"Insurmountable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... languid temper, the natural effect of their solitary and insulated state. From the North they were oppressed by nameless tribes of Barbarians, to whom they scarcely imparted the appellation of men. The language and religion of the more polished Arabs were an insurmountable bar to all social intercourse. The conquerors of Europe were their brethren in the Christian faith; but the speech of the Franks or Latins was unknown, their manners were rude, and they were rarely connected, in peace or war, with the successors of Heraclius. Alone in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... Cymon Tuggs opposed an insurmountable objection. All the coaches had been upset, in turn, within the last three weeks; each coach had averaged two passengers killed, and six wounded; and, in every case, the newspapers had distinctly understood that 'no blame whatever ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... capable of taking dogmatic issues much to heart, and never ceased to hope for reunion, believing that the breach could be repaired, and that men who took pains to understand each other would find that there was no insurmountable obstacle to reconciliation. Many profited by the change who doubted his sincerity. But Henry was in the hands of Duperron, one of the most expert divines of modern times, who proved more than a match for Duplessis Mornay, and whom Casaubon, a better scholar than Duplessis ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... to be so well qualified to take your place as Percy Wintermill. He had everything that is desirable in a husband except good looks and perhaps good manners. So she began fishing for Percy. Anne was a delightful bait. Of course, Percy's robust health was objectionable, but it wasn't insurmountable. I could see that Anne loathed the thought of having him for a husband for thirty or forty years. Anybody could see that,—even Percy must have possessed intelligence enough to see it for himself. Finally, about six weeks ago, Anne rose ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... the powers of the Federal and State authorities difficulties nearly insurmountable arose at the outset and subsequent collisions were deemed inevitable. Amid these it was scarcely believed possible that a scheme of government so complex in construction could remain uninjured. From time to time embarrassments have certainly occurred; but how ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... faithful subjects, it is not easy to guess how far a severity of this kind, unnecessarily pushed, may alienate the affections even of those from the Government. But in particular, as this case relates to Scotland, the difficulty will be insurmountable. I may venture to say, there are not 200 gentlemen in the whole kingdom who are not very nearly related to some one or other of the rebels. Is it possible that a man can see his daughter, his grandchildren, ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... and Abyssinia, who were always embroiled amongst themselves, or at war with the Abyssins, and enjoyed no security even in their own territories. We were now convinced that our enterprise was impracticable, and that to hazard ourselves amidst so many insurmountable difficulties would be to tempt Providence; despairing, therefore, that I should ever come this way to Abyssinia, I resolved to return back with my intelligence to my companion, whom ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... fastened by several bolts and a lock. The bolts were easily withdrawn, but the key was removed. I knew not where it was deposited. I thought I had reached the threshold of liberty, but here was an impediment that threatened to be insurmountable. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... place it was necessary to secure the consent of both the Burmese and Chinese governments—a task of almost insurmountable difficulty because of the natural dislike of these two powers to share with another the trade monopoly they had heretofore exclusively enjoyed. Then again there lies between the civilizations of India and China a broad tract of wild and mountainous country, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... the centre of the country and becomes merely a line of low hills, connecting Gebel Ansarieh with the Lebanon proper; beyond the latter it continues without interruption, till at length, above the narrow Phoenician coast road, it rises in the form of an almost insurmountable wall. Near to the termination of Coele-Syria, but separated from it by a range of hills, there opens out on the western slopes of Hermon a valley unlike any other in the world. At this point the surface of the earth has been rent in prehistoric ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... brought full before Zillah's mind one galling yet undeniable truth, which showed her an insurmountable obstacle in the way of her plan. To one utterly unaccustomed to control of any kind, the thought added fresh rage, and she now sought refuge in thinking how she could best encounter her new enemy, Lord Chetwynde, and what she might say ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... first stone at him who have seen the right way gaping before their feet with a hundred pitfalls and barriers, apparently insurmountable, and have resolutely taken that road. For the devious path of Compromise has this merit—that the obstacles are round ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... just as madly, and that is what makes me seem to her fiendishly cruel occasionally, when the spirit of jealousy robs me of reason. I can't bear it, Erminie, to see her restless and dissatisfied in my presence, to feel her shudder from my kiss. An insurmountable barrier is rising between us. Can you guess what ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... him meant possible motherhood for her again. The tragedy of giving birth to a child—ah, she could not go through that a second time, at least under the same conditions. She could not bring herself to tell him about Vesta, but she must voice this insurmountable objection. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... Jim's business, wished her to remain in her present home; but she declined, and returned to her hovel again, with obstacles threefold more insurmountable than before. Seth accompanied her, giving her a weekly allowance which furnished most of the food necessary for the four inmates. After a time, work failed; their ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... to the venture a hairbreadth escape or two and many insurmountable obstacles which would, of course, be triumphantly surmounted by the hero. But fact will have it otherwise, and the chronicler of events must not be blamed if the hegira of ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... keep Crowther at arm's length, but neither did he seem inclined for any closer intimacy. His attitude neither invited nor repelled confidence. Yet Crowther knew intuitively that his very indifference was in itself a barrier that might well prove insurmountable. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... which no English Jehu dare attempt; and ascend and descend with safety and hardihood, stone steps which occur in many parts of Valletta; and which would certainly present an insurmountable obstacle to our ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... of the functions of the bone-marrow offers insurmountable difficulties. An exclusion of the whole bone-marrow or of larger portions only is an impossible operation. Nor can we ascribe any value to the researches which endeavour to obtain a result by comparative enumerations of the arterial and venous blood of a bone-marrow ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... fouling of water-courses, is the belief that the labor of bringing into the town the enormous amount of earth required to supply such an immense number of closets, and the labor of removing the product at frequent intervals, would be so great as to constitute an insurmountable obstruction. ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... her, you can't have the face to ask her, as long as you keep that half-witted creature dangling after you. It wouldn't be right, man, even if she'd have you. Look the thing in the face, and you'll be the first to say so! It would be a hopeless handicap to any marriage—an insurmountable obstacle to happiness, hers as well as yours. Don't tell me you can't see it! You know it. You know you've no right to ask any woman to share a burden of that kind with you. It would be manifestly unfair—iniquitous. There! I've done. I've never spoken my mind to this extent before. ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... Barrier was undeniably exciting. The ground was absolutely unknown, and our outfit untried. What kind of country should we have to deal with? Would it continue in this boundless plain without hindrance of any kind? Or would Nature present insurmountable difficulties? Were we right in supposing that dogs were the best means of transport in these regions, or should we have done better to take reindeer, ponies, motor-cars, aeroplanes, or anything else? We went forward at a rattling pace; the going was ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... presented himself before the council of state, to remove the impression. He pointed out to them the insurmountable obstacles to such an invasion, physical and moral. He urged to them that the nations of the earth felt so much jealousy and ill-will towards one another, that they never cordially co-operated in any enterprise for their common interest or glory; and that if any one nation were to ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... place and her husband's; to have a vivid experience of how they looked, spoke, and lived; to see them in spirit—in their morning good wishes, their noonday cares, their evening cheer, their nightly prayers? Was their union only apparent? were they severed by a dim, shapeless, insurmountable barrier, for ever together, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Joseph's insurmountable respect for gray hairs kept him standing, but he did not respond with any conjecture as to Nature's intentions, and ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... last he faintly bade me to descend into the library, open the secret drawer of the secretary (which he contrived to direct me how to do), possess myself of his will, and burn it up. He appears to have forgotten his having taken it out night before last. I told him that I had an insurmountable aversion to any personal dealings with the document. He smiled, patted the back of my hand, and requested me, in that case, to get it, at least, and bring it to him. I couldn't deny him that favor? No, I couldn't, indeed. I went down to the library, therefore, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... ready for receiving the attack. There was a doubt as to the direction the tree would take in falling. Should it topple over into the water, their labour would be lost, and the way would be open for the Matabili to reach them by a rush. Should it fall across the isthmus, it would form an insurmountable barrier to their enemies. In silence and with intense interest did the Makololo stand watching for the result. At length the tree began to move; slowly at first, but as they gazed upon its trembling top, they could see that it was going to come down in the right direction. ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... three months and a half to a worthy woman, who should have gained for herself a husband who never deviated from a virtuous path as much as I; but the attachment formed was so strong that no misfortune seemed powerful enough to sever it. The barrier which seemed insurmountable, and which I had erected myself by early indiscretions and excesses, has given way, thanks to your superior medical knowledge and skillful treatment. Again I can hold up my head and say, "I am a man. I never fail to call the attention of my friends to your Institution ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... more delicate than male, and also more normal or uniform in their circulation. Hence there is less difficulty in making an accurate estimate of women and of youth. The greater difficulty is found in men of thick skulls and abnormal brains, and these difficulties are in some cases insurmountable by mere measurement. It will become necessary in the depraved classes to look at the condition of the circulation about the head, and the facial indications of the organs that have been cultivated. If these are not sufficient ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... thoroughly enjoyed himself, and always looked back with special pleasure on the time he spent here. He was unsuccessful in the object of his mission, the obstacles to cheap transport offered by the dense forests and mighty precipices proving insurmountable, but he gathered a wealth of interesting observations on the country and people, a very primitive Mongolian race, which he subsequently embodied in two excellent and most interesting papers (the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... would not be useless for us to speak openly," said Romola, with the sort of exasperation that comes from using living muscle against some lifeless insurmountable resistance. "It was the sense of deception in you that changed me, and that has kept us apart. And it is not true that I changed first. You changed towards me the night you first wore that chain-armour. You had some secret from me—it was about that old man—and I saw him again ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... afterwards destroyed by a flood, and remained in ruins till 1771. Some repairs were then executed, but they were inefficient; and the navigation is now given up, except at the mouth of the river; and even there the bar of Christchurch is an insurmountable obstacle except at spring tides.-(Penny Cyclopdia, art. Wiltshire.) As the Bishop dug the first spitt, or spadeful of earth, and drove the first wheelbarrow, that necessary process was no doubt made a matter of much ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... their own exertions; that they can rise in the world, if they will, only be patient and laborious enough; that they can gain an independent position by industry and economy; that they are not cut off by an insurmountable barrier from the next step in the social scale; that it is possible to purchase a house and farm of their own; and that the more industrious and prudent they are, the better will be the position of their families: [and this consciousness] ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... proved insurmountable, and while Ben was left by the ivory Harry and Frank hurried down the steeps to the plateau on which they had left the Golden Eagle II. It was the work of a few minutes to tune her up. In a brief time from the moment they had left the ivory cache, considering the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... short weeks had passed through many phases of jealousy, hope, despair, and self-delusion. The joy she felt on seeing him again, the pride she took in him, the disgust Helen caused her, the relief she had not dared to own even to herself, when she fancied fate had put an insurmountable barrier between Paul and his cousin, the despair at finding it only a fancy, and the anguish of hearing him declare his unshaken purpose to marry his first love—all these conflicting emotions had led to this hard moment, and now self-control deserted her in her need. In spite of ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... of the art of the Renaissance were so great, and so unlike those of earlier days, that it is not surprising that few women, in its beginning, attained to such excellence as to be remembered during five centuries. Especially would it seem that an insurmountable obstacle had been placed in the way of women, since the study of anatomy had become a necessity to an artist. This, and kindred hindrances, too patent to require enumeration, account for the fact that but two Italian women ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... remained any basic principle to be discovered or simplified, for that had already been done; but it was in the effort to carry these principles into practice that there arose the numerous difficulties that at times seemed insurmountable. But, according to another co-worker, "Edison seemed pleased when he used to run up against a serious difficulty. It would seem to stiffen his backbone and make him more prolific of new ideas. For a time I thought I was foolish to imagine such a thing, but I could ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... ever, and we cannot help again picturing those old heroes driving their wagons up, while the women and children toiled painfully on foot up the steep and rocky slopes. Could anything ever daunt them after this? any obstacle, however insurmountable, discourage them? any labor, however severe, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... serenity they had spent here, no thought of the insecurity of their tenure had troubled them. Though they had but been dwellers on the threshold of the mountain, as it were, and any extension of their territory impossible by reason of the insurmountable barrier around them, they had led an untroubled life, all unknowing of the fearful forces beneath their feet. But now they found the foundations of the rocks beneath breaking up; that withering, incessant shower of ashes and scoriae destroyed all their ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Trinity, the Word by whom the worlds were made, quitted the throne of His glory and lived for thirty-three years as a Jewish peasant? I think the dogmatic theologian would have some hesitation in giving an unqualified affirmative to this question, for the difficulties implied in it are practically insurmountable. Was the full consciousness of the eternal Word present in the babe of Bethlehem, for instance? If not, where was it? Questions like these cannot be answered on the lines of the conventional Christology. The plain and simple answer to all of ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... and was to spend the day there. Not to be able to have a glimpse of their mother for two or three days was depressing news indeed. The three children's faces were absolutely disconcerted, for the obstacles were clearly insurmountable. ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... world of darkness, terrors, mysteries: an immense abyss dug beneath our feet, closed by iron gates, whose exploration was as perilous as the descent into hell of AEneas or Dante. For this reason it was absolutely imperative to get there, in spite of the insurmountable difficulties of the enterprise, and the terrible punishments the discovery of our secret ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... neighbour where he really lives is the greatest of human achievements. And it was with an indescribable depression that I wondered if these Masons and Oddfellows and Elks had in reality caught the Elusive Secret and confined it within the insurmountable and impenetrable walls of their mysteries, secrets, ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... serious difficulty, and one which at present seems insurmountable, is to secure cleanliness and safety in that Augean stable—the cook-house. Until the native can be brought to understand the inadvisability of using tainted water and unclean utensils, and of permitting the ubiquitous ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the camp, by saying, that it would strike such terror as would repress all attempts at insurrection, and would consequently prevent the effusion of much blood. It may have been consistent with the principles of military policy, but I feel an insurmountable reluctance to believe it.] ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... rarely could they use the paddles. It was out on one bank with a tow-line over the shoulders stumbling over the rocks, forcing a way through the underbrush, slipping at times and falling into the water, wading often up to the knees and waist; and then, when an insurmountable bluff was encountered, it was into the canoe, out paddles, and a wild and losing dash across the current to the other bank, in paddles, over the side, and out tow-line again. It was exhausting work. Antonsen toiled like the giant ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... alone, day and night, in the black hole, is to inflict on the Marquesan torture inexpressible. Even his robberies are carried on in the plain daylight, under the open sky, with the stimulus of enterprise, and the countenance of an accomplice; his terror of the dark is still insurmountable; conceive, then, what he endures in his solitary dungeon; conceive how he longs to confess, become a full-fledged convict, and be allowed to sleep beside his comrades. While we were in Tai-o-hae a thief was under prevention. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out in action, several different plans at the same time. If one failed him he could take up another. In this case he intended, if possible, to get the Duchies for Prussia; it was always to be foreseen that the difficulties might be insurmountable; he had therefore to consider the next best alternative. This would be the creation of a new State, but one which was bound to Prussia by a special and separate treaty. There were many demands, some of them legitimate, which Prussia was prepared to make. Bismarck attributed great importance to ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... through his want of skill, and the fate of the people is made thus to depend entirely on the natural disposition of the prince, since none of his subjects possesses sufficient authority to correct the mistakes of his master. Having conquered Asia, the Persian race, finding itself hemmed in by insurmountable obstacles—the sea, the African and Arabian deserts, the mountains of Turkestan and the Caucasus, and the steppes of Siberia—had only two outlets for its energy, Greece and India. Darius had led his army against the Greeks, and, in spite of the resistance he had encountered from them, he had gained ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... accomplished writer, worthy of the most careful consideration. It comprises a brief but clear sketch of Darwin's views, followed by an enumeration of the leading difficulties in the way of their acceptance; difficulties which would appear to be insurmountable to Professor Kolliker, inasmuch as he proposes to replace Mr. Darwin's Theory by one which he terms the 'Theory of Heterogeneous Generation.' We shall proceed to consider first the destructive, and secondly, the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... there over which I could but lament!—how many measures, contrary to my views, to my principles, and to my character!—while the best intentions were incapable of overcoming difficulties which a most powerful and decided will rendered almost insurmountable. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... in this world more serious than to judge other people's problems in the light in which they appear to us. The problem which is nothing to one human being appears insurmountable ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... seats of civil liberty and of the Reformed Faith, had been preserved by his wisdom and courage from extreme perils. Holland he had delivered from foreign, and England from domestic foes. Obstacles apparently insurmountable had been interposed between him and the ends on which he was intent; and those obstacles his genius had turned into stepping stones. Under his dexterous management the hereditary enemies of his house had helped him to mount a throne; and the persecutors of his religion had helped ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with the victory it had obtained over its old antagonist, Reason—seemed, in every sense of the word, to have gained the day, and, despite all the 289 difficulties that lay before me—difficulties which I knew must appear all but insurmountable, whenever I should venture to look them steadily in the face—the one idea that Clara Saville loved me was ever present with me, and rendered ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... nature," retorted the mistress, compassionately; "but she is so weak, so gentle! Ah! Jeanne, think what I have been to you; raise some insurmountable barrier between yourself ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... contrive in some way to make for ourselves a lamp, as we could never live in our cave in darkness; and here was a difficulty apparently even more insurmountable than the others,—as much so as appeared the making of a fire in the first instance,—for while we had a general idea that we might capture some seals, and get thus a good supply of oil, and that we might also get plenty of fox-skins ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... the seas seemed to be the only source of insurmountable difficulties; "but," says Robertson, "over what a vast space might not one travel in six months with a balloon fully furnished with the necessaries of life, and all the appliances necessary for safety? Besides, if, through ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... just such action—rather the executive genius of Jerome had expected it—for which reason we had confronted the readers of the Globe with damning facts and statistics, carefully gathered, which presented an insurmountable barrier to evasion. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... alma mater, which, though small, was influential. Still worse for us, he had in his district the State Agricultural College, which the founding of Cornell University must necessarily wipe out of existence. He might rise above the first of these difficulties, but the second seemed insurmountable. No matter how much in sympathy with our main aim, he could not sacrifice a possession so dear to his constituency as the State College of Agriculture. He felt that he had no right to do so; he knew also that to do so would be ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... peculiarities of the substances found in the pitch-blende seemed to indicate the presence of some hitherto unknown body. The search proved a most difficult one on account of the peculiar nature of the object in question, but the tireless enthusiasm of Madame Curie knew nothing of insurmountable obstacles, and soon drew her husband into the search with her. Her first discovery was that of the substance polonium—so named by Madame Curie after her native country, Poland. This proved to be another of the radio-active substances, differing from any other yet discovered, but still not the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... cannot refrain from writing to thank you for the very lifelike picture of the Welsh people, North and South, which, unlike other Englishmen, you have managed to give us. To ordinary Englishmen the language is of course an insurmountable bar to any real knowledge of the people, and the result is that within six hours of Paddington or Euston Square is a country nibbled at superficially by droves of holiday-makers, but not really better known than Asia Minor. I wish it were possible ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... reason recoils; visionary; inconceivable &c. (improbable) 473; prodigious &c. (wonderful) 870; unimaginable, inimaginable[obs3]; unthinkable. impracticable unachievable; unfeasible, infeasible; insuperable; unsurmountable[obs3], insurmountable; unattainable, unobtainable; out of reach, out of the question; not to be had, not to be thought of; beyond control; desperate &c. (hopeless) 859; incompatible &c. 24; inaccessible, uncomeatable[obs3], impassable, impervious, innavigable[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... produced, they would be capable of propagating themselves in other media, such as a gas at ordinary pressure, or even in an absolute vacuum. Experiment alone could answer this question, but there were difficulties in the way of this which seemed almost insurmountable. The rays are stopped by glass even of slight thickness, and how then could the almost vacuous space in which they have to come into existence be separated from the space, absolutely vacuous or filled with gas, into which it was desired ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... perpendicularly. There was no attempt made to take one up. Though the projection could not be discerned from below, Karl, standing on the topmost round of the last ladder that had been planted, saw at once, with the eye of an engineer, that the difficulty was insurmountable. It would be as easy for them to fly, is to stand a ladder upon that ill-starred ledge; and with this conviction fully impressed upon his mind, the young plant-hunter returned slowly and sorrowfully to ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... sure that she was safe. She stumbled again to her feet, and ran weakly out of the oak grove. There was a low fence between the grove and the field, and when she reached that she stopped. She felt this to be insurmountable for her trembling limbs. "Oh, dear!" she said, aloud, and although the man was holding his butterfly-net cautiously over the top of a clump of asters so far away that it did not seem possible that he could hear her, he immediately ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... great occasion. Our ancestors, probably, committed a blunder in not having fixed upon every fifth decade for a call of a general convention to amend and reform the Constitution. On the contrary, they have made the difficulties next to insurmountable to accomplish amendments to an instrument which was perfect for five millions of people, but not wholly so as to thirty millions. Your patriotism will surmount the difficulties, however great, if you will but accomplish one triumph in advance, and that is, a triumph over party. And what ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... between those on the lofty summit of the insurmountable barrier, and my friend Omar were long, and, to me tedious. I could make nothing of them, although it was apparent that my old chum was carrying on an interesting conversation with some person unseen. Once again the light swept across the silent battle-field, showing, ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... arises. Some of you, having only received limited powers from your constituencies, appear to think that you would not be justified in exceeding your mandates, while others have been authorized to act as circumstances may seem to require. But I do not think that this difficulty should be insurmountable. At least I beg of you not to allow it to cause any dissension among you. Let us all be of one mind. If we are united, then will the nation be united also; but if we are divided, in what a plight will the ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... is wanting? I must be regardful of insurmountable limits. Yet when minds are imbued with a genuine sympathy, are not words and looks superfluous? Are not motion and touch sufficient to impart feelings such as mine? Has he not eyed me at moments, when the pressure of his hand has thrown me into tumults, and was it possible that ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... would always be an honor to his family and the neighborhood; at the same time the obstacles which her son's want of fortune and Mademoiselle Cormon's age presented to the marriage seemed to her almost insurmountable; she could think of nothing but patience as being able to vanquish them. Like du Bousquier, like the Chevalier de Valois, she had a policy of her own; she was on the watch for circumstances, awaiting the propitious moment for a move with the shrewdness of maternal instinct. Madame Granson had ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... me a letter addressed to him by the traveling medical attendant of Lady Berrick. After resting in Paris, the patient had continued her homeward journey as far as Boulogne. In her suffering condition, she was liable to sudden fits of caprice. An insurmountable horror of the Channel passage had got possession of her; she positively refused to be taken on board the steamboat. In this difficulty, the lady who held the post of her "companion" had ventured on a suggestion. Would Lady Berrick consent to make the Channel ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... to explain to Netta that the fee for the course might prove an insurmountable barrier. Gwen was always too proud to plead poverty, and hid her father's narrow circumstances from her schoolmates as well ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... the religion of Jesus. I was with Paris when he gave the fateful apple to Venus, I saw Troy burn, and followed Ulysses on his wanderings. The prototypes of all that is beautiful sank deep into my soul, and consequently at the time when other boys are coarse and obscene, I displayed an insurmountable aversion to everything base, ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... first time in his life he found himself braved by men of a type whose defiance he despised—whose lawlessness he ordinarily warred on without compunction—but himself without the freedom that had always been his to act. Every impulse to take the bit in his teeth was met with the same insurmountable obstacle—Nan's feelings—and the unpleasant possibility that might involve him in ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... disclosure in connection with all these circumstances, I could not help feeling that there was at least a fearful verisimilitude in the allegations which she had made. Still I was not satisfied, nor nearly so; young minds have a reluctance almost insurmountable to believing upon any thing short of unquestionable proof, the existence of premeditated guilt in any one whom they have ever trusted; and in support of this feeling I was assured that if the assertion ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... rate according to Brantome—it was now David Verne, instead of Lilla, who suffered from the feeling of inferiority. To hold her, he had only his music, and perhaps his bodily feebleness that excited her compassion. Yet this feebleness, profound, insurmountable, was what caused his torments ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... Vergil surveyed the insurmountable height before them, and hastened with Dante to inquire the way of a troop of souls coming towards them. As they talked, Dante recognized one, blond and smiling, with a gash over one eyebrow and another over his heart. It was Manfredi, King of Apulia ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... them with a despair Rose did not contemplate, and added also his readiness to repair, in any way possible, the evil done. He spoke of his birth and position. Sir Franks, with a gentlemanly delicacy natural to all lovers of a smooth world, begged him to see the main and the insurmountable objection. Birth was to be desired, of course, and position, and so forth: but without money how can two young people marry? Evan's heart melted at this generous way of putting it. He said he saw it, he had no hope: he would go and be forgotten: and begged that for any ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... misfortunes, which yet he bore, not only with decency, but with cheerfulness; nor was his gaiety clouded even by his last disappointments, though he was in a short time reduced to the lowest degree of distress, and often wanted both lodging and food. At this time he gave another instance of the insurmountable obstinacy of his spirit: his clothes were worn out, and he received notice that at a coffee-house some clothes and linen were left for him: the person who sent them did not, I believe, inform him to whom he was to be obliged, that he might spare the perplexity of acknowledging the benefit; but ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... to fix and direct his attention and to interest him in matters that are more foreign and indifferent to him than the variations of temperature in Sirius or Aldebaran are to us. It really seems, when we consider our preconceived ideas, that there is not in the animal an organic and insurmountable inability to do what man's brain does, a total and irremediable absence of intellectual faculties, but rather a profound lethargy and torpor of those faculties. It lives in a sort of undisturbed stolidity, of nebulous slumber. As Dr. Ochorowicz very justly ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... his academic career, and was ready to enter into the office of the ministry, his progress was obstructed by a difficulty which, for a time, proved insurmountable. Being conscientiously convinced that the prelatic system of church government is of human invention, and not of Divine institution, and having seen the bitter fruits it bore in Scotland, he would not submit to receive ordination from a bishop, and could not, at that juncture, obtain admission ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... comfortably shifted the entire trend of the conversation from his parishioner to himself and found nothing insurmountable in his own problem, the good bishop would chuckle mischievously at finding his eminent self quite human after all, and would suggest their going in to find Mrs. Bishop, and having a cup of tea. These women, always restless and dissatisfied, were a part of his work; he prided himself upon ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... supposition, that there is no good in artificial propagation when the fish which are sent to the sea can never come back again by reason of insurmountable obstacles. If Mr. Horsfall means this he is quite right; there is no good in the upper proprietors of Salmon rivers becoming brood hens for the owners of fisheries at the mouths of rivers or the proprietors of impassable weirs, who take all the fish which get to the foot of these weirs. I ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... all has been clear, each party, with increasing confidence, having insisted on their own position, and denounced their adversaries. A difficulty now arises which, at first sight, appears insurmountable. As the chapters are at present printed, the entire of the twenty-seventh is assigned to Job, and the paragraph from the eleventh to the twenty-third verses is in direct contradiction to all which he has maintained before—is, in ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... epistle wounded the poor child very deeply. "Now I shall be able to go about your election with more confidence and security. Dare I admit to you, my dear Professor, that the only obstacle I encountered, and which seemed to me insurmountable, was the career chosen by that lovely child, your daughter, whose talent we all admire so much! Now I can start my campaign, and I am very sure, my dear Darbois, of achieving our ambition without much difficulty. Therefore, perhaps, I shall ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... of either one of the above-described reservoirs would involve interstate complications, as the 300-foot contour in Ramapo Valley includes a considerable part of the State of New York. This obstacle was deemed insurmountable by the northern New Jersey flood commission, and that commission directed studies to a reservoir which at the time of maximum flood would not back water into New York State to a greater height than it already rises during such floods. The following description ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton
... hard task at first to obtain acceptance for his ill-defined tenets by France, who declined to accept the protection of his League of Nations in lieu of strategic frontiers and military guaranties. Insurmountable obstacles barred his way. The French government and people, while moved by decent respect for their American benefactors[96] to assent to the establishment of a league, flatly refused to trust themselves to its protection against Teuton aggression. But they were quite ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... reprehensible hours along the frontier. Something within her breast cried out for those shining, gone-by moments, something seemed to close down on her throat, something flooded her eyes with a softness that rolled up from her entire being. Their line! Their insurmountable barrier! An absurd yet ineffable longing to fall down and kiss that line came ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... imperfect, and the best of them are more profuse in speculation and surmise than in solid fact. The information possessed has been drawn bit by bit from the reluctant Japanese. The difficulties of investigation have been almost insurmountable,—no visitor, during two hundred years, having been allowed the slightest freedom of association with the people, or opportunity for travel. With very few exceptions, foreigners have been confined to the extremest limit of the islands, and forbidden even to leave the coast; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... upon him, but he did not see, for he was watching the drifting rainbow beyond. Then a cry of rapture broke from him and he started eagerly toward the insurmountable crags that ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... that Chatterton found part of Rowley, and invented the rest, is attended with insurmountable objections, and is never advanced but in the deficiency of better argument; for in the first place, those who favor this supposition, have never supported it by the shadow of proof, or the semblance even of fair inferential reasoning; and in ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... an insurmountable reason why we should refrain from developing this brilliant theory. It would cause a digression from the main theme of our work. In the situation which we have supposed to be that of a married establishment, a man who is ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... minds will read without emotion my mother's own account of the wonderful energy and indomitable perseverance by which, in her ardent thirst for knowledge, she overcame obstacles apparently insurmountable, at a time when women were well-nigh totally debarred from education; and the almost intuitive way in which she entered upon studies of which she had scarcely heard the names, living, as she did, among persons ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... drawn his bank account down to the irreducible minimum and borrowed on his securities up to the insurmountable maximum. It was a bad time for his children to tap him. But here they were—Jno. P., Jerry, and Julia—all very unctuous over the home-coming, and yet all of them evidently cherishing an ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost. It is the attraction of all hearts to one heavenly Saviour, and the submission of all wills to one holy law. Looking at the past condition or the present aspect of society, we may think the difficulties in the way of such unity altogether insurmountable; but it will, in due time, be brought about by Him "who doeth great things and unsearchable, marvellous things without number." Its realization will present the most delightful and impressive spectacle that ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... claim; and an inability to fulfill it would cause her a pain continually revived by their inevitable communion in care of Ezra. Here were fears not of pride only, but of extreme tenderness. Altogether, to have the character of a benefactor seemed to Deronda's anxiety an insurmountable obstacle to confessing himself a lover, unless in some inconceivable way it could be revealed to him that Mirah's heart had accepted him beforehand. And the agitation on his own ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... could stand it no longer. His usually active mind was occupied with one sole thought—how he might get out of Richmond at any cost. Several times had he even made the attempt, but was stopped by some insurmountable obstacle. However, the siege continued; and if the prisoners were anxious to escape and join Grant's army, certain of the besieged were no less anxious to join the Southern forces. Among them was one Jonathan Forster, a determined Southerner. The ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... sonatas! But it is a part of my father's character, of whom it is impossible to say, whether I love, admire, or fear him the most. His success in life and in war-his habit of making every obstacle yield before the energy of his exertions, even where they seemed insurmountable-all these have given a hasty and peremptory cast to his character, which can neither endure contradiction, nor make allowance for deficiencies. Then he is himself so very accomplished. Do you know there was a murmur half confirmed too by some mysterious words which, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... ascended to an elevation of about 250 feet, we were stopped by insurmountable obstacles. The converging inside walls changed into overhangs, and our climb into a circular stroll. At this topmost level the vegetable kingdom began to challenge the mineral kingdom. Shrubs, and even a few trees, emerged from crevices in the walls. I recognized some spurges ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... opinion. Though scarcely a word passed at the moment, yet I fancied that we felt immediately better acquainted. I ventured to go and stand beside her, from doing which I had hitherto been prevented by I know not what insurmountable ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... the Government of the French Republic I tender my warmest and most sincere wishes that the Czecho-Slovak State may speedily become, through the common efforts of all the Allies and in close union with Poland and the Jugoslav State, an insurmountable barrier to Teutonic aggression and a factor for peace in a reconstituted Europe in accordance with the principles of justice and ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... a rather small room, which would have been an advantage in ordinary circumstances. But to the elder its dimensions were an insurmountable difficulty. How can one compass a forty-rod focus within the limits of a ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... marshy ground, traversed by deep sluggish streams, the banks of which were encumbered by a dense vegetation. Such a country, though admirably adapted both for commerce and agriculture, offered almost insurmountable difficulties to first explorers, at least to such as were compelled to move rapidly. We at last became so completely entangled in a marsh that further progress was hopeless, and we halted to prepare breakfast whilst a party ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... that even the natives of Vera Cruz, who are not attacked with typhus in their own town, sometimes sink under it during the epidemics of the Havannah and the United States. As the black vomit finds an insurmountable barrier at the Encero (four hundred and seventy-six toises high), on the declivity of the mountains of Mexico, in the direction of Xalapa, where oaks begin to appear, and the climate begins to be cool and pleasant, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Spanish navigators extended their explorations into every bay and inlet of the Central American isthmus, to discover, if possible, a short route to the Indies, or "from Cadiz to Cathay," the human mind has not been willing to rest content and accept as insurmountable the natural obstacles on the Isthmus which prevent uninterrupted communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Excepting, possibly, Arctic explorations, in all the romantic history of ancient and modern commerce, in all the annals of the early navigators and explorers, there is no chapter that ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... else. There was but one who could go, but she had most emphatically refused; did not care for the dust and dirt, did not care for the curious crowds, did not care to go fast, did not care to go at all. To overcome these apparently insurmountable objections, a semi-binding pledge was made to not run more than ten or twelve miles per hour, and not more than thirty or forty miles per day,—promises so obviously impossible of fulfillment on the part of any chauffeur that they were not binding in law. We started out well within bounds, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... round his extensive kingdom. It was principally from the north that danger threatened. There lived the nomads of Eastern Turkestan and Mongolia, savage, brave, and warlike horsemen. To them the Chinese wall was an insurmountable obstacle. But precisely on that account this wall has also affected the destiny of Europe, for the wild mounted hordes, finding the way southwards to China barred, advanced westwards instead, and in ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... "Law and Order" party were to be sheathed; and the Yankees in the country were only a handful of men, and were therefore powerless; but between them and these bloody-minded chieftains was interposed a barrier that proved insurmountable. The great mass of the squatters were just from the other side of the river. Sometimes a son had left a father, and crossed the river to get a claim; or a brother had left his brother, or a girl had married a young man in the neighborhood, and as the young folks were poor, they had left the old ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... housekeeping, tersely and clearly written, with a flavor of experience about it that makes one accept it as authoritative. It is a staff upon which the young housekeeper may confidently lean, and by the aid of which she may overcome obstacles which without it would seem insurmountable. Mrs. Power does not believe in a house keeping itself. It requires continual care and oversight, and a clear knowledge of what is to be done. She believes, too, that a house can be well kept as easily as badly kept, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... shared, though in different degrees and forms, by the whole little party—the soul of one in it totally absorbed. But owing to some insurmountable obstacles, occasioning delays, by the exhausted state of the overwrought Lady Albina; and notwithstanding the necessity of getting on as fast as possible, to be out of the reach of the enraged earl, ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... expedients to get up a buffalo hunt upon a large scale, but the difficulty of procuring buffaloes was insurmountable. Austin, it is true, did suggest an inroad among the flock of sheep of a neighbouring farmer maintaining that the scampering of the sheep would very much resemble the flight of a herd of buffaloes; but this suggestion was given ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... oxygen upon it, sweep across it rapidly, driven by the wind, for want of trees which might arrest them and so obtain their nourishment. Merely to plant trees in such a region would be carrying a gospel to it. Separated from the nearest town or city by a distance as insurmountable to poor folk as though a desert lay between them, with no means of reaching a market for their products (if they produced anything), close to an unexplored forest which supplied them with wood and the uncertain livelihood of poaching, the inhabitants often suffered from ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... of the same material, and so excessively slippery, being wet, that we could get but little foothold upon them even in their least precipitous parts; in some places, where the ascent was nearly perpendicular, the difficulty was, of course, much aggravated; and, indeed, for some time we thought insurmountable. We took courage, however, from despair, and what, by dint of cutting steps in the soft stone with our bowie knives, and swinging at the risk of our lives, to small projecting points of a harder species of slaty rock which now and then protruded from the general ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was upon the secret negotiations which his brother Louis was then renewing with the French government. The Prince had felt an almost insurmountable repugnance towards entertaining any relation with that blood-stained court, since the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. But a new face had recently been put upon that transaction. Instead of glorying, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the French part of the island, and the consequent belligerent aspect and character of the country, may at first sight appear somewhat discouraging to the beneficent views and labors of the friends of peace; but these I am inclined to think are by no means to be considered as insurmountable barriers against the benevolent exertions of those Christian philanthropists whose sincere and hearty desire it is ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... exceptional opportunities, enabling them to get mental snap-shots of picturesque events and to acquire valuable first-hand information for writing magazine articles or books, but that from a newspaper standpoint there would be insurmountable difficulties preventing them from getting their "news to market," that is to say, in getting their despatches on the wires for their respective papers. However, Mr. Herrick is doing everything he can to obtain all possible ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... thinking quickly. He was never beaten until the last vote was counted on a roll call. He knew that, no matter how apparently insurmountable an opposition was, a way to overcome it might often be found by the man who exercises strong self-control and a trained brain. This corrupt victor in scores of bitter political engagements on the battlefield of ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... would happen if the existing state of things ceased to satisfy Aniela. I have no right to overstep the boundary, and I am afraid to do so; suppose she too thought the same? Her innate modesty and shyness in themselves would prove an almost insurmountable barrier; and if, added to that, she thought the mutual agreement as binding for her as for me, we should never come to an understanding; we ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... considerable plateau, swept by Boer fire, and no advance could be made over its bare expanse save at a considerable loss. The infantry clung in a long fringe to the edge of the position, but for two hours no guns could be brought up to their support, as the steepness of the slope was insurmountable. It was all that the stormers could do to hold their ground, as they were enfiladed by a Vickers-Maxim, and exposed to showers of shrapnel as well as to an incessant rifle fire. Never were guns so welcome as those of the 82nd battery, brought by ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Confederate regiment by Governor Moore of Louisiana (a magnificent body of educated colored men which afterwards became the First Louisiana National Guards of General Weitzel's brigade and the first colored regiment in the Federal Army), the feeling against negro troops was insurmountable until the last days of the struggle. Then no straw could be overlooked. When, in December, 1863, Major-General Patrick R. Cleburne, who commanded a division of Hardee's Corps of the Confederate Army of the Tennessee, sent in a paper in which the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... proved so infallible for yourselves that you must force it upon others? Ah, madam, America has led us far and high, but the West is for the West and the East is for the East. So far, on the road to progress they can march side by side. Further than that, the paths divide and are separated by insurmountable differences, because your country is ruled by the teachings of freedom which you cannot practise. We are governed by the will of our divine Emperor, and the spirit of our ancestors. And I pray the great Amida before my country is stripped of her love and reverence for these, my poor ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... Milton might imagine to rise from a conclave of the damned. "She asked to plead the cause of her sex; to demand the enfranchisement of the women of America—the only class of citizens not represented in the government, the only class without a vote, and their only disability, the insurmountable one of sex." As these last significant words, with more than significant accent and modulation, came from the lips of the knightly, the courtly Horatio, a bestial roar of laughter, swelling now into an almost Niagara ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... caused by his digestive processes is so great that it is almost insurmountable. The heavy, lazy feeling you have after a large meal is with the fat man interminably because his organism is constantly in the process of ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... young once, and almost as popular a preacher as Mark, and he did not underrate the difficulties. But it was his firm persuasion that, with tact and common-sense they were by no means insurmountable. What really distressed the old man was that perhaps Mark had been right in thinking that he personally could not surmount them. And it was Canon Nicholls's doing that he was not by this time a novice in a Carthusian Monastery! ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... length reflected as fully and as calmly as I am able on every circumstance that ought to come under my consideration (at least as much for her sake as for my own) I am compelled to say that I find the obstacles to it decisive and insurmountable.[439] ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... some insurmountable difficulty, the fatigue, perhaps, or the disobedience, of the conquerors, prevented Claudius from completing in one day the destruction of the Goths. The war was diffused over the province of Maesia, Thrace, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... which is apparent to everyone, yet the actual measurement of size in the case of a large lot of nuts presents difficulties which seem practically insurmountable. A serious attempt was made to measure the length, breadth and height of the nuts examined and gauges were made which should do this exactly and quickly. These were finely discarded and the characteristic "weight" adopted in place of size. This has to quite an extent replaced ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... to comply with its engagements, far from having deferred, either voluntarily or from negligence, the accomplishment of its promises, the King's Government, ever occupied in the design of fulfilling them, was only arrested for a moment by insurmountable obstacles. This appears from the explanations now given, and I must add that the greater part of them have already been presented by M. Serurier to the Government of the United States, which by its silence seemed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... just what I've got hold of. When two persons are united by the tenderest affection and are sane and generous and just, no difficulties that occur in the union their life makes for them are insurmountable, no problems are insoluble." ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... country and straitened in circumstances. Bryant judged that his host would consider any offer which would enable him to realize something on the ranch and to depart; so that particular aspect of the matter if undertaken, namely, securing title to the land and water right, seemed favourable. If no insurmountable obstacle stood in the way of building a dam and a canal, arising from construction elements, it assuredly looked as if money was to be made out ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... overtops all the arithmetic and history that he ever learned. The man who carried the message to Garcia is another fitting illustration of this same principle. In executing his commission he overcame difficulties that would have seemed insurmountable to a less intrepid man. He kept his eye on the goal and endured almost unspeakable hardships in pressing forward toward this goal. Somehow and somewhere in his life he had learned the meaning of responsibility and so felt that he must not fail. The world came to know ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... had already lost one-fourth of his army through the prowess of the natives. The prospect before him was dark in the extreme. His troops were thoroughly discouraged, and the difficulties still to be encountered seemed absolutely insurmountable. Humiliated as never before, the proud Don Pedro was compelled to order a retreat. He returned to Panama, where, as we have mentioned, he had removed his seat of government from Darien. Panama was north of Darien, or rather west, as the isthmus there ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... as is natural in a city so great as to be the metropolis of the world, diseases attain to such an insurmountable degree of violence, that all the skill of the physician is ineffectual even to mitigate them; a certain assistance and means of safety has been devised, in the rule that no one should go to see a friend in ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... footpath that intersected the road only a few yards from the grotto. It was there she resolved to go for shelter. But to reach this path she must walk through the raging flood. She did not hesitate. Each moment of delay aggravated her peril, and might place some insurmountable barrier between her and her only chance of salvation. She lifted her skirts, fastened her child upon her back and bravely ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... classic umbrage of venerable elms. "But surely this is no fault of mine.—Hold there! Are you quite sure it's no fault of yours? Are we not responsible to a much greater extent than we imagine for our physical condition? After making all abatement for insurmountable hereditary influences upon organization,—after granting to that remorseless law of genealogical transmission its proper weight,—after admitting the seemingly capricious facts of what the modern French physiologists call atavism, under which we are made ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... an Establishment for the Relief of the Poor, in every country, ought to be founded. At the same time I shall consider the difficulties which are generally understood to be inseparable from such an undertaking, and endeavour to show that they are by no means insurmountable. ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... seen, that those who, to conquer insurmountable difficulties, have supposed in man an immaterial substance, distinguished from his body, have not thoroughly understood themselves; indeed they have done nothing more than imagined a negative quality, of which they cannot have any correct ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... recently-improved microscopes, and which probably are fully as large as the cells or units in one of the higher animals; yet these organisms no doubt reproduce themselves by germs of extreme minuteness, relatively to their own minute size. Hence the difficulty, which at first appears insurmountable, of believing in the existence of gemmules so numerous and so small as they must be according to our hypothesis, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... optional form arise in connection with the petitioning. Easy though it be for a rich and strong party to bear the expense of printing, mailing, and distributing petitions and circulars, in case of opposition from the poorer classes the cost may prove an insurmountable obstacle. Especially is it difficult to get up a petition after several successive appeals coming close together, the constant agitation growing tiresome as well as financially burdensome. Hence, measures have ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... accidentally turned into the Rue de la Barouilliere, and saw a house and garden with a bill upon it indicating that it was to be let or sold. She immediately asked to go over it. All sorts of difficulties, apparently insurmountable ones, stood in the way of the purchase. They were overcome in a strangely unaccountable manner, and the money which had to be paid in advance was actually forthcoming on the appointed day, to the astonishment ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... myself is worth. Owning at the present moment about two hundred and fifty thousand francs, I want to raise myself to a fortune which may some day make me the equal of his Excellency. At this moment I feel within me the power to move mountains and vanquish insurmountable difficulties. What a lever is such a scene of bitter humiliation as I have just passed through! Whose blood has Oscar in his veins? His conduct has been that of a blockhead; up to this moment when ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... obstacles (which it is to be hoped, however, may not prove ultimately insurmountable) exist in the way of their prosecuting their intended inquiries on behalf of ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... wellnigh circumnavigated the vast head. It seemed first of all to make straight for the ears on either side. Then, quite suddenly, finding these obstacles insurmountable, it dodged underneath them, and the scared observer could almost imagine its two ends meeting with a click somewhere in the wilderness at the back of that unseen hemisphere ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... smother it. If only her love was like her blood, he might have had no scruples; or if her blood were as pure as her love—even then it would be easier; but, as it was, he must give her up to-night, and for all time. Her love had placed a barrier between them greater and more insurmountable than her blood. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... the student who is determined to become useful to his fellow-men and to God. His path is strewn with difficulties all the way. He meets discouragements and back-sets which seem to him sometimes insurmountable, and he will need all his courage to keep on to the end. In our Southern country there are, it seems to me, many difficulties which do not exist in all parts of our land; but as I hear our teachers tell of their struggles and trials, I conclude there is no broad, smooth way along ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 08, August, 1885 • Various
... educated at least in the excellences of landscape-painting, acknowledged. But although he could pull a good oar, and liked other lakes, to this particular sheet of water there lurked within him an insurmountable antipathy. It was engendered by a variety ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu |
