"Unanswerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the terrors which surround him, and by the stern authority of the judge, but not by the want of a valid plea. When the sentence shall go forth consigning him to perdition for the deeds done in the body, he will have in readiness, whether allowed to utter it or not, the unanswerable answer: "Lord, the deeds for which I am condemned were in all respects what thou didst predetermine. I have executed from first to last thy wise and holy counsels. Had I acted otherwise, I should have frustrated thy free purposes, formed ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... their main argument in favor of the doctrine of metempsychosis the justice of God. But for the belief in metempsychosis, they maintained, the question why God often permits the wicked to lead a happy life while many righteous are miserable would be unanswerable. Then too the infliction of pain upon children would be an act of cruelty unless it is imposed in punishment of sin committed by the soul in a previous state. Isaac Abravanel sees in the commandment of the ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... by a Greek letter? When I was at systematic work, I know I longed to have no other difficulty (great enough) than deciding whether the form was distinct enough to deserve a name, and not to be haunted with undefined and unanswerable questions whether it was a true species. What a jump it is from a well-marked variety, produced by natural cause, to a species produced by the separate act of the hand of God! But I am running on foolishly. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... The only unanswerable connection between this old crime and Oliver lay in the evidence she had herself collected. As she had every intention of suppressing this evidence, and as she had small dread of any one else digging out the facts to which she only possessed a clew, might she ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... disgust they treated him, not as the legitimate pope, whose authority was to be vindicated against his rivals, but as one of three schismatic popes, whose retirement was a necessary condition of the restoration of unity. When he tried to evade their demand, they brought unanswerable charges against his personal character and threatened to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... not to themselves. Some of them recollected the evidence in one way, and some of them recollected it in another; and each man insisted on doing justice to his own excellent memory, and on stating his own unanswerable view of the case. ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... They could all read and write tolerably well, and knew something of arithmetic. This was a proof that their education had not been neglected. And why should it? Were they not the descendants of the great Maguires of Fermanagh? Why, the very consciousness of their blood was felt as a proud and unanswerable argument against ignorance. The best education, therefore, that could be procured by persons in their humble sphere of life, they received. The eldest brother, whose name was Brian, did not, as is too frequently the case with the ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... celebrated reply of the 16th April, 1898, the Government of the South African Republic proved with unanswerable force that the preamble of the Convention of 1881 had been abolished, that Lord Derby had himself in 1884 proposed a draft Convention, in which the preamble was erased (see Appendix B.), and that by the ultimate acceptance of that proposal, the ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... him make a speech in 1865, which in force of reasoning, purity of language, and propriety of utterance, was not unworthy of comparison with a sermon of Bishop Thomson, or an address of George William Curtis. As he was "a full-blooded Negro," he was a standing and unanswerable proof that the race is capable of all that has distinguished MAN. How much of history and progress could be crowded in a memorial inscription for him! It might be something like this: Born a slave ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... together according to a combination that is unlike anything else on this earth. It is a combination that does combine. It cannot be sorted out again, even on the Day of Judgment. Two totally different people have become in the sense most sacred, frightful, and unanswerable, one flesh. If a golden-haired Scandinavian girl has married a very swarthy Jew, the Scandinavian side of the family may say till they are blue in the face that the baby has his mother's nose or his mother's eyes. They can never be certain the black-haired Bedouin is not present in every feature, ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... to avail themselves of his personal character as a man of known bravery; and thus quash a process which must finally have brought them before the tribunal. But let naval officers remember, that the officer who fights is the officer of the nation. Nelson's maxim is unanswerable—"The captain cannot be mistaken who lays ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... course, follow as a matter of course, follow necessarily; stand to reason; hold good, hold water. convince, persuade (belief) 484. Adj. demonstrating &c v., demonstrative, demonstrable; probative, unanswerable, conclusive; apodictic^, apodeictic^, apodeictical^; irresistible, irrefutable, irrefragable; necessary. categorical, decisive, crucial. demonstrated &c v.; proven; unconfuted^, unanswered, unrefuted^; evident &c 474. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... which has been doomed to run the gauntlet, and against which every pert and insolent political declaimer has had his fling, it is that of this unfortunate writer; yet in his short but masterly and unanswerable "Advertisement to the Jurymen of England, touching Witches, together with a difference between an English and Hebrew Witch," first published in 1653, 4to., he has addressed himself so cogently and decisively to the main fallacy ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... should have met with no reply at all. It was a statement—authoritative and unanswerable, if there ever ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... dispatched his reply. Morgan was glad that it had arrived at this opportune moment. With Murphy to testify that Marsh had claimed Ames as a friend, and with this cablegram to prove the falsity of the claim, he had at least one unanswerable piece of evidence of a suspicious nature to warrant his proposed action ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... an unanswerable argument, and nobody could deny it; consequently, there was a cessation of talk, and the people then came up, as the two first were ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... the House of Commons, however, a very different fate awaited it. Walpole assailed it with powerful eloquence and with unanswerable argument. The true nature of the scheme now came out. It would have simply rendered the representative chamber powerless against a majority of the chamber which did not represent. This will be readily apparent to any one who considers ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... now. Doctor Jackson don't know everything. It's only God that knows everything," said Fred, with unanswerable argument. ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... objections to our following the advice of the Count de Vergennes were unanswerable, I proposed to Dr Franklin, that we should state them in a letter to him, and request his answer in writing, because, as we were instructed to ask and to follow his advice on these occasions, we ought always to be able to ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... child's beauty, and nothing is withheld that can gratify the ambition of the mother, so characteristic, to dress with fantastic colours: the child gambols at her feet, views its many-coloured dress, keeps asking various unanswerable questions about Daddy Bob, Harry, and the pic-nic. Again it scrambles pettishly, sings snatches of some merry plantation song, pulls its braided hat about the floor, climbs upon the table to see what ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Savior does not imply that God said so much in substance, nor that Moses intended to teach, or even knew, any thing like it, but that, by adding to the passage cited a premise of his own, which his hearers granted to be true, he could deduce so much from it by a train of new and unanswerable reasoning. His opponents were compelled to admit the legitimacy of his argument, and, impressed by its surpassing beauty and force, were silenced, if not convinced. The credit of this cogent proof of human immortality, namely, that God's ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... only on a Saturday night. What, then, was Saturday night to me more than any other night? I had no labours that I rested from, no wages to receive; what needed I to care for Saturday night, more than as it was a summons to hear Grassini? True, most logical reader; what you say is unanswerable. And yet so it was and is, that whereas different men throw their feelings into different channels, and most are apt to show their interest in the concerns of the poor chiefly by sympathy, expressed in some shape or other, with their distresses ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... brain through the skull. The attacks upon phrenology have been generally remarkable for their logical feebleness. Any one well acquainted with the science and the phenomena in nature, could have made a much more effective attack,—an attack which would have appeared entirely unanswerable; but no such attack has ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... Stanton, of Seneca Falls, N. Y., and adopted by the Albany Convention—presented to our Legislature at its last session. This Address has been highly spoken of by many of the best papers in the State, and pronounced, by eminent lawyers and statesmen, an able and unanswerable argument. And the Committee, being fully confident of its power to convince every candid inquirer after truth of the justice and mercy of our claims, do urgently call upon the friends everywhere to aid them in giving to it a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... that Universalists have been helped to some of their best arguments by adversaries. Bishop Watson, to wit, has suggested objections to belief in the Christian's Deity, which they who hold no such belief consider unanswerable. In his famous 'Apology' he desired to know what Paine thought 'of an uncaused cause of everything, and a Being who has no relation to time, not being older to day than he was yesterday, nor younger to day than he will be to-morrow—who has no relation to ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... As this was unanswerable Blanquette diverted the conversation to the less transcendental topic of the premature baldness of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... The opinion was unanswerable, and we tramped on along the dusty road, wearied out, but kept going by the excitement; till, coming upon a group of people, whose appearance suggested that they had journeyed from the city, Brace stopped them to question them about the state of ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... and modest reply was received in a silence which would have embarrassed any other man than the Abbe Dutheil. The three priests chose to see in it one of those hidden and unanswerable sarcasms which are characteristic of ecclesiastics, who contrive to express what they want to say while observing the strictest decorum. In this case there was nothing of the kind. The Abbe Dutheil never thought of himself and had ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... saw the evidences of God's skill and wisdom in the adaptations of nature, fitting the organs of animals for hearing, walking, and eating, and especially in the structure of the human eye. This has long been owned by candid minds as an unanswerable argument, demonstrating the being of God by the works of his hands. But since that chapter was written a school of scientists has arisen, of whom Mr. Darwin is at present the most popular, claiming to be able to show how all ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... different position from that of wealth which is being created from day to day. It can be defended only on two grounds. One is prescriptive right, and the difficulty of disturbing the basis of the economic order. This provides an unanswerable argument against violent and hasty methods, but no argument at all against a gentle and slow-moving policy of economic reorganization. The other argument is that inherited wealth serves several indirect functions. The desire to provide for children and to found ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... and Platforms; to dispense with Party Organizations and Party Appeals; to forget that they were ever divided until they had first rescued the Government from its assailants. His arguments were clear, convincing, and unanswerable; his appeals for the Salvation of his Country, irresistible. It was the last speech, but one, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... attempt to defeat it? Bloodshed—violence! He whose every dream had been of a life in which his fellow-men might find encouragement to endure their burdens, and of walking before them an example of love and forbearance, submissive and meek that he might with the more unanswerable grace preach obedience and fraternity to them—Merciful Heaven! And he shuddered and drew the veil hastily over his face, as if, in a bloody tumult, the ideal life, so the ultimate happiness, were vanishing before his eyes. Taking the confessions of such as have been greatly tried, few men, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... those who reason for the necessity of a future state, in order that the justice of the Deity may be satisfied, Hume's argumentation appears unanswerable. For if the justice of God resembles what we mean by justice, the bestowal of infinite happiness for finite well-doing and infinite misery for finite ill-doing, it is in no sense just. And, if the justice of God does not resemble what we mean by justice, ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... notions about the economy of nature—poetry of science. But this makes rather a joke of that, too—don't you think?" He paused, and Georgia could see the hot beating in his temples and his throat. And then he added, with a quiet more unanswerable than the passion had been: "So the beautiful thing about having no gods at all is that you're so fixed you have ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... unanswerable, inexplicable. They all looked at one another almost helplessly. Pamela held out ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... really deplored the disaster that had fallen on his friend. Hitherto Vendale had tried vainly to alter his first opinion of Marguerite's guardian, for Marguerite's sake. All the generous instincts in his nature now combined together and shook the evidence which had seemed unanswerable up to this time. "Who knows?" he thought. "I may have read that man's face ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... is the unanswerable problem of all religions; all philosophies; all science. If we return to a void, such as some interpreters of the Vedas declare, then surely this urge within mankind toward this annihilatory state would hardly be expected. It would be inconsistent with that instinct of self-preservation which ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... ask you to believe that your request was granted even before you marshalled such unanswerable arguments to stand, like armoured men, around it. There is a tern and stringent law of our great Church which forbids its servants suing for a lady's hand. Countess, I never felt the grasp of that iron fetter ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... was a complete success: it was unanswerable. It fixed the lodgings at Camden Town. It stopped Mrs. Bumpkin's impatience; diminished her apprehensions; and apparently, lulled her misgivings. She was a gentle, ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... sorry that you lost your cause of Intromission, because I yet think the arguments on your side unanswerable. But you seem, I think, to say that you gained reputation even by your defeat; and reputation you will daily gain, if you keep Lord Auchinleck's precept in your mind, and endeavour to consolidate in your ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the novelty of the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come by this time—i.e. 1836 to 1839—to see that the Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos. The question then continually rose ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... down upon creation, while they watched a looper caterpillar that clung to the edge of the illustrated paper and made futile circles in the air with the knob it called its head. Some one had forgotten to let down the ladder it expected, or perhaps it, too, was asking unanswerable questions ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... watery Unitarianism, and its adherents are allowing themselves, where permitted, to become completely assimilated. Reform Judaism which began as a compromise is ending as a surrender. The final and unanswerable objection to Reform Judaism as a solution is that the majority of Jews will not even in theory accept it. The devotion to race, religion, and separation is too strong. The Gentile in asking the Jew to assimilate is undoubtedly right; the refusal of the Jew undoubtedly is not wrong; and the ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... him in stupefaction: her hands trembled: she thought for a moment of throwing his book at his head: afterwards she did not understand how it was that she did not do so. But she was overwhelmed by Christophe's authority and his unanswerable tone of voice: she began again. She sang the song-cycle, without changing one shade of meaning, or a single movement: for she felt that he would spare her nothing: and she shuddered at the thought of a ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... against those who have helped to rouse them. Marat did not live to see the waning of his star; Danton was dragged to the guillotine by those whom he had taught to look upon that instrument of death as the only possible and unanswerable political argument; Robespierre succumbed to the orgies of bloodshed he himself had brought about. But Droulde remained master of the people of Paris for as long as he chose to exert that mastery. When they listened to him they felt better, ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... expenditures together; in short, it costs seven marks of soldier to protect every one mark of plough. I admit frankly the horror and the absurdity of all this; but as an argument for disarmament, "it does not lie," as the lawyers phrase it. It is a criticism, and an unanswerable one, of our failure as human beings to enthrone reason and to tame our passions; but it is a veritable call to arms to protect ourselves, not a reason for not doing so. Let the international gluttons ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... did neither eat nor drink." The anguish of spirit suffered during these days and nights no heart but his own can ever know. His sins were red with the blood of the saints. Doubts as to what the persecuted Jesus might require of him, with a thousand unanswerable questions, harassed his mind. Conviction, or a feeling sense of sin, always precedes conversion. Repentance cannot take place without a knowledge of sin's condemning and destroying power. When this is felt man desires to be rid ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... with feelings similar to those he would experience in contemplating the inscriptions on the walls of a condemned cell. The very chairs in the room look overbearing and unpleasant; and the whole locality is invested with an overallishness of unanswerable questions and intricate botheration. Some of the students are marching up and down the room in feverish restlessness; others, arm in arm, are worrying each other to death with questions; and the rest are grinding away to the last minute at a manual, or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... pointed this out to the others as they climbed higher and higher; but he was directly afterwards somewhat nonplussed by a question put by the captain—one which was unanswerable. It was simply this: ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life. Whether Socrates got as much happiness out of life as Wesley is an unanswerable question; but a nation of Socrateses would be much safer and happier than a nation of Wesleys; and its individuals would be higher in the evolutionary scale. At all events it is in the Socratic man and not in the Wesleyan ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... not degenerate into personal bitterness; but it was very earnest, and, in later years, my mother told me that when Hayne, of South Carolina, made his famous speech, charging the North with ill-treatment of the South, my grandfather sent a copy of it to my father, as unanswerable; but that, shortly afterward, my father sent to my grandfather the speech of Daniel Webster, in reply, and that, when this was read, the family allowed that the latter had the better of the argument. I cannot help thinking that my grandfather must have ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... something with shafts, Mr. Jim, and a dacint horse in them. More by token, I would not get up at three in the morning either, but dhrive in aisy an' comfortable the night before." He beamed on Jim with so clear a conviction that he was unanswerable that Jim hadn't the heart to argue further. Instead he ran the car deftly into a buggy-shed whence an ancient double buggy had been deposed to make room for her, and then fell to discussing with Murty the question of building a garage, with a turn-table and pit for cleaning and repairs. To which ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... been killed. I had let the man go; and he would certainly never come to my shop again. True, I should know him again; but what better chance should I ever have of identifying him? And then again came the unanswerable question: Was he ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... intervals, "Yes, yes, yes." As the minutes passed, Ralph's presence became more and more intolerable to him, since there was so much that he must say to Katharine; the moment he could not talk to her, terrible doubts, unanswerable questions accumulated, which he must lay before Katharine, for she alone could help him now. Unless he could see her alone, it would be impossible for him ever to sleep, or to know what he had said ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... such a combination of tastes, though it seems to be uncommon, is quite intelligible—that the somewhat unholy business of party management was at first attractive to him. To the end he showed no intuitive comprehension of individual men. His sincere friendly intention, the unanswerable force of an argument, the convincing analogy veiled in an unseemly story, must take their chance of suiting the particular taste of Senator Sherman or General McClellan; but any question of managing men in the mass—will a given candidate's influence with this section of people count ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... upon your consideration. When you plunged them into this abyss of greed and deceit did no phantom of their lost manhood rise and confront you with an unanswerable reproach?" ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... benefit by such an association? Why could she thus shield the murderers of Percival Coolidge? What possible object could there be in the commission of this crime, except to gain possession of her own fortune? It was all mystery to his mind; a new unanswerable question arising ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... wish to have clear views of the doctrine taught by those who believe in entire consecration should peruse this able, decided, and unanswerable volume."—Living Waters. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... no reply to this unanswerable logic, but was as surprised as he was gratified. He recalled the hour when the kinship was, at the best, but coldly recognized, the inscrutable haughtiness, even distrust, with which Miss Arundel listened to the exposition of his views and feelings, and the contrast which her past mood ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... of felonies and mitigated the severity of law? My fellow-countrymen, as you yourselves may sometimes have to appeal at the bar of human judgment for justice and for right, give to my people to-night the fair and unanswerable conclusion ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... first six months of the year 1824 Ursula spent all her mornings at the parsonage. The old doctor guessed the abbe's secret hope. He meant to make Ursula an unanswerable argument against him. The old unbeliever, loved by his godchild as though she were his own daughter, would surely believe in such artless candor; he could not fail to be persuaded by the beautiful effects of religion on the soul of a child, where love was like those trees of Eastern climes, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... smile, which gave him the air of a bold but cunning man. His throat and bosom were bare, and of a deep copper colour; and his muscular chest was covered with short curly hair. The conversation on George's part became more animated, and he at length made use of what seemed an unanswerable argument. Taking out a beaded purse, which Sir Henry knew well—it had been Emily's last present to George—he emptied the contents into the bronzed hand of his companion, who grasped the money with avidity. The Maltese ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... spake the truth, they so persistently refused to believe Him. Answering His own question, He told them that they were not of God and therefore they understood not the words of God. The Master was unimpeachable; His terse, cogent assertions were unanswerable. In impotent rage the discomfited Jews resorted to invective and calumny. "Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?" they shrieked. They had before called Him a Galilean; that appellative was but mildly depreciatory, and moreover was a truthful designation according ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... scatter, the students impress afresh upon their memory how, and in what quantity, the medicine should be taken. Only too often the printed directions are entirely disobeyed, and the week's supply swallowed in one dose, on the strength of that unanswerable argument with which we wrestled ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... give in place of that which you take away? This is a question which is proposed to Unitarians over and over and over again. It is looked upon as an unanswerable criticism. We are supposed to be people who tear down, but do not build; people who take away the dear hopes and traditional faiths of the past, and leave the world ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... cowardly a proceeding. Grotius repaired to Paris, where he was received in the most flattering manner, and distinguished by a pension of one thousand crowns allowed by the king. He soon published his vindication—one of the most eloquent and unanswerable productions of its kind, in which those times of unjust accusations and illegal ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... followed her mother to her room, who avenged Miss Gleason by a series of inquisitional tortures, ending with the hope that, whatever she did, Grace would not have that silly creature's blood on her hands. The girl opened her lips to attempt some answer to this unanswerable aspiration, when the unwonted sound of wheels on the road without ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Pharisees?" repeated Bertram, who was not able to answer Hugh's argument, and considered his own unanswerable. ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... Greeks was, indeed, far from strict. Logic never can be strict where books are scarce, and where information is conveyed orally. We are all aware how frequently fallacies, which, when set down on paper, are at once detected, pass for unanswerable arguments when dexterously and volubly urged in Parliament, at the bar, or in private conversation. The reason is evident. We cannot inspect them closely enough to perceive their inaccuracy. We cannot readily compare them with each other. We lose sight of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... were to entertain the four brothers and their ladies, adding that he would himself go forthwith as Aldobrandino's envoy, and bid them welcome to his peace and banquet. All which being approved by Aldobrandino, the pilgrim hied him with all speed to the four brothers, whom by ample, apt and unanswerable argument he readily induced to reinstate themselves in Aldobrandino's friendship by suing for his forgiveness: which done, he bade them and their ladies to breakfast with Aldobrandino on the morrow, and they, being assured of his good faith, were ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... supposition that the grants against which he argues are to be erected into separate governments. But we are clearly of opinion, that his arguments do, in the general view of them, as applied to the question of granting lands in the interior parts of America, stand unanswerable; and admitting that the settlers in the country in question are as numerous as report states them to be, yet we submit to your Lordships, that this is a fact which does, in the nature of it, operate strongly in point of argument against what is proposed; for if the foregoing ...
— Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates • Great Britain Board of Trade
... reply, and Aimee had strong hopes that he was prepared with some wise, unanswerable reason for remaining where he was. Meanwhile, his ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... unanswerable—which is the happy property of all remarks that are sufficiently wide of the purpose—they changed the current of the conversation, and diverted the general attention to the Veal and Ham Pie, the cold mutton, the ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... 'Baby' with a given colossal statue should have found its way into the family without father, mother, or nurse being aware of it; or that any joke should have been accepted there which implied that the little boy was not of normal size. But the fact is still more unanswerable that Apennino could by no process congenial to the Italian language be converted into Penini. Its inevitable abbreviation would be Pennino with a distinct separate sounding of the central n's, or Nino. The accentuation of Penini ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... things on purpose to provoke me when my remarks are unanswerable. Robin Lyth indeed! A sailor, a smuggler, a common working-man! And under that ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... so unanswerable that I did not know what to say. So I only asked what he meant to do, as escape was impossible, seeing that we were surrounded ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... lives A dirty life. Here I could shelter him With noble and right-reverend precedents. And show by sanction of authority That 'tis a very honorable thing To thrive by dirty ways. But let me rest On better ground the unanswerable defense. The pig is a philosopher, who knows No prejudice. Dirt?... Jacob, what is dirt? If matter,... why the delicate dish that tempts An o'ergorged epicure to the last morsel That stuffs him to the ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... account of the negotiations (p. 736): "Mr. Evelyn gave him [Col. Morley] some visits to attemper his affection by degrees to a confidence in him, & then by consequence to ingage him in his designes; and to induce him the more powerfully thereunto, he put into his hands an excellent and unanswerable hardy treatise by him written and severall times reprinted, intituled An Apology for the Royall Party, which he backed with so good Argument and dextrous Addresses in the prosecution of them, that, after some private discourse, the Colonel was so well inclin'd, as to recommend ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... me to answer a single word. I went back to my pile of lava, in a state of silent awe. The evidence was unanswerable, overwhelming! ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... this earth, and even after all these years, Sir, you see me overcome with emotion at the remembrance of it all. I was under arrest, remember, on a terribly serious charge, but, conscious of mine own innocence and of my unanswerable system of defence, I bore the preliminary examination by the juge d'instruc-tion with exemplary dignity and patience. I knew, you see, that at my very first confrontation with my supposed victim the latter would at ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... mummery, without half the sense, of an ape, deliver what the fool vainly called his opinion, which consisted of the most stupid and senseless contradictions and assertions, generally finishing with something which he conceived to be unanswerable, "as our mayor said!" How often have I felt my blood boil, to hear my worthy friend and preceptor insulted by one of these contemptible jackanapes. In fact, more than once, when I found that my friend the clergyman did not condescend even to return a look of contempt ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... sit ye down, and let me think o' this. If I warn't a man on a small annuity, that was large enough till to-day, I hadn't need to think of it. But you only lay your head well to the wind,' said the Captain, again administering that unanswerable piece of consolation, 'and you're ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... questions that I propounded, methinks thou couldest not have done it better than by uttering such words as thou hast now spoken unto me. Thou hast taught me that God is the Maker and preserver of all things; and in unanswerable language thou hast shown me that the glory of his majesty is incomprehensible to human reasonings, and that no man is able to attain thereto, except those to whom, by his behest, he revealeth it. Wherefore am I lost in amaze at thine ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... of vice and profligacy was drawn by one whose love of truth rendered him incapable of deceit or of exaggeration. It was published at the time, and was unanswered, because unanswerable. It was not painted from imagination by an ascetic; but from life by an enlightened observer—not by the poor preaching mechanic when incarcerated in a jail for his godliness; but when his painful sufferings were past—when his Pilgrim, produced by the folly of persecutors, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... did not enjoy one advantage which all founders of sects have duly appreciated, and by which they have been materially assisted. It is a great and an unanswerable argument in favour of a Providence that we constantly perceive that the most beneficial results are brought about by the least worthy and most insignificant agents. The purest religions would never have been established had they not been supported by sinners who felt the burthen ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... statesmanlike observation, your Majesty," smiled the Prime Minister. "In this matter I may say we are without scruple because our case is unanswerable." ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... watched her run across the meadow, leap the brook, and hurry on to a grove of quaking aspens at the edge of the forest. Then he lay back to consider the logic of the situation, with the following result, which appeared to him unanswerable: ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... deprecation, being only half pacified, "I do not see who there could be to ask the Bishop except ourselves. Where should the Bishop of Carisbury lunch in Cullerne except at the Rectory?" In this unanswerable conundrum she quenched the smouldering embers of her wrath. "I have no doubt, dear, that you did it all for the best, and I hate these vulgar pushing nobodies, who try to get hold of everyone of the least position quite as much as you do. So let us consider whom we ought to ask to meet ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... weaken or obscure the general design; and finally, whether, if we decide to use it, we should do so grossly and notably, or in some conventional disguise: are questions of plastic style continually rearising. And the sphinx that patrols the highways of executive art has no more unanswerable riddle ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... convicted together upon that evidence, and while one of the five was acknowledged by the crown to be innocent, and the whole conviction was thus acknowledged to be wrong and invalid, three of the five men were hanged upon that conviction. My friend, Mr. Sullivan, in his eloquent and unanswerable speech of yesterday, has so clearly demonstrated the facts of that unhappy and disgraceful affair of Manchester, that I shall merely say of it that I adopt every word he spoke upon the subject for mine, ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... It was impossible not to see it, forty-eight inches long and quarter-inch-wide buckskin. He began seeking for its mate, and found it on the floor where Marette Radisson had been standing. And again the unanswerable question pounded in Kent's brain—why had Kedsty's murderer used a tress of hair instead of a buckskin lace or one of the curtain cords ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... creak of pulley, or groaning of rope—merely that fleeting vision, seemingly a phantom of imagination, a vision born from sea and cloud. Yet I knew I was not deceived. Where the craft could be bound; for what secret purpose it was afloat; who were aboard, were but so many unanswerable questions arising in my mind. I stared vainly into the darkness, puzzled and uncertain, impressed alone by the one controlling thought, that some mysterious object, some hidden purpose alone could account for that swift, silent passage. Where could they have ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... is an example of unanswerable refutation. To show why a man has not one rib less than a woman, it is stated that imperfections are not hereditary; ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... exception, which, by a head not fully impregnated with politicks, is not easily comprehended, it is alleged, as an unanswerable reason, that the colonies send no representatives ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... philosophy of Rousseau and Rousseau's interpreter, Jefferson. When he undertakes to explain the rationale of government he is a young man, captivated by the current mode; when he reaches the immediate, practical duty he is an Englishman, speaking to the point, and lighting upon the one unanswerable demand of American political life at the time. In the earlier pages of his "Sketches" he lays down his Theory of Government, which is, in brief, that of the contrat social, but presented in a homely form, which brings it nearer to the actual life of men; he concludes his observation ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... Mentor. A war of pamphlets ensued between Mentor and Phocion. It was genius pitted against dulness, reason against passion; and reason wielded by genius won the day. The more intelligent and respectable citizens reluctantly admitted that Hamilton's arguments were unanswerable. A club of boon companions, to which Ledyard belonged, made the same admission by the peculiar manner in which it proposed to silence him. It was gravely proposed that the members of the club should pledge themselves one after another to challenge Hamilton to mortal combat, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... But, on this occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips to the old woman's ear, Mr. Dimmesdale, as the great enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul. The instilment thereof into her mind would probably have caused this aged sister to drop down dead, at once, as by the effect of an intensely poisonous infusion. What he really ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lady is not the first person who has dilated of late years upon the "decay of conversation," nor the only one who has sometimes felt the heaviness of silence descend upon her at a modern dinner. No doubt this same great and unanswerable question has been asked by many a traveller who, for the first time, has sat next an Englishman of good family (perhaps even with a handle to his name), who has answered all remarks by the proverbial but unsympathetic "Oh!" Indeed, it is to be feared that it is a fashion for ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... despotism in the place of that system of well-understood local self- government which the territorial policy offered as a preparation for restoration. The measure was analyzed and exposed with great ability by Henry J. Raymond, whose arguments were unanswered and unanswerable; but nothing could stay the prevailing impatience of Congress for speedy legislation looking to the early return of the rebel districts to their places in the Union. The bill was a legislative solecism. It ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... their eyes shut tight, and all these said: "We decline to look at the pages fairly and as a whole, because to look might seem to imply a doubt of what the tumblebug has decreed. Besides, as long as the tumblebug has reasons which he declines to reveal, his reasons stay unanswerable, and you are plainly a prurient rascal who are ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... Falling silent after this unanswerable proof of Mr. PENDRAGON'S guilt, Mr. SIMPSON mused upon as much of the dear old nutcracker as was not hidden by the vast charity stocking. In her ruffled cap, false front, and spectacles, she was so exactly the figure one might picture Mr. JOHN STUART MILL to be, after reading his latest literary ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... illogical and pander to false sentiment? Why not sink the Lusitania and set the waves afloat with the little corpses of children and the beauty of dead women? It is but one more incident of horror in a war which is all horror. Its logic is unanswerable in the Euclid of Hell. ... It is war, and when millions of men set out to kill each other, to strangle the enemy's industries, to ruin, starve, and annihilate him, so that the women may not breed more children, and ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... quite fair conditions, conditions under which it could be judged as an acting play and as a work of art. It is brilliantly clever, with a close, detective cleverness, all made up of merciless logic and unanswerable common sense. The principal characters are well drawn, the scenes are constructed with a great deal of theatrical skill, the dialogue is telling, the interest is held throughout. To say that the characters, without exception, are ugly in their vice and ugly in their virtue; that they all have, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... same time, what every one knew of his mother, coupled now with the mere idea of the Ghost's accusation, wrought in him such misery, roused in him so many torturing and unanswerable questions, so blotted the face of the universe and withered the heart of hope, that he could not but doubt whether, in such a world of rogues and false women, it was worth his while to slay one villain out of ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... the work to which you have already consecrated so much time, with the possibility of self-support. It appears from your letter to your brother that you see no one in Paris; the reason seems to me a sad one, but it is unanswerable, and since you cannot change it, you must change your place of abode and return to your own country. You have already seen in Paris all those persons whom you thought it essential to see; unless you are strangely mistaken in their good-will, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... dream survives to light us on the forward path. We must travel that path rightly. We can so travel whatever the enemy's mind. More difficult it will be, but it can be done. That is the great significance and justification of Nationalism: it is the unanswerable argument to cosmopolitanism. If the greatness and beauty of life that ought to be the dream of all nations is denied by all but one, that one may keep alive the dream within her own frontier till its fascination will arrest and inspire the world. If this ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... (studying the Declaration). Mr. Jefferson, I am delighted with your production. Your statements relative to the inalienable rights of men are unanswerable and to secure these rights, governments must be instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. This paragraph concerning negro slavery meets with my approval but I fear it will not meet with the approval of some of the Southern ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... thing for which, all my life, I had been prescribing as confidently as I would for a sprain. Medical men will understand me, and some others may, when I say that I experienced surprise to come face to face at last, and in this unanswerable personal way, with an invisible, intangible power of the soul and of the body, which could not ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... are surprised! and the next question you will ask will be, who succeeds? Truly that used to be a question the easiest in the world to be resolved upon change of ministers. It is now the most unanswerable. I can only tell you that all the atoms are dancing, and as atoms always do, I suppose. will range themselves into the most durable system imaginable. Beyond the past hour I know not a syllable; a good deal of' the preceding hours—a volume would not contain it. There is some notion ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... colonies was defended by Burke with splendid and unanswerable eloquence. He had been returned to the House of Commons for the pocket borough of Wendover, and his first speech (January 27, 1766) was felt to be the rising of a new light. For the space of a quarter of a century, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... statesmen. The Peers in the course of the trial had taken the opinion of the judges frequently, and had followed it in deciding on the admissibility of evidence, a great deal of which was important to the prosecution. The report maintained, and with apparently unanswerable force, that when a legislature sits on offenses against the State, it constitutes a grand inquest which makes its own rules of evidence; and is not and ought not to be tied up by the rules administered in the ordinary law courts, and formed for ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the details of this subject. It will be sufficient to draw attention to the different points of view from which the Eastern and the Western approach the subject of fiscal administration. The latter urges with unanswerable logic that financial equilibrium must be maintained, and that he cannot frame a trustworthy Budget unless he knows the amount he may count on receiving from direct taxes, especially from the land-tax. The Eastern replies that he knows nothing of either financial equilibrium ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... became Italian sovereigns, both in right and fact." On this very lucid and satisfactory account of the origin of the Papal power, S is convinced at once, and is finally dismissed shamefaced, with the unanswerable interrogation, "whether the real object of the Revolution is not to create new men, new nations, new reason, new humanity, and a ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... think the still small unanswerable voice of coins will make it impossible until the session is over (end of March); but for all that, I think I shall hold out jolly. I do not want you to come and bother yourself; indeed, it is still not quite certain whether my father will be quite fit for you, although I have now ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be unanswerable and conclusive, at least for the time being, and the silk was laid away. We sat talking until late bedtime, Hope and I, telling of our studies and of the many people we ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... 18. As a suitable text for this chronicle, as well as an unanswerable argument for its carrying out, combined with a sort of premium, I'm sending you to-day, freight paid, a barrel of lily-of-the-valley roots, all vigorous and with many next ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... of death or dismemberment at the week-end, they would settle the business and come to terms before the week was out. I heard that proposition put forward many times by young officers of ours, and as an argument against their own sacrifice they found it unanswerable. ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... by unanswerable logic knows that a fire which has burned him once will burn him again, or will burn another person, he knew that just as the form before him was, his form would be ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... crew saved the missionary party. So grievously do unjust laws demoralise contemporary opinion, that Fuller was constrained to meet the objections of many to the "illegality" of the missionaries' action by reasoning, unanswerable indeed, but not now required: "The apostles and primitive ministers were commanded to go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature; nor were they to stop for the permission of any power upon earth, but to go, and take the consequences. If a man of God, conscious of having ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... colleague had consented to die—thanks to several successive attacks of extremely persuasive apoplexy—the last of which proved unanswerable. I had been very little acquainted with him during his lifetime; but it seems that I became his friend the moment he was dead, for our colleagues assured me in a most serious manner, with deeply sympathetic countenances, that I should act as one of the pall-bearers, and deliver an ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... why let me go thither at all? He knows that it was his by the law of nations, for he made Mr. Harcourt a grant of part of it. If it be, as Gondomar says, the King of Spain's, then I had no more right to work a mine in it than to burn a town.' An argument which seems to me unanswerable. But, says James, and others with him, he was forbid to meddle with any country occupate or possessed by Spaniards. Southey, too, blames him severely for not having told James that the country was already settled by Spaniards. I can excuse Southey, but not James, for overlooking the broad fact that ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... The argument was unanswerable; and after a last wild gaze round, the little party gave way step by step, and were literally driven out by the tremendous heat, Fred's last look back being at the splendid staircase, now one raging mass of fire, which was spreading upward with ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... An unanswerable argument against disunion, and an earnest appeal to reason and lawful remedy, he followed by a most impressive declaration of peace and good-will: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow- countrymen, and not ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... their own number against a practical compromise to which the good sense of the majority of them assented. No reply was made to the pamphlet when first issued in 1698; and two or three years afterwards Defoe, exulting in the unanswerable logic of his position, reprinted it with a prefatory challenge to Mr. Howe, an eminent Dissenting minister. During the next reign, however, when a bill was introduced to prohibit the practice of occasional conformity, Defoe strenuously ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... Peter Anthony Bandini about 1540, "as a cultivated man or a good courtier who does not harbor some heretical opinions." Paul Sarpi, the eminent historian of Trent, reports that Luther's arguments were held to be unanswerable at Rome, but that he was resisted in order that authority might be uphold. For this statement he appeals to a diary of Francis Chieregato, an eminent ecclesiastic who died on December 6, 1539. As ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... discontented, the nation was torn into different factions, the grumblers or patriots insisting that the second princess was the eldest, and ought to be declared heiress apparent to the crown. Many pamphlets were written pro and con, but the ministerial party pretended that the chancellor's argument was unanswerable, who affirmed, that the second princess could not be the eldest, as no princess-royal ever had a Yorkshire accent. A few persons who were attached to the youngest princess, took advantage of this plea for whispering that her royal highness's ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole
... Which was an unanswerable argument. So with our bone knives we hacked off gobs of the still warm flesh, covered with ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... He hardly dared form the question. Only this stood clear and unanswerable in his mind: The yacht was in the monster's grip, and Ruth Allaire was there on board. Ruth Allaire, so smiling, so friendly, so lovable! Food for that horror from the depths.... He rowed with super-human strength to drive the heavy boat across the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... But, to say nothing of the extreme uncertainty which attends such remote speculation, and the utter impossibility of training men with no personal hopes to labor for the benefit of distant generations, there was one political argument against that course, which Mr. Gordon justly considers unanswerable. It is this: Turkey in Europe has been long tottering on its basis. Now, were the attempt delayed until Russia had displaced her and occupied her seat, Greece would then have received her liberty as a boon from the conqueror; and the construction would have been that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Withers, Mr. E. Jones, Dr. J. H. Gladstone, and many others. The whole matter is no longer a matter for argument; and the older I grow, the more I feel convinced that nothing vexes people so much, and hardens them in their unbelief and in their dogged resistance to reforms, as undeniable facts and unanswerable arguments. Reforms are carried by Time, and what generally prevails in the end, are not logical deductions, but some haphazard and frequently irrational motives. I do not say, therefore, with Dean Swift, that "there is a degree of corruption wherein some nations, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... against Ferris' brutal treatment, announced the policy of a united resistance, a joint appeal to Hugh Worthington, and the demand of an Investigation Committee of Directors. "We will wait for Mr. Worthington's vindication," said Wade, in an unanswerable tone. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... he ate with great care and discrimination, evidently looking for poison, embarrassed me in the usual fashion by asking how I write my books, where I get my plots, and all the rest of the questions that have become so hatefully unanswerable, ending up by blandly enquiring what I had written. This was made especially humiliating by the prefatory remark that he had lived in Washington for five years and had read everything ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Epicurus downwards.[147] Like all others of his school, Holbach has no perception nor sense of the necessity of an explanation how the mental world came to be what it is, nor how men came to think and believe what they do think and believe. He gives them what he deems unanswerable reasons for changing their convictions, but he never dreams of asking himself in what elements of human character the older convictions had their root, and from what fitness for the conduct of life they drew the current of their sap. Yet unless this aspect of things had ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... expenditure, but hitherto not the slightest explanation has been vouchsafed to the public, and we are, in common with five-sixths of the community, at present quite ignorant of the reasons given for this enormous expenditure: that there must be unanswerable reasons we have no doubt whatever, for have not the Council been unanimous to a man throughout. Not a single protest was entered. Not a single speech was publicly made against it. But more wonderful still, not a single ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... from immediate action by the American Executive to assert as they, best of all nations, could assert, now and at once in terms uncompromising, unanswerable, that the ground taken up by international consent in the past generation must be held now and hereafter, and accepted as an essential basis ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... seemed unanswerable; anyhow Mr. Taynton made no reply. Then, having excluded the splash of sunlight he ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... set himself against the Northern Jingoes, and though his motives may have been sectional, his arguments were really unanswerable. He pointed out that to fight England for Oregon at that moment would be to fight her under every conceivable disadvantage. An English army from India could be landed in Oregon in a few weeks. An American ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... and they were all for others, never for His own ends; and they were all for saving, never for destroying. Then, too, by this very taunt His claim to be the 'Saviour' is presupposed. And so, 'Physician, heal Thyself,' seemed to them an unanswerable missile to fling. If they had only known what made the 'cannot,' and seen that it was a 'will not,' they would have stood full in front of the great miracle of love which was before them unsuspected, and would have learned that the not saving Himself, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of man do not act very powerfully, as disturbing forces, in these decisions. The question, therefore, does not merely depend upon whether a man may be made to understand a distinct proposition or be convinced by an unanswerable argument. A truth may be brought home to his conviction as a rational being, though he may determine to act contrary to it, as a compound being. The cravings of hunger, the love of liquor, the desire of possessing a beautiful woman, will urge men to actions, of the ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... disputants and for the consumers. If disagreements terminating in strikes and lock-outs remained as numerous as they are at present, there would result both for the producer and consumer a condition of perilous and perhaps intolerable uncertitude. But this objection, although serious, is not unanswerable. The surest way in which a condition of possible warfare, founded on a genuine conflict of interest, can be permanently alleviated is to make its consequences increasingly dangerous. When the risks become very dangerous, reasonable men do not fight ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... should I breathe, whose breath was but a sigh? Why should I live, who drew such painful breath? Oh weary work, the unanswerable why!— Yet I, why should I die, Who had no hope in life, no ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... frauds which continue to be practiced upon the revenue by false invoices and undervaluations constitute an unanswerable reason for adopting specific instead of ad valorem duties in all cases where the nature of the commodity does not forbid it. A striking illustration of these frauds will be exhibited in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, showing the custom-house ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... write in favour of the pope, and a learned monk published a spirited and plausible treatise, which had many advocates. Wickliffe, irritated at seeing so bad a cause so well defended, opposed the monk, and did it in so masterly a way, that he was considered no longer as unanswerable. His suit at Rome was immediately determined against him; and nobody doubted but his opposition to the pope, at so critical a period, was the true cause of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... garbed in oilskins and sou'westers. They talked, too, by signaling to each other with their hands. Merry, Hodge, and Inza sat up until a late hour, going over and over again all the points of the day's experience, with the many conjectures and unanswerable questions ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... hope and believe) destined to do, is to renovate Liberalism, and though Liberalism (like every other party) is often conducted by claptrap, it has never been renovated by claptrap, but by great command of temper and the persistent exposition of persuasive and unanswerable truths. It is while we are in the desert that we have the vision: we being a minority, must be all philosophers: we must think for both parties in the State. It is no good our devoting ourselves to the flowers of mob oratory with no mob to address ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... which that increase was checked were removed, no considerable inconvenience would result from discontinuing the importation of African slaves. Burke, Pitt, and Fox supported the resolutions. Mr. Wilberforce's speech was distinguished by eloquence and earnestness, and by its unanswerable appeals to the first principles of justice and religion. The consideration of the subject was ultimately adjourned to the following session. In that, and in two subsequent sessions, the motions were renewed; and the effect of pressing such a subject upon the attention of the country was to open ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... of controversial writing. He had acknowledged his mistakes, but had restated his theory so as to show that it was left intact in spite of them; and he had even found cases in which Ziphius, Microps, Scrag Whale the explorer, and other Cetaceans of unanswerable authority, were decidedly at issue with Grampus. Especially a passage cited by this last from that greatest of fossils Megalosaurus was demonstrated by Merman to be capable of three different interpretations, all preferable to that chosen by Grampus, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... concurrence and approval filled the room at these bold words of Huanacocha, and every eye was at once turned upon Tiahuana to see what reply he would give to this apparently unanswerable objection. ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... the weight of a foot. It deranged the balance of our intercourse; there was no use in throwing a fly where a paving-stone had just splashed into the water, and I nodded a good-by to the boy-fighter, thinking how much pleasanter it was for my friend the Captain to address him with unanswerable arguments and crushing statements in his own tent than it would be to meet him upon some remote picket station and offer his fair proportions to the quick eye of a youngster who would draw a bead on him before he had time to say ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... he did not understand the difficulties he had to face. At first he was confronted, as by a stone wall, by the simple and unanswerable fact that the bird was not for sale at any price. And he went to bed that night raging with disappointment and baffled purpose. But in the course of his efforts and angry protestations he had let out a portion of his story—and this, as a matter of interest, was carried to the president ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... that 'knowledge is true opinion.' But how is false opinion possible? The Megarian or Eristic spirit within us revives the question, which has been already asked and indirectly answered in the Meno: 'How can a man be ignorant of that which he knows?' No answer is given to this not unanswerable question. The comparison of the mind to a block of wax, or to a decoy of birds, is ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... Porphyrius took a vain pleasure in their eager discussions, and clapped with delight, as though it were a game of skill, when Gorgo laughingly checkmated her excited opponent with some unanswerable argument. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... who, on his part, maintained his side of the argument with characteristic vehemence. He actually spent a whole day in the college library, making out a list of all the athletic divines in history since the creation of the world, the which he hurled triumphantly at his good relations' heads as an unanswerable challenge. But, however satisfactory it may have been to Jim, it failed to convince them, and neither party being disposed to give in, the feud in this ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... confession, his past life had not been such as to place him without the pale of her just affections; and there were frequent moments when, remembering that the death of her father had removed the only being who could assert an unanswerable claim to the dictation of her actions, she thought that Clifford, hearing her hand was utterly at her own disposal, might again appear, and again urge a suit which he felt so few circumstances could induce her to deny. All this half-acknowledged yet earnest train of reasoning and hope vanished ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unrivalled potteries, in exchange for their capital wines, would be found throughout France. The dinners of both nations would be improved: the English would gain a delightful beverage, and the French, for the first time in their lives, would dine off hot plates. An unanswerable instance of the ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... he is buying, we don't;" to which unanswerable argument Mr. Fairchild had nothing to say. And so they drove to a great book importers, and ordered the finest books and bindings that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... say something! You always show me things on which no other comment is possible but an exclamation, or you tell me things so unanswerable that there's nothing ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... coffee with a dogmatical air, as though his arguments were unanswerable, and shortly took his leave, after making us promise to breakfast with him the next day, and go and draw the money which was ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... matter to me. I admit, however, that I was converted to active partisanship by Mrs. Mosely. I have been more impressed by that dim little old woman than by all the arguments you, for example, ever made for suffrage. She was herself an unanswerable plea for the rights of women to live, for she had never really lived at all. She looked as if every mortgage held by her estate had been foreclosed at ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... great many years afterward the orator was the greatest of leaders. By the magic of his eloquence he changed the views of men and inspired them to deeds of valor. The fiery orations of a Demosthenes, of a Cicero; the thrilling words of a Peter the Hermit or a Savonarola; the unanswerable arguments of a Burke or a Webster, have more than once turned the course ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... at last. "I've asked myself the same question for years—and couldn't answer it. It's as big as the universe. Steve is simply an atom. It's unanswerable." ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... once more! It was very embarrassing. Here was a person who was asked to submit her case to the Church, and who frankly consents—offers to submit it to the very head of it. What more could any one require? How was one to answer such a formidably unanswerable ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain |
