"Unlikelihood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gulf between them—between a beautiful American heiress with the entry into all circles of aristocratic society, except the highest, and an only decently pecunious medical student, caught both of them off their guard. The utter unlikelihood of anything coming of such an acquaintance as theirs, was just the ambush needed to make it possible for them to fall in love. They would, probably, have attracted each other anywhere. But, in a city like Vienna, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... renewal from the pope of certain immunities and indulgences for the town of Boston; a story which derives some kind of credibility from its connection with Lincolnshire, but is full of incoherence and unlikelihood. Following still the popular legend, we find him in the autumn of 1515 a ragged stripling at the door of Frescobaldi's banking-house in Florence, begging for help. Frescobaldi had an establishment in London,[583] with a large connection there; and seeing an English face, and seemingly ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... people who had effected their escape from the craft during the darkness, they having perhaps set fire to the bush in the hope of involving the prizes and ourselves in the ensuing destruction; but a little reflection revealed the unlikelihood of this, the vegetation not only being saturated with the rain that had fallen during the night, but also being so green and full of sap that it would probably prove impossible to fire it. We had just reached this conclusion when Ryan and his party appeared returning, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... of suggestions. They were sober expressions of opinion, based on years of experience. Not once did he reject the possibility of cure, though with several patients suffering from organic disease in an advanced stage, he admitted its unlikelihood. To these he promised, however, a cessation of pain, an improvement of morale, and at least a retardment of the progress of the disease. "Meanwhile," he added, "the limits of the power of autosuggestion are not yet known; final recovery ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... question Lola's mind sharply reverted to the distressing scene which had by a moment preceded her neighbor's summons. There had been in Jane's words a broken, yet oddly definite, assertion of impending poverty. She had spoken of the unlikelihood of another year in Pueblo for Lola, and the girl for the first time began to realize this fact with a sinking of the heart. Her voice had a tremor as she said hesitatingly, "I'm afraid I can't go ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... Then look at the instrument with which the murder was accomplished,—a needle. Is it in any way likely that the Marchese Ludovico should habitually carry such a thing about with him? Is there any unlikelihood that the girl may have had such a thing about her; Amico mio Pietro," said the lawyer, in conclusion, tapping his fingers on the Commissary's coat-sleeve as he spoke, "that Venetian girl is the murderess! The deed was done under ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... "I have always," Sir George Airy wrote,[217] "considered the correctness of a distant mathematical result to be a subject rather of moral than of mathematical evidence." And that actually before him seemed, from its very novelty, to incur a suspicion of unlikelihood. No problem in planetary disturbance had heretofore been attacked, so to speak, from the rear. The inverse method was untried, and might well be deemed impracticable. For the difficulty of determining the perturbations produced by a given planet is small compared ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... fearlessly declared this unprejudiced person (who, although entitled by hereditary right to carry a banner on the field of battle, with patriotic self-effacement preferred to remain at home and encourage those who were fighting by pointing out their inadequacy to the task and the extreme unlikelihood of their ever accomplishing it), "and in order to achieve our purpose speedily it is necessary to resort to the methods of barbarism." The most effective measure, as he proceeded to explain with well-thought-out ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... only daughter of its richest citizen. But the bold, luxuriant quality of her beauty, the original and piquant freedom of her manners, the stories told in gossip about her lawlessness at home, her intellectual attainments, and artistic vagaries—these were even more exciting. The unlikelihood of her marrying any one—at least any Octavian—was felt to add a certain romantic zest to the image she made on the local perceptions. There was no visible young Irishman at all approaching the social and financial standard of the Maddens; it was taken for granted that a mixed marriage was quite ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... to his persecutor; who, as soon as the line was as nearly completed as it ever would be, would come down on horseback with some diabolical device for waking the slumberer. I will confess there is a subtle seeming of unlikelihood about all this; but in the land where Ponce de Leon searched for the Fountain of Youth there is an air of unreality in everything. I can only say I have had the story by me a long time, and it seems to me just as true as it was the ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... having a shade more of plausibility than of unlikelihood. The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... bank, field and line officers labored to calm their men and restore organization. It was in vain that they pointed out that there had been no pursuit thus far, and the unlikelihood of there being one. When did Panic yield to Reason? In those demoralized ears the thunder of the cannon at Wildcat, the crash of the bursting shells, and the deadly whistle of bullets still rang louder than any words officers ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... the hotel he heard with satisfaction that Henshaw had gone off by the late afternoon train and had suggested the unlikelihood of his returning. "So I suppose he is content to let the mystery remain a mystery," the landlord remarked. And the Coroner's jury subsequently had perforce to come to the ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... fracas. Low-Lowers, the dregs of society, seldom employed and then at the rapidly disappearing, all but extinct, unskilled labor jobs. Low-Lowers, most of them probably in this fracas in hopes of the unlikelihood of so distinguishing themselves that they would be jumped a caste, or at least acquire an extra share or two of common stock to better the basic living guaranteed by the State. Rank Privates, most in their first fracas, unknowledgeable about taking cover and ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds |
