"Possibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this life, men who are in sin retain the possibility of obtaining everlasting happiness: not so those who are lost in hell, who, in this respect, are in the same case as ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... (5/8. If we suppose the case of the discovery of a skeleton of a Greenland whale in a fossil state, not a single cetaceous animal being known to exist, what naturalist would have ventured conjecture on the possibility of a carcass so gigantic being supported on the minute crustacea and mollusca living in the frozen seas of the ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... expressionless as ever. She well knew her action of the previous evening had severed the cordial relations formerly existing between her and Mr. Merrick's nieces, and determined to avoid the possibility of a snub by keeping aloof from them. She greeted whoever approached her station in her usual gracious and cultured manner, and refrained from ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... passed I returned once more to New York. I had reached a time of life when the possibility of death must be as steadily reckoned with as the processes of digestion. And I wished, before I lay down in the narrow house, to revisit the scenes of my former happiness. I took the same furnished lodging to which we had gone after our wedding. I lay all night, but ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... tellt! But dinna think she gaed to ony place whaur she was kent," sobbed Agnes, "or appeart to ony to be ither than a puir auld body 'at gaed aboot for hersel'. Dinna think aither 'at ever she tellt a lee, or said a word to gar fowk pity her. She had aye afore her the possibility o' bein' ca'd til accoont some day. But I'm thinkin' gien ye had applyt to her an' no to me, ye wad hae h'ard anither mak o' a defence frae mine! Ae thing ye may be sure o'—there's no a body a ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... me a letter just received from him in which (in answer to J.H.N.'s account of his work and the possibility of his breaking down) he said in substance: "I daresay you have more to do than your health will bear, but I would not have you give up anything except perhaps the deanery" (of Oriel). And then J.H.N. paused, with a kind of inner exultant chuckle, and said, "Ah! there's a Basil ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... in moral movements persons of homosexual temperament have sometimes become prominent, it is undoubtedly true, beyond possibility of doubt, that they have been prominent in religion. Many years ago (in 1885) the ethnologist, Elie Reclus, in his charming book, Les Primitifs,[51] setting forth the phenomena of homosexuality among the Eskimo Innuit tribe, clearly insisted that from time immemorial ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... concrete example. The publication in a New York paper of a news story to the effect that the first commencement exercises were about to be held in the only factory school ever conducted in the city, suggested to a special feature writer the possibility of preparing an article on the work of the school. To obtain the necessary material, he decided to attend the exercises and to interview both the principal of the school and the head of the factory. In thinking over the subject beforehand, he jotted down these points upon which to secure data: ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... which I would understand the system operates injuriously in that case is, that if man is in debt to a merchant, the merchant, if he wishes the man to fish, has no more to do than to say to him, 'I will roup you off: you will be without the possibility of holding land, and your cows will be taken. You will get no manure; you cannot cultivate your land profitably without it, and you will just have to begin the world again a new man.' Now a man with a family, and probably a pretty large family, cannot ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... it. Uttered insincerely, such words would be insult; she would see through his pretence of earnestness, and then farewell to her for ever. But if his intellectual sympathy became tinged with passion—and did he discern no possibility of that? An odd thing were he to fall in love with Rhoda Nunn. Hitherto his ideal had been a widely different type of woman; he had demanded rare beauty of face, and the charm of a refined voluptuousness. To be sure, it was but an ideal; ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... and conjures it up to the understanding and the feeling of the reader, with far more certain and more concentrated and striking effect than if it were painted on canvas, or modeled in wax, these pigeons form a feature in it which no one who knows can by possibility forget. It is probable that the multitudes may not be more numerous than those of the petrels in Bass's Strait, of which Captain Flinders—who also was a kind of Wilson in his way—gives a graphic description. But vast as the multitude of these was, it was ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... position to support each other. Then, by directing the entire movement in person, it is probable that Sheridan might have thrown his left forward, completely enveloping Hampton's right and crushing it before there was any possibility of receiving reinforcements. In that event, this turning movement would have been Custer's part of the battle, his regiments would have been kept together, under his eye, and well in hand for a combined movement at the right moment. Complete success ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... blasted by the wrath of Almighty God, although a place which had at one time been "well watered everywhere . . . even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt," (Gen. xiii. 10;) and it required strong faith to expect the possibility of this "wilderness" ('Arabah) being again made "like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord," (Isa. li. 3.) Indeed, that promise does not seem to apply to this peculiar locality, by comparing it with Ezek. xlvii. 10, 11, although these unwholesome waters are to be healed, ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... head. That was beyond the reach of possibility for her, she believed. But she thanked Wyn ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... new-born infant requires only the mother's milk. The true mother will nurse her child if it is a possibility. The infant will thrive better and have ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... urged her heart no more to the unequal task of subduing her love. Their stolen interviews were managed with much care, and for a long time no one suspected them; but at length the secret of their love and the story of their shame became so apparent as to do away the possibility of further concealment. The lovers were in an agony of fear and terror. Though beloved by her father, she had no reason to hope that he would so far forget his dignity and the honour of his family, and so far sacrifice his views of aggrandizement, as to admit into his family a man who was ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... that permit of the construction of such voltameters are as follows: (1) the substitution of an alkaline for the acid solution, thus affording a possibility of employing iron electrodes; (2) the introduction of a porous partition between the electrodes, for the ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... the filing-cabinet where he kept his future-history notes and began pulling out envelopes. There was nothing about the Kilroy in the Twentieth Century file, where it should be, although he examined each sheet of notes carefully. The possibility that his notes on that might have been filed out of place by mistake occurred to him; he looked in every other envelope. The notes, as far as they went, were all filed in order, and each one bore, beside the future date of occurrence, the date on which the ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... further remarks, that there was at one time reason to believe that James Graham was the author of the well-known book in question, but that circumstances have come to his knowledge altogether precluding the possibility that the author of The Sabbath and The Travels of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... or the summer snow of wood anemones, or that the hedge banks could hold great clusters of starry primroses. No, Sue had never seen the place where she and Giles would live together when they were old. She pictured it like the town, only clean—very clean—with the possibility of procuring eggs really fresh and milk really pure, and of perhaps now and then getting a bunch of flowers for Giles without spending many pence ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... necessary to examine in detail all the miracles recorded in the gospel history. Though they all proceeded alike from the direct agency of God, they are not all alike open to human inspection. If upon examination we find the supernatural origin of many of them raised above all possibility of doubt, it is a legitimate inference that the rest of them had the same divine origin. Not to insist then upon the miracles ascribed to our Lord within the sphere of inanimate nature, such as the conversion of water into wine, the feeding of many thousands with a few loaves and fishes, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... Snaekoll, and, as such, heiress of large estates, made a ward by the king, whose queen was Johanna; her husband's lineage; suggested born by 1232 at latest, when her supposed father, Snaekoll, went to Norway, but not before 1225; possibility of her being a dau. of a younger child of Ragnhild and born later than 1225; her guardian; her lands bounded those of the lord of Sutherland; d. ca. 1269; her children and estates; succ. to Erlend and Moddan lands in C.; owned Dalharrold; she did not own ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... besides, he would find nobody to second him. I have expelled from the ranks all the light infantry of Louis XIV.[66], who had been given to us, and all the country is fired with enthusiasm."—"No matter, I shall not leave him any possibility of disturbing us: you will direct him and the royalist officers to be secured till we enter Paris. I shall be there without doubt by the 20th or 25th, and sooner. If we arrive, as I hope, without any obstacle, do you think they will defend ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... worthy uncle, who is all to me in this world, would be quite alone if I were to leave him; and, although he has never said so, I know he dreads the possibility of my suggesting such ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... war with the Turks. Simolin wrote Catherine II. of Russia that, "with the chief command of the fleet and carte blanche he would undertake that in a year Paul Jones would make Constantinople tremble." This exciting possibility was no doubt constantly in Jones's mind while he was at Copenhagen, and probably increased his willingness to dismiss the indemnity negotiations. He began immediately to manoeuvre for the highest command possible. He demurred to the rank of captain-commandant, equal to that of ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... him for saving you from my stupid blunder," answered the girl, artfully avoiding all possibility of personal obligation. "Would you like me to read it ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... fanegas of rice and one thousand five hundred jars of wine, from such district or districts as they may choose, for any necessities that might arise in general—namely, in city, monasteries, and hospitals; since all are sustained by alms, and, in such times, there is no possibility that these can be supplied or provided for them from any place. For this reason it would be advisable to levy an assessment among the citizens of this city; for, although there may be no necessity therefor, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... Probability, amounting, it may be, at times, to an assurance of certainty, is the strongest proof which this Method can, from its very nature, produce. To establish a Principle or Law for a certainty beyond any possibility of doubt by the Inductive Method, it is essential that we should know that we are in possession of every Fact in the universe which has any relation to the given Principle, or rather that we should know that there are no Facts in the universe at variance with it. To know ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... his aunt even worse than the communication from the Widow Edlin had led him to expect. There was every possibility of her lingering on for weeks or months, though little likelihood. He wrote to Sue informing her of the state of her aunt, and suggesting that she might like to see her aged relative alive. He would meet her at Alfredston Road, the following evening, Monday, on his way back from Christminster, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... such a calamity as even her worst fears had never suggested, for they never had been parted, even for a single day; but wherever the little girl went, if to stay more than a few hours, her faithful attendant had always accompanied her, and she had never thought of the possibility of doing without her. ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... exaggerated my pecuniary embarrassments, and pointed out to him the necessity of his providing for himself, suggesting, with tears in my eyes, that he must adopt some servile trade or calling, as his melancholy deficiencies precluded the possibility of his success in ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... the breath, then the dead silence, when the committee appointed to draw the Declaration advanced to the President's table. It was the moment of crossing the Rubicon. It was the burning of the ships behind them. From this moment there was to be no possibility of retreating. Independence declared, it still remained to conquer it. British troops burdened the soil; shiploads of them were at that moment crossing the Atlantic. The Continental army was but an armed rabble, with patriotism for their strongest ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... of the palpitating order for Gower, although his common sense lectured the wildest of hearts for expecting such a possibility as the presence of his lofty ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... succession to the empire. The cool yet sanguinary policy, and the patient perseverance of resolution, with which she prosecuted her design, have seldom been equalled. While the sons of Julia were yet young, and while there was still a possibility that she herself might have issue by Augustus, she suspended her project, in the hope, perhaps, that accident or disease might operate in its favour; but when the natural term of her constitution had put a period to her hopes of progeny, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... The possibility of finding a source of wealth in the new world, such as the Spanish had found in Mexico and Peru, and the more urgent need of finding a route to the East and securing this through the development of colonies ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... open before him the illimitable realm of what is yet to be known. In the lowest deep which research the most profound can reach, there is a lower deep still unattained—perhaps, even, unattainable. But the fact that he cannot by any possibility master all human knowledge should not deter the student from making ever advancing inroads upon that domain. The vast extent of the world of books only emphasizes the need of making a wise selection from the mass. We are brought inevitably back to that precept ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... possibility that the savage was left-handed, in which event, the necessary action on his part would be much less, though sufficiently complicated to afford the white men abundance ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... to serve as commentary would be the better expression), the superintendence of their production had been left to Schofield. He, Maschka, and I passed the proofs in consultation. The blocks were almost ready; and the reason for their call that evening was to consider the possibility of having all ready for production in the early spring—a possibility which was contingent on the state of advancement of my own share ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... on to say (and, ah, with what a smile of exultation and delight those words were penned!), that "there was a possibility that he might be with them again in the fall, long enough to find a suitable home for Lulu; and, in the mean time, would they kindly seize any opportunity that presented itself, to make inquiries in ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... of conversation Kenwick, watching the straggling group in front, found it curiously gratifying to observe that Daymond did not seem to have much to say for himself. Kenwick had not by any means made up his mind to cut Geof out, but the possibility of such a feat gave a new zest to his intercourse with May. He was one of those men who, in their admirations at least, unconsciously take their cue from others. His judgments were not spontaneous, and the value he placed upon any good thing ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... Volterra, groups it with them; but the similarity of colour and treatment lead me to accept the former theory. The distance from Cortona to Volterra is not very great, and the fact that he was painting there in 1491 does not preclude the possibility of his having painted there six or seven years before, even if it was executed on the spot, which was not by any means always the case. At all events the picture has much in common with the Perugia altar-piece, both in ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... closed over me, hiding even the windows. I groped my way round the walls in a thorough search; but in order to prevent all possibility of the other's escape, I first of all ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... till the following spring there is no possibility of doing any agricultural work, for the ground is hard as iron, and covered with a deep layer of snow. The male peasants, therefore, who remain in the villages, have very little to do, and may spend the greater part of their time in lying ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... seems now a contemptible part—but I had to know whom you were protecting, whom you suspected of killing Spencer—I thought—forgive me—your father guilty. Until you said last night that you were shielding me, I had no idea of such a possibility; then I jumped to the conclusion that you had seen me in this house on Tuesday night, and imagined you were the person creeping up to the attic. Then, then—God help me!—came the idea that German gold had corrupted ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... Cyril, because Lad's mighty heart and soul were miles above the possibility of resenting anything from so pitifully weak and defenseless a creature as this child. He seemed to realize, at a glance, that Cyril was an invalid and helpless and at a physical disadvantage. And, as ever toward the feeble, his big nature went out in friendly protection ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... endowed with tenfold its present powers, it would differ essentially from any Irish Parliament which, even though denied the Parliamentary title, should represent the people of Ireland, and should have received the very smallest amount of authority which could by any possibility satisfy Mr. Parnell. Nor are differences which may not admit of easy definition difficult for a candid enquirer to discern. A town council, whatever its powers, does not represent a nation, and derives no prestige from the principle of nationality; the feeblest ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... up his hands in dismay, but a half hour later he was eagerly discussing with Henry the possibility of overtaking some large band ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his upright son his own accounts and those of Samuel Pfefferkorn, and—it is hard for me to say this in Herr Casper's presence;—also, when the peril became urgent, illegally deprived his business partner of the possibility of obtaining a correct view of the real situation of affairs. So, in the Emperor's name, let ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... defeat would have been alike dangerous to his safety. Twice at Charles' request orders were sent to disband, or at least remove, the French army from the frontier. The King's letters were delivered by his messenger in the persistent presence of a Burgundian who prevented the possibility of any private communication. Louis' crafty old soldier, Dammartin, paid little attention to such orders. He sent word to the Duke that, unless his master soon returned, all France ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... put the matter to the test, and found that truth of which the mere possibility had been torture. He had absolutely rejected her. "He could not care for me," she kept repeating, as the silent air round her seemed full ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... consequently the vague news of the young man's death was probably received with a feeling of relief. There was always a probability that such a wild and dissipated youngster would come to some bad end; but with his death that probability ceased to be even a possibility, and so, no doubt with a sigh of relief, young Bunkley's people put aside the memory of him. He was dead and buried. Those who survived him were more than willing to take the care and trouble of managing the estate which young Bunkley would ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... liableness[obs3]; possibility, contingency; susceptivity[obs3], susceptibility, exposure. V. be -liable &c. adj.; incur, lay oneself open to; run the chance, stand a chance; lie under, expose oneself to, open a door to. Adj. liable, subject; in danger &c. 665; open to, exposed to, obnoxious ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... all on account of that unprincipled scoundrel who has deceived and deserted her, weighs upon her spirits as it does on mine. It is not the loss of the jewels (though we would have been beyond the possibility of want had they reached her) that we mourn; it is that one whom I fear I have sorely angered, perhaps past all forgiveness, should have to suffer so much more on our account, and yet if you only knew—if I could only explain! But ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... second greatest in all the land of the Nile—of Ancient Egyptian sorcery! I pray heaven I may be wrong, but in the disappearance of Lady Lashmore, and in the story of Ali Mohammed, I see a dreadful possibility. Ring for a time-table. We have ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... Flaxman's apparent susceptibility to them, the possibility of results, and the satisfactory disposition of the family goods and chattels that would be brought about by such a match, the opportunity it would offer the man, too, of rehabilitating himself socially after his first matrimonial ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... concerning the people of the Missouri village. "They're a lot of miserable lazy louts," she had declared a thousand times, and Hugh, agreed with her, but sometimes wondered if in the end he might not also become a lazy lout. That possibility he knew was in him and for the sake of the woman as well as for his own sake he was determined ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... because it was good policy to do them. Before Archdale she was brave; not only from pride, but out of pity to him; before others, all but her father, pride restrained her from complaint, even from admission of the possibility of the disaster she feared. But alone her ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... which, to Norman's family, overshadowed all possible advantages, small time was lost in calling Mr. and Mrs. Moulton into the conference. After the arrival of the latter, it had been a debate between the two boys, their parents, and several sisters, with no apparent possibility of reaching a decision. ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... friends, at times, of the rapid triumphs of modern science. Were we but aware of the vast amount of preventible misery around us, and of the vast possibility of removing it, which lies in the little science which we know already, we should rather bewail the slow departure ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... any government of him," said the father, looking towards the identical person whom Dr. Harrison had characterized as 'the perspective of a woman,' and who certainly had the air of one whose mind—what she had—was shut up and shut off into the further extremities of possibility. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... any of its charm. Neither will I, Hazel, as long as I have the care of it. So long as you are even in idea mine, no man shall—touch you, again, as I saw it last night! You are precious to me beyond such a possibility. Give me ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... him. Wouldn't she try that before giving them up? And I remember distinctly that her face blushed as red as a bright red rose, as she replied, "Why, Mr. Gordon, he'd laugh at me!" And she could not bear the possible chance of being laughed at for the other more likely possibility of winning a soul—a man—a life. That was "self" in her, shrinking back from a laugh; dreading that look of possibly contemptuous surprise ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... growth of ash and dwarf elm and cedar, thorny underbrush choking the spaces between. Posting the cowboy, to whom he gave his rifle, with two greyhounds on one side of the upper end, and old man Prindle with two others on the opposite side, while I was left at the lower end to guard against the possibility of the wolves breaking back, the Judge himself rode into the thicket near me and loosened the track-hounds to let them find the wolves' trail. The big dogs also were uncoupled and allowed to go in with the hounds. Their power of scent was very poor, but they were sure to be guided aright by the ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... tolerate the thought that other forces might have called her even had she lived, and that she might not have been his to hold and to fight for. He did not question the possibility of shackles and chains that might have bound her, or other inclinations that might have led her. He claimed her, now that she was dead, and knew that living he would have possessed her. Nothing could have kept him from that. But she was gone. And for ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... to the same effect might be adduced, but the foregoing are sufficient to indicate the fact that belief in the possibility of such occurrences was quite general, and that if doubt did exist in regard to their real nature, it was not so strong as not readily to be overcome by the tricks ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... to be no possibility that she could ever have Max for her husband, even should she win his heart as Yolanda. In view of the impending and apparently unavoidable French marriage, the future held no hope. But when her day of wretchedness should come, she would, through all her life, ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... noiselessly, and then raised it again. He made his escape, and for some reason thought that he could do so more safely on foot than on the bicycle. He therefore left his machine where it would not be discovered until he had got safely away. So far we are within the bounds of possibility, are we not?" ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the wretchedness, and the degradation attached to the condition to which England reduces her political convicts. Condemned to associate with the vilest of the scoundrels bred by the immorality and godlessness of England—exposed, without possibility of redress, to the persecutions of brutal, coarse-minded men, accustomed to deal only with ruffians than whom beasts are less ferocious and unreclaimable—restricted to a course of discipline which blasts the vigour ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... wisdom Valour and perseverance America is to be made free, not to mention the dangerous president such trials may afford. Your Petitioner therefore implores Congress to reconsider their determination on the impeachment of Genl. Arnold, as there cannot at this Day remain a possibility of Doubt but that the same was premature, and furnished Genl. Arnold with a foundation to establish a Character on the Ruins of a Man who to speak moderately has rendered his Country as essential [?] Service as that Donquixote Genl. whose reasons for evading ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe
... of Friday, August 11, beyond possibility of doubt we sighted a ship; and that it was the same which we already had seen at least once, the lozenge-shaped patch on the foresail proved to the satisfaction of ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... such as belongs to the domain of Art, and will both save from absurdity, and allow the relations with surroundings to manifest themselves;—harmoniousness, which is the possibility of co-existence.] ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... adequate expression at last. If there had not been a God, mused Percy reminiscently, it would have been necessary to invent one. He was astonished, too, at the skill with which the new cult had been framed. It moved round no disputable points; there was no possibility of divergent political tendencies to mar its success, no over-insistence on citizenship, labour and the rest, for those who were secretly individualistic and idle. Life was the one fount and centre of it all, clad in the gorgeous robes of ancient worship. Of course ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... of the contest lifted him from a State leader to a national, an international man, and made the presidency a possibility. We now leave the reader to engage in the profitable pleasure of reading the ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... poetry? Had he not called him Aesop, when it was plain to all the world that he represented Apollo? And now this night, again, he had taken the opportunity of turning him into ridicule in the presence of La Bianca; and he and she had spoken of the possibility of their being troubled with his company as of a nightmare. For the painful fact was that their uncomplimentary expressions had been heard by the poet; who, when he had left Ludovico and Bianca in the little supper-room together, had retreated no further than just to the other ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... whole empire, and the national desire on the part of many Protestant princes, as well as on the part of the Catholic emperor, to rid the Germanies of foreign soldiers and foreign influence—all these developments seemed to point to the possibility of concluding the third, or Swedish, period of the war, not perhaps as advantageously for the imperialist cause as had ended the Bohemian revolt or the Danish intervention, but at any rate in a spirit of reasonable compromise. In fact, in May, 1635, a treaty was signed at Prague ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... bald-headed—sat by me all night to give me medicine. In the morning I felt as if I had a new heart in me, and was planning to mount my horse. I thought I ought to go on about my business, but I fear I thought more of the young ladies and the possibility of my seeing them again. The baroness came in after I had a bite to eat. I told her I ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... you knew my father very well, you would understand. Though he's fond of pictures, he looks upon artists and poets as a rather effeminate and irresponsible set, and I must admit that he has met one or two unfavorable specimens. Then, he couldn't imagine the possibility of a son of his not being anxious to follow the family profession; and, knowing how my defection would grieve him, I let him have his way. There has always been a Challoner fighting or ruling in ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... for him. There was in not a few of his poems the promise of reaching a height which was attainable only to a man who climbs light. There was in him the possible making of a great reformer, an evangelist, which possibility never became actuality, owing to the weight which social success laid ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... concoction of which all Troy acknowledged him to be an expert), drew his arm-chair close to the genial blaze, and sat alternately sipping his brew and conning for the thousandth time the annotated pamphlet in which he had demonstrated exhaustively, redundantly, irrefutably, beyond possibility of disbelief or doubt, that with the morrow the world's great age must be renewed and the Millennium ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... went on Andy. "He's in need of money, and has been for some time, though we didn't know it. As soon as I heard that news about his father losing all his fortune, and the possibility that Mortimer might have to leave Yale, I said to myself that he was the most likely one to have been ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... leave her during lecture hours but always in charge of trustworthy friends. At no time, so far as he could find, had she been in danger of contagion. Of course that danger might possibly have been incurred without his knowledge, but another possibility was that the scourge might have been visited upon us through her infection ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... states facing the Mississippi River. Their grandfather had been a noted man in the state, having been one of its first governors and later serving it in the senate in Washington. There was a county and a good-sized town named for him and he had once been talked of as a vice- presidential possibility but had died at Washington before the convention at which his name was to have been put forward. His one son, a youth of great promise, went to West Point and served brilliantly through the Civil War, afterward commanding several western ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... handsome and wore a red hat on her dark hair; but there were no suitable young men here, and in the long run it was a bore to waste her holidays so completely. Tradesman Batt, who had been in both Africa and America, was the only possibility, for even ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... reflection the unknown chronicler had decided, for political reasons of the highest importance, to allow others to guess how the "conversation" opened. From the context it seems absolutely clear that the excised words have to deal with the possibility of the re-establishment of the Empire in China—a very important conclusion in view of what followed later in the year. Indeed there is no reason to doubt that the Japanese Envoy actually told Yuan Shih-kai that as he was already virtually Emperor it lay within his power to settle ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... an assiduity which showed how pleasurable he found the task, while the care with which he secured the preservation of his letters, begging his correspondents to retain them, in case at any future time he should desire their return, proves that he anticipated the possibility that they might hereafter be found interesting by other readers than to those ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... appears to be of a rich soil, well cultivated. The crops of ripe corn were abundant. We found the town quite full; not a vacant room in the inn, it being the time of the assizes: there was no lodging for us, and hardly even the possibility of getting anything to eat in a bye-nook of the house. Walked up to the Castle. The prospect from it is very extensive, and must be exceedingly grand on a fine evening or morning, with the light of the setting or rising sun on the ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... beautiful sectarian churches. He could see the effect, not visible to less interested eyes but very plain to his. He feared that another generation would be lost and he asked me if there was any possibility of securing temporary aid such as the sects had for their building work. I had to tell him that nothing could be done. I told him of the poverty of my own Diocese, and that, while his was a poor place, there were others approaching it. In my heart I knew there ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... "for despair is sinful." As soon, continued the gentleman, as I had indulged the first tumult of my passion, I began to consider coolly what course I should take, in a situation without friends, money, credit, or reputation of any kind. After revolving many things in my mind, I could see no other possibility of furnishing myself with the miserable necessaries of life than to retire to a garret near the Temple, and commence hackney-writer to the lawyers, for which I was well qualified, being an excellent penman. This purpose I resolved on, and ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... from a railroad, was lonely and unmarked by those tokens of progress that the locomotive generally leaves in its track, hence it was the last spot where a scene of fraud and deception could find a possibility of a successful execution. The house was a humble frame dwelling fronting south, consisting of two fair-size parlours opening into each other, east of these a bedroom and a buttery or pantry, opening into one of the sitting rooms; and a stairway between the buttery and ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... the arrival of the Princess of Wales at Acre, and the possibility that she might extend her journey to Sayda, induced Lady Hester to embark for Antioch, where she professed to have business with the British consul. It was considered an act of great daring on her part to go into a district inhabited entirely by the Ansarys, on whom she had lately wrought ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the most open-hearted old bachelor in the country. His imagination never could conceive the possibility of everybody not being glad to meet everybody, his house could never be too full, his dinner-parties of 'a few friends' overflowed the dining-room, and his 'nobody' meant always at least six bodies. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heathen origin is at least as probable as a Christian one. I would suggest as a possibility that the expectation of the Twilight of the Gods may have grown out of some ritual connected with the eclipse, such as is frequent among heathen races. Such ceremonies are a tacit acknowledgment of a doubt, and if they ever existed among ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... to demand consideration, namely, the possibility of such an alliance as that which Rama is said to have concluded with the monkeys. This possibility will of course be denied by modern critics, but still it is interesting to trace out the circumstances which seem to have led to the acceptance ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... throwing to bases. He should throw only when there is a fair chance of making the put-out; for all other purposes, as to hold the runner close to the base, a feint will answer just as well and does not entail the possibility of an error. ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... Paula to say," Miss Wollaston insisted, "that she did nothing to exhibit a feeling of that sort. But when, at John's suggestion, I spoke of the possibility of having in the Cravens and the Blakes,—the Cravens are very musical, you know—and Wallace Hood who would be really hurt if we left him out, Paula came nearer to being downright rude than she often allows herself to be. She said among other things that she didn't propose to have March subjected ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... who alone occupied the vast central plain; and a strong French claim was established to the possession of this vital area, which was not only the most valuable part of the American continent, but would have shut off the English coastal settlements from any possibility of westward expansion. These remarkable explorations led, in 1717, to the foundation of New Orleans at the mouth of the great river, and the organisation of the colony of Louisiana. But the whole of the intense and systematic imperial ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... Nor was it seriously supposed that any relics of prehistoric Egypt or Mesopotamia ever would be found. The antiquity of the known history of these countries already appeared so great that nobody took into consideration the possibility of our discovering a prehistoric Egypt or Mesopotamia; the idea was too remote from practical work. And further, civilization in these countries had lasted so long that it seemed more than probable that all traces ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... may a few generations hence land modern society in similar conclusions, unless other convictions revive meanwhile and get the mastery of them; of which possibility no more need be said than this, that unless there be such a revival in some shape or other, the forces, whatever they be, which control the forms in which human things adjust themselves, will make an ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... in captain Willoughby's determination. Some of the fire of youth awoke within him, and he debated with himself on the possibility of making a sortie, and of liberating his son, as a step preliminary to victory; or, at least, to a successful retreat. Acquainted with every foot of the ground, which had singular facilities for a step so bold, the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... make allowance for the fact that there was no centre-board nor keel to speak of to the Glarus. I will admit that the sails upon a nine-hundred-ton freighter are not calculated to speed her, nor steady her. I will even admit the possibility of a current that set from the island toward us. All this may be true, yet the Glarus should have advanced. We ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... industry. With the January 2005 expiration of a WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, Cambodia-based textile producers are in direct competition with lower priced producing countries such as China and India. Faced with the possibility that over the next five years Cambodia may lose orders and some of the 250,000 well-paid jobs the industry provides, Cambodia has committed itself to a policy of continued support for high labor standards in an attempt to maintain favor with buyers. Tourism growth ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... you take all the evil out of the world you will remove the possibility of the best thing in life. That does not mean that evil is good. What one means by calling a thing good is that the spirit rests permanently content with it for its own sake. Evil is precisely that with which no spirit can rest content; ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... nearly passed, when the Vicar had another stroke, a stroke that rendered him childish and helpless, and precluded all possibility of his leaving his bed again. Miss Thornton found that it was necessary to have a man servant in the house now, to move him, and so on. So one evening, when Major and Mrs. Buckley and the Doctor had come down to sit with ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... secession of the Southern States should be followed by that of New York city; and in fact the scheme had been recommended by the Democratic mayor, Fernando Wood, in a message to the Common Council of the city on January 6; and General Dix conceived it to be a possibility. In the Senate Simon Cameron declared himself desirous to preserve the Union "by any sacrifice of feeling, and I may say of principle." A sacrifice of political principle by Cameron was not, perhaps, a serious ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... Hitherto, whenever the gipsy had noticed them, they had appeared hermetically blocked up by closely-fitting shutters, painted to match the colour of the wall, of which they almost seemed to form a part. On taking up his position just within the skirt of the forest, the possibility of these casements being opened, and his proceedings observed, had not occurred to him; and it so happened that from one of them, through an opening in the branches, the retreat he had chosen was completely commanded. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... and so beautiful, my dear white r-rose. It means, besides those things, that you have saved me from the sin of letting my poor powers grow weaker; that you have changed me from a plaything of chance into a man of will and action. I am bor-rn again, my heart's joy, into a world of force and possibility, and you are the queen of the ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... pain in tearing themselves loose from the spiritual bonds—especially perhaps in matters of religion—woven by long tradition to bind them to their parents. It was on the daughters that the chief stress fell. For the working class, indeed, there was often the possibility of escape into hard labour, if only that of marriage. But such escape was not possible, immediately or at all, for a large number. During the nineteenth century many had been so carefully enclosed in ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... the impression that the Germans were planning a new offensive on a large scale against their left wing, in an attempt to blast a passage through to Calais and Dunkirk. By February 7, 1916, the Allies were thoroughly awake to the possibility of a big blow impending somewhere in the west. The sweep through Serbia had released several hundred thousand men for service elsewhere. For a month the Germans had been hammering and probing at Loos, Givenchy, Armentieres, and other points ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... delivered to Baron Platen your message. He is, however, quite despondent as to the possibility now of an attack upon Aland. Count ——, it really appears, might have taken a stronger position, so as to prevent the escape of Kaminski. The time that will now be lost in his pursuit being fatal, renders future operations ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... "But there is another possibility—which is why I should like to know who suggested this sudden wedding. I mean that we can't overlook the possibility that these two murders made either the bride or the groom feel perfectly safe in going on with the marriage. ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... carbon, thus increasing the amount originally deposited, as was strikingly exemplified in the case of Duncan and others, to be afterwards detailed. Duncan had not for fifteen years been engaged in mining operations, nor was there any possibility of his having inhaled more carbon: yet in him it was found to have increased to the greatest possible extent, leaving but a small ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... and said that nobody was. He'd only mentioned the possibility if the fellow ever got troublesome, which was most unlikely. His wife was a climber—social bug, you know. "Pays to know your ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a large landed estate by putting together several smaller grants; and this was done by a limited number of persons during the seventeenth century in Virginia as will be discussed later. There was also the possibility that grants of considerable size in the original patent might be broken up and distributed to others in smaller amounts. In any case, the second half of the century as reflected in the land patents saw a moderate increase in the size and number of large grants as the population increased, ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... proposition must be made so plain that there is no possibility of its being misinterpreted. What a city man who is a wide reader gets at a glance, the ordinary farm owner or farmer's boy—often with only a rudimentary knowledge of English—must ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... he probably thought of it as a mere cheap substitute for india rubber; it cost a few shillings a ton. But you can never tell all an invention will do. It was the genius of a man named Warming that pointed to the possibility of using it, not only for the tires of wheels, but as a road substance, and who organised the enormous network of public ways ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... "vanity is the end of all his ways," and vanity has been the beginning and middle of them—a perfectly quiet and everyday kind of vanity, but vain from centre to circumference and entire surface. He (one cannot exactly say "tries," but) is brought into the possibility of trying love of various kinds—illegitimate-romantic, legitimate-not-unromantic, illegitimate-professional but not disagreeable, illegitimate-conventional. Nothing ever "comes off" in a really satisfactory fashion. He is "exposed" (in the photographic-plate ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... to rest in fancied security, with the pleasing hope of safely reaching their destination on the following day. After midnight the wind increased; but though the ship drove rapidly before it, no danger was perceived till about day-break,—when, already in the surf, there was no longer a possibility of escape. The crew immediately proceeded to set all sail the storm would permit, in hopes of weathering the point; but their gallant efforts could not long delay the fate of the doomed vessel, she continued to drift towards ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... the situation and considered the possibility of one, two, three, or more possible causes, we fix upon one of them for further investigation; that is to say, we frame an hypothesis that this is the cause. When an effect is given to find its cause, an inquirer nearly always begins his investigations by thus framing an hypothesis ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... made entanglements that would have disconcerted a bear. He realized that it was a zone picketed with unseen riflemen, and advisers, who were by no means alarmists, had told him that he could not pass through it alive. Yet he believed there was the possibility, and upon it he was staking everything, that so long as he rode openly and with the audacity of seemingly nickel-plated self-confidence, these watchers by the way would, in sheer curiosity, pass him on to those superiors within the house from whom ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... view. It was ruin, utter and complete. He had disclosed a valuable political secret to a woman who had not hesitated to make use of it. Nothing could be more ignoble. He tried to fancy for himself some new life under altered conditions, but everywhere he seemed to run up against some possibility, some combination of circumstances which included a share in things which were absolutely finished. His brain refused to fashion for him the thought of any life which could leave outside everything which had been ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... interview had become poignantly distasteful to him. He wished to get away; to be alone. He was conscious that a possibility had passed out of his life, the thought of which had been very dear to him. He wanted to think, to plan against this new condition. In discussing Inez with this man, in this way, he felt he was degrading her and ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... from rivers to canals, and from larger canals to smaller ones, is expedited by the possibility afforded of, on the arrival at the locks, dividing the vessel in a space of a few minutes; of passing with the semi-vessel, singly, the various smaller locks or the shallow canal, after which the two sections may be re-combined and navigated again as one vessel. The process of "folding ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... who strongly urged him to become a candidate. As this situation must inevitably destroy all his future prospects, he for a long time hesitated; but Dr. Easton having informed the Managers of the Institution, that there was a possibility of their obtaining a professor, so eminently qualified as Dr. Garnett, they, after making further inquiry concerning him, offered it to him in so handsome a manner, that, although the situation was ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... but my brain cool. The interest was centring in Starling, and the older men had their calumets in hand and were preparing for the council. I saw that for a few hours at least I should have life and semi-liberty. There was no possibility of my escape, so, bound as I was, I was free to wander within limits. I would keep as near the women as possible and try and ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... wearing qualities is bound to be discovered. To those who believe in the law of musical evolution, and who realize that mechanical music has reached the wide world, and is even beginning to penetrate into the public library, the possibility of these happy accidents means a sure and swift general development in the appreciation of ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... house would the gallant Van Home and his compeers hold frequent councils of war, as to the possibility of re-conquering the province from the British; and here would they sit for hours, nay, days, together smoking their pipes and keeping watch upon the growing city of New-York; groaning in spirit whenever they saw a ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... over defective housekeeping. She was as horrified as he over the picture that he held up with such apparently justified indignation, the picture of her as a querulous and ungrateful wife. Why, Paul was looking at her as though he hated her! For the first time in her married life, she conceived the possibility that she and Paul might quarrel, really seriously quarrel, about fundamental things. The idea terrified her beyond words. Her mind, undisciplined and never very clear, became quite confused, and only her long preparation and expectation of ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... just as though the energy lying behind all this stillness had pressed forward to the edge of action. This, no doubt, was merely the quickening of my own mind, and had no other justification; for the presence of John Silence always suggested the near possibility of vigorous action, and as a matter of fact, he came in with nothing more than a nod and ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood |
