"Unassailable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and public event of Lazarus's resurrection,—the circumstantial cross-examination of the man born blind and healed by Jesus,—made those two miracles, in Dr. Arnold's view, grand and unassailable bulwarks of Christianity. The more I considered them, the mightier their superiority seemed to those of the other gospels. They were wrought at Jerusalem, under the eyes of the rulers, who did their utmost to detect them, and could not; but in frenzied despair, plotted to kill Lazarus. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... in the room she could feel his hands again on her shoulders: a mysterious excitation.... She was a married woman. She had the right to discuss Florrie's case with aloof disdain, if she chose. Her respectability was unassailable. None might penetrate beyond the fact of her marriage. And yet, far within her, she was ashamed. She dimly admitted once more, as on several occasions previous to her marriage, that she had dishonoured an ideal. Her conscience would not chime with the conscience of society. She thought, as she prepared ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... penurious, dastardly, arrogant enemy; if he were gifted with one particle of the virtues you call his, he would do justly by us, if it were only to shew, that if he must strike, it should not be a fallen foe. His father injured my father—his father, unassailable on his throne, dared despise him who only stooped beneath himself, when he deigned to associate with the royal ingrate. We, descendants from the one and the other, must be enemies also. He shall find that I can feel my injuries; he shall learn ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... lapsed. Irresistibly, but so gradually as to be all but unconscious, the spirit of the prairie night—a sensation, a conception of infinite vastness, of unassailable serenity—stole over and took possession of the men. The ambitious and manifold artificial needs for which men barter their happiness, their sense of humanity, even life itself, seemed beyond belief out there alone with the stars, with the prairie ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... represented passing through the most ticklish and trying situations in which it is possible for female modesty to be placed,—disguised in male attire and sharing as men in the conversations of men; yet so unassailable is their modesty, that they give themselves, apparently, no trouble about it. And, framed as they are, all this may well be so: for indeed such is their fear of God, or, which comes to the same thing, their fear of doing wrong, that it casts out all other fears; and so their "virtue ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... my methods and redoubled my precautions, he was never deceived, his sagacity seemed never at fault, and he might have been pursuing his career of rapine to-day, but for an unfortunate alliance that proved his ruin and added his name to the long list of heroes who, unassailable when alone, have fallen through the indiscretion of ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Industrial Exhibition was ministering exultation to many a British heart by its wonderful display of the various wealth of our distant domains and their great industrial resources. We were even then tempted—as have been nations that are no more—to pride ourselves on having reached an unassailable height of grandeur. Since then our territory has expanded and our wealth increased; but with them have increased the evils and the dangers inseparable from great possessions, and the responsibilities involved ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... literature was his Natural Law in the Spiritual World, which had extraordinary popularity. The Ascent of Man was less successful. D. was a man of great personal fascination, and wrote in an interesting and suggestive manner, but his reasoning in his scientific works was by no means unassailable. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... loitering about the steps, or sneaking into the rear yard. But the answer was always no; these same noes growing more and more emphatic, and the gentleman more and more impenetrable and dignified as the examination went on. In fact, he was as unassailable a witness as I have ever heard testify before any jury. Beyond the fact already mentioned of his having observed a light in the opposite house on the two evenings in question, he admitted nothing. His life in the little cottage was so engrossing—he had his organ—his dog—why should ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... and crime, by the same ruling ambition, which had crushed the promise of his early youth! It was an awful testimony to the eternal and mysterious nature of thought, to behold that wasted and weakened frame; and then to observe how the unassailable mind within still swayed the wreck of body yet left to it—how faithfully the last exhausted resources of failing vigour rallied into action at its fierce command—how quickly, at its mocking voice, the sunken eye lightened again with a gleam of hope, and the pale, thin lips parted mechanically ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... assertion—unquestionably dogmatic—that exponents of materialism hold to be logically unassailable. To disprove it may not be an easy task at present; but I am, nevertheless, convinced there is a world apart from matter—a superphysical plane with which part of us, at least, is in some way connected, and I ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... time, when it came to me by a kind of spontaneous generation, as it seemed, having no connection with any previous train of thought that I was aware of. I consider the evidence of entire independence, apart from possible "telepathic" causation, completely water-proof, airtight, incombustible, and unassailable. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and unassailable as the laws of the world; he wished to give me peace for quiet work, and I also, he said, might be a chosen spirit, the divinity might perhaps vouchsafe revelations to me too. I was young at that time, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and ridicule for herself. So, this was the man for whom she had dressed herself three times, cunningly and provocatively? This was the man to whom she had come running with her heart held out in her hands,—her sane, sound, hitherto unassailable heart, twenty-eight years old,—when he required of her merely a service such as he might ask of any of his Settlement workers,—money from this one, work from that one, charm and ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... his name from the suavity of his countenance, the inveterate politeness of his language, and the unassailable composure of his manner. He was in the prime of life, but very bald—had been in the army and the coal trade—wore very stiff collars and prodigiously long wristbands—seldom laughed, but talked with remarkable glibness, ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... I fear. If he had merely planned the murder from here, he would certainly have accorded me the interview I asked for, so as to secure an unassailable alibi. But I can't help seeing that unless one of the accomplices confesses, which is highly unlikely, it will be next to impossible to bring it home to him. Poor little Kharrak Singh! I give you my word, Bob, I really was most uncommon fond of that little chap. He used to sit opposite ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... shortly after Early appeared on the 7th Street Road leading to the capital, the reenforcements which Grant had rushed forward reached the city, and before any attack on the intrenchments was attempted they were fully defended and practically unassailable. Seeing this, Early retreated with the Union troops following ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... to feed. And why offend a person on whom one was utterly dependent? That would not be bravery but temerity, a quality of which the citizens of Rouen could no longer be accused as in the days of those heroic defenses by which the city had made itself famous. Above all, they said, with the unassailable urbanity of the Frenchman, it was surely permissible to be on politely familiar terms in private, provided one held aloof from the foreign soldier in public. In the street, therefore, they ignored one another's existence, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... establishment." "The arguments pretended to be urged by the Roman Catholics, in this tract," says Monck Mason, "consist partly of true statements and partly of ironical allusions, which are combined together into such a trellis work, as to render it almost unassailable." ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... I am determined to find pleasure in it." Believe me that faith counts enormously in the development of that wide taste which is the instrument of wide pleasures. But it must be faith founded on unassailable authority. ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... presumptive evidence of her guilt. These circumstances, far beyond the realm of human volition, smelted and shaped in the rolling mills of destiny, form the tramway along which already the car of doom thunders; and when they shall have been fully proved to you, by unassailable testimony, no alternative remains but the verdict of guilty. Mournful as is the duty, and awfully solemn the necessity that leaves the issue of life and death in your hands, remember, gentlemen, Curran's immortal words: 'A juror's oath is the adamantine chain that binds the integrity ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... nevertheless, be still bound by the limits of thought, still unable to refute the arguments of pure idealism. The more completely the materialistic position is admitted, the easier is it to show that the idealistic position is unassailable, if the idealist confines himself within the limits ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... that which seems to have had the chief weight with Niebuhr, is the supposed identity or intimate connection of the Babylonians with the Assyrians. That the latter people were Semites has never been denied; and, indeed, it is a point supported by such an amount of evidence as renders it quite unassailable. If, therefore the primitive Babylonians were once proved to be a mere portion of the far greater Assyrian nation, locally and politically, but not ethnically separate from them, their Semitic character would thereupon be fully established. Now that this ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... haven't failed in a thousand in Vermont. You need not remind me that the white man has been there only two or three hundred years. My information comes straight from a very old Indian chief who was the depository of tribal recollections absolutely unassailable. The streams even in midsummer come down as full and cold as ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the scheme by means of which this result was to be accomplished. A whole month's clean-up had been made. If this reached the company safely, it would be a revelation to them. Firmstone's position would be unassailable, and henceforth Pierre would be compelled to content himself with the yield of the gambling and drinking at the Blue Goose. Whether the bullion ever found its way to the Blue Goose or not, the wrecking of ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... course, I ought to have known that you would at once be ready again with fine words. It is so convenient to be able to take shelter behind so unassailable a rampart, if at the same time it falls in ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... not be as mellow as Mario's," said Warner calmly, "but my technique is perfect. Music is chiefly an affair of mathematics, as everybody knows, or at least it is eighty per cent, the rest being voice, a mere gift of birth. So, as I am unassailable in mathematics, I'm a much better singer than the common and vulgar lot ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Merely to pander to the European's convenience; to differentiate the white man from brown or yellow, by placing him on the unassailable pedestal of a ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... enter into some sort of combination against them. We saved Austria, I am not sure that we did not save Russia. But England is different. The aristocracy here are a strong resident class. They have their House of Lords, they own the land, and will own it for many years to come, their position is unassailable. It is the worst country in Europe for us to work in. The very climate and the dispositions of the people are inimical to intrigue. It is Muriel Carey who brought the Society here. It was a mistake. The country is in no need of it. There is no scope ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... want to believe Jakdane was right, but his reasoning was unassailable. Looking upon Quest as an android, many things were explained: his great strength, his short, broad build, his immunity to injury, his refusal to defend himself against a human, his inability to return ...
— The Jupiter Weapon • Charles Louis Fontenay
... physical thing, stirring in his veins like the cool blood that follows the awakening from healthy sleep. The sight of all these friends of his, these followers of his, with their keen, sunburnt faces, or their wrinkled and wise ones—! Surely he occupied a position almost unassailable; almost as unassailable as that of the God of Force whose purposes of late had at times puzzled him in a new and disturbing way—. What nonsense! He gripped power as securely as he could grip, if he wished, his sword. What strength in heaven or earth could ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Church owes its power to the uniformity of precept and practice of the vast majority of its members, and it is precisely because this was the reverse in political Spain—where statesmen are divided into a dozen or more groups with distinct policies—that the Church was practically unassailable. In the same way, all the members of a Religious Order are so closely united that a quarrel with one of them brings the enmity and opposition of his whole community. The Progressists, therefore, who combated ecclesiastical preponderance in the Philippines, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... case of notorious, unassailable virtue. No one, among the most sceptical, most incredulous, would have been able, would have dared, to suspect Isidore of the slightest infraction of any law of morality. He had never been seen in a cafe, never been seen at night on the street. He went ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... your society, of course." Nick's benignity was unassailable, but there was a sharp edge to it somewhere of which Grange was uneasily aware. "Come along and ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... warfare had left France unassailable in Western Europe, and England in command of every sea. No Continental armies could any longer be raised by British subsidies: the navies of the Baltic, with which Bonaparte had hoped to meet England on the seas, lay at peace in their ports. Egypt was now the only arena ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of land necessary for the German people, or useful in the real sense of the word, could France or even Russia vacate for us in Europe? To be "unassailable"—to exchange the soul of a Viking for that of a New Yorker, that of the quick pike for that of the lazy carp whose fat back grows moss covered in a dangerless pond—that must never become the wish of a German. And for the securing of more comfortable frontier protection ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... which, at the secret instigation of the Viceroy, though without actual coercion, eventually threw out a tax so distasteful to its English patrons. But the argument for financial independence remained unassailable, and eventually the Irish Parliament itself summoned up the courage to adopt and act ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... various directions, seven Akshauhini of troops, bristling with banners of various forms. And eager to fight with the Kurus, they gladdened the hearts of the Pandavas. And in the same way king Bhagadatta, gladdening the heart of Dhritarashtra's son, gave an Akshauhini of troops to him. And the unassailable mass of his troops, crowded with Chins and Kiratas, all looking like figures of gold, assumed a beauty like to that of a forest of Karnikara trees. And so the valiant Bhurisravas, and Salya, O son of Kuru, came to Duryodhana, with an Akshauhini of troops each. And Kritavarman, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... This is the position in which instinct long ago taught Protestants to entrench themselves, and where alone they can hope to hold their ground: once established in these lines, they were safe and unassailable, unless it could be demonstrated that any fact or facts related in the Bible were ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... capricious perversity had recently astonished those who remembered her in her first season as a sweet, reasonable, and unspoiled girl, was always friendly with him. That must be looked upon as important, considering Sylvia's unassailable position, and her kinship to the autocratic old lady whose kindly ukase had for generations remained the undisputed law in the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... comptroller-general, after having unfolded his projects, "demands undoubtedly the most solemn examination and the most authentic sanction. It must be presented in the form most calculated. to place it beyond reach of any retardation and to acquire for it unassailable strength by uniting all the suffrages of the nation. Now, there is nothing but an assembly of notables that can fulfil this aim. It is the only means of preventing all parliamentary resistance, imposing silence on the clergy, and so clinching public ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... help his rage-tangled tongue and he managed to make himself very well understood. They did not argue the fine point of gastronomic ethics which he raised, though they felt that his position was not unassailable and his ultimate victory ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... Muravyof, the solicitor, consisted in getting fresh signatures from Lyoff Nikolaievich, whose great age made it desirable to make sure, without delay, of his wishes being carried out by means of a more unassailable legal document. Strakhof brought the draft of the will with him, and laid it before Lyoff Nikolaievich. After reading the paper through, he at once wrote under it that he agreed with its purport, and then added, after ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... vast and incomprehensible, to be handled with care, to be approached as a country which, though it shows an inscrutably smiling face to the modern world, has the power suddenly to baffle its modern rulers by opening to them glimpses of an intricate and unassailable life which cannot be ruffled by Orders in Council or disturbed by the weak ploughing of teachers from the West. The task of the Anglo-Indian administrator is, indeed, the finest opportunity for that heroic life to the celebration of which Mr Kipling has devoted ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... they whose palates have been accustomed to manna will have little taste for leeks and garlic. The mental and spiritual activity involved in the habitual exercise of Christian virtues will go far to make the soul unassailable by evil. A man, busily occupied, as the Apostle would have us to be, may be tempted by the devil, though less frequently the more he is thus occupied; but one who has no such occupations and interests tempts the devil. If our lives are inwardly and secretly honeycombed with ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... what I had in mind. To perversion too there is a limit. So—the fortifications are unassailable. If one ever does get out, I suppose it is—quite unexpectedly, ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... morning, he would say to-morrow and the next day, to any one who cared to listen, including the second-class reporters who go to underlings for information; Margaret's name was already coupled with that of a millionaire who was supposed to protect her. Ten days ago, she had been unassailable, a 'lady'—Lushington did not particularly like the word—a young English girl of honourable birth, protected by no less a personage than Mrs. Rushmore, and defended from calumny by that very powerful organisation for mutual defence ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... conducive to the truth That we should paint the enamourment of youth So bright, as if—ahem—it stood alone. Love-making still a frail foundation is. Only the snuggery of wedded bliss Provides a rock where Love may builded be In unassailable security. ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... barricaded in so brief a time, the entrance where the brook issued at the west. This pass must be forced, for the straight, uprising wall between the flames and across the opening to the north was something relatively unassailable. It was too narrow and too high and sheer and there were too many holes in the wall through which could be sent those piercing arrows which the Western cave men knew how to use so well. The battle must be up along the bed of the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... written the delightful name on every corner of my blotting-paper) honoured me with her hand, I brought this power to bear on her incessantly. Under all kinds of vexatious circumstances I have been witness of her unassailable good temper. I have seen her wear a new bonnet in a shower of rain. These clumsy hands of mine have spilled lobster-salad upon her dress. That little wretch of a brother of hers has pulled her back hair down. Her ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... slopes of the Pentlands only brought about a change of the Scottish front; and as Cromwell fell back baffled upon Dunbar, Leslie encamped upon the heights above the town, and cut off the English retreat along the coast by the seizure of Cockburnspath. His post was almost unassailable, while the soldiers of Cromwell were sick and starving; and their general had resolved on an embarkation of his forces when he saw in the dusk of evening signs of movement in the Scottish camp. Leslie's caution had at last been overpowered by the zeal of ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... were. The want of gun-boats and vessels of light draught was the chief ingredient in the elements of discomfiture which affected the allies. Throughout the year the allies hemmed in the Russian ships in their unassailable harbours of refuge, or as at Sweaborg, destroyed them by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... made. I regretted my conduct, which then struck me in the light of false delicacy, for if I had satisfied my desires and she chose to turn prude, I might have laughed her to scorn, and my position would have been unassailable. At last I determined on telling the husband that I would give him twenty-five louis if he could obtain me an interview in which I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... govern her territory something must be done. The Colonization Society while claiming for Liberia the right to exercise sovereign powers, seems to have had the unacknowledged conviction, that England's position, however ungenerous, was logically unassailable. The supreme authority wielded by the Society, its veto power over legislative action, was undoubtedly inconsistent with the idea of a sovereign state. This is clearly apparent from the fact that though there was pressing necessity for a treaty with England, neither the colony ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... dirty work—miserable, dirty work, the work of a hound and a cur! And the Rat's logic was unassailable. From Patsy Marles' maudlin babbling it was evident that Reddy Curley had bought Haines, his partner, out; that the price was fifteen thousand dollars; and that Grenville, acting for Haines obviously, had ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... head of an army of 30,000 foot and 7000 horse to advance into North Brabant and raise the siege. But the stadholder was prepared and ceaselessly on his guard; and the Spanish general, after several vain attempts, found the Dutch lines unassailable. With the view of compelling Frederick Henry to follow him, Berg now marched into the heart of the United Provinces, devastating as he went with fire and sword, took Amersfoort and threatened Amsterdam. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... always stood above the muck and ruck—clear and clean and unassailable. But this—this is too much! It is the spark. There is no forecasting what it may ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London
... other hand there is nothing so convenient as this theory, and many who have no other support cling fast to this anchor. The Bible is divine revelation, say they, therefore it is infallible and unassailable, and ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... object, but it answered no other purpose. Mrs. Lecount listened, without being imposed on by a single word the captain said to her. He merely confirmed her conviction of the hopelessness of taking Noel Vanstone into her confidence before she had facts to help her against Captain Wragge's otherwise unassailable position in the identity which he had assumed. She quietly waited until he had done, and then returned ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... me triumphantly. Behind his triumph was a hint of the vast resources and the slowmoving but unassailable force his uniform represented. It sounded as though he had been correct in his boast and something drastic indeed ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... this unassailable position of this misrule: "Ex-Governor Northen, of Georgia, in his address before the Congregational Club the other evening, declared that the status of the black race in the South was that of permanent dependence upon the white ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... faith against reason were, on the one hand, his personal piety, on the other, his conviction of the unassailable purity of Christian ethics. All the sects agree in regard to moral principles, and it is this which assures us of the divinity of the Christian revelation. Nevertheless, he does not conceal from himself the fact that possession of the theoretical side of religion is far from being ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... related he had begun to go out into Society. Indeed, starting from the Rossiters' Thursdays and Praed's studio suppers, he was being taken up by persons of influence who were pleased to find him witty, possessed of a charming voice, of quiet but unassailable manners. Opinions differed as to his good looks. Some women proclaimed him as adorable, rather Sphynx-like, you know, but quite fascinating with his well-marked eye-brows, his dark and curly lashes, the rich warm tints of his complexion, the unfathomable grey eyes ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... never alone, it appeared, for she was with him constantly, a vivifying principle. He had ensphered her in light; she was unassailable— his fly in amber. Ingram, Chevenix, all Wanless, might have daily converse with her, and one might grudge her her self-sufficiency, and another see her a pretty girl in a mess. To him she was a fairy in harness, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... a witness depends much upon his character; if that is impeached, then the testimony is discounted. Scrutinize carefully the character of the men who bore witness to the fact of Christ's resurrection. Impeach them if you can. They are unassailable on ethical grounds. "No honorable opponent of the Gospel has ever denied this fact. Their moral greatness awakened an Augustine, a Francis of Assisi, and a Luther. They have been the unrivalled pattern of all mature and moral ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... about as satisfying to talk to as a stump," she paid tribute to his unassailable calm. "There's four bits wasted," she sighed, "to say nothing of the trouble I had packing that candy to you—you ungrateful old devil." With which unladylike remark she dismissed him from her mind as a ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... I regard as unassailable Lord Sherbrooke's position that every deliberative body must possess the entire control of its own procedure, even to the point of saying how much speaking it will allow on each topic. The rough-and-ready method of coughing down a superfluous speaker is perfectly constitutional, because absolutely ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... her due. She assumed a perfectly unassailable attitude: we had her full permission to break off the match—if we could. "I refer you to your father. Pray understand that I don't wish to marry him, if his daughters object to it. He has only to say, 'Release me.' From ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... part of an enterprise which had been so far too easy. At the moment it was not obvious to him what he was to do. James was aware, that was plain; and James had a strong hand—if he knew that too, he had an unassailable hand. But did he? Urquhart thought not. He chuckled grimly to himself as he saw his complacent host taken at his word. He looked at his wrist. "Half-past three? D—— him, I'll ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... ago this theory of the constitution of Saturn's rings, though unassailable from a mathematical point of view, had never been confirmed by observation. The only astronomer who maintained that he had actually seen the rings rotate was W. Herschel, who watched the motion of some luminous points on the ring in 1789, at which time the plane ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... the two sisters in silence. In a moment the little girl of sixteen saw her castle in Spain, built and furnished with romantic hopes, a heap of ruins. She and Calyste had played together so much in childhood, she was so bound up with him, as it were, that she had quietly supposed her future unassailable; she arrived now, swept along by thoughtless happiness, like a circling bird darting down upon a wheat-field, and lo! she was stopped in her flight, unable to ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... her; he trusted her! Back to the old sheet-anchor flew her whirling thoughts. His faith in her was invincible, unassailable. It kept her safe. It sheltered her from every danger. It was her single safeguard in temptation; without it she would ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... for the unassailable dignity of grandmamma that she did not share the same fate. She, however, ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... new hotel, we had the roughest ride I have ever taken—a long distance to the outskirts in order to view some of the ruined forts—first, to East Keekwan, the name of a group of defence works. The main fort here was so well defended that it was considered unassailable from any direction; it was also very strongly protected. The assault began on the 18th of August; there was very stubborn resistance, and many attacks were necessary before General Stoessel, on January 1st, proposed to surrender. As the ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... are near a song publisher, the very best thing you can do is to fortify yourself with unassailable faith in your song and then make the publisher listen to you. If you have a song that shows any promise at all, the chances are that you will come out of the door an hour later with ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... New York, and Narragansett Bay, and with the line of the Hudson within their grip, it was in their power to isolate a large, perhaps decisive, part of the insurgent territory. New York and Narragansett Bay could have been made unassailable by a French fleet of that day, thus assuring the safety of the garrisons against attacks from the sea and minimizing the task of the navy; while the latter would find in them a secure refuge, in case an enemy's force eluded the ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... condemn him contrary to justice, he intended to appeal not to ultra-montane Rome, ignorant of the German language and the German character, but to the judgment of his own nation, to the decision of an independent government entitled to act in the case, and the rule should be the Holy Scriptures, an unassailable code of laws acknowledged by all. And thus the fundamental idea of the Reformed Church naturally arose, which in its development has been more clearly defined rather than corrupted,—limited rather than extended. To follow out and discuss this ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... her pride—and it was very great—had procured for her the respect and consideration which is bestowed, in the lorette quarters, upon a servant who honestly serves a virtuous mistress. She had become accustomed to respect and deference and attention. She stood apart from her comrades. Her unassailable probity, her conduct, as to which not a word could be said, her confidential relations with mademoiselle, which caused her mistress's honorable character to be reflected upon her, led the shopkeeper to treat her on a different footing from the other maids. They addressed her, cap in hand; ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... deaf to all, and even to the entreaties of beauty,—several ladies being likewise advocates for him; whether it was that the justice was past that age when love shoots his darts with most success, or whether his heart was always made of that unmalleable stuff which is quite unassailable by love, or by his cousin-german, pity, we ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... chosen retreat. Beetle christened it the Pleasant Isle of Aves, for the peace and the shelter of it; and here, the pipes and tobacco once cache'd in a convenient ledge an arm's length down the cliff, their position was legally unassailable. ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... long and steadily as to prove that his large grey, ox-like eyes were not quite so insignificant as the rest of his face. When silence had fallen he said with marked respect: "Mr. Bohun, yours is the only theory yet propounded which holds water every way and is essentially unassailable. I think, therefore, that you deserve to be told, on my positive knowledge, that it is not the true one." And with that the old little man walked away and stared ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Indra, the overcomer, the destroyer, the munificent, the invincible, the all-endowing, the creator, the all-adorable, the sustainer, the unassailable, the ever-victorious!" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... you are now repossessed of the property, and as you have the outward semblance of Heaton, your rights cannot be questioned. As far as property is concerned you are now in an unassailable position where formerly you were in an assailable ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... and the supplementary mails shipped than the word went quietly round among the officers that the "Old Man" was bent upon breaking the best previous record for the run across the herring pond and setting up a new one unassailable by any other craft than the Everest herself. And certainly when, as the liner passed Daunt Rock lightship shortly after nine o'clock on the Sunday morning following her departure from Liverpool, and ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... was seized with convulsion fits. When he called to family devotion she would whistle, and sing, and scream, and pretend to try to strike and kick him; but her blows would be stopt before reaching his body, indicating that he was unassailable by the Evil One. Mather published an account of these transactions,[3] with a collection of other appropriate matter. The treatise circulated not only in Massachusetts, but widely also in England, where it obtained the warm commendation of Richard ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... catechismal truth, which strong feeling might force to surrender, but reasoning, never. It is their weakness, and at the same time their strength. In consequence of this their power of reasoning is weaker than man's, but their saintliness in certain conditions becomes unassailable. The devil can lead a woman astray only when he inspires her with love; by way of reasoning he can do nothing, even if for once he has the ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... one may read in all histories. The perplexed King asked Joan for a sign. He wanted to believe in her and her mission, and that her Voices were supernatural and endowed with knowledge hidden from mortals, but how could he do this unless these Voices could prove their claim in some absolutely unassailable way? It was ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... the truth of all that has been said, that, namely, the inference from a given existence (my own, for example) to the existence of an unconditioned and necessary being is valid and unassailable; that, in the second place, we must consider a being which contains all reality, and consequently all the conditions of other things, to be absolutely unconditioned; and admitting too, that we have thus discovered the conception of a thing to ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... overdone to the provincial. He thought that there was something affected, studied in them, and at the same time he fancied that he noticed in the thanks she expressed to her husband in a low tone a dread, a submissiveness derogatory to the dignity of a lawful wife, happy and proud in an unassailable position. "Why, society is a hideous thing!" said de Gery to himself in dismay, his hands as cold as ice. The smiles that encompassed him seemed to him like mere grimacing. He was ashamed and disgusted. Then suddenly his soul rose in revolt: ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... partly mischievous, working. But he felt, as all deep minds must feel, that it is easier to overthrow the Roman theory of Church authority than to replace it by another, equally complete and commanding, and more unassailable. He was quite alive to the difficulties of the Anglican position; but he was a disciple in the school of Bishop Butler, and had learned as a first principle to recognise the limitations of human knowledge, and the unphilosophical folly of trying to round off into finished ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... in state, controlling the moods of the Elect and Select which she chooses to call "society," Innocent was invited to the house of a well-known Duchess, renowned for a handsome personality, and also for an unassailable position, notwithstanding certain sinister rumours. People said—people are always saying something!—that her morals were easy-going, but everyone agreed that her taste was unimpeachable. She—this great lady whose rank permitted her to entertain ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... reviews than I have noticed; which, though entirely dissenting, are unassailable on their own principles. What I have given represents five-sixths of the whole. But it must be confessed that the fraction of fairness and moderation and suspended opinion which the doctrine of Spirit Manifestations has met with—even in the lower ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... is too deeply rooted ever to be uprooted; reason will ever remain powerless to harm it. Very seldom, if ever, has a man committed suicide for purely intellectual reasons. It nearly always takes the form of a sudden paroxysm of mind. The will to live is an almost unassailable fortress, and it ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... not, as it has been asserted with dull pertinacity, an endeavour to put sentiment in the place of science; but it contains the exposure of what insolently pretended to be a science; and the definition, hitherto unassailed—and I do not fear to assert, unassailable—of the material elements with which political economy has to deal, and the moral principles in which it consists; being not itself a science, but "a system of conduct founded on the sciences, and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... retired before Metellus, and had encamped near the hill, they despised him as being beaten, on which Sertorius, whether in passion or not wishing to appear to be flying from the enemy, at daybreak rode up to the place and examined it. But he found the mountain unassailable on all sides; and while he was perplexing himself to no purpose and uttering idle threats, he saw a great quantity of dust from this light earth carried by the wind against the barbarians; for the caves ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... no such offerings do I aspire. Tyrian maidens are wont ever to wear the quiver, to tie the purple buskin high above their ankle. Punic is the realm thou seest, Tyrian the people, and the city of Agenor's kin; but their borders are Libyan, a race unassailable in war. Dido sways the sceptre, who flying her brother set sail from the Tyrian town. Long is the tale of crime, long and intricate; but I will briefly follow its argument. Her husband was Sychaeus, wealthiest in lands of the Phoenicians, and loved of her ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable. 12. There are five dangerous faults which may affect a general: (1) Recklessness, which ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... the river from Staward Peel, but Dicky dwelt generally at the latter place—in former days an almost unassailable stronghold, standing on a bold eminence overlooking Allen Water, some miles to the east of Haltwhistle. Here of old, when beacon-fires blazed on the hill-tops, "each with warlike tidings fraught," flashing their warning of coming trouble ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... treaty aside; and for himself there was a degree of obligation to help France when she came to open hostilities with England; while Henry's instructions to West are hardly consistent with a character for stainless and unassailable honour. [Footnote: Cf. Lang, Hist. Scot., i., p.375; commenting on Brewer, Henry VIII., ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... already advancing upon the third, when Dumourier, with only twenty-five thousand men, threw himself into this line, and by a well-conducted war of positions, placing his raw and unsteady forces behind unassailable intrenchments, succeeded in repelling a disciplined army nearly four times as numerous as his own. Had no other obstacle than the French troops been interposed between Paris and the Prussians, all agree that France ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... indeed, but nothing is more unfair says a great French critic than to judge notable minds solely by their defects, and in spite of them Pope's position is so unassailable that the critic must take a contracted view of the poet's art who questions his right to ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... is taught during earliest childhood the principles of the manufacture of atmosphere, but only two at one time ever hold the secret of ingress to the great building, which, built as it is with walls a hundred and fifty feet thick, is absolutely unassailable, even the roof being guarded from assault by air craft by a glass covering ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... little seamstress; for though she had long since given up all hope of welcoming back Liz in the guise of a great lady, who had risen to eminence by dint of her own honest striving, she only knew to-night, when the last vestige of her hope had been wrested from her, how absolute and unassailable had been her faith in her friend's honour. And now she knew intuitively the very worst. It needed no sad story from Liz to convince the little seamstress that she had tried the way of transgressors, and found it hard. Mingling with her intense sorrow over Liz was another ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... have been to me, even if I receive your help, to have stood in need of it: if I escape safely, to have trembled for myself; if I be acquitted, to have had to plead my cause. To escape from fear, however great it may be, can never be so pleasant as to live in sound unassailable safety. Pray that you may return my kindnesses when I need their return, but do not pray that I may need them. You would have done what you prayed for, had it been in ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... general opinion seemed to be, that it was all a deep-laid scheme of some irresponsible man in authority, the end whereof was to be suffering in some shape or other to the good people of Nikolsk; until the inspector of the hospital, the Nikolsk Socrates, proved clearly, by unassailable argumentation, that Tchitchikof was mad; that his exit was in exact keeping with his conduct during his sojourn; and that they might repose in the peace of easy consciences, proud that they had made the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... P-R4 Black would play P-R3, and it is not evident how White is to win. But 29. ... P-KKt4 is parried by PxP e.p. The difference in the pawn positions, which decides the issue for White, is found in the fact that the White passed pawn at Q5 is unassailable because the support of the BP cannot be taken away by Black's P-Kt3, whilst Black's passed pawn at his B3 can be isolated at any time through P-R4-R5. White would take up a position on the Knight's file with the King, ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker
... shook his head with an air of much sagacity, a method of expressing an opinion which is eminently unassailable. Paul Burns condescended on reasons for his belief—which, like Olly's, ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... which she offends when she resorts to physical violence is not an ordinance of man; it is not written in the statutes of any State; it has not been enunciated by any human law-giver. It belongs to those unwritten, and unassailable, and irreversible commandments of religion, [Greek 1], which we suddenly and mysteriously become aware of when we see ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright |
