"Defensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... made the blood-avenger a murderer, instead of a hero as he had been. Moreover, the foundations of a university were laid in the town of Corte, which was the hearthstone of the liberals because it was the natural capital of the west slope, connected by difficult and defensible paths with every cape and bay and intervale of the rocky and broken coast. The Genoese were gradually driven from the interior, and finally they occupied but three ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... if our boats were crippled, they would drop back with the current and escape capture. But a still greater advantage would be its tendency to cut the enemy's lines in two, by reaching the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, threatening Memphis, which lies one hundred miles due west, and no defensible point between; also Nashville, only ninety miles north-east, and Florence and Tuscumbia in North Alabama, forty miles east. A movement in this direction would do more to relieve our friends in Kentucky, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... between efficiently organized nations tend to obtain just this character. They are fought for a defensible purpose, and they accomplish a definite result. The penalties of defeat are so disastrous that warfare is no longer wantonly incurred; and it will not be provoked at all by nations, such as Italy or France, who have less ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... philosophical honesty of the Mutakallimun. Epicurus too, he says, believed in the atomic theory, though he regarded the world as eternal. Hence there is no necessary connection between atoms and creation.[363] The atomic theory is defensible on its own merits, and the motives of the Mutakallimun in adopting it are purely scientific, as follows: According to the Mutakallimun there are only body or substance and its accidents or qualities. This is the constitution of material objects. There are, however, two kinds of qualities or attributes, ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... you to observe the utmost silence on this point, as it may lead me into an awkward situation; for I have acted solely on my own responsibility, and without orders; the causes and reasoning on which, upon general principles, may be defensible, but as applying to our own country, may not be borne out, the old mercantile interest being ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... Normandy reached Paris, Phillip despatched the Count d'Eu, Constable of France, with the Count of Tankerville and 600 men-at-arms, to oppose Edward at Caen. The Bishop of Bayeux had thrown himself into that city, which was already garrisoned by 300 Genoese. The town was not defensible, and the only chance of resistance was by opposing the passage of the river Horn, which flowed between the suburbs and the city. The bridge was barricaded, strong wooden towers were erected, and such was the confidence of the inhabitants and their leaders that Edward's ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... all, can only be one function—that of dealing with the subconscious part of the author's mind which only the critic can express, and not with the conscious part of the author's mind, which the author himself can express. Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the lodge, moved in much of the wood where it would be more convenient for Suzanne, cleaned and polished the guns and revolvers in the little armory, inspected the limousine and put it in perfect order, and did everything else that he could think of to make their mountain castle luxurious and defensible. ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... later Hellas was startled to hear that Tempe had been evacuated without a blow, and the pass left open to Xerxes. It was said Democrates, in his ever commendable activity, had discovered at the last moment the mountain wall was not as defensible as hoped, and any resistance would have been disastrous. Therefore, whilst the retreat was bewailed, everybody praised the foresight of the orator. Everybody—one should say, except two, Bias and Phormio. They had many conferences together, especially after ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the Troaedes was produced, Athens, now entirely in the hands of the War Party, had been engaged in an enterprise which, though on military grounds defensible, was bitterly resented by the more humane minority, and has been selected by Thucydides as the great crucial crime of the war. She had succeeded in compelling the neutral Dorian island of Melos to take up arms against her, and after ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... so plainly contradictory of the most obvious Dictates of common Sense; that Religion (for the which they never think of looking beyond these Systems) appears to them indeed a thing not Built upon, or defensible by Reason: In consequence of which Opinion, the weakest attaques made against it, must needs render such Persons (at the least) wavering in their Belief of it; Whence those Precepts of Vertue, which they have receiv'd as bottom'd thereon, are, in a Time wherein ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... god of their idolatry, their style is the style of the Surrey Theatre, and we are sorry to see that that disregard of the rights of property which always characterises the able-bodied vagrant is extended by our tramps from the defensible pilfering from hen-roosts to the indefensible pilfering from poets. When we read ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... of the peninsula necessarily indicated the eastern, or Coromandel, coast as the scene of operations. Trincomalee, in the adjacent island of Ceylon, though unhealthy, offered an excellent and defensible harbor, and thus acquired first-rate strategic importance, all the other anchorages on the coast being mere open roadsteads. From this circumstance the trade-winds, or monsoons, in this region also had strategic bearing. From ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... characteristic and easily definable. If it is not quite defensible on the strictest principles of plain speaking, it is also certain that we could not condemn him without condemning many of the best and most catholic-spirited of men. The dogmatic system in which he had presumably been educated had softened under the influence of the cultivated ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... thoroughfare, leading as it did in old times to the ford, and afterwards to the bridge and the Abbot's mill beside it. Here were the oldest inns; and though all the house-fronts have been sadly modernised, either by the insertion of huge plateglass windows or in some less defensible manner, yet the eye still passes with pleasure from house to house, and the effect of the irregularity, heightened by the contrast of light and shade, ...
— Evesham • Edmund H. New
... this you took your sudden journey. Under pretence of business indispensable With that sublime of rascals your attorney, Whom I see standing there, and looking sensible Of having play'd the fool? though both I spurn, he Deserves the worst, his conduct 's less defensible, Because, no doubt, 't was for his dirty fee, And not from any love ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... among the moderns, may be said to choose imperfect rimes deliberately, both as a fresh means of securing variety and avoiding the monotony of hackneyed rimes, and also as a means of subtly suggesting the imperfection and futility of life. A few famous examples, defensible and indefensible, are: Wordsworth's robin: sobbing, sullen: pulling; Tennyson's with her: together, valleys: lilies; Keats's youths: soothe, pulse: culls; Swinburne's lose him: bosom: blossom. Keats and Rossetti are noted for their free use of approximate ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... with the riding-rod which he carried in his hand, after the manner of a half-bred man who affects ease in the society of his betters, he delivered his unasked opinion as follows:—"This house of yours, now, Sir Duncan, is a very pretty defensible sort of a tenement, and yet it is hardly such as a cavaliero of honour would expect to maintain his credit by holding out for many days. For, Sir Duncan, if it pleases you to notice, your house is overcrowed, and slighted, or commanded, as we military men say, by yonder round ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... as this would in a way be defensible. Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life, so why not say that any total reaction upon life is a religion? Total reactions are different from casual reactions, and total attitudes are different from usual or professional attitudes. To get at them you must go behind ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... swallowed. It is not of course a case necessarily of want of scholarship, or want of ear, for there are few better scholars or poets than Mr Robert Bridges, who, though not a mere Guestite, holds theories of prosody which seem to me even less defensible than Guest's. But it is, I think, a case of rather misguided patriotism, which thinks it necessary to invent an English prosody for ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... It is permissible to present men as monsters if we wish to make the reader jump; and to make anybody jump is always a Christian act. But it is not permissible to present men as regarding themselves as monsters, or as making themselves jump. To summarize, our slum fiction is quite defensible as aesthetic fiction; it is not ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... of being allowed to poison the infants and women in his own family. What would be said of a man who introduced poison in any degree into the food or drink of his child? Is the poisoning of the household atmosphere by the ignorant, thoughtless, or selfish smoker morally more defensible? Tobacco injures health through hereditary influence. The tobacco user begets, more certainly than the non-user, puny children with disordered nervous conditions. Luckily for our race, the women, who have the most important prenatal influence in guarding its physical well-being, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... for one, regret that (if you are going to have an aristocracy) it did not remain a logical one founded on the science of heraldry; a thing asserting and defending the quite defensible theory that physical genealogy is the test; instead of being, as it is now, a mere machine of Eton and Oxford for varnishing anybody rich enough with one ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... and execute the will of his master, that submission and surrender of his will should be absolute, and without the least reserve or limitation. Perfect obedience is a beautiful fulfilment of duty, and defensible on the grounds of common-sense; for as no one can serve two masters—that is, in the performance of any particular duty—so no man can both obey his own inclination and submit himself to his master's will in the performance ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... experience in our thought and life and action, has realized a tradition of the memory into a conviction of the understanding and the soul. It will not do for the Republicans to confine themselves to the mere political argument, for the matter then becomes one of expediency, with two defensible sides to it; they must go deeper, to the radical question of right and wrong, or they surrender the chief advantage of their position. What Spinoza says of laws is equally true of party platforms,—that ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... labors of the day. With all this the fort was not completed until the supplies grew so short that further delay in obtaining more could not be thought of. By the latter part of April the work was in a partially defensible condition, and the 7th infantry, Major Jacob Brown commanding, was marched in to garrison it, with some few pieces of artillery. All the supplies on hand, with the exception of enough to carry the rest of the army to Point Isabel, ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... ineptitudes inherent in this institutional scheme of civilised life. This count comes under the head of what may be called capitalistic sabotage. "Sabotage" is employed to designate a wilful retardation, interruption or obstruction of industry by peaceable, and ordinarily by legally defensible, measures. In its present application, particularly, there is no design to let the term denote or insinuate a recourse to any expedients or any line of conduct that is in any degree legally dubious, or that ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... encroachment; between domination and defence: the former being equally condemnable, whether it be encroachment of a criminal upon an individual, or the encroachment of one upon all others, or of all others upon one; while resistance to encroachment is defensible and necessary. For their self-defence, both the citizen and the group have the right to any violence, including capital punishment. Violence is also justified for enforcing the duty of keeping an agreement. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the smallest degree abrogate, alter, or lessen any one duty of any one relation of life, or weaken the force or obligation of any one engagement or contract whatsoever. Despotism, if it means anything that is at all defensible, means a mode of government bound by no written rules, and coerced by no controlling magistracies or well-settled orders in the state. But if it has no written law, it neither does nor can cancel the primeval, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... we may perceive how much more defensible the new doctrine is than the old one. Even could the supporters of the Development Hypothesis merely show that the origination of species by the process of modification is conceivable, they would be in a better position than their opponents. But they can do much more than this. ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... strain of the war. It was this finance that, continuing the work begun by Peel, made the country in 1859 richer by more than sixteen per cent, than it had been in 1853. It was this finance, that by clinching the open questions that enveloped the income-tax, and setting it upon a defensible foundation while it lasted, bore us through the struggle. Unluckily, in demonstrating the perils of meddling with the structure of the tax, in showing its power and simplicity, the chancellor was at the same time providing ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... time Arab Aristotelianism, with its consequences for thought and life, was filtering into Europe and forcing Christian thinkers to defend the bases of their faith. Since these, so far as defensible at all, depended upon the Platonic doctrine of universals, and this could be maintained only by dialectic, this science became extremely popular,—indeed, almost the rage. Little of the real Aristotle was at that time known in ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... by being down there together in spite of him, it was he who had engineered that triumph by striving in vain to prevent her from going there, whereas if he had approved of her plan, which for that matter was quite defensible, she would have had the appearance of being there by his counsel, she would have felt herself sent there, housed there by him, and for the pleasure which she derived from entertaining those people who had so often entertained her, it was to him that she would have had ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... often defensible and sometimes even desirable. If the trees are growing too rapidly, they may be "slowed down" by seeding to grass for a time; and pasturing with hogs, and possibly with sheep, may afford a way of keeping the area in condition and of adding fertilizer. Sheep that do not have access to drinking-water ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... uncouth. Murray, it seems, found none for his Exercises, but made up a couple to suit his purpose. The following might have answered as well for an other: "Monsieur D'acier observes, that Zeno's (the Founder of the Sect,) opinion was Fair and Defensible in these ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... enemies of an equal degree of civilization. It was a war of a general with a small escort, but literally without an army, against able officers with thousands of disciplined troops and numerous defensible towns and positions, against enormous difficulties of country, against want and fatigue in every shape, and ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... the highest rank as well as by the general mass of the community; and every Government that pretended to adhere to the Treaty of 1852 was denounced as recreant to the cause of Germany. In this state of affairs the Governments of Austria and of Prussia took a somewhat singular and not very defensible course. In the beginning they declared in the Diet that, having a majority in favour of this declaration, they would proceed to Federal Execution—thereby, to all appearance, making the present King of Denmark responsible for that which was done by the late King, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... journey, Under pretence of business indispensable With that sublime of rascals your attorney, Whom I see standing there, and looking sensible Of having played the fool? though both I spurn, he Deserves the worst, his conduct's less defensible, Because, no doubt, 't was for his dirty fee, And not from any ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... were killed or rendered useless; the others were "corralled" under the bank, where, in a deep bend, they were safe except from long-range fire. Ray's men on the island had improved their advantage by seizing defensible positions on the north bank, and, as against two hundred and fifty Indians, with two days' rations left, with abundant water to be had by digging in the sand, with pluck and spirit left for anything, they were not badly off, provided the Indians were not heavily reinforced ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... of Bourmont's going, whereas he thought it an objectionable nomination, because he had formerly deserted from the Portuguese service.[6] He had never had any communication with these agents, and did not believe Aberdeen had had any either: he said Lisbon was more defensible than Oporto, but required more men. Talking of Miguel, the Duke related that he was at Strathfieldsaye with Palmella, where in the library they were settling the oath that Miguel should take, Miguel would pay no attention, and instead of going into the business and saying ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... a fringe of population was strung out on the southern border, could not but feel that some attempt to add a second storey to the structure, to give breadth as well as length, was a national necessity. Perhaps least defensible was the Quebec-Moncton section; true, it was essential, if freight was to reach the Maritime ports, that a shorter line with better grades than those of the Intercolonial should be secured if possible. Grades were bettered in the lines secured, but the saving in distance was not as great as ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... not ultimately the most defensible, hypothesis to adopt in the first instance, at any rate as regards visual sense-data, would be that, though physical objects cannot, for the reasons we have been considering, be exactly like sense-data, yet they may be more or less like. ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... conforming to the typical pueblo arrangement. The numerous exceptions to this arrangement seen in Tusayan are due to local causes. The general view of Mashongnavi given in Pl. XXVII shows that the site of this pueblo, as well as that of its neighbor, Shupaulovi, was not particularly defensible, and that this fact would have weight in securing adherence in the first portion of the pueblo built to the defensive inclosed court containing the ceremonial chamber. The plan strongly indicates that the other courts of ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... undiscriminating epithet. I use it here. The Dixville Notch is, briefly, picturesque,—a fine gorge between a crumbling conical crag and a scarped precipice,—a pass easily defensible, except at the season when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... You cannot have a dense population in Sahara; and you can hardly fail to have one in the fruitful valley of the Nile. The growth of towns in one district rather than another must be governed largely by the existence of rivers or harbours, of coal or metals, of agricultural lowlands or defensible heights. Glasgow could not spring up in inland Leicestershire, nor Manchester in coalless Norfolk. Insular England must naturally be the greatest shipping country in Europe; while no large foreign trade is possible in any Bohemia ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... acquired. In China it has sometimes been the custom thus to acquire smallpox. Such methods are decidedly heroic, and of course to be heartily condemned. But the principle that a mild type of the disease conveys protection has been made use of in a more logical and defensible way. ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... Principles of Human Eloquence;" a volume so much esteemed that it is still reprinted. Leland refuted the whimsical paradox, yet complimented Warburton, who, "with the spirit and energy of an ancient orator, was writing against eloquence," while he showed that the style of the New Testament was defensible on surer grounds. Hurd, who had fleshed his polished weapon on poor Jortin, and had been received into the arms of the hero under whom he now fought, adventured to cast his javelin at Leland: it was dipped in the cold poison of contempt and petulance. It ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... and Sir Louis would be far safer at the house of one William Lyon, guarded by his stout sons, by his influence over the wildest spirits of the community, in a house garrisoned by a horde of sleepless sheep-dogs, set in a defensible square of office-houses, barns, byres, stables, granaries, cart-sheds, peat-sheds and ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... genuine passion, too, is not wanting, and an ingenious use of guiding themes binds the score together into a harmonious whole. A novelty in its arrangement is the plan of an orchestral accompaniment to the dialogue. AEsthetically this is perhaps hardly defensible, but in several scenes—notably that of Cours-la-Reine, in which Manon's agitated interview with the Count stands out in forcible relief against the graceful background formed by a minuet heard in the distance—the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... the colony rolls through the water. After a time each individual absorbs its flagella, the colony is broken up, the different individuals settle to the bottom, and each gives rise by division to a new colony. This group of cells may be considered as a colony or as an individual. Each term is defensible. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... out into the wide smiling plain that thence spreads itself on every side to the sea. Hence there would be easy access to both regions; both would be, in a way, commanded; here, too, was a readily defensible position, one assailable only in front. Experience has shown that the instinct of the first founder was right, or that his political and strategic foresight was extraordinary. Though circumstances, once and again, transferred the seat of government to Thebes or Alexandria, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... enlightenment. It may be that Russia needs sternness and discipline more than anything else; it may be that a revival of Peter the Great's methods is essential to progress. From this point of view, much of what it is natural to criticize in the Bolsheviks becomes defensible; but this point of view has little affinity to Communism. Bolshevism may be defended, possibly, as a dire discipline through which a backward nation is to be rapidly industrialized; but as an experiment in ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... nothing else for them to be. But even the heathen can claim the right to be judged by their deeds, not by their creeds. Measured by this standard, the average heathen would not make a bad showing in comparison with the average denizen of Christian lands. As to beliefs, how much more defensible were the superstitions of our own race two or three centuries ago, or of to-day, than those of the Hawaiians? How much less absurd and illogical were our notions of cosmogony, of natural history; how much less beneficent, humane, lovable the theology ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... p. 114) tells how in 1745 he found 'Professor Maclaurin busy on the walls on the south side of Edinburgh, endeavoring to make them more defensible [against the Pretender]. He had even erected some small cannon.' See ante, iii, 15, for a ridiculous story told of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... value in a military point of view, commanding as it did the pass of the Kishon valley on one side, and the Wadi Mel'hh on the other. Such a post would be in good hands, when intrusted to the bold and warlike tribe of Levi. In the same way several other defensible posts were committed to their charge ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... Unforeseen savings—though these, indeed, were not an item of much importance in the financial administration of Charles's reign—could not, under such a system, be applied to new exigencies without a further warrant from Parliament. The whole system of appropriation, however defensible on the modern maxims of sound finance, was inconvenient in working, and tended to increase the dependence of the Crown on Parliament, and to diminish at once the discretion and the responsibility of ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik |
