"Insuperable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... singular, says MR. HICKSON; but means "is beyond all dispute plural," for Shakspeare talks of "a mean:" with news, however, there is the slight difficulty of the absence of the noun new to start from. Why is the absence of the singular an insuperable difficulty in the way of the formation of a plural noun from an adjective, any more than of plural nouns otherwise formed, which have no singulars, as clothes, measles, alms, &c. What says MR. HICKSON of these words? Are they all singular nouns ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... in consequence, long ago pronounced her to be a positive fright; and Lady Belstone had declared that such hair would prove an insuperable obstacle to her chances ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... neither the athletic chivalry of Livingstone nor the winning beauty and high-souled nobility of generous Alan Wyverne. We never saw such models, for such never quitted their ideal essences to become incarnate in the flesh. But why need this be an insuperable objection? We don't find Achilles any the less interesting because we doubt the ability of any degenerate modern to calmly destroy such outnumbering hosts of his fellow beings, and send such a throng ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... is the special charge of the armed forces. It is their task to weld the assemblage of men, armed and maintained by the State, into an harmonious whole, skilled in technique and imbued with a psychological and mental attitude which will not admit that any obstacle is insuperable. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... forbearing to make any claim upon Sir John Belmont, I am totally a stranger to; but, without knowing, I respect them, from the high opinion that I have of your character and judgment: but I hope they are not insuperable; for I cannot but think, that it was never designed for one who seems meant to grace the world, to have her life devoted ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... mind it presents insuperable difficulties," said the Hatter, "but to a public mind like my own nothing is impossible. If a man can do a seemingly impossible thing with one plant there is no reason why he shouldn't do a seemingly impossible ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... admissible in a court of law, which will convince a jury of the defendant's guilt. Even though a person's guilt be apparent to all, the difficulties in shattering the protecting wall which the law erects around every accused man or woman, are frequently insuperable. Evidence which convinces the police or the prosecuting attorney of the defendant's culpability is as likely as not to be found incompetent in court and barred from the record. The result is a verdict of acquittal and all the work of the police goes ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... hardly be necessary also to assure Lord Robert that I am fully aware of the formidable, though perhaps not insuperable, difficulties which would beset any efforts to carry out my suggestions. He may have inferred so much from my letter of the 16th, in which, treating the question whether it is now too late to attempt a remedy for the existing state of things as beyond the competence of ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... little, Uncas, in his turn, taking the lead of Heyward. In this manner, rocks, precipices and difficulties were surmounted in an incredibly short space, that at another time, and under other circumstances, would have been deemed almost insuperable. But the impetuous young men were rewarded by finding that, encumbered with Cora, the Hurons were losing ground in ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... never been such a band. It was Cardillac alone who, active in wickedness, sought for his victims and found them throughout the entire city. And it was because he acted alone that he was enabled to carry on his operations with so much security, and from the same cause arose the insuperable difficulty of getting a clue to the murderer. But let me go on with my story; the sequel will explain to you the secrets of the most atrocious but at the same time of the most ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... convinced (as I am) that Miserrimus Dexter is the man who ought to have been tried for the murder at Gleninch; and it is another thing, at this distance of time, to lay our hands on the plain evidence which can alone justify anything like a public assertion of his guilt. There, as I see it, is the insuperable difficulty in the case. Unless I am completely mistaken, the question is now narrowed to this plain issue: The public assertion of your husband's innocence depends entirely on the public assertion of Dexter's guilt. How are you to arrive at that ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... to that instinct of contradiction of which I was speaking? A great deal of time is lost in profitless conversation, and a good deal of ill temper frequently caused, by not considering these organic and practically insuperable conditions. In dealing with them, acquiescence is the best of palliations and silence the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... had any fear—I threw myself on it, seized it as one would seize a thief, as one would seize a wife about to run away; but it pursued its irresistible course, and despite my efforts and despite my anger, I could not even retard its pace. As I was resisting in desperation that insuperable force, I was thrown to the ground. It then rolled me over, trailed me along the gravel, and the rest of my furniture, which followed it, began to march over me, tramping on my legs and injuring them. When I loosed my hold, other articles had passed over my body, just as a charge ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... elephant, with thine! 'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier: For ever separate, yet for ever near! Remembrance and reflection how allied; What thin partitions[88] sense from thought divide: And middle natures, how they long to join, Yet never pass th' insuperable line! Without this just gradation, could they be Subjected, these to those, or all to thee? 230 The powers of all subdued by thee alone, Is not thy reason all ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... a return to Roman republican virtue or to the simplicity of the natural man.[40:2] I noticed quite lately a speech of an American Progressive leader claiming that his principles were simply those of Abraham Lincoln. The tendency is due in part to the almost insuperable difficulty of really inventing a new word to denote a new thing. It is so much easier to take an existing word, especially a famous word with fine associations, and twist it into a new sense. In part, no doubt, it comes from mankind's natural love for these old associations, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... doubtless rude. He had an insuperable aversion to men of Mr. Baddeley's class,—men who could have no position but for their money, and who yet presumed upon it, as if it were gifts and graces, genius and learning, judgment and art, all in one. He was in the habit of saying that the plutocracy, as he ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... justice, therefore, remains the secret of the race. Of such secrets it has many, which it reveals one by one, at such moments of history as become truly critical; and the solutions it offers to insuperable difficulties are almost always unexpected, and of strangest simplicity. The hour approaches, perhaps, when it will speak once more. Let us hope, without being too sanguine; for we must bear in mind ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... same regions, prove that some portions of it were, for longer or shorter periods, invaded by the sea; but any break of continuity was probably not prolonged; for Mr. Wallace's investigations in the Eastern Archipelago have shown how narrow a sea may offer an insuperable barrier to the migration of land animals. In Palaeozoic times this land must have been connected with Australia, and in Tertiary times with Malayana, since the Malayan forms with African alliances are in several cases distinct from those of ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... hour the holy man approached a narrow strand, shut in by steep mountains. He went along the coast for a whole day and a night, passing around the reef which formed an insuperable barrier. He discovered in this way that it was a round island in the middle of which rose a mountain crowned with clouds. He joyfully breathed the fresh breath of the moist air. Rain fell, and this rain was so pleasant that the holy man ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... amended roads admitted of more rapid movement from place to place, the vocation of the highway robber was at first rendered difficult, and in the end impossible to exercise on the greater thoroughfares. Fast horse-coaches were the first obstacle. Railways have became an insuperable impediment to ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... cried the girl; and her face glowed with heroic sympathy and defiance. It is from this heaven-born ignorance in women of the insuperable difficulties of doing right that men take fire and accomplish the sublime impossibilities. Our sense of details, our fatal habits of reasoning paralyze us; we need the impulse of the pure ideal which we can get only from them. These two were alike children as regarded the ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... to Damascus and the Archipelago, Asia was in the hands of Timur; his armies were invincible, his ambition was boundless, and his zeal might aspire to conquer and convert the Christian kingdoms of the West, which already trembled at his name. He touched the utmost verge of the land; but an insuperable, though narrow, sea rolled between the two continents of Europe and Asia; and the lord of so many myriads of horse was not master of a single galley. The two passages of the Bosporus and Hellespont, of Constantinople and Gallipoli, were possessed, the one by the Christians, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... most profitable? Virtue; for by a right managery of other things she makes them all beneficial and advantageous. What is most pernicious? Vice; for it depraves the best things we enjoy. What is most strong? Necessity; for this alone is insuperable. What is most easy? That which is most agreeable to nature; for pleasures themselves are sometimes ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... and egotistical manner in which nations have understood and applied the right of sovereign independence in their outward dealings, has, up to the present time, been the almost insuperable obstacle to the universal establishment of a rule of justice which governs, in a permanent and uniform manner, the concourse of interests; each state following one of its own modeling, in accordance with the power it holds and the ambitions it ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... time the day went pleasantly enough. She had plenty to do as mistress of the house, and in entertaining the new friends who came to see her. After a while, when the novelty had worn off, the old insuperable feeling of monotony returned, more particularly in the evening. Mr. Farrow never went near a public-house, but he never opened a book, and during the winter, when the garden was closed, amused himself ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... insuperable even to the iron will of Anicza. It was a test even she could not submit to. She stamped her foot with rage and uttered again and again the word Dracu, which in Roumanian means nothing less than his highness the ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... mystery as to results was only for local consumption. Nevertheless, the charm of Memmert as the place we had traced Grimm to, and as the only tangible clue we had obtained, was still very great. The really cogent objection was the insuperable difficulty, known and watched as we were, of learning its significance. If there was anything important to see there we should never be allowed to see it, while by trying and failing we risked everything. It was ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Perception arises, but how it is limited, since it should be the image of the whole and is in fact reduced to the image of that which interests you."[Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 34 (Fr. p. 29).] We only make an insuperable difficulty if we imagine Perception to be a kind of photographic view of things, taken from a fixed point by that special apparatus which is called an organ of perception—a photograph which would then be developed in the brain-matter by some ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... "Cecil Dreeme" it is Churm's pair of trotters that convey the party of rescuers to the private Insane Asylum in which Densdeth had confined the heroine. In "Edwin Brothertoft," it is one of Edwin's renowned breed of white horses that carries him through almost insuperable obstacles to his goal. In "John Brent," the black stallion, Don Fulano, who is throughout the chief figure in the book, reaches his apogee in the tremendous race across the plains and down the rocky gorge of the mountains, to where the abductors of the heroine ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... kind. In fact, throughout the early history of Europe these coherent kinship groups, with their inner insulation and their inability to offer anything but passive resistance to the forces which were to dissolve them, were an insuperable bar to anything politically larger. 'If only these could hold together, they would rule the world' is the judgement of Herodotus on Scythia, of Thucydides on Thrace, of Polybius and Caesar upon Gaul, of Tacitus on Germany: each ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... support, as in her sister she lost her protector from impulse. Since she was buried there was no one to keep her in order. With the sudden promotion to the category of persons sui juris, the poor "child" was a prey to great distress, everything worried her, everything was an insuperable difficulty. Those sharp scoldings had been less overwhelming to her, for if they had caused tears, they had been salutary in checking her juvenile ebullitions, and so prevented the fatal consequences attending her inexperience. Her guests were a few youths, and several young men of our ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... ideas common in other Epics composed during the later centuries of the supposed four hundred years of Epic growth. [Footnote: Homerische Epos, p. 3.] Thus a signet ring was mentioned in the Ilias Puma, and there are no rings in Iliad or Odyssey. But Helbig does not perceive the insuperable difficulty which here encounters his hypothesis. He remarks: "In certain poems which were grouping themselves around the Iliad and Odyssey, we meet data absolutely opposed to the conventional style of the Epic." He gives three or four examples of perfectly un-Homeric ideas occurring ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... pledge and foundation of his independence." Here Mr. Hastings has got back to his old principles, where he takes post as on strong ground. This he declares "to be his objection to Mr. Fowke, and that it is insuperable." The very line before this paragraph he writes of this person, to whom he could not give his confidence, that "he believed he might depend upon his fidelity, and his exact and literal obedience." ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... cases of Circuits proposed to be divided were next taken up. This caused many amusing remarks. Rev. R. Newton thought they were losing the spirit of their fathers in travelling, who had insuperable objections to solitary stations. Dr. Bunting assigned as a reason for the failure of the health of so many young men, the custom of giving up horses: said it was an innovation; quoted some of the last words of Wesley: "I cannot make preachers—I cannot ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... obliged me to retire. I may add that the manner in which my proposals were received and discussed by the European public in Egypt afforded good reason for supposing that the obstacles to be overcome before any serious reforms could be effected, though formidable, were by no means insuperable. After my departure in 1907, events occurred which rendered it impossible that the subject should at once come under the consideration of the Government, but in 1911 Lord Kitchener was able to report that the legislative powers ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... he had in his mind was not easy to put into words without discourtesy. He would far rather have left it unsaid; but to do so would have been, in truth, to stand farther off, to erect a barrier which might prove insuperable to happy ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... said that the Clouds were very wealthy. That Leslie was especially so. That when she was of age she would have a vast inheritance. There had been no sign of great wealth or ostentation in their living but if that were so then there was an insuperable wall between ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... siege of Vicksburg is raised, or supplies are thrown in, it will become necessary very shortly to evacuate the place. I see no prospect of the former, and there are many great, if not insuperable obstacles in the way of the latter. You are, therefore, requested to inform me with as little delay as possible, as to the condition of your troops and their ability to make the marches and undergo the fatigues necessary to accomplish ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to simplify even the first rudiments of the science of civilization sufficiently to render them intelligible to these fair countrywomen of yours. Patience is a fine thing, and might accomplish something, perhaps; but there are insuperable bars to any hope of their progress in the high wages which they can all command at once, whether they ever saw the inside of a decent house before they came to this country or not; the abundance of situations; and the ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... rear. * * * We will all act together as one Army, until it is seen what can be done with the Enemy." The rain fell all that night in torrents. The face of the country, where forests, swamps, and quicksands alternated in presenting apparently insuperable obstacles to immediate advance, was very discouraging next morning, but Sheridan's heart was gladdened by orders ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... celebrating the Queen's birthday. I said I would be delighted to do it. I said I liked all the Englishmen I had ever happened to be acquainted with, and that I, like all my countrymen, admired and honoured the Queen. But I said there was one insuperable drawback—I never drank anything strong upon any occasion whatever, and I did not see how I was going to do proper and ample justice to anybody's birthday with the thin and ungenerous ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Sweden or the "Great Elector" Frederick William of Brandenburg. From the very beginning of his reign Frederick III. was resolved upon a rupture at the first convenient opportunity, while the nation was, if possible, even more bellicose than the king. The apparently insuperable difficulties of Sweden in Poland was the feather that turned the scale; on the 1st of June 1657, Frederick III. signed the manifesto justifying a war which was never formally declared and brought Denmark ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... is a very curious circumstance in its geographical distribution, that it has never been seen, fortunately for the inhabitants of Banda Oriental, to the eastward of the river Uruguay: yet in this province there are plains which appear admirably adapted to its habits. The Uruguay has formed an insuperable obstacle to its migration: although the broader barrier of the Parana has been passed, and the bizcacha is common in Entre Rios, the province between these two great rivers. Near Buenos Ayres these animals are exceedingly common. Their most favourite resort appears ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... actual service; you would then feel a just contempt for military martinets and parade exercise. Goring would, I know, delight in bringing forward a spirit like yours. But it is impossible. The barriers which detain you are insuperable. I myself know too well the power of beauty; yet, if you knew all that was said, even for Constantia's sake you might resolve, for a few months, to tear yourself from ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... without degradation, or refuse without aggravating the existing grounds of hostility. Circumstances might arise—such as a change in the Government—to obviate the former difficulty; but the latter was insuperable. It would have been inconsistent with the principles upon which the war was undertaken to have proposed or submitted to any conditions which France, exulting over her recent successes, could have been ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... princes, would, on that account, have been exposed to perpetual jealousy and persecution from the sovereign. There was even a palpable deficiency in Henry's claim, which no art could palliate. For, besides the insuperable objections to which Edward the Third's pretensions were exposed, he was not heir to that monarch: If female succession were admitted, the right had devolved on the house of Mortimer: Allowing that Richard the Second ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... certainly the case of what, at one time, was, with quite as much sympathetic affection as contempt, popularly called "the poor old Cambrian." There were times when the difficulties which faced its constructors appeared to be absolutely insuperable. What with the enormous weight of its cradle, measured in gold, and the continual quarrels of its nurses, the undertaking was well nigh strangled at birth. Even when the line was actually opened for traffic a burden of financial difficulty rested ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... English-speaking immigrants of earlier days. They wanted a parliament, public schools, and many other things new to the country; and they were the sort of people who had a right to have them. The problem of defence was always a vexed one with the inadequate military forces at hand and the insuperable difficulties concerning the militia. The British still held the Western forts pending the settlement of the frontier and the execution of the treaty of peace in full. This naturally annoyed the American government and gave Carleton ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... it is all right, then," smiled Mrs. Fayre; "it is, to my mind, only the loss of more than a week of the school work that presents the insuperable objection." ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... that these were the summits of submarine volcanoes on which the coral had grown. But as the reef-making coral does not live at greater depths than about twenty-five fathoms, the immense number of these reefs formed an almost insuperable objection to this theory. The Laccadives and Maldives for instance—meaning literally the "lac of or 100,000 islands," and the "thousand islands"—are a series of such atolls, and it was impossible to ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... were a secret to no one, least of all to him. But as Mazzini placed those sentiments on second rank to the grand end of Italian unity, so the King, to serve the same end, showed himself superior to prejudices which in most men would have proved insuperable. The fact that Victor Emmanuel opened negotiations with Mazzini, and maintained them, off and on, for years, proves amongst other things, that he knew the exiled patriot better than the world yet ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... dug its gallery according to the mould of its body. Evidently, the road by which the larva entered and moved about cannot be the Capricorn's exit-way: his immoderate antennae, his long legs, his inflexible armour-plates would encounter an insuperable obstacle in the narrow, winding corridor, which would have to be cleared of its wormed wood and, moreover, greatly enlarged. It would be less fatiguing to attack the untouched timber and dig straight ahead. Is the insect capable of doing so? We ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... William or the English nation would ever consent to make the settlement of the English crown a matter of bargain with France. And even had William and the English nation been disposed to purchase peace by such a sacrifice of dignity, there would have been insuperable difficulties in another quarter. James could not endure to hear of the expedient which Lewis had suggested. "I can bear," the exile said to his benefactor, "I can bear with Christian patience to be robbed by the Prince of Orange; but I never will consent to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... The Unionist is not really passionately attached to the Union. He has no insuperable antipathy to Home Rule. Indeed, I think most Unionists would welcome any change in our existing system of government if it were not that they have the most profound and deeply rooted objection to the men ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... substance. Certainly these statements do not of themselves teach any thing like the Augustinian doctrine of expiatory sufferings to placate the Father's indignation at sin and sinners, or to remove, by paying the awful debt of justice, the insuperable bars to forgiveness. Nothing of that sort is anywhere intimated in the Johannean documents, even in the faintest manner. So far from saying that there was unwillingness or inability in the Father to take the initiative for our ransom and pardon, he expressly avows, "Herein is love, not ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... in on them and for the first time in his life Samuel realized the insuperable inconvenience of being passionately detested. He gazed around helplessly at the glowering, violently hostile faces. He towered a head taller than his roommate, so if he hit back he'd be called a bully and have half a dozen more fights on his hands within five ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... a higher feminine spirituality is a pleasing one for women—but is it true? The insuperable difficulty to its acceptance arises, in the first place, from the fact that we can know nothing at all of the spiritual condition of the human beings among whom mother-kin was held first to have been practised. But we must go further than this in our doubt. Can we accept ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... mighty instrument in the service of recruiting; the newspapers still talk of its astounding realism, and it is generally admitted that the great kinematograph picture has done much to help the people of the British Empire to realise the wonderful spirit of our men in the face of almost insuperable difficulties; the splendid way in which our great citizen army has been organised; the vastness of the military machine we have created during the last two and a half years; and the immensity of the task ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... all anti-Catholics together (19 April 1529). And not only between Catholics and Protestants in the Empire did the rupture become complete. Even before the end of that year the question of the Lord's supper proved an insuperable stumbling-block in the way of a real union of Zwinglians and Lutherans. Luther parted from Zwingli at the colloquy of Marburg with the words, ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... is wily, but he is not able, and he is exceedingly ignorant; this ignorance even extends to matters in which he is directly and personally interested. In most men this defect would have proved an insuperable obstacle to success, but it has not been so with Sir Matthew because he is aware of his own shortcomings, and when he can't do a thing himself he is exceedingly good at getting some one to do it ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... hears a great deal about Destiny and Fortune. Who are they, and what is the extent of their power? Is it equal to that of the Fates? or greater perhaps? People are always talking about the insuperable ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... I shall adopt my heir; but, in order to do so, I must have some knowledge of your respective characters and attainments. As I said before, I hold somewhat unusual views. What the world in general would probably consider the best qualification for the owner of a big estate is, in my eyes, an insuperable objection. What I look to find, others might regard as a fault. We all have our own ideas, and must act according to our lights. I wish then, in the first place, to make your acquaintance but do not be afraid that I shall ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... endeavoured to prove to the squire that the flax itself contained particles which, if returned to the soil, repaid all that the crop took away, Mr. Hazeldean had his old-fashioned prejudices on the matter, which were insuperable. "My forefathers," quoth he, "did not put that clause in their leases without good cause; and as the Casino lands are entailed on Frank, I have no right to gratify your foreign ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... all favor, all power, all comfort, all ambition, all greatness—that was his genius and glory. He confronted the spirit of the nation and of the age. I had almost said he set himself against nature, as if he had been a decree of God over-riding all these other insuperable obstacles. That was his function. Mr. Phillips was not called to be a universal orator any more than he was a universal thinker. In literature and in history widely read, in person magnificent, in manners most accomplished, gentle as a babe, sweet as a new-blown rose, in voice clear ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... his father. And perhaps nothing will tend to lift the whole subject of paternity in the popular mind to the plane where it belongs, as will this love and knowledge, when it is bred in the child from his early years. Many difficulties in handling this subject that become insuperable might never even exist if the knowledge of fatherhood, if love and respect for it and for the father as the giver of life, were bred into the boy at an early age. Moreover a certain shyness, which often makes it more difficult for fathers to talk to their sons on these ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... of a man like Charles Reade that an actress learns—that is, if she is not conceited. Conceit is an insuperable obstacle to all progress. On the other hand, it is of little use to take criticism in a slavish spirit and to act on it without understanding it. Charles Reade constantly wrote and said things to me which were not absolutely just criticism; but ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... obstruction of the broken rail in time, by reversing their engine, to prevent wreck, but the hindrance was for the present insuperable. Leaving all their men behind, they started for a second foot-race. Before they had gone far they met the train we had passed at Adairsville and turned it back after us. At Adairsville they dropped the cars, and with locomotive and tender loaded with armed men, ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... that its mirth might be insuperable, not to be saddened by the most grievous song; nevertheless he did not turn back then, but softly climbed the stairs and, placing the agate bowl upon a step, struck up the chaunt called Dolorous. It told of desolate, regretted things befallen happy cities long since in the prime of the world. It ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... in Sterling's life, when the excuse was real enough but not the chief excuse; "ill-health, and insuperable obstacles and engagements," had to bear the chief brunt in apologizing: and, as Sterling's actual presence, or that of any Englishman except Boyd and his money, was not in the least vital to the adventure, his excuse was at once accepted. The ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... praise that had been so grudgingly dealt out to him when ambition was at its height, when a word or two of generous recognition would have atoned in some measure for the failure and embitterment of his private life. Finally, they commiserated with the man on whom would devolve the insuperable task of replacing a ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... this part is one of so tremendous a character, and northward abuts so closely on the Caspian, that all communication between the east and the west necessarily passes to the south of it. In this quarter the Great Desert offering an insuperable obstacle to transit, the line of communication has to cling to the flanks of the mountain chain, the narrow strip between the mountains and the desert—rarely ten miles in width—being alone traversable. But about long. 52 deg. 20' this ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... hands with amusement, while the sweat of anguish stood on the old slave's face, and to prolong the delightful joke, he took good care not to help the miserable old man when his unaccustomed tongue came to some insuperable difficulty. When, at length, the negro had finished the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... conformation created by the diffusion of this superstitious spirit is an obstacle, an insuperable barrier set up against the development of the moral sense. We shall sow principles of morality as the farmer who sows in the fields the seeds properly selected which will not grow unless the soil is adequate. Sane morals ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... LOVE said there might be hindrances in the way of woman too great for her to surmount. Men in their straggles for liberty have sometimes met insuperable obstacles; there have been unsuccessful revolutions at all stages of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... several weeks, but they were weeks of increasing uneasiness and pain for Norma, and she knew that Chris found them even less endurable than she. The happy hours of confidence and happiness grew fewer and fewer, and as their passion strengthened, and the insuperable obstacles to its natural development impressed them more and more forcibly, miserable and anxious times took their place. Their love was no sooner acknowledged than both came to realize how mad and hopeless it was, and that no reiteration of its intensity and no argument could ever give them ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... if we reckon into the account those who were the Trimmers of the times; I mean such, who privately were papists, though under her protestant predecessor they appeared otherwise; therefore her difficulties in persecuting her reformed subjects, were far from being so insuperable as ours now are, when the strength and number of the papists is so very inconsiderable. They, who cast in the church of England as ready to embrace popery, are either knaves enough to know they lie, or fools enough ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... popular one, and, moreover, being more favourably received by the assemblage, Minnie felt it to be her duty to admit the correction, and next fell to wondering how they would manage to get out again. The difficulty did not seem to strike the children as being an insuperable one, they even proposed to tackle and overcome it on the spot—merely as an experiment, in order to show that it could be done—which obliging proposal, however, was not accepted. One row of small boys, nevertheless, fired with a ...
— Hollowmell - or, A Schoolgirl's Mission • E.R. Burden
... England, and that there should be telegraphic communications between all the Presidencies in India, as I hope before long to see a telegraphic communication between the office of the noble Lord (Lord Stanley) and every Presidency over which he presides. I shall no doubt be told that there are insuperable difficulties in the way of such an arrangement, and I shall be sure to hear of the military difficulty. Now, I do not profess to be an authority on military affairs, but I know that military men often make great mistakes. I would have the army divided, each Presidency having its own ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... words to say What is already written in the hearts 185 Of all that breathe?—what in the path of all Drops daily from the tongue of every child, Wherever man is found? The trickling tear Upon the cheek of listening Infancy Proclaims it, and the insuperable look 190 That drinks as if it ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... heavy burden on it to pay their ransom; and to paying it, no patriot or loyal citizen of the free States would raise the slightest objection. The objection therefore urged, though grave, need not be regarded as insuperable; and we think the advantages of the measure, in a military point of view, would be far greater than any disadvantage we ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... "I'm ridiculous, I know that. I haven't got anything to found my hopes on but the fact that there's nothing in my way to the one insuperable obstacle: to the fact that she doesn't and can't really care a straw for me. But just now that seems a mere bagatelle." He laughed with a nervous joy, and he kept talking, as he walked up and down Wade's study. "I don't know that I have the hope of anything; and I don't see how ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... are, in my mind, insuperable, because in terms it deprives the United States of all future discretion as to the increased service and compensation, whatever changes may occur in the art of navigation, its expenses, or the policy and political condition of the country. The gravity of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... were proposed in the course of the negotiation, but there seemed to arise insuperable objections against them all. At one time, either at this period or subsequently, when Richard returned again to the coast, a project was formed to settle the dispute, as quarrels and wars were often settled in those days, by a marriage. The plan was for Saladin and Richard to cease ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... grief, wondered that to him alone it was forbidden to weep. Yet after all, when she was gone, and he again alone, he could not but think death likely to prove to her the most happy of earthly boons. He was not sanguine of acquittal, and even in acquittal, a voice at his heart suggested insuperable barriers to their union, which had not existed ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... C, in making Habakkuk than in making Cyrus, a contemporary of the grown-up Daniel. Indeed, with the earlier date formerly assigned to Habakkuk, the difficulty seemed all but insuperable, except by postulating two Habakkuks or two Daniels. And, much as it may lack vraisemblance, either of those suppositions is of course within the bounds of possibility. So Trapp notes, rather sneeringly, on Hab. i. 1: "Those apocryphal Additions to Daniel, which either are false, or there ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... by the newspapers, as well as by your letter, that the difficulties still exist about your ceremonial at Ratisbon; should they, from pride and folly, prove insuperable, and obstruct your real business, there is one expedient which may perhaps remove difficulties, and which I have often known practiced; but which I believe our people know here nothing of; it is, to have the character of MINISTER only in ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... nephew better than ever she had loved him. Bernard also had considered it probable that he might be expected to horsewhip the man who had jilted his cousin, and, as regarded the absolute bodily risk, he would not have felt any insuperable objection to undertake the task. But such a piece of work was disagreeable to him in many ways. He hated the idea of a row at his club. He was most desirous that his cousin's name should not be made public. He wished to avoid anything that might be impolitic. A wicked ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... growth of soft, delicate bath sponges whose prices run as high as 150 francs apiece: the yellow sponge from Syria, the horn sponge from Barbary, etc. But since I had no hope of studying these zoophytes in the seaports of the Levant, from which we were separated by the insuperable Isthmus of Suez, I had to be content with observing them in the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... from the hostile son of Atreus,[85] and AEneas had escaped from the sword of Diomedes. In such words as these {did} her father {Jove address her}: "Dost thou, my daughter, unaided, attempt to change the insuperable {decrees} of Fate? Thou, thyself, mayst enter the abode of the three sisters, {and} there thou wilt behold the register of {future} events, {wrought} with vast labour, of brass and of solid iron; these, safe and destined for eternity, fear ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... through Cavour's instrumentality, was elected President of the Chamber, D'Azeglio felt again aggrieved. Cavour, who began by treating his chief's antipathy to his new ally as a prejudice to be made fun of, and in the end dispelled, came to understand that it was insuperable. To cut short an impossible situation, he tendered his resignation, on which all the ministers resigned; but as the question was one of personal pique, the king commanded them to remain at their posts. Cavour applauded this decision. ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... from the rushing of a dark or faint star through a resisting medium, then the novae, planetaries and Wolf-Rayets belong to a new and second generation: they were born under exceptional conditions. The velocities of the planetary nebulae seem to be an insuperable difficulty in the way of placing them between the irregular nebulae and the helium stars. The average radial velocity of 47 planetary nebulae is about 45 km. per second; and, if the motions of the planetaries are somewhat at random, their average velocities in space are twice as great, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... unexplored. This has not been because no efforts have been made to break through the thick veil that has always hung over it. Travellers have been unceasing in their attempts to penetrate into the interior, and have failed, not from want of energy, but because of the insuperable difficulties in the way. If they have succeeded in reaching the shores, they died under the fatal coast fever. If they have escaped this death, and pressed towards the interior, it has been only to fall victims ...
— The Future of the Colored Race in America • William Aikman
... undertaken to see to it; but it was especially important to secure a safe return, and a secret landing on the French coast, lined as it was by patrols, watched day and night by custom-house officers, and guarded by sentinels at every point where a boat could approach the shore, offered almost insuperable difficulties. D'Ache selected a little creek at the foot of the rocks of Saint Honorine, scarcely two leagues from Trevieres and David, who knew all the coast guards in the district, bribed one of them to ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... his effort to prove that his invention was the simplest and the best of them all. That he should have persisted in spite of discouragement after discouragement, struggling to overcome obstacles which to the faint-hearted would have seemed insuperable, constitutes one of his greatest claims to undying fame. He left on record an account of his experiences in Europe on this voyage, memorable in more ways than one, and extracts from this, and from letters written to his daughter and brothers, will ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... many Christians and others live as if the opposite were true. Wealth possessed, and not trusted in, but used aright, may become a help towards eternal life; but wealth as commonly regarded and employed by its possessors, and as looked longingly after by others, is a real, and in many cases an insuperable, obstacle to entering the strait gate. As soon drive a camel, humps and load and all, through 'a needle's eye,' as get a man who trusts in the uncertainty of riches squeezed through that portal. No communities need this lesson more ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... has, of course, none to direct to the support of thought. A man whose strength is habitually exhausted by bodily labor becomes, at length, incapable of mental exertion; and I cannot help feeling that half of the farmers of the country establish insuperable obstacles to their own improvement by their excessive toil. They are nothing more than the living machines of a calling which so far exhausts their vitality that they have neither the disposition nor the power to improve either their ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... confesses but brags of difficulties, and not only suffers from them but cries out under the suffering, and shows us the grimace of the pain of it, than I have lighted upon in the critical article of a recent quarterly. Reviewing the book of a "poet" who manifestly has an insuperable difficulty in hacking his work into ten-syllable blocks, and keeping at the same time any show of respect for the national grammar, the critic gravely invites his reader to "note" the phrase "neath cliffs" (apparently for "beneath the cliffs") as "characteristic." Shall the reader indeed ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... he began; 'but I did not expect that you would have thus returned any service I may have rendered you. I have been wrong, I confess, to permit the intimacy which has existed between you and all the members of my family; but I tell you at once that I have an insuperable objection to any one of my daughters marrying a man whose family is unknown to me. For yourself I shall always entertain the truest regard, and I must beg you to receive this answer as final. Though Mrs Leslie and I shall regret the loss of your society, you will see ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... masters. Let there be added to this inherent mutual repulsiveness—those recent indignities and horrible outrages; and we need not fear to say that such reconcilement is impossible; even without that further insuperable obstacle which we hope will exist, an establishment of a free Constitution in Spain.—The intoxicated setter-up of Kings may fill his diary with pompous stories of the acclamations with which his solemn puppets are received; he may stuff their ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... and that brings fears of its own, and fears that are all the more intolerable because they are not definite fears at all, merely a loss of nervous vigour, which attaches itself to the most trivial detail and magnifies it into an insuperable difficulty. A friend of mine who was growing old once confided to me that foreign travel, which used to be such a delight to him, was now getting burdensome. "It is all right when I have once started," he said, "but for days before I am ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... this struggle, as has been said, did not begin with the conviction in which it ended. It began and long continued with the belief that though England was wrong, Rome was not right; that though the Roman argument seemed more and more unanswerable, there were insuperable difficulties of certain fact which made the Roman conclusion incredible; that there was so much good and truth in England, with all its defects and faults, which was unaccountable and unintelligible on the Roman hypothesis; that the real upshot was ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... first sight, the reproduction of many of these patterns may seem to present insuperable difficulties, they will, after a careful study of the text, and exact attention to the directions given, prove ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... did not regard the admission of the negroes into the ratio of representation, as liable to such insuperable objections. It was the freemen of the Southern States who were, in fact, to be represented according to the taxes paid by them, and the negroes are only included in the estimate of the taxes. This was his idea ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... having the year previous married a gentleman whose estate was in the same county, they remained as united as ever. Sambo held for many a year the important position of butler to Tom, then he found that one of the housemaids did not regard his color as any insuperable obstacle, and they were accordingly married. It was difficult to say after this exactly the position which Sam held. He lived at a cottage on the edge of the estate, where it joined that of Peter, and his time was spent in generally looking after things at both houses, ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... was for him to be there; and he was there to be bidden to do whatever they wished. He said so much in recognition of their goodness, that he became abashed by it. Mrs. Pasmer sat at the head of the table, and Alice across it from him, so far off that she seemed parted from him by an insuperable moral distance. A warm flush seemed to rise from his heart into his throat and stifle him. He wished to shed tears. His eyes were wet with grateful happiness in answering Mrs. Pasmer that he would not have any more ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... make it imperative. As soon as the siege of Knoxville was raised, he applied himself earnestly to the question, What next? His first choice would have been to start from Chattanooga as a base, and make the Confederate Army his object. The insuperable obstacle to this was the impossibility, at the time, of supplying the forces already collected on the upper Tennessee. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxi. pt. iii. p. 503.] The railroad to Nashville must be practically rebuilt ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Boston. The general court began to manifest some disposition to appease their sovereign, and passed several laws for this purpose; but still declined complying with his directions to send agents with full powers to attend to the new ordering of the province; and the collector encountered insuperable obstacles in his attempts to execute the laws of trade. Almost every suit he instituted for the recovery of penalties or forfeitures was decided against him, at the costs of the prosecutor. These difficulties induced ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... trace the steps by which they arrived at the present use. These I have noted with great care; and though I cannot flatter myself that the collection is complete, I believe I have so far assisted the students of our language that this kind of phraseology will be no longer insuperable; and the combinations of verbs and particles, by chance omitted, will be easily explained by comparison with those that ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... was extremely concerned at the thought of some mischief having befallen his friend and patron; and he was terrified with the apprehensions, that, in case Sir Launcelot was murdered, his spirit might come and give him notice of his fate. Now he had an insuperable aversion to all correspondence with the dead; and taking it for granted that the spirit of his departed friend could not appear to him except when he should be alone, and a-bed in the dark, he determined to pass the remainder of the night without going to bed. For this purpose, his first ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... under the erroneous supposition of his attachment to an object which had been the only one of my adoration, I could not make up my mind to a disclosure, which I feared would have renewed our differences, and produced the most insuperable bars to our future reconciliation. This thought burned in my brain, and urged the speed of the jaded post-horses. If you will examine the drivers, they will tell you, that the whole way from town, they have been stimulated by the rapping of a Spanish dollar ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... some modern writers the narrative of the gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost has seemed to present an insuperable difficulty. Undoubtedly it is above our comprehension how a man should suddenly become possessed of the ability to speak in a language before unknown to him; but why should we doubt God's power to bestow such a gift? ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... hat had made him quarrel with her father, a quarrel which involved her conquest, not by wooing, but by the treaty of war. The same hat had inspired the superstition which led her kitchen servants to leave their comfortable home, and had been the insuperable obstacle to her mother's consent to her marriage. It had caused the only bitter words that ever passed between her and her father. At last it had spilled blood, and her uncle, she well knew, from his implacable nature, had set the ruffians on, and she knew as well that her ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... operative feeling was with the North. Even in Ireland petitions were being circulated for signature among the working men, appealing to Irishmen in America to stand by the administration of Lincoln and to enlist in the Northern armies on the ground of emancipation[1247]. Here, indeed, was the insuperable barrier, in the fall of 1864, to public support of the South. Deny as he might the presence of the "foul blot" in Southern society, Hotze, of The Index, could not counteract that phrase. When the Confederate Congress at Richmond began, in the autumn of 1864, seriously to discuss ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... did not wish to return to England calling Hart's granddaughter her child. She said she had an insuperable objection and repugnance to the idea, and an aversion for the poor little creature began to grow ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... have been sufficiently tenacious of what they considered as the rules of English courts, were obliged in many points, and particularly with regard to evidence, to relax very considerably, as the civil and politic government has been obliged to do in several other cases, on account of insuperable difficulties arising from a great diversity of manners, and from what may be considered as a diversity even in the very constitution of their minds,—instances of which your Committee will subjoin ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Ann Eliza recalled the layer of dust in Mr. Ramy's shop, and pictures of domestic disorder mingled with the more poignant vision of her sister's illness. But surely if Evelina were ill Mr. Ramy would have written. He wrote a small neat hand, and epistolary communication was not an insuperable embarrassment to him. The too probable alternative was that both the unhappy pair had been prostrated by some disease which left them powerless to summon her—for summon her they surely would, Ann Eliza with unconscious cynicism ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... believe it does, revelations of the Divine will and character, cannot be regarded as historically true.... My reason for no longer receiving the Pentateuch as historically true, is not that I find insuperable difficulties with regard to the miracles or supernatural revelations of Almighty God recorded in it, but solely that I cannot, as a true man, consent any longer to shut my eyes to the absolute, palpable self-contradictions of the narrative. The notion of miraculous or supernatural ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... finality. It cannot do this; but that is only because conditions are represented with only approximate realism, because the rules of the game may not be quite correct, and because sufficient correct data cannot be procured. The difficulties of securing absolute realism are of course insuperable, and the difficulties of getting absolutely correct data are very great. The more, however, this work is prosecuted, the more clearly its difficulties will be indicated, and therefore the more effectively ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... these changes, as there are in introducing all new systems. You have to meet the doubts and suspicions of those who are unacquainted with them, the opposition of interested parties, and the general feeling which influences all men to let well enough alone. But that there are no insuperable obstacles in the way is evident from the fact that this system has already been partially applied on a railway doing a very large business, the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore, under the able superintendence of S. M. Felton, Esq., who, in his last ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... interviews with him, with the object of endeavouring to solve the difficult problem of how to secure precise workmanship in lock-making. But they could not solve it; they saw that without better tools the difficulty was insuperable; and then Bramah began to fear that his lock would remain a mere mechanical curiosity, and be prevented from ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Have you only just thought of it?" Miss Tattersall said pertly. "Nora and I agreed about that before we came down to prayers. But there's a difficulty that seems, for the moment, insuperable." ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... to be scaled by one like her. As she looked at it the thought came to her that it had been arranged for that very purpose, so that it should not be easily climbed, and so it was not surprising that a barrier which might baffle the active poacher or trespasser should prove insuperable to ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... suggested in the memorial, respecting the different Particular Synods to which the brethren belong, and the delays of carrying out a system of appellate jurisdiction covering America and China, it is enough to say:—(1) That the Presbyterian Church (O.S.) finds no insuperable difficulties in carrying into operation her system which comprehends Presbyteries and Synods in India as well as here; and (2) That whatever hindrances may at any time arise, this body will, in humble reliance upon the divine aid and blessing, undertake to meet and ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage
... the old South flushed in every vein of both. They were of an old aristocracy, with but two ambitions, the military and the political, and while they prayed for complete success in the end, they wanted another great triumph on the field of battle. Gettysburg, that insuperable bar, was behind them, casting its gloomy memory over the year between; but this might take its place, atoning for it, wiping it out. But there was doubt and fear in the heart of each; this was a new general that the North ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... the Central European Powers have announced their intention of following in the near future with regard to undersea warfare," the President wrote, "seems for the moment to threaten insuperable obstacles, but its apparent meaning is so manifestly inconsistent with explicit assurances recently given us by those powers with regard to their treatment of merchant vessels on the high seas that I must believe that explanations will presently ensue which will put a different aspect upon ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... fellow, a young artist of promise, might spend two or three years in painting the interior of a church, or other public building, maintaining himself meanwhile on his fellowship, or two or three hundred pounds a year." "If, however, the objections to painting our churches be deemed insuperable, we have buildings designed for civil purposes in abundance, which are well adapted for this species of decoration." He then instances Westminster Hall, the walls of which might be covered with fresco; and the outsides of houses in many ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... subject of great practical importance, and one which, until quite recently, has been attended with apparently insuperable difficulties. ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... of all well-regulated states have taken care to enforce this duty: though providence has done it more effectually than any laws, by implanting in the breast of every parent that natural [Greek: storge], or insuperable degree of affection, which not even the deformity of person or mind, not even the wickedness, ingratitude, and rebellion of children, can totally suppress ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... often the case, the difficulty of maintaining one's serenity seems insuperable, the battle can often be won by "living one day at a time." Almost any one in ordinary conditions of adversity has it within his or her power, for merely one day or at any rate one hour, or one minute, to eliminate the fear, worry, ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... consumed in the foregoing colloquy, and was already near the river bank. On he sped, bent on making good his escape with the money he had dishonestly acquired. One doubt was in his mind. Should he find a boat? If not, the river would prove an insuperable obstacle, and he would be compelled to turn and change the direction of his flight. Looking over his shoulder he saw Robert and the farmer on his track, and he clutched his gun ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... personal objection to trying his luck with Mrs. Glenarm? Not he! Any woman would do—provided his father was satisfied, and the money was all right. The obstacle which was really in his way was the obstacle of the woman whom he had ruined. Anne! The one insuperable difficulty was the difficulty of dealing ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... between. The difficulty seemed insuperable—at least where you were dealing with Tristrams. Mina could not but acknowledge that. For Harry, having nothing to give, would take nothing. And Cecily, having much, was thereby debarred from giving anything. ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... Dainty to death, but foiled in that, you kidnaped her at the eleventh hour, hoping to frighten me into marrying one of your nieces by the threat of disinheritance; but your malicious scheme has failed. There exists an insuperable objection to my marriage with ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... at full speed, floundering into pools, breaking through bushes, and finally scrambled up the steep embankment. How to board the train seemed a problem which was insuperable, if the cars were moving at any speed. There was little foothold by the side of the track, and undoubtedly the train was moving quickly, for now the noise of it was a dull roar, and he, who was not wholly ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... exaltation, when the soul of every Frenchman was strung up to a superhuman pitch. But the pledge once made, it had to be carried out, and even those who most applauded his decision wondered how he would meet the almost insuperable difficulties it involved. Morocco, when he was called there, was already honeycombed by German trading interests and secret political intrigue, and the fruit seemed ready to fall when the declaration of war shook the bough. The only way to save the colony for France was to keep its industrial ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... difficulty the gold-mines of desert and dreary Bambuk. There he visited the principal districts, and secured specimens of what he calls the ghingan, or golden earth. He proposed a third incursion, but the absolute apathy of his countrymen proved an insuperable obstacle. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... hero-worship, but the fact remained that he thought Jim the finest specimen of manhood he had ever known. Jim, on the other hand, began to drop a few of his early prejudices. He came to realize that all men have something in common, and that accident of birth placed no insuperable bar between one and another. Once penetrate that icy reserve, and more often than not there was a stout heart ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... houses adopt their neighbour's basket? Not because people are not amenable to conviction, for within a certain radius from the source of the invention they are convinced to a man. Nor again is it from any insuperable objection to a change of habit. The Stura people have changed their habit—possibly for the worse; but if they have changed it for the worse, how is it they do not find it out and ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... strength at the commencement of the campaign, and, notwithstanding its own heavy losses and the reinforcements received by the enemy, still presented an impregnable front to its opponent, and constituted and insuperable barrier to ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... infinite substance, of spiritual generation; as often as we deduce any positive conclusions from a negative idea, we are involved in darkness, perplexity, and inevitable contradiction. As these difficulties arise from the nature of the subject, they oppress, with the same insuperable weight, the philosophic and the theological disputant; but we may observe two essential and peculiar circumstances, which discriminated the doctrines of the Catholic church from the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... been meanly overlooked by one who preached to mankind with the eloquence of the Prophets the prime need and virtue of recognizing the hero. If self-abnegation lies at the root of true heroism, Charles Lamb—that "sorry phenomenon" with an "insuperable proclivity to gin" [6]—was a greater hero than was covered by the shield of Achilles. The character of Mary Lamb is quickly summed Up. She was one of the most womanly of women. "In all its essential sweetness," says Talfourd, "her character ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... other method so safely and conveniently as in sumas. Notwithstanding, however, all the attention which is thus exhibited on the part of the Russian government to make Ochotsk a complete and valuable naval station; and the care paid to its arrangement and furnishing supplies, there yet exists an insuperable obstacle to all their efforts, from the fact that it has not a good port. No vessel of any great burthen, carrying guns, can enter or be wintered there, without incurring the risk of being bilged by the ice of the river Ochota, which flows ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... activities—what he called justice—as a trait of both individual and social organization. But how is the knowledge of the final and permanent good to be achieved? In dealing with this question we come upon the seemingly insuperable obstacle that such knowledge is not possible save in a just and harmonious social order. Everywhere else the mind is distracted and misled by false valuations and false perspectives. A disorganized and factional society sets up a number of different models and standards. Under such ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... others had pointed out that all the arguments in support of Home Rule were equally valid for treating Ulster as a unit. There were both economic and administrative difficulties in such a scheme which were sufficiently obvious, though by no means insuperable; but what weighed far more heavily in the minds of the Ulster members was the anticipation that their acceptance of the proposal would probably be represented by enemies as a desertion of all the Irish Loyalists outside ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... danger very firmly in my mind, and having also seen several large avalanches falling, as well as the immense amount of damage done to forests and chalets by these insuperable monsters, I have never wished to risk getting ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... source of mortification to them. As a child and a boy he had been their idol. They had looked forward to the time when he, with irreproachable manners and reputation, would become their escort in the exclusive circles in which they were entitled to move. Now he was and would continue to be the insuperable bar to those circles; and by their sighs and manner he would be continually reminded of this fact. Fallen idols are a perpetual offence to their former worshippers, as they ever remind of the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... was all the difference between her and other girls. Besides this, she was a singularly determined young woman. She had made up her mind to marry the young Squire; he in his folly had given no single hint of the vast, the insuperable difficulties that lay in the way; and so ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... at Detroit, there is not much evidence available. It was Haldimand's intention at first to establish a large settlement there, but the difficulties of communication doubtless proved to be insuperable. In the event, however, some of Butler's Rangers settled there. Captain Bird of the Rangers applied for and received a grant of land on which he made a settlement; and in the summer of 1784 we find Captain Caldwell and some others applying for deeds for the land and houses they occupied. ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... without any result. Early in 1607 however the efforts were renewed, and negotiations were actively set on foot for the purpose of concluding a peace or a truce for a term of twelve, fifteen or twenty years. There were, however, almost insuperable difficulties in the way. In the first place the stadholders, the military and naval leaders, the Calvinist clergy, and the great majority of the traders honestly believed that a peace would be detrimental to all the best interests of the States, and ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... into the enemy's country, to surprise the convent and rescue his mistress. Impracticable when first devised at Artajona, the difficulties besetting the scheme, although diminished by the comparative proximity of Pampeluna to Rita's prison, still appeared almost insuperable. Could the expedition have commenced and terminated between sunset and sunrise, a party of active guerillas, well acquainted with the country and accustomed to such enterprises, might have accomplished it without incurring more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... precedent must be. His interest evidently called him to receive Rodolph at once into his arms, and had he done this, the result of the contest would have been very different. In the behavior of Gregory we discover, in addition to an insuperable aversion to countenance civil war, a disposition to endure the last extremity rather than dethrone a legitimate monarch, and perhaps a preference of Henry, for his parents' sake, ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... compels us to establish between our ideas the same clear and precise distinctions, and the same break in continuity, as between material objects. This assimilation is useful in practical life and necessary in most sciences. But we are right in asking whether the insuperable difficulties of certain philosophical problems do not arise from the fact that we persist in placing non-spatial phenomena next one another in space, and whether, if we did away with the vulgar illustrations ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... same moving from the smaller to the larger, I might instance the efforts of Miss McDowell of the University of Chicago Settlement and others in urging upon Congress the necessity for a special investigation into the conditions of women and children in industry because we had discovered the insuperable difficulties of smaller investigations, notably one undertaken for the Illinois Bureau of Labor by Mrs. Van der Vaart of Neighborhood House and by Miss Breckinridge of the University of Chicago. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... is what you have to do, and the danger you have to avoid; but if you are prudent, you will take my advice, and not expose your life. Consider once more while you have time that the difficulty is almost insuperable." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... kept up in each." But the sea lay between England and Ireland, and the delays and sometimes difficulties which were thus interposed rendered it "necessary that Ireland should have a separate government;" and he affirmed that "this was an insuperable bar to a beneficial Union," quoting a saying of Lord Somers, that "if it were necessary to preserve a separate executive government at Edinburgh after the Union, he would abandon the measure." Mr. Grey even denied that the prosperity of Scotland since the Union was mainly ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... this Government to argue against this announcement of Canadian official opinion. It must be accepted, however, I think, as the statement of a condition which places an insuperable barrier in the way of the attainment of that large and beneficial intercourse and reciprocal trade which might otherwise be developed between the United ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... ceased at the waist, leaving a Jaeger-like and unmedieval gap thence to the tops of the stockings. The inventive genius of woman triumphantly bridged it, but in a manner which imposes upon history almost insuperable delicacies of narration. Penrod's father was an old-fashioned man: the twentieth century had failed to shake his faith in red flannel for cold weather; and it was while Mrs. Schofield was putting away her husband's winter ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... as this there are insuperable objections, from grounds of reason as well as of Scripture. For God is the Supreme Being, the Most High; and how can there be three Supreme Beings, three Most High Gods? Again: God is the First ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... members, nor even by their devoted co-operation with one another. The spirit which animates them must animate the whole nation, if the right result is to be produced. For it is evident that the effort of the volunteers, continued for half a century, to make themselves an army, has met with insuperable obstacles in the social and industrial conditions of the country. The Norfolk Commission's Report made it quite clear that the conditions of civil employment render it impossible for the training of volunteers to be extended beyond the present narrow limits of time, and it is ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... and is rightly considered as that which it will be most difficult for a vessel to double during the whole North-East Passage; but our vessel, equipped with all modern appliances, ought not to find insuperable difficulties in doubling this point, and if that can be accomplished, we will probably have pretty open water towards Behring's Straits, which ought to be reached before the end of September. From Behring Strait the course will be shaped for some ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... proceeded; and as we can perceive no legal or other objection to this, or some other such like expedient, it is to be wished that his Majesty will not permit an obstacle so very unimportant to Great Britain, but so essential and insuperable with respect to us, to delay the re-establishment of peace especially, and in case the business could be but once begun, the confidence we have in your candor and integrity would probably render the settling all our articles only the work of a ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... the exchange of prisoners, which had hitherto appeared to be insuperable, and made repeated but ineffectual efforts to remove it. Howe had uniformly refused to proceed with any cartel unless his right to claim for all the diseased and infirm, whom he had liberated, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... shall ballot. The members of Parliament also shall decide by ballot. A fifth project is the change of the present legal representation of the kingdom. On all this I shall observe, that it will be very unsuitable to your wisdom to adopt the project of a bill to which there are objections insuperable by anything in the bill itself, upon the hope that those objections may be removed by subsequent projects, every one of which is full of difficulties of its own, and which are all of them very essential ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... place of the old close formations it seemed that to disable the leading ships came to the same thing as disabling the weathermost. The solution eventually arrived at was of course a concentration on the rear, but to this at the time there were insuperable objections. The rear was normally the most leewardly end of the line, and an oblique attack on it could be parried by wearing together. The rear then became the van, and the attack if persisted in would fall on ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... speak. But those who are proper judges maintain that in simplicity and lucidity, vigour, and power, softness, elevation, and eloquence, the style of Machiavelli is 'divine,' and remains, as that of Dante among the poets, unchallenged and insuperable among ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the relations which culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the world as made especially for the uses of man. Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to century ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir |
