"Tenable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... longer tenable that prophets must be necessarily crucified. As a matter of history, most prophets have been crucified by people; but it was not so much because of their prophecy as because their prophecy did not have any first twenty-five years ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... a race will be broken down in the process of hybridization, and that it will take a long time to bring them together again. The old view that racial crosses lead fatally to race degeneration is no longer tenable, but the view recently advanced, that crosses are advantageous, seems equally hasty. W. E. Castle has cited the Pitcairn Islanders and the Boer-Hottentot mulattoes of South Africa as evidence that wide crosses ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... been all very well without the icy cold that assailed my legs, and I saw nothing in reach to cover me. I said to myself, "Captain, the position is not tenable," when at length I perceived on the couch—One sometimes is childishly ashamed, but I really dared not, and I waited for a long minute struggling between a sense of the ridiculous and the cold which I felt was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... compelled Mr. McKinlay and his party to fire upon them. The mystery attached to the remains here spoken of has yet to be cleared up. The idea at first entertained that they were those of Gray is not tenable. A glance at the map will show that Gray died and was buried far away to the ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... the tie of vassalage should be imposed on every important official; and natural also to regard his office as a benefice, tenable for life or during good behaviour. At an early date we find cases of conquered princes—a Duke of Aquitaine, a Duke of Bavaria, a King of Denmark—who take the vassal's oath and agree to hold their former dominions as a beneficium. So again a member of the royal house does homage and ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... made out of nothing by a personal God—is no longer regarded as tenable by intelligent individuals, though miracle and special providence are often included in accounting for the vicissitudes of life, just as the so-called scientist superficially and flippantly uses the word "coincidence," as though it ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... off the Heads of Virginia on the 9th of July, and found there the Richmond, Guadaloupe, Fowey, and Vulcan fire-ship. It had been for some time seen that the town of Portsmouth was not a tenable post. The neighbourhood, especially in the summer season, was unhealthy, and ships of any size could not get up sufficiently near it to assist in its defence. The commanders-in-chief had accordingly resolved to evacuate it, and to occupy York Town, on the James River, instead. The latter ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... said this distinction in character is owing to the different estimation of principles and morals in the two nations. The solidity and purity of our ethics and religious creeds may have given a superior tone to our moral feeling; but has that man a tenable ground to value himself on either, whose respect to sacred things grows out of a respect to himself: on the other hand, is not humility the very foundation of the real Christian? For our part, we should be glad to see this national reserve lessened, if not done entirely away; we believe ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... principle.' But Mr. Mill, to whom Mr. Darwin refers, has expressly shown that the Greatest Happiness principle is a STANDARD, and not a FOUNDATION, and that its validity as a standard of right and wrong action is just as tenable by one who believes the moral sense to be innate, as by one who holds that it is acquired. He says distinctly that the social feelings of mankind form 'the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality.' ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... the recognition of asceticism; that is to say, it is valid only from a much higher ethical standpoint than has ever been adopted by moral philosophers in Europe. If we abandon that high standpoint, there is no tenable reason left, on the score of morality, for condemning suicide. The extraordinary energy and zeal with which the clergy of monotheistic religions attack suicide is not supported either by any passages ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... said, "it is a tenable hypothesis. I allude to the hypothesis which I understand you to entertain, that our civilization is not or may not be an advance upon, and indeed (if I apprehend you), is or may be a retrogression from states identical with or analogous to the state of ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... as far as it differs from that of Aristotle, is neither tenable in theory, nor founded ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fund (Charles Landseer, R.A.), which provides four scholarships of L. 40 each, two in painting and two in sculpture, tenable for two years, open to students at the end of the first two years of studentship, and given for the best work done during the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... time that falls of meteoric matter into the sun would account for the sun's heat. This position is hardly tenable now. The mere bulk of the meteoric matter required by the hypothesis, apart from other reasons, is against it. There is undoubtedly an enormous amount of meteoric matter moving about within the bounds of ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... expeditiously spread through all the West India islands. The enemy were not the last who heard this intelligence, which acted with double force against these marauders: it armed with resolution the defenceless inhabitants of even the least tenable situations, by inspiring them with hopes of a speedy and effectual aid to their own manly exertions; and filled with dread and horror those pusillanimous pillagers who had alone confided in their ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... wholly at a loss for a tenable theory till he thought of the frequency with which men are robbed of scarf-pins or similar trifles—and then ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... much pleasure in informing you" (so ran the letter) "that the Governors of the Seaton High School have decided to award you a Scholarship tenable for two years...." ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... dependence his best happiness, and to have built up a factitious self-respect from the very ruin of true dignity. His position was the antipodes of Balder's, yet, if results were evidence, it was tenable and ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... will remember it, and show the marks of it for months, as the day we had our heads cropped. By evening there was hardly one poll in the Seventh tenable by anybody's grip. Most sat in the shade and were shorn by a barber. A few were honored with a clip by the artist hand of the petit caporal of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... little hesitation in deciding that the first was the most tenable ground; but, from the peculiar circumstances of the case, it merited consideration, if the principle could be saved, whether facility in the provision might not result from a compliance. An attentive ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... building is two hundred and fifty feet in length, and the wing two hundred feet. It requires for its completion a considerable extension of the main building, and the addition of another wing. If this supposition is tenable, it serves to show that these great houses were of slow construction, by the process of addition and extension from time to time, with the increase of the people in numbers. Upon this theory of construction, the first row of the main ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... assumption serves to connect and harmonize these into one probable and consistent whole. Can the derivative hypothesis be maintained and carried out into a system on similar grounds? If so, however unproved, it would appear to be a tenable hypothesis, which is all that its author ought now to claim. Such hypotheses as, from the conditions of the case, can neither be proved nor disproved by direct evidence or experiment, are to be tested only indirectly, and therefore ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... by the grants of 1417 and 1419; excepting that in these the Commons make the argument intended to support the charge against Henry's veracity still less tenable, by inserting a phrase which might seem to exclude the very object for which application for the subsidy was made. The application was made especially for the supplies necessary to carry on the war abroad; the Commons vote the subsidy "for the defence of the ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... if, as in science so in faith, reason were everything, our position would hardly be tenable, for then there should be no vagueness but clear vision. But the will enters for something in our act of faith. If everything we believe were as luminous as "two and two are four," a special act of the will would be utterly uncalled for. We must be able, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... morass or water-bed, favors the theory that it was deposited there. Setting aside the belief, honestly entertained by many people in the immediate vicinity, that the statue was surreptitiously placed in the slough where it was dug up a few days since, there is tenable ground for the theory that it was taken there by some of the early white visitors to this section of country. This might have been done by transportation over the water-courses communicating with the locality, either through ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... supposed that if Dr. Johnson was not the sole author of 'the Dictionary'—a notion which, in view of the 'pushfulness' wherewith, in recent times, Dictionaries, American and other, have been pressed upon public notice, is now not so easily tenable—he was, at least, the 'original author,' from whose capacious brain that work first emanated. Whereas, in truth, Dr. Johnson had been preceded by scores of workers, each of whom had added his stone or stones to the lexicographic cairn, which had already ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... it assume my noble Fathers person,[3] Ile speake to it, though Hell it selfe should gape And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, If you haue hitherto conceald this sight; Let it bee treble[5] in your silence still: [Sidenote: be tenable in[4]] And whatsoeuer els shall hap to night, [Sidenote: what someuer els] Giue it an vnderstanding but no tongue; I will requite your loues; so, fare ye well: [Sidenote: farre you] Vpon the Platforme twixt eleuen and twelue, [Sidenote: a leauen ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... a loss to account for his invitation to Green Fancy under the circumstances. The confident attitude of those responsible for Miss Cameron's detention evidently was based upon conditions which rendered their position tenable. Their disregard for the consequences that might reasonably be expected to result from this visit was puzzling in the extreme. He could arrive at no other conclusion than that their hospitality was inspired by a desire to disarm him of suspicion. An open welcome to the house, ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... reconciling them, and to grapple directly with the difficulty itself. Let us see if this was not too much for him. Let us see if he has been able to maintain the doctrine of necessity, holding it as a "demonstrated truth," and at the same time give the idea of liberty a tenable position in his system. ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... and in a great part spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod's account of the decisive war of the younger gods with the Titans. The rest of his poem is a picturesque drama, in which every artifice of invention is visibly and consciously employed; not a single fact being for an instant conceived as tenable by any living faith" (Sesame and ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... for instance M. Loth, speak as if the external environment of daily life, the furniture and decorations and architecture of our houses, or the clothes and buckles and brooches of our dress, bore no relation to the feelings and sentiments of those that used them. That is not a tenable proposition. The external fabric of life is not a negligible quantity but a real factor. On the one hand, it is hardly credible that an unromanized folk should adopt so much of Roman things as the British did, and yet remain uninfluenced. And it is equally incredible that, while ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... not alive? And by the same token, here on the Elsinore, has not the land-world ceased? May not the pupil of one's eye be, not merely the centre of the world, but the world itself? Truly, it is tenable that the world exists only in consciousness. "The world is my idea," said Schopenhauer. Said Jules de Gaultier, "The world is my invention." His dogma was that imagination created the Real. Ah, me, I know that the practical Miss West would dub my metaphysics ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... close of this appalling week, the troops at last were conquerors on the banks of the James, they were in a position not permanently tenable, and before they could rest they had to fall back another march to Harrison's Landing. The rear guard reached this haven on the night of July 3, and the army, thus at last safely placed and in direct communication with the fleet and the transports, was able to recuperate,[27] ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... the Nineteenth Century, to examine a sick person's pulse, to inspect his tongue, to observe his breathing, to interrogate his skin by our sense of touch, and to try to make his statements and those of his friends fit in with some tenable theory of the nature of his ailment, were about all we could do. Possibly it was because he realized to an uncommon degree the tremendous impediment of this narrow limitation that Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of Homoeopathy, cut the Gordian knot in sheer rebelliousness, and proclaimed, as he virtually ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... of Congreve was not tenable: whatever glosses he might use for the defence or palliation of single passages, the general tenour and tendency of his plays must always be condemned. It is acknowledged, with universal conviction, that the perusal ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... sufficient so to reason from as to convince the thousands, ready and willing to gainsay them: and Locke's utter annihilation of poor ridiculous well-intentioned Filmer, makes one wary, of taking up and defending a position so little tenable, as, for instance, Adam's primary grant for the foundation of absolute monarchy, or of attempting to nullify natural freedom by the dubious succession of patriarchal power. At the same time, (competency for so great a task being conceded—no small ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... all other species of the same genus, but all the attributes implied in the name of the species, which the name of the superior genus has not already implied. The assertion, however, that a definition must of necessity consist of a genus and differentiae, is not tenable. It was early remarked by logicians, that the summum genus in any classification, having no genus superior to itself, could not be defined in this manner. Yet we have seen that all names, except those of our elementary ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... of Antenatal Pathology, 1902, pp. 321-6) concluded that the theory of arrested development is best supported by the facts; persistence of lanugo is such an arrest, and hypertrichosis may largely be considered a persistence of lanugo. Such a conclusion is still tenable,—though it encounters some difficulties and inconsistencies,—and it largely agrees with what we know of the condition as associated with inversion in women. But we are now beginning to see that this arrested development may be definitely associated with anomalies in the internal secretions, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... to England from such a destruction of the balance of power; her position as mediator was only tenable so long as neither Francis nor Charles had the complete mastery. War on the Emperor was, no doubt, out of the question, but that was no reason for war on France. Prudence counselled England to make ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... stress on all that appears to be connected with homosexuality; he is apt to remember those instances only in which his conduct exhibited girlish characteristics, and to forget all instances of an opposite kind. Finally, we have to take into consideration the various interpretations which are tenable of occurrences during childhood. An adult homosexual who as a child once did some needlework for a joke, sees in this later a characteristic of effemination. A girl who, for lack of companions of her own sex, was accustomed to join in her brother's sports, comes ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... temple, as though to still the dull, constant throbbing that brought to his mental agony the added torment of physical pain. For these three days now he had fought with mind and body and soul against the one conclusion that was tenable—the conclusion which to-night, robbing him of every hope in life, bringing a grief and anguish greater than he could bear, cold logic was finally forcing him to accept. She would have known the torment of anxiety in ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... another, in its criminal legislation, in its whole national policy, in its relation to education, and more or less in every great department of life. In his view, therefore, the ordinary cry for disestablishment was not the recognition of a tenable and consistent principle, but an attempt to arrange a temporary compromise which could only work under special conditions, and must break up whenever men's minds were really stirred. However reluctant ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... her desertion of his business and her criminal folly in abandoning it so as to help mend the shattered bodies of fools and knaves who, by joining the forces of militarism, had betrayed the Sacred Cause of the International Solidarity of Labour. His first ground for complaint was scarcely tenable; with his dwindling business the post of clerk had dwindled into a sinecure. To sit all day at the receipt of imaginary custom is not a part fitted for a sane and healthy young human being. Still, from Gedge's point of view ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... was owing to a pamphlet I had written some years previously, in which I certainly had attacked the Magyar policy somewhat vehemently. I maintained the standpoint that a policy of suppression of the nations was not tenable in the long run, and that no future was in store for Hungary unless she definitely abolished that policy and allowed the nations equal rights. This pamphlet gave serious displeasure in Budapest, and representatives in the Hungarian Parliament were afraid I should introduce that policy in Roumania, ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... very slight change in the explanation will make it tenable. Quite possibly the white deposits may be due to something like hoar-frost condensed from slightly moist air, without the actual production of snow. This would produce the effect that we see. Even this explanation ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... Gallatin asked if a declaration of war could not be moved as an amendment, but the speaker, Mr. Dayton, made no reply. Mr. Gallatin objected that Congress could not declare a state of facts by a legislative act. But this view, if tenable then, has long since been abandoned. In witness of which it is only necessary to name the celebrated resolution of the Congress of 1865 with regard to the recognition of a monarchy in Mexico. July 6 the House went ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... the great benefits enjoyed in this regard by the Jewish race to the soberness of their lives. This position is, however, not altogether tenable, if by that we mean abstemiousness; they are extremely temperate, but not abstemious. Tissot, Cornaro, Lessius, Hufeland, Humphry, Sir Henry Thompson, as well as the older Greek and Roman authorities, all are ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... be proved that animals have endured, without undergoing any demonstrable change of structure, for so long a period as four thousand years, no form of the hypothesis of evolution which assumes that animals undergo a constant and necessary progressive change can be tenable; unless, indeed, it be further assumed that four thousand years is too short a time for the production of a change ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... however, were not permitted to remain long in peaceable possession of their most recent conquest; for on the 3rd of June, a considerable French armament arrived off Point a Pitre. Fort Fleur d'Epee was taken by storm, and the place not being tenable after this loss, the British crossed over to Basseterre. Several prisoners were taken by the French, and amongst them were some of the Carolina Corps, for in the return of that corps for February, 1795, dated March 1st, there is the following note: "Some of the corps are prisoners at Point a ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... is all very well: I do not object to the Quarterly Reviewer giving up an opinion which he finds no longer tenable; but when I see in the same review (No. 44, p. 481.) the following words,—"we 516 give no credit whatever to the report received by Mr. Jackson, of a person (several Negroes[314], it should be) having performed a voyage by water from Timbuctoo to Cairo," I cannot but ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... Well, we arrived safely at our various camps of Drean, Nech Meya, and Amman Berda. We made a little detour to visit Ghelma. I had curiosity to see it, as formerly it was an important city. I must say that a more tenable position I never beheld. But I tire ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... long story short, Onofrio again endeavoured to rouse the bishop to a sense of his duty. Again he tried to make terms for the exiles and to re-establish a tenable condition. It was useless. Louis of Bourbon refused to approach nearer to Liege than Tongres, and declined to meet the advances of his despairing subjects. It was just at this moment that fresh emissaries arrived from Louis, despatched, ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... facts, the Guevara theory is no longer tenable; and in consequence the whole situation is reversed, and we approach the problem from the natural side, the side from which it should have been approached from the first—that is from the English and not the Spanish side. I say the natural side, because it seems to me obvious that ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... laugh. The surgeon, Harry and I bowed from the room and stepped out to the water-bucket and gourd. From there we could see the missing two, lingering at the dooryard gate, in the bright moonlight. As we finished drinking, "Gentlemen," murmured Harry, "I fear our position is too exposed to be tenable." ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... accosted Jack had heard of Mr Easy and his arguments; he was a humorist, and more inclined to laugh than to be angry; at the same time he considered it necessary to show Jack that under existing circumstances they were not tenable. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Each time, on his return, he found the hill neglected, whereupon he complained, feeling this a blot upon his reputation and an insult to his magistracy. Eventually, the works went on, until, when the besieging army arrived, they were tenable." ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... inhabitants. The morning, being the first after the battle of Loudon-hill, had dawned upon its battlements, and the defenders had already resumed the labours by which they proposed to render the place tenable, when the watchman, who was placed in a high turret, called the Warder's Tower, gave the signal that a horseman was approaching. As he came nearer, his dress indicated an officer of the Life-Guards; and the slowness of his horse's pace, as well as the manner ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of the Sable River, near Lake Huron, and near the Red River[198] Gillman thinks that the Michigan trepanations, which bad been made with clumsy tools, were simply holes for hanging up skulls as trophies, as is still customary amongst the Dyaks of Borneo; but this seems scarcely a tenable hypothesis, for as a rule the skeletons lying in their last home are complete. Quite recently were discovered, beneath a tumulus near Rock River, eight skeletons, the skull of one of which bore a circular perforation made during life, which rather ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... his snow-shoes, then they entered. The cabin was not so badly burned as Stane had expected to find it. The bunk had burned out, but the inner wall of the cabin had scarcely caught and the place was still tenable. Benard blocked the window, and they sat down to eat. For a time the meal progressed in silence, Stane deliberately refraining from speech out of consideration for the feelings of his companion, though from time to time glancing at him he caught an expression of ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... inadequate to the solution of the problem. This scrutiny consisted in searching for the ground of "contradiction"[571] with regard to each opinion founded on sensation, and showing that opposite views were equally tenable. It inquired on what ground these opinions were maintained, and what consequences flowed therefrom, and it showed that the grounds upon which "opinion" was founded, and the conclusions which were drawn from it, were contradictory, and consequently untrue.[572] "They," the Dialecticians, "examined ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the Paternoster ruby? It was impossible even to surmise a tenable theory. His parsimony was notorious; he was a bachelor without known kith or kin, and had never before been known to evince the slightest interest ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... here were panic-struck; and finding that many who were entrusted with arms had deserted the barriers, and it being considered that others could not be depended on, the Officers concluded that the town was not tenable, and without firing a shot it was evacuated on the 30th of May, and shortly after entered by the Rebels; who kept possession of it until the 21st of June. As to the different engagements the army has had with the Rebels at Ross, Newtownbarry, Arklow, &c. you must ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones
... the students in convocation; and he holds the office for life. He is the chief magistrate in the government of the University. The Chancellor of Cambridge is also elected from among the prime nobility. The office is biennial, or tenable for such a length of time beyond two years as the tacit consent of the University may choose to ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... possible indications that I had invented various theories to account for them, some of which seemed to myself original and ingenious, while the common idea that they are vague reminiscences of a former state of being, I had again and again examined, and as often entirely rejected, as in no way tenable or verisimilar. ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... twenty-five miles, without the occurrence of any such position, nothing except the prospect of losing a large proportion of his men from weariness ought to induce a general to stop, until he has reached some spot at least more tenable than the rest. Our march to-day was, upon this principle, extremely short, the troops halting when they had arrived at a rising ground distant not more than six miles from the point whence they set out; and having stationed the piquets, planted the sentinels, and made such other ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... says Professor Nanson of Melbourne, "is to find the popular mind by the issue of a number of contests between the 'ins' and the 'outs.' But owing to the multiplicity of political issues, this theory is now no more tenable than is the theory that every question can be answered by a plain 'yes' or 'no.' ... We require a system capable of finding the mind of the people on more than one issue. With such a system all the difficulties caused at present by the existence of three ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... had to admit to themselves that the place was no longer tenable. Nevertheless, neither Mendoza nor his men had any intention of abandoning permanently these fertile plains through which ran the great rivers. The scarcity of minerals in these districts had now become sufficiently obvious ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... proceeded to carry out his orders. On the other hand, it was nearly 8 o 'clock before Col. Peacocke left Chippawa, which threw the whole programme out of joint by nearly two hours. Various excuses were made for the delay, but some of them were not very tenable. The regulars had had a good night's rest, and the volunteers (who were all on the ground at Chippawa before 4.30 a.m.) were eager and willing to proceed. Why he did not leave Chippawa by at least 6 o'clock (in ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... for a minute, and said, "I think, lieutenant, I understand your project. The scheme seems tenable; and I shall be ready to co-operate with you, to the best of my power, in putting ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... it; but all the bourgeois nodded approval. Roudier, who, being rich, did not fear to applaud the sentiment aloud, went so far as to declare, while glancing askance at Monsieur de Carnavant, that the position was no longer tenable, and that France must be chastised as soon as possible, never ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... and prejudice, we will at once state that we believe it possible for a man to be singular in his manner and quaint in his mode of phrasing, and yet to utter an opinion in some one direction which, if neither novel nor interesting, nor even tenable, shall yet have the one redeeming merit of representing a conceivable point of view. But when a man begins by stating that he belongs to the Democrats and then claims as his own the views of his political opponents, winding up by demanding the ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... however, was able to rely on the precedent of 1788, to which Grenville, for one, had been a party, and, after considerable opposition, the prince was made regent under several temporary restrictions. With certain exceptions, he was precluded from granting any peerage or office tenable for life; the royal property was vested in trustees for the king's benefit, and the personal care of the king was entrusted to the queen, with the advice of a council. In this form, the regency bill was passed on February 4, 1811, after a protest ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... High-honored Gentlemen [of the Catholic persuasion], accept, with all frankness of colleague-love and amity, me and the Evangelical brother Raths now introduced by Royal grace and power; and make the new position generously tenable and available to us;—and thereby bind with us the more firmly the band of peace and colleague-unity, for helping up this dear, and for some years greatly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the geologists and volcanists are equally unable to agree in all details concerning this form of the earth's ailment. After all theories relating to the cause of volcanoes have been considered, the one that is most tenable and is sustained by the largest number of scientific men is that which traces volcanic effects back to the old accepted cause of internal fires in the center of the earth. Only in this way can the molten streams of lava emitted by volcanoes ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... think me not strict enough in my morals, but that position is hardly tenable. There are many kinds of lying which I do not approve. I do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else; and I do not like the lie of bravado, nor the lie of virtuous ecstasy; the latter was affected by ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... am in possession of a respectable body of facts that I do not know how to explain except on the theory that I am dealing with some invisible intelligence. I hold that as the only tenable ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... not merely a war on Great Britain but a war on the British Empire, for Canada as well as Australia, India, South Africa and Egypt, having once sent aid could not again refuse it and make their position tenable. The Empire now presents a solid front to the world and her strength is vastly increased hy the loyalty and devotion of ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... ought to be put an end to by legislation." Another debate—in this very quarrelsome spring of 1887—was a written one in the National Reformer between the Rev. G.F. Handel Rowe and myself on the proposition, "Is Atheism logically tenable, and is there a satisfactory Atheistic System for the guidance of Human Conduct." And so the months went on, and the menace of misery grew louder and louder, till in September I find myself writing: "This one thing is clear—Society must ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... undoubtedly a most difficult problem. What the student has to do is to admit the difficulty, and to state, if necessary, that the fact preserved by tradition is not in all cases possible to discover with our present knowledge. This is a perfectly tenable position. Human imagination cannot invent anything that is outside of fact. It may, and of course too frequently does, misinterpret facts. In attempting to explain and account for such facts with insufficient knowledge, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... a part of the old Empire under a plea of being oppressed. They claimed only the natural and sacred right of acting upon their honest convictions; and surely no one will pretend to say that their position was not as just and tenable, or that it was less honourable than that of those who had rebelled. I am not going to say that there was no cause of complaint on the part of those who threw down the gage of war. The truth about that matter has been conceded long ago. The enactments of ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... down, and only one tin basin amongst six to wash in. It was funnier still when they attempted to lie down on their mattresses. A bag stuffed with hay is so round that it is very difficult to keep upon it without rolling off, and there was much pommelling and flattening before the beds were at all tenable. At last everyone was settled, the lights were out, and the campers, rolled in their blankets, tried to compose themselves ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... these horrors, many were for abandoning the place at once, as no longer tenable, and for opening a passage for themselves to the coast with their own good swords. There was a daring in the enterprise which had a charm for the adventurous spirit of the Castilian. Better, they said, to perish in a manly struggle for life, than to die thus ignominiously, pent ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... no answer," said Charles, who saw by Bateman's manner how the truth lay. "Does any one Bishop hold it? did any one Bishop ever hold it? has it ever been formally admitted as tenable by any one Bishop? is it a view got up to meet existing difficulties, or has it an ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... (cum patiendi tum sentiendi,) both of suffering and perceiving an alteration;" while the other affirms that such bodies are formed (ex patibilibus, sed sensu expertibus) out of passible, but not sentient elements. Neither of these doctrines does he consider tenable, so long as only one element is affirmed, as earth, air, or fire alone, which could never become capable of that great variety of actions we witness in living bodies: but, admit several elements, ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... for the Alderson Construction Company, eh?—the concern that was mixed up in that campaign fund contribution that had been stolen. Question: Had Jimmy Stiles been forced by Nickleby to——? No, that was not tenable because Nickleby would not be trying to steal from himself. Well, he'd soon get the hang of things when he went to see Stiles. It was going to be an interesting little pow-wow with ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... I looked. The young demon trotted by my stirrup and showed me his whole army (twenty of 'em) laid out under cover as nicely as you please round a cowhouse in a hollow. He kept on shouting: 'I've drew Alf into there. 'Is persition ain't tenable. Say it ain't tenable, Guard!' I rode round the position, and Alf with his army came out of his cowhouse an' sat on the roof and protested like a—like a Militia Colonel; but the facts were in favour ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... is, that both in friend and enemy alike, there has been a reluctance to see Spinoza as he really was. The Herder and Schleiermacher school have claimed him as a Christian—a position which no little disguise was necessary to make tenable; the orthodox Protestants and Catholics have called him an Atheist —which is still more extravagant; and even a man like Novalis, who, it might have been expected, would have had something reasonable to say, could find no better name for him ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... is not likely to be called a Socialist by anybody. Yet I find him writing in his magazine, at the end of November, 1907: "The tradition which many hold that the condition of poverty is ordinarily and as a matter of course to be explained by personal faults of the poor themselves is no longer tenable. Strong drink and vice are abnormal, unnatural and essentially unattractive ways of spending surplus income." Dr. Devine very frankly and bravely admits that poverty is an unnecessary evil, "a shocking, loathsome excrescence on the body politic, an intolerable evil ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... as would fit the circumstances of the handicraft industry and the petty trade, and such as can be extended to any other economic situation by shrewd interpretation. These theories, as they run from Adam Smith down through the nineteenth century and later, appear tenable, on the whole, when taken to apply to the economic situation of that earlier time, in virtually all that they have to say on questions of wages, capital, savings, and the economy and efficiency of management and production by the methods of private enterprise resting on ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... understanding of the degree in which she might expect to cultivate such discernment in the general mind of polite travelers; nor have I less admired her aptitude in collation of essentially illustrative facts, so as to bring the history of a very widely contemplative range of art into tenable compass and very graceful and serviceable form. Her reading, indeed, has been, with respect to many very interesting periods of religious workmanship, much more extensive than my own; and when I consented to edit the volume of collected papers, it was not without the assurance ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... other side, in the face of these confederate forces working the world over for the abasement of man, how urgent is the appeal to rescue and fortify the doctrine, to make it effectual, first in our own conduct and then in that of others! And on what tenable foundations can we rest it, ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... night, etc., may be by this explained. These views of Luys are accepted as true, but to a less extent than taught by Luys. The prevalent idea that a lesion of one hemisphere produces a paralysis upon the opposite side of the body alone is no longer tenable, for each hemisphere is connected with both sides of the body by motor tracts, the larger of the motor tracts decussating and the smaller not decussating in the medulla. Hence a lesion of one hemisphere produces paralysis upon the opposite side of the body. It has recently been established that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... evidently possesses two points of moral truth and power, and, if not tenable as strict science, is yet instructive as symbolic poetry. First, it embodies, in concrete shapes the most vivid and unmistakable, the fact that beastly and demoniac qualities of character lead men down towards the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... assertion? Is the historical evidence on which you build trustworthy? And if in certain departments this evidence is clearly untenable, what guarantee have you that in other departments evidence of similar character is tenable? The fine-spun abstractions of the Platonists and their kin, unchecked by a natural science which had not yet the appliances necessary for its growth; the orthodoxies of the various churches, so singularly differentiated ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... mind every reason, tenable and untenable, that he could frame to account for Agnes' sudden and unexplained trip. He thought she probably had gone for her mail, or to send a telegram and receive a reply, or for money, or something which she needed in camp. More than once he took up the probability ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... the growth of the body is mechanical, and that thought, as exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of the brain, I think the position of the 'Materialist' is stated, as far as that position is a tenable one. I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain this position against all attacks; but I do not think, in the present condition of the human mind, that he can pass beyond this position. I do not think he is entitled to say ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... misunderstanding of orders tenable? The records show that on the 11th of December, two days before the battle, Burnside ordered his division commanders to so dispose their troops as to bring them within easy reach of Fredericksburg, and that ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... accumulation of funds, which the commercial character of that great city had caused to be neglected. At that time, I believe each exhibition yielded about forty guineas a- year, and was legally tenable for seven successive years. Now, to me this would have offered a most seasonable advantage, had it been resorted to some two years earlier. My small patrimonial inheritance gave to me, as it did to each of my four brothers, exactly one hundred ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... are formed in our politics as systematic as those which prevail in Great Britain. Such as opposed the constitution, from a hatred to the Union, can never be conciliated by any overture or atonement. By others it is meditated to push the construction of Federal powers to every tenable extreme. A third class, republican in principle, and, thus far, in my judgment, happy in their discernment of our welfare, have, notwithstanding, mingled with their doctrines a fatal error—that the State ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... awful burden. It seems to be forgetful of the fact that these millions have been taken from the public tax funds for education, and that the law of political economy which recognizes the land owner as the one who really pays the taxes is not tenable. It would be just as reasonable for the relatively few land owners of Manhattan to complain that they had to stand the financial burden of the education of the thousands and thousands of children whose parents pay rent for tenements and flats. Let the millions of producing and consuming ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... are still less tenable. If a true sense of family ties exists, the owner of property will not fail to make a will, which is an extremely simple process under the present law. If such ties are weak, they are assuredly not strengthened by the right of certain next of kin to be the heirs of a man ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... could they? Compared with this question, the riddle of the Sphinx was simple, the supposition that they were going to batter coast-walls in the S. Pacific being hardly now tenable. The Boodah finally came to rest some miles North of lat. 50 deg. and East of long. 20 deg.: and there—just on the northern rim of the Gulf Stream where it divides, part toward Ireland, and part toward Africa—she remained, precisely in the middle of the trade- ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... overpowered by numbers, he retreated to Londonderry and exhorted the governor to take the field, as the army of king James was not yet completely formed. Lundy assembling a council of war, at which Cunningham and Richards assisted; they agreed, that as the place was not tenable, it would be imprudent to land the two regiments, and that the principal officers should withdraw themselves from Londonderry, the inhabitants of which would obtain the more favourable capitulation in consequence of their retreat. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... the only possible theory. There is another view of our relations to such places as Egypt and India which is entirely tenable. It may be said, "We Europeans are the heirs of the Roman Empire; when all is said we have the largest freedom, the most exact science, the most solid romance. We have a deep though undefined obligation ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... early graperies, gardeners have a prejudice against growing any other plants than the grapevines lest red spiders, thrips, or mealy bugs are introduced with the plants, but in the case of mushrooms no such grounds are tenable. As the vines have yielded their fruit by midsummer and ripened their wood early so as to be ready for starting into growth again in December or January, the grapery is kept cool and ventilated in the fall and early ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... which developed itself after the return of H.M.S. "Challenger" from her famous voyage. Mr. John Murray, one of the staff of naturalists on board that vessel, propounded a new theory of coral-reefs, and maintained that the view that they were formed by subsidence was one that was no longer tenable; these objections have been supported by Professor Alexander Agassiz in the United States, and by Dr. A. Geikie, and Dr. ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... School founded by Henry VIII., a handsome building in the Vines. The tuition fee commences at L15 per annum for boys under 12, and there is a reduction made when there are brothers. There are two or three annual competitive Scholarships tenable for a period of years, and there are also two Exhibitions of L60 a year to University College, Oxford. There is also Sir J. Williamson's Mathematical School in the High Street, founded in 1701, having an income of L1500 a year from endowments, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... departure of the French they blew up several towers of the outer wall, and left the fortifications scarcely tenable. Since that time the military importance of the post is at an end. The garrison is a handful of invalid soldiers, whose principal duty is to guard some of the outer towers, which serve occasionally as a prison of state; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... the theory before he gave it to the world. A generalization that the republican form of government produces greater peace and prosperity than the monarchical would neglect the obvious exceptions in the Central American republics; and to make it at all tenable the generalization would have to have some such proviso as, "among peoples of Germanic race." Even then the exceptions would be more numerous than the cases which would fall within the rule.[39] One ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... siege of Malta seems almost an insult; these gallant knights and soldiers were only so in comparison with their leader. Twice during the siege of St, Elmo did the garrison send to La Valette and represent that the place was no longer tenable; but Garcia de Toledo, Viceroy of Sicily for Philip of Spain, was writing specious letters instead of sending reinforcements, and every moment gained was of importance. Coldly did La Valette remind the Knights of their vows to the Order, and when renewed assurances came that it was only ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... known you and understood your nature and disposition as I fancy I do, I should not have allowed myself to be put in this position; but I have implicit faith in your doing what is wise and right, and so making it tenable. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... geographical Central America, including all that is not specifically enumerated from Mexico on the north, to New Grenada or the United States of Columbia on the south; that the claim of Great Britain was not a tenable or reasonable one, and that the understanding was, that neither government should thereafterwards acquire, or assume any control over, any part of the territory lying between Mexico and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... say, my lud," returned Mr. Balais, after a hurried conversation with the little attorney, "that my client is not in a position to dispute the evidence just adduced. He prefers to throw himself upon the mercy of the court, on the ground—a very tenable one, I think—of his youth and," he was going to add "inexperience," but, under the circumstances, he thought it better not—"of his extreme youth, my lud; my unhappy client is ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... third point of view alone can give joy. Only is it tenable? Is there a particular Providence directing all the circumstances of our life, and therefore imposing all our trials upon us for educational ends? Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual knowledge of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the capture of Pope's dispatch book, containing most detailed information as to his strength, dispositions, and designs; referring to the reinforcements he expected, and disclosing his belief that the line of the Rappahannock was no longer tenable. But the enterprise had an indirect it upon the enemy's calculations, which was not without bearing on the campaign. Pope believed that Stuart's advance on Catlett's Station had been made in connection with Jackson's attempt to cross at Sulphur Springs; and the retreat of the cavalry, ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... homoousios carried in its train a whole army of contradictions which increased as thought advanced," says Harnack. Yes, so it was, and so it had to be. And he adds: "Dogma took leave for ever of clear thinking and tenable concepts, and habituated itself to the contra-rational." In truth, it drew closer to life, which is contra-rational and opposed to clear thinking. Not only are judgements of worth never ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... arose when it became known that the judges, or some of them, had informally declared to the government (without waiting to hear any argument on the subject) that the points raised by the prisoners' counsel were not tenable, or were not of force. Mr. Roberts was officially informed that the sentence would infallibly be carried out. By this time barely a few days remained of the interval previous to the date fixed for the execution, ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... the Bishop there, and hauing a goodly Cathedrall Church in it, with a right goodly Abbey, a Nunnery, and an exceeding fine College of the Jesuites, and was by naturall situation, as also by very good fortification, very strong, and tenable enough in all mens opinions of the better judgement. Their building was all of a kind of hard stone, euen from the very foundation to the top, and euery house was in a manner a kinde of a fort or Castle, altogether flat-roofed ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... through the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, and if the equally august and authoritative dogma of the transmission by inheritance of acquired characteristics were longer tenable, then perhaps we might invoke faith, hope and patience and continue our generous method of imperilling present society while we fixed our eyes on the vision of that to come when environment, education and heredity had accomplished their perfect work. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—science ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... that Dr. Sharpe's views of the natural immortality of the soul and the future condition of the wicked are tenable by reason ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... temperament, the "Colliery explosion," as it was called, when Sir R. Collier, the Attorney-General, was appointed to a Puisne Judgeship, which he held only for a day or two, in order to qualify him for a seat on a new Court of Appeal; together with a very similar trick, by which Ewelme Rectory, tenable only by an Oxonian, was given to a Cambridge man. The responsibility was divided between Gladstone and Lord Hatherley the Chancellor, with the mutual idea apparently that each of the two became thereby individually innocent. But ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... that, Wallace?'—'I do,' replied the colonel; 'and I would rather drive the French out of the town than cover a retreat across the Coa.'—'Perhaps,' said Sir Edward, 'his lordship don't think it tenable.' Wallace answering, said, 'I shall take it with my regiment, and keep it too.'—'Will you?' was the reply; 'I'll go and tell Lord Wellington so.' In a moment or two, Pakenham returned at a gallop, and waving his hat, called out, 'He says ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... watch-dog and the tabby-cat; of home in all its minutiae. Its familiar scenes visited him with a vividness which added ten-fold to their influence. He was as far abstracted as the mosquitos, which gathered in swarms upon every tenable spot of his flesh, would permit, when his meditations were disturbed by the gentleman who occupied the next chair. He wore the uniform of the army, and was battling the mosquitos with the smoke of a plantation cigar, which bore a very striking resemblance to those rolls of the weed ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... postponement was no longer a tenable city of refuge: the plunge had to be taken. Accordingly, he fared forth to present himself at the Broadway address given in the Pacific Southwestern printed matter as the New York headquarters ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde |
