murderer had assisted at the investigation, that he was still, doubtless, living in the village, possessed all ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... year to any lover of Nature. A great drawback to town gardens, or gardens situated near crowded thoroughfares, is that the plants there grown are almost invariably smothered with dust: under such circumstances successful gardening becomes simply a matter of impossibility, as hardly any plants will thrive, or even live, under such conditions. A proper site is, therefore, a matter ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of these columns, with thirty-five interstices each: approximately, 1,050—certainly not fewer—interstices to be deliberately cut clear, to get that two inches square of shadow. Now calculate—or think enough to feel the impossibility of calculating—the number of woodcuts used daily for our popular prints, and how many men are night and day cutting 1,050 square holes to the square inch, as the occupation of their manly life. And Mrs. Beecher Stowe and the North Americans ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... Albert's great joy; for the wily knight had foreseen the great difficulty, or rather impossibility, of prevailing upon Brian de Bois-Guilbert to take such an oath before the assembly, and had invented this excuse to escape the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... sit anywhere in his long-skirted blue coat and blue trousers, without holding converse with everybody within speaking distance, was a sheer impossibility. So the captain fell to talking with the fishermen, and to asking them knowing questions about the fishery, and the tides, and the currents, and the race of water off that point yonder, and what you kept in your eye, and got ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens
... dazzled her eyes. But when the old knight assured her that there was as much difference between Sieradz and Krakow as there is between a firebrand and the sun, she would not believe her own ears, because it appeared to her an impossibility that another city could be found in the world which could ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... on one of those top shelves, I know. The cords will certainly break." The chambermaid here takes up the conversation, and solemnly assures them that such an accident is not to be thought of at all; that it is a natural impossibility—a thing that could not happen without an actual miracle; and since it becomes increasingly evident that thirty ladies cannot all sleep on the lowest shelf, there is some effort made to exercise faith in this doctrine; nevertheless, all look on their neighbors with ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to do you that favor," replied Baba Mustapha, "I assure you I cannot. I was taken to a certain place, whence I was led blindfold to the house, and afterward brought back in the same manner. You see, therefore, the impossibility of my doing ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... appearance—that all-overish grace and elasticity which comes only from the development of the brain and nervous system. His face was also marred by the seal of commonness which trade impresses on so many men, the result of the subjection of the intellect to the will, and of the impossibility of grasping things except as they relate to self. In this respect the American cousin was his antipodes. His whole body had a psychical expression—slim, elastic, alert. Over his bright gray eyes ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... freely. While in Providence she was refreshed by calls upon her of several abolitionists, among them a cotton manufacturer and his son, Quakers, with whom she had a long talk, not knowing their business. She discussed the use of slave-labor, and descanted on the impossibility of any man being clean-handed enough to work in the anti-slavery cause so long as he was making his fortune by dealing in slave-labor products. These two gentlemen afterwards became her ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... was only half through a fervent asseveration to the effect that such a catastrophe was a complete impossibility, when Farmer ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... officers made stirring speeches by platform or Press, offering the services of their battalions as complete units—an impossibility to accomplish owing to the terms of enlistment; others with more modesty sent in their applications, without any flourish of trumpets, for ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... From the utter impossibility of procuring corn, I was forced to take the horses out grazing a mile beyond the town for four hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. As one mustn't lose sight of them for a moment, this occupied me all day, while Lawley ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... more advanced the intelligence and piety of mankind, the less, it is confessed, do we know of them in detail, the more they rise above our comprehension, the more unfathomable become their depths. Experience, history, the progress of light, all increase our sense of the impossibility of estimating the capacities of the human soul. So also we find that the higher we rise towards the Deity, in the contemplation of his works and word, the more does he continue to transcend our power ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the Amoeba. How could the formation of such a creature have been described to the contemporaries of Moses? They could have had no idea of its existence. To describe the first beginnings of life then, was, under the circumstances, an absolute impossibility. But if a part only of the long series of animal life could possibly be noticed, the determination of the point at which he should first speak of it would be left to the writer, guided as he would be by considerations of the object for which, and the ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... Among some of these most highly modified crustaceans the whole of the alimentary canal—that is, all the food-digesting and food-absorbing parts—form a useless solid cord: the animal is nourished—it is a parasite—by absorption of the nutritive fluid in which it swims. Is there any absolute impossibility in supposing man to be destined for a similar change; to imagine him no longer dining, with unwieldy paraphernalia of servants and plates, upon food queerly dyed and distorted, but nourishing himself in elegant simplicity by immersion in a tub of ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... all we think and all we do. No people can live to itself alone. The unity of all who dwell in freedom is their only sure defense. The economic need of all nations—in mutual dependence—makes isolation an impossibility; not even America's prosperity could long survive if other nations did not also prosper. No nation can longer be a fortress, lone and strong and safe. And any people, seeking such shelter for themselves, can now build ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... how essentially provincial English and American writers are, one has only to consider for a moment the absolute impossibility of such books as "L'Orme du Mail," "Le Mannequin" or "Monsieur Bergeret a Paris" appearing in ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... disposed to agree with him, although my impression at the time has been always that the diffracted colors rose out of the white, as a rainbow does out of the gray. But whatever the facts may be, in this respect the statement in the text of the impossibility of representing diffracted color in painting is equally true. It may be that the resolved hues are darker than the white, as colored panes in a window are darker than the colorless glass, but all are alike in a key which no artifice of painting ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... visited only by Cypros, who, when Eva would have inquired the cause of all this mysterious cruelty and startling contrast to the dispositions which had preceded it, only shook her head and pressed her finger to her lip, to signify the impossibility of her ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... a tense silence, then Hal turned to the sofa and picked up her hat as if she were a little dazed. She seemed suddenly to have nothing to say, and she knew herself to be no good at prevarication. To congratulate him seemed an impossibility just yet. ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... strange, marvellous, almost inexplicable peculiarity. The player sounded on his instrument, simultaneously, a chord of four notes. To produce at the same time four different notes from one and the same tube seems, and must be, an impossibility. But Vivier did it, and the fact was certified to by Meyerbeer, Auber, Halevy, Adolphe Adam, and other musicians ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Life (CONSTABLE), which begins in "the night train from the German frontier to Paris," gave me much the same impression of impossibility (was there ever such a train?) that I should have felt about a story that opened in the moon. But the shock of this was nothing to some, different in character, that were to follow. Frankly, I confess that Mr. MIDDLETON ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... more and more into the light in the course of Mr. Swinburne's poetic development—let me say, his thoroughly normal development. We can see now that from the first such a school, such a successful following, was an impossibility. The fact is that Mr. Swinburne has not only genius, but an extremely rare and individual genius. The germ of this individuality may be found, easily enough, in "Atalanta" and the Ballads; but it luxuriates in his later ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... neither,' as if Hugh had said a word. In fact, Miss Peniston was almost as cross and abrupt as dear Miss Wynne at her worst. If ever, God willing, I should marry her,—there, I am blushing even to think of such a sweet impossibility,—she would drive me frantic. I should be in small rages or begging her pardon ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... supreme God. But alongside of these stood also decidedly anti-Jewish groups, who seem to have been influenced in part by the preaching of Paul. They advanced much further in the criticism of the Old Testament and perceived the impossibility of saving it for the Christian universal religion. They rather connected this religion with the cultus-wisdom of Babylon and Syria, which seemed more adapted for allegorical interpretations, and opposed this formation ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... that impossibility, to judge by the work you are at present engaged in. You must have changed your opinions since you ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... London, and another time in Paris. It is a kind of foretaste of hell. There is no way to avoid it except by the method which you have now chosen. One must live secretly and cut himself utterly off from the human race, or life in Europe becomes an unbearable burden and work an impossibility. I learned something last night, and maybe it may reconcile me to go to Europe again sometime. I attended one of the astonishingly popular lectures of a man by the name of Stoddard, who exhibits interesting stereopticon pictures and then knocks the interest all out of them with his comments ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to have waited just long enough for the defence to become difficult, to admit its impossibility. He chose the part of safety rather ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... I endeavour to show the impossibility of such an achievement; the merchant will not hear of refusal, and as an inducement for me to make only a trial, he offers me a large price, promising to double the amount if ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... remembered. There was stealing over Hollister a curious sense of something unreal in his first marriage, in the war, even in the strange madness which had briefly afflicted him when he discovered that Myra was there. He could smile at the impossibility of that recurring, but he could not smile at the necessity of living within gunshot of her again. He was not afraid. There was no reason to be afraid. He was officially dead. No sense of sin troubled him. He had put all ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... other methods may exaggerate. It is hardly possible to copy a natural spray of flowers in cross stitch and keep it very naturalistic. The stitch being square and alike all over gives a formality of treatment to every part of the design, also, some detail is perforce omitted owing to the impossibility of putting it in; all of this tends to a right method of treatment, which renders the sampler an admirable lesson not only in ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... hour to which he had been looking forward, first as an impossibility, then as a danger, and at last as an expectation, ever since the day, now some years ago, when he began to fear that he might not be able to restore all the money he had "borrowed" from the properties ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... evolution and the life of the species, is studied from the standpoint of the animal group more than from that of the environment. Consequently, the separation of species from each other is regarded as the outcome not only of a sheer physical impossibility of contact, but even more of other factors as differences in physical structure, in habits of life, and in the instincts of the animal groups. J. Arthur Thomson in his work on "Heredity" presents the following compact and illuminating statement of isolation as ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... officer can now live in California on his pay, money has so little value; the prices of necessary articles of clothing and subsistence are so exorbitant and labor so high, that to hire a cook or servant has become an impossibility, save to those who are earning from thirty to fifty dollars a day. This state of things cannot last for ever. Yet from the geographical position of California, and the new character it has assumed as a mining country, prices of labor will always be high, and will hold out temptations to desert. ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... to say that he couldn't possibly make it any mouldier than his own. This was a slander. In the high dry Greek atmosphere which surrounded and enclosed his mind, mould, which requires dampness before it can exist, was an impossibility. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... fully aware that as far as we know this is the only scientific system evolved up to date, also that there are a number of breeders of the American dog who maintain that this is an absolute impossibility, that breeding for color is as absurd as it is impractical, but we can assure these honest doubters that we have blazed a trail, and all they now have to do is simply to follow instructions and success ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... the Affiliation Orders Act, 1914, and the appointment of a Collecting Officer, there is still far too easy opportunity for the escape of a shirking father. The law takes no cognizance of the fact that in the majority of cases it is an absolute impossibility for the mothers, even with the best will in the world, unassisted, to place their children in proper conditions for their up-bringing. At present, with no authorized person to supervise the mother ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... not one word relating to the guilt or innocence of Henry Ward Beecher, she did confide her real feelings to her diary. She believed that to save himself Beecher was withholding the explanation which the situation demanded. "It is almost an impossibility," she wrote in her diary, "for a man and a woman to have a close sympathetic friendship without the tendrils of one soul becoming fastened around the other, with the result of infinite pain and anguish." Then again she wrote, "There is nothing ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... which in the smallpox has been frequently observed, the constitution remaining in as full health and vigour after the termination of the disease as before the infection. Another important consideration appears to be the impossibility of the disease being communicated except by the actual contact of the matter of the pustule, and consequently the perfect safety of the remaining part of the family, supposing only one or two should wish to be inoculated at the ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... led through wooded lands, large trees, chestnut, hickory, oak, and pine, were cut pell mell, creating a perfect abattis across the road—so much so as to cause our troops in their verdant ignorance to think it almost an impossibility for such obstructions to be cleared away in many days; whereas, as a fact, the pioneer corps of the Federal Army cleared it away as fast as the army marched, not causing as much as one hour's halt. Every morning at nine o'clock one company from a ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... with Glendower, while Roger's wound was healing. At the end of that time he learned that Henry, having marched into Cardigan and ravaged the country there, was already retiring; his army having suffered terribly from the effects of the weather, the impossibility of obtaining supplies, and the constant and harassing attacks ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... every Tudor, but which no Tudor had been so tactless as publicly to avow. The first two Stuarts confidently expected to maintain the same measure of absolutism which their Tudor predecessors had maintained—nothing more, nothing less. There were, however, several reasons why, for them, this was an impossibility. The first arose from their own temperament. The bluntness, the lack of perception of the public will, and the disposition perpetually to insist upon the minutest definitions of prerogative, which so pre-eminently characterized ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... of that. She reasoned from analogy. "All the other lights are reflections," she told herself, "and of course that must be." However, the main cause of her terror remained: the unfounded, world-old conviction of presences behind closed doors, the almost impossibility for a very imaginative person to conceive of an entirely empty room or house—that is, empty of sentient life. She had hidden the front-door key under the mat before the front door; she had lived long enough in the ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... at for nearly twenty years because I stammered. I found school a burden, college a practical impossibility and life a ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... attraction which drew her towards the young girl in spite of this repugnance. She began to look with new feelings on the contradictions in her moral nature,—the longing for sympathy, as shown by her wishing for Helen's company, and the impossibility of passing beyond the cold circle of isolation within which she had her being. The fearful truth of that instinctive feeling of hers, that there was something not human looking out of Elsie's eyes, came upon her with a sudden flash of penetrating conviction. ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... hundred prizes, laden with corn, wine, oil and other provisions were sent to England: one hundred other ships, that could not be carried off, were destroyed; and the French king, Philip II. (surnamed Augustus), during the temporary retreat of the English, perceiving the impossibility of saving the rest of his fleet in the event of a fresh attack, set it on fire, that it might not fall into the enemy's hands. Thus the first great naval victory of the English destroyed the first fleet that had been ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... mass of ice upon the beach. After setting to the southward for an hour or two longer the ice became stationary, no open water being anywhere visible from the mast-head, and the pressure on the ships remaining undiminished during the day. Just as I had ascertained the utter impossibility of moving the Hecla a single foot, and that she must lie quite aground fore and aft as soon as the tide fell, I received a note from Captain Hoppner informing me that the Fury had been so severely “nipped” and strained as to leak a good deal, apparently about four inches ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... madam? Alas, you don't know me. I have much ado to tell your ladyship how long I have been in love with you—but encouraged by the impossibility of Valentine's making any more addresses to you, I have ventured to declare the very inmost passion of my heart. O madam, look upon us both. There you see the ruins of a poor decayed creature—here, a complete and lively figure, with youth and health, and all his ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... as an absolute impossibility?" murmured Julius, who still sat with his chin in his hand, looking as if he considered the "thing" from a long way off as one of a multitude of ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... some device to get the chiefs of the conspiracy off their guard, and, by destroying them, to break up the hostile confederacy altogether: and as Maitland was bound to obey his orders, and also knew the utter impossibility either of changing the resolves of his captain or of deserting the enterprise, he was compelled to join in proceedings ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... and a half; and I hope, therefore, if there be anything that he has said upon which you would like to hear something from me, but which I omit to comment upon, you will bear in mind that it would be expecting an impossibility for me to go over his whole ground. I can but take up some of the points that he has dwelt upon, and employ my ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... is much more profitable than thinking self-destruction or the effort at self-destruction for that is an act which aims at an impossibility. You can destroy the body, but the you who suffers in mind and spirit will suffer still, and live still. You will only change your location from one state to another. You did not make yourself, you cannot unmake yourself. You can merely put yourself among the spiritual tramps who hang ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... be the criticism that would stop to note the impossibility; yet was it a great truth, the garden was his own heart, and his every wish a new flower. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... an impossibility," responded the man, earnestly, though he was unable to keep from slightly smiling at the unconscious naivete of the question. "I would she could see it in a more befitting frame, to set it off. If thou 't but let me, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... in finding that the latter was an impossibility, for at the slightest movement the pain was intense, and ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... form the basis of the Christ-like character. Thus the particular or individual system grows, by a moral necessity, out of the general system of thoughts, affections, and volitions, here unfolded; it being a moral impossibility for one cordially to adopt the latter, in all its length and breadth, without determining upon such a private system of beneficence as his means, his relations to God and to the wants and woes of our species, demand. To refuse this system of benevolent principles ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... were often in serious apprehension that the coach would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this storm, like showers of steel; and, at those times, when there was any shelter of trees or lee walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a sheer impossibility of ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... under such laws the improvement of agriculture in Greece is impossible. No green crops can be grown with profit at any distance from a large town. The tenth of garden produce and green crops being generally valued and paid for in money, the disputes concerning the valuation, and the impossibility of obtaining any redress, in case of injustice, have induced the cultivators to give up such cultivation. We have known proprietors pay half the value of a crop of potatoes as the value of the tenth; and in one case, on our asking the farmer of the tenths, who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... of surprise having passed, Mrs. Gower's thoughts involuntarily turned to Reginald. How would he like this discovery? But again the mother's partiality, which already had too often blinded her to his faults, suggested the impossibility that he would receive the news with aught but pleasure, though there might be a momentary feeling of disappointment as regarded his future prospects. But now she must return to the sick-room, and try to see her friend for a minute or two alone, and tell her the glad tidings; also, if possible, ...
— Little Frida - A Tale of the Black Forest • Anonymous
... contradicts at every moment. To recognize the necessity of a religion, the necessity of authority, and then to leave to subjects the right to deny religion, attack its worship, oppose the exercise of power by public expression communicable and communicated by thought, was an impossibility which the Catholics of the sixteenth century ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... over and over again, on the highest authority, that it was an idle dream. When we wanted to express the superlative degree of the impossible, we said "I can no more do it than I can fly." But the irrepressible spirit of man was not to be daunted by a priori demonstrations of impossibility. One day there came the rumour that the thing had been achieved, followed soon by ocular demonstration; and now we rub shoulders every day with men who have outsoared the eagle, and—alas!—carried death and destruction ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... are under the sway of particular impressions or mental images, we can, when resolved to do so, undeceive ourselves by carefully attending to the actual state of things about us. And in many cases, when once the correction is made, the illusion seems an impossibility. By no effort of imagination are we able to throw ourselves back into the illusory mental condition. So long as this power of dispelling the illusion remains with us, we need not be alarmed at the number and variety of the momentary misapprehensions ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... afford the explanations, with which it is necessary to take the doctrine of the impossibility of an excess of all commodities, we must advert for a moment to the argument by which this impossibility ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... enemy)—the barbarous nature of the war waged upon us, and told him we were in fact fighting the battles of Spain as well as our own; for if the barbarians of the North succeeded in overcoming the South (which, however, I pronounced an impossibility), and destroying our slave property, in their wild fanaticism and increasing madness, they would next make war on Cuba and Porto Rico. He replied that this war could not continue much longer; there were people and territory enough in ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... of its bar—a great semicircular sweep with heavy breakers—too bad a bar for boats to cross; but a steamer on the Lagos bar boat plan might manage it, as the Bull Frog reported in 1884 nineteen to twenty-one feet on it, one hour before high water. The absence of this bar boat, and the impossibility of sending goods out in surf-boats across the bar, causes the goods from Adda (Riverside), the chief town on the Volta, situated about six miles up the river from its mouth, to be carried across the spit of land to Beach Town, and then brought ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Man, considering all these things as he looked into the fire when he was alone, earnestly desired that he could have told the Young Man the exact truth, have printed it, and have produced a proper Gospel. But considering the mountains of impossibility that lay in the way of such public action, he sighed deeply and took to the more indirect method. He turned to his work and continued to perform his own duty before God and for the help of mankind. This, on that evening, was for him a review upon the interpretation of ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... mask, and says now to the nation, "Your life or mine!" Even the compromising Everett has boldly told the South, "To be let alone is not all you ask—but you demand a great deal more." And in his late oration, he has most powerfully portrayed the impossibility of a peaceful disunion. Many men, some anti-slavery, were at first inclined to yield to the idea of a separation. But every day's experience is scattering that notion to the winds. The ferocious spirit exhibited from the first by the Secessionists towards all dissentients, the invasion of ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... flagpole 500 miles high. The consideration of such a signal only belongs to the domain of the imagination. As an illustration, it should conclusively settle the question of the possibility or rather impossibility of signalling ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... they had been already furnished with a better description of drink—"But with regard to the youth in question, there is one thing puzzles me, oh, most prophetical niece, and that is, that you should take it into your head to effect an impossibility, in other words, to make a gentleman of him; ex quovis ligno nonfit Mercurius, ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... power of His mighty life in you? Filled with desires that are not realised; offering prayers that are not answered; striving at times to work out a law of goodness which you feel all the time is an impossibility for you? Living, so to speak, out of your element—like a fish out of water? ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth |
