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Insoluble   Listen
adjective
Insoluble  adj.  
1.
Not soluble; in capable or difficult of being dissolved, as by a liquid; as, chalk is insoluble in water.
2.
Not to be solved or explained; insolvable; as, an insoluble doubt, question, or difficulty.
3.
Strong. "An insoluble wall." (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Insoluble" Quotes from Famous Books



... should decide whether and how much the window should be open and how many blankets should be on the bed, and at what hour they should go to bed and get up so as to avoid disturbing one another's sleep, seemed insoluble questions to me. But the members of the conference did not seem to mind. They were content to have the whole national housing problem treated on a basis of one room for two people. That was the ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... was found in the usual way, and the extractive by the difference. In the ash the amount soluble was determined, and qualitatively examined, as was the insoluble portion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... wrangled, wailed, talked of parting, and only became quiet when their emotions had exhausted them. Yet no ill-feeling resulted from these disputes. Virginia had a rooted faith in her sister's innocence; when angry, she only tried to provoke Monica into a full explanation of the mystery, so insoluble by unaided conjecture. And Monica, say what she might, repaid this confidence with profound gratitude. Strangely, she had come to view herself as not only innocent of the specific charge brought against her, but as a woman in every ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... running to the north, from the upper end of Jan Mayen. Only a week had elapsed since he had actually ascertained the impracticability of reaching a higher latitude,—what likelihood could there be of a channel having been opened up to the northward during so short an interval? Such was the series of insoluble problems by which I posed myself, as we stood vainly smacking our lips at the island, which lay so ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... that the question which has been raised as to the legitimacy of cable-cutting is not so insoluble as most of the allusions to it might lead one to suppose. It is true that no light is thrown upon it by the Convention of 1884, which relates exclusively to time of peace, and was indeed signed by Lord Lyons, on behalf of Great Britain, only with an express ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland

... a good deal of the drugged liquor. "They are to ascend the great Tower,"—and why they do that is part of the Mystery, though not an insoluble part. Before they climb, Durdles tells Jasper that he was drunk and asleep in the crypt, last Christmas Eve, and was wakened by "the ghost of one terrific shriek, followed by the ghost of the howl of a dog, a long dismal, woeful howl, such as a dog gives when a person's ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang

... given as a drench we must be careful to use water or oil enough to dissolve or dilute it thoroughly; more than this Wakes the drench bulky and is unnecessary. Insoluble medicines, if not irritant or corrosive, may be given simply suspended in water, the bottle to be well shaken immediately before giving the drench. The bottle used for drenching purposes should be clean, strong, and smooth about its neck; it should be without shoulders, tapering, and of a size ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... state of our morals and of our imperfect civilization, a problem crops up which for the moment is insoluble, and which renders superfluous all discussion on the art of choosing a wife; we commend it, as we have done all the others, to the meditation ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... will be seen that the problem is an exceedingly complex one, not to be decided off-hand, or by any simple method. It has in fact been usually considered as (strictly speaking) insoluble, and only to be estimated by a more or less rough approximation, or by the method of general analogy from certain known facts. It will be seen, from what has been said in previous chapters, that Mr. Lowell, in his book, has used the latter method, and, by taking the presence of water and water-vapour ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace

... am pursuing my studies as usual day after day; and they lure me, too, deeper and deeper into the insoluble mystery that lies behind all these inquiries. Nay! why keep revolving in this fruitless circuit of thought? Better go out into the winter night. The moon is up, great and yellow and placid; the stars are twinkling overhead ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... and Arcot reported to the others the curious constants they had discovered for coronium. It was not attacked by any acid except boiling selenic acid, since it formed a tremendous number of insoluble salts. Even the nitrate violated the long-held rule that "all nitrates are soluble"—it wouldn't dissolve. Yet it was chemically more active ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... be removed by a simple washing with water, and on the Continent forms a valuable source of potash salts, since the ash after ignition contains 70 to 90 per cent. of potassium carbonate. The wool fat is insoluble in water, but dissolves readily in ether, benzene, carbon ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech

... continue the experiment further since Julius had given up his attempts to locate the right box in the first choice and was apparently satisfied to discover it by a process of trial and error. He had, it would seem, satisfied himself that the problem was insoluble. These results obtained in problem 1a constitute a most interesting comment on the effects of problem 2 on the orang utan. Behavior similar to that which he developed well might have been obtained from a child ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... further explanation of motion, the definition of a virtue or potency that produces it, first a neglected problem, then an irrelevant problem, is finally, for a naturalistic philosophy in which this progression is completed, an insoluble problem. For the sequel to this purely descriptive procedure on the part of science is the disavowal of "metaphysics" by those who will have no philosophy but science. Thus the scientific conservatism of Newton has led to the positivistic and agnostic phase ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... episode. The murder of Michael Pendean became received as a fact capable of everything but proof absolute, while the escape of Robert Redmayne offered an insoluble problem to the authorities. Michael Pendean indeed was dead enough, for it had been a part of my original conception that he should never reappear. Obviously he could not do so; and I, who had already created "Doria," now began to live my new part in life with zest and gusto—a dramatist and ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... fostering of the imagination—was it right? was it wise? Harvey worried himself with doubts insoluble. He had merely obeyed his own instincts. But perhaps he would be doing far better if he never allowed the child to hear a fairy-tale or a line of poetry. Why not amuse his mind with facts, train him to the habit of scientific thought? For all he knew, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... dissolved before they are given; insoluble ones should be finely divided by powdering or by shaking, and should be well agitated and mixed immediately before they are given. In the latter case a menstruum with considerable body, such as molasses or flaxseed tea or milk, will ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... were palpably inapplicable. And so they fell back upon 'by Beelzebub'; and they thereby admitted that humanity without something more at the back of it never made such a man as that. And I beg you to lay that to heart. It is very easy to solve an insoluble problem if you begin by taking all the insoluble elements out of it. And that is how a great deal of modern thinking does with Christianity. Knock out all the miracles; pooh-pooh all Christ's claims; say nothing about Incarnation; declare ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... remedy this situation was to tax the wisdom of a Solomon. It probably would have remained insoluble, had not the statement I made that the main element in the difficulty was the mother-in-law vs. daughter-in-law situation come to the ears of the old lady. Conscientious and well-meaning, that lady announced her determination ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... prove this, he collected the contents of these bubbles in a bottle containing lime-water. When this bottle was shaken violently, so that the lime-water and the carbonic acid became thoroughly mixed, an insoluble white powder was precipitated from the solution, the carbonic acid having combined chemically with the lime to form the insoluble calcium carbonate, or chalk. This experiment suggested another. Fixing a piece of burning charcoal in the end of a bellows, he arranged a tube so ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... the names of the twelve apostles struck me as a notable fact.—I farther remembered the numerous difficulties of harmonizing the four gospels; how, when a boy at school, I had tried to incorporate all four into one history, and the dismay with which I had found the insoluble character of the problem,—the endless discrepancies and perpetual uncertainties. These now began to seem to me inherent in the materials, and not to be ascribable to our want ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... no insoluble riddle to Leigh's mind. On the contrary, he had met his type before and knew it well; but with Miss Wycliffe the case was different. He recognized now the reason of Cardington's inability to describe her, for a categorical account of her features, or of what is commonly called her "good ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... application of one of the numerous and useful inventions for which photography is indebted to A. Poitevin. In 1863 he discovered that certain organic substances were rendered insoluble by ferric chloride, and that they again became soluble; when under the influence of light the ferric chloride has been reduced to a ferrous salt. This curious phenomenon is the base of the process now to be described. As usual the process has ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois

... spread beyond the Gnostics, and in modern times it is applied contemptuously (e g. by the early opponents of the evolution theory) to a conception or hypothesis which purports to be a simple solution of apparently insoluble phenomena. The Gnostic physician Serenus Sammonicus gave precise instructions as to its mystical use in averting or curing agues and fevers generally. The paper on which the word was written had ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... coast of Thrace and opposite the mouth of the Hebrus; the Mysteries are said to have found their first home in this island, where the Cabirian gods were worshipped; this cult, shrouded in deep mystery to even the initiates themselves, has remained an almost insoluble problem for the modern critic. It was said that the wishes of the initiates were always granted, and they were feared as to-day the 'jettatori' (spell-throwers, casters of the evil eye) in Sicily ...
— Peace • Aristophanes

... plain, and passed through several shady forests of casuarina. A curious provision of nature for the distribution of the seeds of a parasitical plant was observed here, each seed being enclosed within a sort of pulp, like bird-lime, insoluble in water; the whole resembling a very thin-skinned berry. On this being broken, probably by birds, the bird-lime is apt to attach the seed to trees or branches, and so the parasitical growth commences. On the plains, the blue flowers of a large variety of MORGANIA ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... of the nitrogenous materials, containing also carbon, hydrogen, a certain amount of oxygen, sulphur, and possibly other elements. Among the carbohydrates, the commonest are starch and cellulose, which are insoluble bodies, and sugar, which is soluble. The hydrocarbons, fats, oils, and so on, form a comparatively small proportion of the rabbit's diet; the proverb of "oil and water" will remind the student that these are insoluble. ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... Reader, but by the police, do not involve adultery, nor any allusion to Mrs Warren's profession, nor to the fact that the children of any polyandrous group will, when they grow up, inevitably be confronted, as those of Mrs Warren's group are in my play, with the insoluble problem of their own possible consanguinity. In short, by depending wholly on the coarse humors and the physical fascination of sex, they comply with all the formulable requirements of the Censorship, whereas plays ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... error, he approaches closely to it in "Fanshawe." There is some dark secret between the two villains of the piece, which he leaves to the reader as an exercise for the imagination. This is a characteristic of all his longer stories. There is an unknown quantity, an insoluble point, in ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... Kent; and its surface, from having been exposed during an immense period to the dissolving action of rain-water, is extremely irregular, being abruptly festooned and penetrated by many deep well-like cavities. {43} During the dissolution of the chalk, the insoluble matter, including a vast number of unrolled flints of all sizes, has been left on the surface and forms a bed of stiff red clay, full of flints, and generally from 6 to 14 feet in thickness. Over the red clay, wherever the land has long remained as pasture, there is a layer a few inches ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... thinking over the insoluble mystery of Winifred's disappearance, I was struck by a sudden thought that caused me to leap from my bed. What could have led the official in Scotland Yard to connect Winifred with Gypsies? I had simply told him of her disappearance on Snowdon, and her reappearance afterwards near ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... suppose him capable of constructing any of the more abstruse cryptographs. I made up my mind at once that this was of a simple species—such, however, as would appear to the crude intellect of the sailor absolutely insoluble without ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... States, our fate might be learned from the history of other nations. Thanks to the wisdom and independent spirit of our forefathers, this is not the case. Each State having sole charge of its local interests and domestic affairs, the problem, which to others has been insoluble, to us is made easy. Rapid, safe, and easy communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific will give cointelligence, unity of interest, and cooeperation among all parts of our continent-wide republic. The ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... now one pressing and immediate problem to be solved—how to keep Buisson-Souef as his own without paying for it? To one less sanguine, less daring, less impudent and desperate in his need, the problem would have appeared insoluble. ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... afternoon wore on, the spectators began to desert the jury of view, their progress over the mountain being slower than had been anticipated. So often, indeed, did insoluble difficulties arise touching the location of the road and questions of dispute that it might be wondered that the whole body did not perish by faction. After the party had passed the boundary line of Persimmon Sneed's tract, where he seemed ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... would not admit that he constantly admired her, he did admit that there were moments when he admired her passionately and deemed her unique and above all women. Whence the change in himself? How to justify it? The problem was insoluble, for he was intellectually too honest to say lightly that originally he had ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... or affectation, charmed Henri for one reason, yet, on the other hand, redoubled his perplexity. How could he conciliate his scruples of conscience with the aspirations of his heart? The problem seemed then as insoluble as when it had been presented the first time. But Valentine was saved. For the moment that was the essential point, the only one in question. The involuntary revelation of her secret had brought the color to her cheeks, the light to her eyes, a smile to her lips, ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa

... potash, silicate of soda, etc., which are soluble in water, and therefore available to plants. If we roughen a corn stalk with sand-paper we may sharpen a knife upon it. This is owing to the hard particles of silica which it contains. Window glass is silicate of potash, rendered insoluble by ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring

... that extends beyond his grave,—all start up before you at the very moment your reason is overtasked, your imagination fevered, in seeking the solution of problems which, to a philosophy based upon your system, must always remain insoluble. The young man's conversation not only thus excites your fancies,—it disturbs your affections. He speaks not only of drugs that renew youth, but of charms that secure love. You tremble for your Lilian while you hear him! And the brain thus ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... new system—a system so great, so illuminating, and so simple. Other systems are full of absurdities; this system seems to me to contain fewer things which are beyond the understanding of the human mind. I said to myself, "Every system has its insoluble problems, for the finite mind of man is too small to deal with them; these difficulties are therefore no final arguments, against any system. But what a difference there is between the direct evidence on which these systems are based! ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... however, Donatus (De Medica Historia Mirabili, 1613, lib. iv, cap. xvii) held the same view, and remarked that sometimes men and sometimes women are the more salacious, varying with the individual. Roubaud (De l'Impuissance, 1855, p. 38) stated that the question is so difficult as to be insoluble. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... World State cuts that away from beneath their feet; there are no imports but meteorites, and no exports at all. Trading is the earthly economists' initial notion, and they start from perplexing and insoluble riddles about exchange value, insoluble because all trading finally involves individual preferences which are incalculable and unique. Nowhere do they seem to be handling really defined standards, every economic dissertation and discussion reminds one more strongly than ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... chemical extraction plant in Puerto Rico, where they had worked for Associated Enterprises, whose president, Blake Hartley, had later become President of the United States. The hard-won victory over a seemingly insoluble problem in the Belgian Congo uranium mines——He thought, too, of the dangers they had faced together, in a world where soldiers must use the weapons of science and scientists must learn the arts of violence. Of the treachery of the Islamic Kaliphate, for whom they had once worked; of ...
— The Mercenaries • Henry Beam Piper

... theological ancestors took their origin. Septimius, the rather disagreeable hero of his last romance, is a peculiar example of a similar change. Brought up under the strict discipline of New England, he has retained the love of musing upon insoluble mysteries, though he has abandoned the old dogmatic guide-posts. When such a man finds that the orthodox scheme of the universe provided by his official pastors has somehow broken down with him, he forms some audacious theory of his own, and is perhaps plunged into an unhallowed revolt against the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... become. Hell is an actual plane, less vivid than was formerly imagined, not hot but cold, grey rather than red, but amply provided with demons, with the devils of self-accusation, with the fiends of insoluble queries. Very real and very actual, it is surprising how many educated people are there. The oddity of that is increased by the fact that they regard it as a private establishment. They regard their hell as unique. Perhaps the ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... too, was marred by strange pettinesses and curious contradictions; but one can scarcely grudge to his sickly sensitive nature the anodyne of feminine sympathy. Why so close and tender a friendship never ripened into marriage is an inquiry that may be consigned to the limbo of questions insoluble. It is enough that in the checkered chronicle of the loves of the poets, "blue-eyed Patty Blount" has an immortality almost as secure as that of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... regarded as coeval with the epoch of a chaotic conflict of the struggling elements. But the empirical domain of objective contemplation, and the delineation of our planet in its present condition, do not include a consideration p 340 of the mysterious and insoluble ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... of our hard lot from those above me. After a loss of many feathers and some brave plumage, but no down, I must in all humility beat my way back to the traditional lost ideals of our organically incorporated class.... Perhaps the most conscienceless class who seek to solve the insoluble is the 'cultured' class. But most of them seem to me like artistic undertakers officiating at the 'wake' of Life. With their platitudes, their prudery, and their chastity, they make for death. These languid ones desire to have life served up ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... without a perfect understanding of the finall causes, for which the Law was made; the knowledge of which finall causes is in the Legislator. To him therefore there can not be any knot in the Law, insoluble; either by finding out the ends, to undoe it by; or else by making what ends he will, (as Alexander did with his sword in the Gordian knot,) by the Legislative power; which no ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... such a sorely insoluble problem for academic people of small means, was solved by the Marshalls in an eccentric, easy-going manner which was considered by the other faculty families as nothing less than treasonable to their caste. Professor Marshall, it is true, having to make a public appearance on the campus every ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... Then we habitually regard movement as something superadded to the motionless. This is quite legitimate in the world of affairs; but when we bring this habit into the world of speculation, we misconceive reality, we create lightheartedly insoluble problems, and close our eyes to what is most alive in the real world. For us movement is one position, then another position, and so on indefinitely. It is true that we say there must be something else, viz., the actual passing across ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... manner as the foregoing, only, after exposure, instead of producing the image with a slightly alkaline powder, powdered bitumen is used, and the plate is slightly warmed, so that the powder may slightly fuse and adhere to the metal, but not enough to make the bichromated sugar become insoluble. The plate is then washed with water, and all the sugary coating removed, leaving the surface of the copper bare, except where it is protected by the bitumen forming the image. The plate is then bitten ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various

... prevailing tenor of the American legislation; and these customs are no less opposed to the tone of society. If the English colonies had been founded in an age of darkness, or if their origin was already lost in the lapse of years, the problem would be insoluble. ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... God, we are not here as those who face an insoluble riddle. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the resurrection of the dead; and with this key in our hand, we stand here at the grave's mouth, and looking backward, interpret the lesson of this closed life; ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... aspirant to that pure atmosphere of art in which there are no vulgar connubial prejudices! Could I—whether I be rich or poor—see in her the ideal of an English wife? As it is—as it is—with this mystery which oppresses me, which, till solved, leaves my own career insoluble,—as it is, how fortunate that I did not find her alone; did not utter the words that would fain have leaped from my heart; did not say, 'I may not be the rich man I seem, but in that case I shall be yet more ambitious, because struggle and labour are ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... hundred roots which remain, the insoluble residuum (so thought by Professor Mueller) of Language, after eliminating the immense mass of variable and soluble material, he says: 1. That 'they are phonetic types produced by a power inherent in human nature;' 2. 'Man, in his primitive and perfect state, was not only endowed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... a problem, I admit," he said, "but not so complete as to look absolutely insoluble. I have, as you may be aware, made a study of criminology, and in my researches, which have included criminality, have come across incidents which to the smartest detective brains were at the outset quite as baffling. Clement's tragic end is ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William

... by which all could have come about. As he grew older and his mind became more cautious he came to think the matter deeper than the human mind could ever fathom. He gave up the hope and believed the problem of animal origin and derivation would forever remain insoluble. He feared there was not in man the power to conceive his ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... is a vast one but this is no reason why it should be looked upon as insoluble, or left to grow year by year still vaster and ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker

... surroundings was precisely the same quality which, ripening and expanding rapidly and grandly with maturing years and a greater circle of humanity, made him what he was in later life. It is through this quality that we get continuity in him; without it, we cannot evade the insoluble problem of two men,—two lives,—one following the other with no visible link of connection between them; without it we have physically one creature, morally and mentally two beings. If we reject this trait, we throw away ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... armed man keeping his house. Therefore it is that potentates are reluctant to draw the sword, and rather bear the ills they have than fly to other evils inevitably worse still. Whether the final outcome will be universal national bankruptcy or the millennium, is a problem as yet insoluble. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... in adult life is a bilobed structure on either side of the windpipe. Like the thymus it is a ductless gland, abundantly supplied with blood-vessels, and possesses a vast number of small cavities, lined with cells and containing an insoluble jelly. So far as appears, both these glands are useless, or nearly so, to man; or if the thyroid performs any useful service it is a minor and obscure one. Such functions as it may have could probably be performed by some ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris

... turns as though the whole thing was the most insoluble mystery to her. Her beautiful dark eyes retained their customary serenity. She no longer wore her nurse's uniform; and her gray gown, very simply cut and devoid of ornaments, showed her graceful figure. She was grave and ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... insoluble.—Before going on to say more about human personality, especially the personality of Jesus, it is requisite that we should determine our attitude toward a great question which in manifold forms has beset ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... insoluble problem, when a strange impulse led him to look aloft. It will be remembered that he was near the roof of the cavern, among a mass of bowlders and rocks ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... neutralize the effects of poisons by a chemical union, forming an insoluble compound, or a mild, harmless one. Alkaline solutions are antidotes for the mineral acids; as soap in solution, a simple remedy, and always at hand. Lard, magnesia, and oil are antidotes for poisoning by arsenic; albumen,—in the form of the white ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... microorganisms that help start out decomposition. Many compostable materials come with bits of soil already attached and few are sterile in themselves. But extra soil ensures that there will initially be a sufficient number and variety of these valuable organisms. Soil also contains insoluble minerals that are made soluble by biological activity. Some of these minerals may be in short supply in the organic matter itself and their addition may improve the health and vigor of the whole decomposition ecology. A generous ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... What mystery is insoluble in the sharp light of modern research? Yet until the defenders of the view that the Basques came from Atlantis can make truce with the advocates of their Phoenician origin,—until the well-attested theory of their affinity with certain South American races can overthrow the better-attested ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... Using Carbonate of Lime (Figs 2, 3, and 10)—When chalk is acted upon by sulphuric acid, there is formed an insoluble sulphate which, by covering the chalk, prevents the action of the acid from continuing if care be not taken to constantly agitate the materials. This has led to a change in the arrangement of the generator in the apparatus designed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... photographic negative, and, after washing, dyeing with alizarin or some similar coloring matter. During the exposure under the negative, the light has reduced and fixed the chromium salt upon certain parts of the fiber as insoluble chromate of chromium (Cr{2}O{3}CrO{3}) in the more protected portions, the bichromate remains unchanged, and is subsequently removed by washing. During the dyeing process, the coloring matter ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... important to remember, the letter continues, that the Hindenburg line at that time presented an insoluble problem. The sea of wire which protected its well-developed trenches and machine-gun positions was placed almost throughout on the reverse slope of the hills or rising ground of which the line took advantage. The artillery observer could hardly get a view of the wire ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... concerning feminine conceit when we ask how a man could have altered the inclination of a woman whose equal he in no sense was. It is not necessary in such cases to fuss about the insoluble riddle of the female heart and about the ever-dark secrets of the feminine soul. Vulpes vult fraudem, lupus agnum, femina laudem—this illuminates every profundity. The man in question knew how to make use of laudem—he knew how to excite feminine conceit, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... abolish all contradictions. But if all contradictions are once and for all disposed of, we have arrived at the so-called absolute truth, history is at an end, and yet it will continue to go on, although there is nothing further left for it to do—thus a newer and more insoluble contradiction. So soon as we have once perceived—and to this perception no one has helped us more than Hegel himself—that the task thus imposed upon philosophy signifies nothing different than the ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels

... Grilo. He did not know whether that was so; but he felt that his heart was full of noble sentiments, and he loved the theater better than the apple of his eye. Would he succeed in being an Ayala or a Tamayo? Would he be rejected by the public? It was an insoluble ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various

... heard. It is Corkey crying to Lockwin to climb up the steps to the hurricane deck. Indeed it is a clever riddance of that uncomfortable man. Ouf! that brutal sneeze, that jargon, that tobacco, that quaking of head and hesitancy of expression! It distracts one's thoughts from an insoluble problem; How to shuffle off this coil—not of life, but of respectability, ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... the insoluble mystery, which appeared so plainly before him, enveloped him completely, even as the water in high-flood covers the willow twigs on the shore,—a desire came upon him to pray. He felt like kneeling, but he was ashamed of the soldier and, folding his ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev

... extremely probable that in no remote future the State in England will reject as insoluble the problem of imparting religious instruction to the young in its schools, in accordance with a movement of opinion which is taking place in all civilized countries.[176] The support which the Secular Education League has found in the ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... was confronting the problem that has troubled and baffled so many honest hearts, but the more she thought about it, the more it seemed insoluble. ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells

... from accepting the conventional orthodoxy of Dante which, referring all human action to the easy formula of purgatory, heaven, and hell, leaves an insoluble element of prose in the depths of Dante's poetry. One picture of his, with the portrait of the donor, Matteo Palmieri, below, had the credit or discredit of attracting some shadow of ecclesiastical censure. This Matteo Palmieri—two dim ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... of difficulties, the one insoluble problem is——, given a good and perfect God, where does sorrow come from, and why is there any pain? Men have fumbled at that knot for all the years that there have been men in the world, and they have not untied it yet. They have tried ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... satisfactorily under pressure. The bones of fish are composed of large quantities of harmless lime, bound by a matrix of collagen, which is insoluble under ordinary conditions. When subjected to a high temperature under pressure this collagen is converted into gelatin and dissolved, leaving the bones soft and friable and even edible. Bony fish, such as herring and shad, which are too ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray

... Take a portion of the decalcified bone obtained from Experiment 4, and wash it thoroughly in water: in this it is insoluble. Place it in a solution of carbonate of soda and wash it again. Boil it in water, and from it gelatine will ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... as anomalous to me as my own desultory and self-found way must have seemed to him. We passed the time in the delight of trying to make ourselves known to each other, and in a promise to continue by letter the effort, which duly lapsed into silent patience with the necessarily insoluble problem. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... of these problems has no bearing at all on any moral or religious question. It is insoluble. It leaves us not in ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... because the moral doctrine of Paul is partly a reaction against, the violent folly for which Nero stood the symbol; but it certainly was not philosophical considerations of this kind that led the Roman authorities to rage against the Christians. The problem, I repeat, is insoluble. However this may be, the Christians were declared responsible for the fire; a great number were taken into custody, sentenced to death, executed in different ways, during the festivals that Nero offered to the people to appease them. Possibly Paul himself ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... to make it almost equally difficult to live either in Switzerland, where, at Schinznach-les-Bains, I could receive so much benefit; or in London, or New York. I wish, as I wished two years ago, that my accident had ended it, and saved all the pain and difficulty of solving a perpetual and insoluble problem... It seems sometimes as if there were only two kinds of people in the world—those who ride over others roughshod, and those who are ridden over. The cruel accident that shattered me on that June ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various

... Bobbie Holland's eyes were dreamy and her tongue unguarded. "I don't know what I'm going to do with him," said she with a gesture as of one who despairingly gives over an insoluble problem. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... to argue with you," she said, "you must admit there are so many insoluble riddles ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... her sake he persevered—for the sake of those precious tears that had so wrung his heart he would do that which he had set out to do, notwithstanding the utmost discouragement. An insoluble enigma the man might be to him, but he would not for that turn back from the task that he had undertaken. West should have his chance in ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... the problem of authorship partly as insoluble, partly as of slight importance for a literature which is manifestly popular. With even greater brevity may the problem of nationality be disposed of. Some critics have claimed an Italian, some an English, some a French, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... read our handwriting through the body of the flask. Notwithstanding this, there was still a very active operation going on in the deposit, but it was confined to that spot. Indeed, the swarming vibrios were bound to remain there, the tartrate of lime being still more insoluble in water saturated with carbonate of lime than it is in pure water. A supply of carbonaceous food, at all events, was absolutely wanting in the bulk of the liquid. Every day we continued to collect and analyze the total amount of gas ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... books. And if this be our fortune, the world may be kind or unkind, it may seem to us to be hastening on the wings of enlightenment and progress to an imminent millennium, or it may weigh us down with the sense of insoluble difficulty and irremediable wrong; but whatever else it be, so long as we have good health and a good library, it ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... servants, and the whole burden is a thing difficult to bear even for those who are nearest and dearest. If children are only allowed to be children, to run and play about and satisfy their curiosity, it becomes quite simple. Insoluble problems are only created if you try to confine them inside, keep them still or hamper their play. Then does the burden of the child, so lightly borne by its own childishness, fall heavily on the guardian—like that of the horse in the fable which was carried instead of being ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... either, my dear," said my father, slowly taking his hand from his waistcoat, as if the effort were too much for him, and the problem were insoluble. "But this, begging your pardon, I do think, that before a young woman does really, truly, and cordially centre her affections on one object, she suffers fancy, imagination, the desire of power, curiosity, or Heaven knows what, to stimulate, even to her own mind, pale reflections of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... he believe his ears? And if Martin was so horribly scared, why did his eye glint in that peculiar way between his fingers? He had seen this light in it before, no later indeed than the last afternoon just as the soldiers tried to rush the stair. He gave up the problem as insoluble, but from that ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... epoch-making speech Booker Washington had presented a solution of an apparently insoluble problem. He had offered a platform upon which, as Clark Howell said in the Atlanta Constitution, "both races, blacks and whites, could stand with full justice to each." In the course of the speech he told this story: "A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... in the silence. The answer to my silent question may come to me in the most commonplace way days or weeks after it is asked. Some person may say something that will be the very clue I am seeking. We are not to be anxious or troubled if many questions perplex us, or many problems seem insoluble, but wait, trusting that 'he is faithful who promised.' We must not be wishing for the same signs or powers that others have, but appreciate what is given to us, for faithfulness shall receive its full reward in due time ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... of this book, Marquise Tullia Fabriana, reputed to have assimilated the Chaldean science of the women of Edgar Allen Poe, and the diplomatic sagacities of Stendhal, had the enigmatic countenance of Bradamante abused by an antique Circe. These insoluble mixtures developed a fuliginous vapor across which philosophic and literary influences jostled, without being able to be regulated in the author's brain when he wrote the prolegomenae of this work which could not have embraced less than ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... from volcanic clefts is wont to do. And where it came upon water some chemical action occurred, and the surface would be instantly covered with a powdery scum that sank slowly and made way for more. The scum was absolutely insoluble, and it is a strange thing, seeing the instant effect of the gas, that one could drink without hurt the water from which it had been strained. The vapour did not diffuse as a true gas would do. It hung together in banks, flowing sluggishly down the slope of the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells

... carbon tetrafluoride, hydrofluoric acid, etc., with more or less speed. A rubber gas mask lasts about an hour. Glass first frosts and then disappears. Plastics act like rubber, only a little slower. The heavy metals, iron, nickel, copper, monel, etc., stand up well, forming an insoluble coat of fluorides at first and then ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... this same National Assembly of hers, has got something, nay something great, momentous, indispensable, cannot be doubted; yet still the question were: Specially what? A question hard to solve, even for calm onlookers at this distance; wholly insoluble to actors in the middle of it. The States-General, created and conflated by the passionate effort of the whole nation, is there as a thing high and lifted up. Hope, jubilating, cries aloud that it will prove a miraculous Brazen Serpent in the Wilderness; whereon whosoever ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... democracies was as unknown as the discontents which undermine the thrones of monarchies. Equality here was not a name; it was a reality. Riches were not persecuted, because they were not envied. Here those problems connected with the labours of a working class, hitherto insoluble above ground, and above ground conducing to such bitterness between classes, were solved by a process the simplest,—a distinct and separate working class was dispensed with altogether. Mechanical inventions, constructed on the principles that baffled my research to ascertain, worked by ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... more, but leave the problem as insoluble, only fearing that it will become a formidable weapon in the hands of the enemies of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... especially by contrast with the Christian view, it would be a mistake to suppose that it was the only one with which they were acquainted, or that they had put aside altogether, as indifferent or insoluble, the whole problem of a future world. As we have seen, they did believe in the survival of the spirit, and in a world of shades ruled by Pluto and Persephone. They had legends of a place of bliss for the good and ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... acquired, that we have still to conquer? And if you have truly resolved these problems, acquired these certitudes, by the aid of some blind and primitive impulse and not through the intellect, then to what enigma, more insoluble still, are you not urging ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer

... presence here is fortunate, almost providential. You can help us. Your interest in such things and your success in the solution of many apparently insoluble affairs is known to all of us. While we are between us able to cope with most of the things that arise, you, an outsider, without having your emotions involved may see more clearly than we, aside from your undoubted talents in ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... temperature of the flame. In this case we only take cognizance of the latter or fixed substance, although in many instances we make use of ignition for the purpose of changing the conditions of a substance, for example, the sesquioxide of chromium (Cr^{2}O^{3}) in its insoluble modification; and as a preliminary examination for the purpose of ascertaining whether the subject of inquiry be a combination of an ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... not solve the insoluble problems of life, but having presented them as powerfully, perhaps, as is possible for human intelligence, he turned in his last period, of only two or three years, to the expression of the serene philosophy of life in which ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... Werner Siemens, was a method of reproducing printed matter by transferring the print from paper to plates of zinc. Caustic baryta was applied to the printed sheet to convert the resinous ingredients of the ink into an insoluble soap, the stearine being precipitated with sulphuric acid. The letters were then transferred to the zinc by pressure, so as to be printed from. The process, though ingenious and of much interest at the time, has long ago ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... this evening, and the very air had a sense of waiting in it. The priest sat and looked at his lifelong friend, his furrowed face the incarnation of cynical hopelessness. 'What is, is worst,' he seemed to say. His yellow, wise old eyes watched the quick face with the air of one who, having posed an insoluble problem, awaits with a sarcastic humour the admission ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman

... proportion to harden well, where at the same time the paint on iron remains soft. To be more lucid, it need be explained, linseed oil boiled has lost its oleic acid and glycerine ether, which form with the bases of pigments the insoluble soap, as well as its albumen, which in boiling is thrown out. It coagulates at 160 deg. F. heat; each is needed to better withstand the action of wind and weather, preventing the dust from attaching ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various

... but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day—that is, forget oneself. To forget himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could not go back now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... The problem is insoluble. The body is harnessed to a brain. Beauty goes hand in hand with stupidity. There she sat staring at the fire as she had stared at the broken mustard-pot. In spite of defending indecency, Jacob doubted whether he liked it in the raw. He had a violent reversion towards male ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... the sheath, and gradually passes into the more insoluble ferric oxide. These actions are of extreme importance in nature, as their continuation results in the enormous deposits of bog-iron ore, ochre, and—since Molisch has shown that the iron can be replaced by manganese ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... later endeavoured to explain to him that in North America persons were almost quite equal to one another—being born so—but at this he told me not to be silly and continued to regard my rise as an insoluble part of the strangeness he everywhere encountered, even after I added that Demosthenes was the son of a cutler, that Cardinal Wolsey's father had been a pork butcher, and that Garfield had worked on a canal-boat. ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... produced at the clearing, why the changing of the lorry numbers? That would then be a part of the business quite unconnected with the illicit traffic. After much thought, Merriman had to admit to himself that here was one more of the series of insoluble puzzles with which ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... be truths at all. It is his office to determine how much can be known in each province of thought; when we must be contented not to know; in what direction inquiry is hopeless, or on the other hand full of promise; where it gathers into coils insoluble by reason, where it is absorbed in mysteries, or runs into the abyss. It will be his care to be familiar with the signs of real and apparent difficulties, with the methods proper to particular subject-matters, what in each particular case are the limits of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... star or a burning mine will be his objective, but with the essential condition that it be— unattainable. Achievement would mean lost interest. For Tim's desire was, is, and ever will be insatiable. Profoundest mystery, insoluble difficulty, and endless searching were what his soul demanded of life. For him all ponds were bottomless, all gipsies older than the moon. He felt the universe within him, and was born to seek its inexplicable "explanation"—outside. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... a score of times every day that she could not understand how this dreadful affair had come to pass. The most complete explanation from her daughter availed nothing; she deemed the event an insoluble mystery, and, in familiar talk with Mrs. Mumford, breathed singular charges against Louise's lover. 'She's shielding him, my dear. I've no doubt of it. I never had a very good opinion of him, but now she shall never marry him with my consent.' To this kind of remark ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing

... which it first lay with as much precision as if man had "consciously selected" it by the aid of a sieve. Physical Geology is full of such selections—of the picking out of the soft from the hard, of the soluble from the insoluble, of the fusible from the infusible, by natural agencies to which we are certainly not in the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... as many men in all ages have been on first bending their minds to the consideration of spiritual things. All is not mystery. In the dealings of God with man, much, very much, is mysterious, and by us in this life apparently insoluble; but many things—especially those things that are of vital importance to the soul—are as clear as the sun at noonday. However, our red man was at this time only beginning to run the spiritual race, and, like many others, he ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... small early 15th Century castle it was excellent; as a home it was inconvenience incarnate. How so many draughts found their way through such thick walls was a perennial mystery, and how to convey dishes from the kitchen to the dining room without their getting cold an almost insoluble problem. ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... it delighted, but also in the possession of a definite scheme of republican church government which became as distinctive of the Calvinistic or "Reformed" churches as their doctrine of the Supper. It was at a later epoch still that those insoluble questions which press most inexorably for consideration when theological thought and study are most serious and earnest—the questions that concern the divine sovereignty in its relation to human freedom and responsibility—arose ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... of matter, and the unexpected revelations in plant life, have opened out very extended regions of inquiry in physics, in physiology, in medicine, in agriculture, and even in psychology. Problems hitherto regarded as insoluble have now been brought within the sphere of ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... kinds of universes, each abounding in hitherto unimagined modes of life and degrees of bliss? To our present faculties, with only our present opportunities and data, the final problem of being is insoluble. We resolve the properties of matter into methods of activity, manifestations of force. But there, covered with alluring awe, a wall of impenetrable mystery confronts us with its baffling "Thus far, and no farther, shall thine explicating gaze read the secrets of destiny." We cannot ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... refers only to the quantity of those substances actually added in the process of manufacture, and not to the percentage of gelatine or agar, as the case may be, present in the finished medium; the explanation being that the commercial products employed contain a large proportion of insoluble material which is separated off by filtration during the ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... whole of its air, and be entirely restored to its original weight and condition: and it also follows, that the earth separated from lime-water by an alkali, is the lime which was dissolved in the water now restored to its original mild and insoluble state. ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black

... of the elements are due to the influence of light; for example, a sulphur soluble in carbon disulphide is converted into sulphur which is insoluble, and the rate of change of yellow phosphorus into the red variety is greatly accelerated by light. Hydrogen and chlorine combine under the action of light with explosive rapidity to form hydrochloric ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... and duty, which touch only contingent and external elements, are not to be regarded as inconsistent with the fact that the Scriptures were inspired of God. Nor will our reverence for the Scriptures be impaired if, in such cases, it be frankly said, 'There is an insoluble difficulty.' Such a course is far less dangerous to the moral sense than that pernicious ingenuity which, assuming that there can be no literal errors in Scripture, resorts to subtle arts of criticism, improbabilities of statement, and violence ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... recently set afloat that a well-known lady had admitted that George Meredith understands women better than any writer who has preceded him. This may be true, and it may be a wily statement to again throw men off the track; at any rate it contains the old assumption of a mystery, practically insoluble, about the gentler sex. Women generally encourage this notion, and men by their gingerly treatment of it seemed to accept it. But is it well-founded, is there any more mystery about women—than about men? Is the feminine nature any more difficult ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the subject," said Holmes. "He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... then give up the problem as insoluble; for if reason be insufficient to give authority to the Bible, and criticism fails to discover its truth, how are we to ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... crushing us. The experience of the wars of latter years teaches us that every war has only intensified national hatreds, made military burdens more crushing and insupportable, and rendered the political and economical grievous and insoluble." ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy

... form a general idea from all the agonizing and conflicting experiences of the day. He felt something bordering upon despair, which he had never known till then. Towering like a mountain above all the rest stood the fatal, insoluble question: How would things end between his father and his brother Dmitri with this terrible woman? Now he had himself been a witness of it, he had been present and seen them face to face. Yet only his ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... different poets. This theory has been attacked and supported with great energy: for a half century men have flown into a passion for or against the existence of Homer. Today we begin to think the problem insoluble. What is certain is that these poems are very old, probably of the ninth century. The Iliad was composed in Asia Minor and is perhaps the result of the union of two poems—one dedicated to the combats of the Trojans, ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... working of her thoughts to go on uninterrupted; and as she stood there, her eyes fell on the bench near the corner of Twenty-sixth Street, where she had sat with Amherst on the day of his flight from Lynbrook. He too had dreamed of escaping from insoluble problems into the clear air of hard work and simple duties; and she remembered the words with which she had turned him back. The cases, of course, were not identical, since he had been flying in anger and wounded pride ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... Morselli, and Bottazzi) that the facts of mediumship exist, it is my purpose to take up definitely the question of identity, which is the final and most elusive part of the problem—it may turn out to be the insoluble part of ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... becomes distinctly visible.[dd] That ordinary black pencil-marks will endure on paper for two centuries may very likely be doubted by many readers, but without reason. Plumbago-marks, if not removed by rubbing, are even more durable than ink; because plumbago is an organic, insoluble substance, not subject to the chemical changes which moisture, the atmosphere, and fluids accidentally spilled, and solvents purposely applied, make in the various kinds of ink which are known to us. The writer discovered this in the course of many amateur print- and book-cleaning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... sulphur in insoluble sulphates, for the determination of copper in copper ores by iodometric methods, for the determination of iron by permanganate in hydrochloric acid solutions, and for the standardization of potassium permanganate solutions ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot

... arise in which a man who genuinely abhors violence confronts an almost insoluble dilemma. On the one hand he may be faced with the imminent triumph of some almost insufferable evil; on the other, he may feel that the only available means of opposing that evil is violence, which is ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin

... orators who have become what they call debaters. I do not believe there could be another Dante, even another Milton. The world is devoted to physical science, because it believes these discoveries will increase its capacity of luxury and self-indulgence. But the pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble. When we arrive at that barren term, the Divine voice summons man, as it summoned Samuel; all the poetry and passion and sentiment of human nature are taking refuge in religion; and he, whose deeds and words most nobly represent Divine ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... all the great questions, more or less insoluble, which the study of fossil organic bodies can offer, were raised and even discussed by the celebrated professor of Goettingen as early as 1803, before anything of the sort could have arisen from the essays of M. G. Cuvier; the errors of distribution in the classes committed ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... per cent of the aphides. Laundry soap, 3 to 50, was effective against the young aphides only. Arsenate of lead alone, as was to be expected, had little or no effect upon the aphides. The combination of arsenate of calcium with kerosene emulsions is not a desirable one, since an insoluble calcium soap is formed, thereby releasing some ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... exhaust this general question as pass from it to her insoluble individual problem again: ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, "That that is is"...for what is "that" but "that," and "is" but "is"?'). Unless we are willing to admit that two contradictories may be true, many questions which lie at the threshold of mathematics and of morals will be insoluble puzzles to us. ...
— Sophist • Plato

... grey, inscrutable eyes that I had seen before—immediately above my own. I tried to fathom them, to discover some trace of expression. I could not—they were insoluble. I instinctively felt there was a subtle brain behind them, a brain that was stealthily analysing me, and I tried to assure myself its intentions were not hostile. Above, and on either side of the eyes, I saw the shadow of something white, soft, and spongy, in which I fancied ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... seize upon something in the nature of the child, or upon something in the developed consciousness of the adult, and insist upon that as the key to the whole problem. When this happens a really serious practical problem—that of interaction—is transformed into an unreal, and hence insoluble, theoretic problem. Instead of seeing the educative steadily and as a whole, we see conflicting terms. We get the case of the child vs. the curriculum; of the individual nature vs. social culture. Below all other divisions in pedagogic ...
— The Child and the Curriculum • John Dewey

... truth,' he calls the problem of understanding how the complete coherence of all things in the absolute should involve as a necessary moment in its self-maintenance the self-assertion of the finite minds, a self-assertion which in its extreme form is error,—he calls this problem, I say, an insoluble puzzle. If truth be the universal fons et origo, how does error slip in? 'The coherence theory of truth,' he concludes, 'may thus be said to suffer shipwreck at the very entrance of the harbor.'[12] ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... scale of a balance, no diminution of weight should ensue on mixing them together. Calcined magnesia, however, is very seldom so pure as to be totally dissolved by diluted sulphuric acid; for a small insoluble residue generally remains, consisting chiefly of silicious earth, derived from the alkali employed in the preparation of it. The solution in sulphuric acid, when largely diluted, ought not to afford any precipitation by the addition ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum

... colours in a solid or insoluble state, prepared for the artists' use. Hitherto, we have treated of colours in the abstract sense, as appealing to the eye only: we have now to ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field



Words linked to "Insoluble" :   hopeless, indissoluble, inexplicable, non-water-soluble, insolubility, unsolvable, incomprehensible, insolvable



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