"Unanswerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that this view cannot be true; that thousands of men selected from the officers of our citizen-soldiery by the unanswerable certificate of disabling wounds and the added prestige of their commander's recommendation, a class of men in physical, intellectual and moral power and attainments far superior to the average of the ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... trial was a success. Freedom was gained, although not without the sad loss of her two older children, whom she had to leave behind. Mother and father were again reunited in freedom, while two of their little boys were in slavery. What to do for them other than weep and pray, were questions unanswerable. For over forty years the mother's heart never knew what it was to be free from anxiety about her lost boys. But no tidings came in answer to her many prayers, until one of them, to the great astonishment of his relatives, turned up in Philadelphia, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... "The unanswerable argument to make one contented," said Meta. And, certainly, to be wife to a Member of Parliament is not so very delightful that one would covet ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... correspond with the obvious symbolism of the wings and wreath, or the serious richness of the black and white effect of the composition; but that face holds our attention as not even the Sibylla Delphica cannot by beauty, not by conscious inspiration, but by the spell of unanswerable thought, by the power to brood, by the patience that can and dare go unresolved for many years. Everything is begun about her; she cannot see unto the end; she is powerful, she is capable in many works, she ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... demonstrate that all those ideas are untenable, hollow visions, which a man of sense casts from him. And, according to the premises from which we set out and which are taken from our own innermost experience, we are quite right, and are alike unanswerable and unteachable, so long as we remain what we are. The excellent doctrines which are current among the people, fortified with special authority, concerning freedom, duty and eternal life, change themselves for us into grotesque fables, like those of Tartarus and the Elysian ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Lord Harewood, to whose outlay was added the mortification of its uselessness, is said to have kept a card in his pocket from that day forward with the ominous figures L100,000 inscribed on it, and whenever he was asked again to contest the county, he would produce this as an unanswerable argument against his ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... experience, without undergoing the peril of acquiring it, yet we must acknowledge that the free and full discussion has in the end resulted in truth: the very error has stimulated discovery. So far from being a warning against having confidence in the exercise of inquiry, it is an unanswerable ground for reposing confidence ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... yacht was not precisely the kind of craft best adapted to navigate the thousands of miles of ocean that lay between ourselves and home. Yet when Cunningham challenged me to point out what I regarded as faults, I was met at every turn by arguments which seemed quite unanswerable, so that at last I was driven to take refuge in the adage that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and to acknowledge that if the vessel only behaved half as well as her designer asserted she would, I ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... place." A girl may, indeed, be superior to sun and moon, as we see in the same book: "The moon has only a few of her charms; the sun tried to vie with her but failed. Where has the sun hips like those of the queen of my heart?" An unanswerable argument, surely! ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... dressed in her very best,—for Marston is proud of the child's beauty, and nothing is withheld that can gratify the ambition of the mother, so characteristic, to dress with fantastic colours: the child gambols at her feet, views its many-coloured dress, keeps asking various unanswerable questions about Daddy Bob, Harry, and the pic-nic. Again it scrambles pettishly, sings snatches of some merry plantation song, pulls its braided hat about the floor, climbs upon the table to see what is in ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... have been discreet enough not to refer to "Through Five Republics on Horseback." His readers bought it, and—had their eyes opened, for the statements made in this work, and the authorities quoted, are unanswerable. ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... stand-back for Ursula, who suffered agonies when she thought a person disliked her, no matter how much she despised that other person. How could anyone dislike her, Ursula Brangwen? The question terrified her and was unanswerable. She sought refuge in ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... means of Persia. The oligarchical conspirators formed themselves into a confederacy, and Pisander was sent to Athens to lay the proposal before the Athenian assembly. It met, as it might be supposed, with the most determined opposition. The single but unanswerable reply of Pisander was, the necessities of the republic; and at length a reluctant vote for a change of constitution was extorted from the people. Pisander and ten others were despatched to treat with Alcibiades ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... there disputed with great vehemence and fury for nearly two hours. I can’t give a correct report of the debate, for it was held in a barbarous dialect of the Arabic unknown to my dragoman. I recollect I sincerely felt at the time that the arguments in favour of robbing me must have been almost unanswerable, and I gave great credit to the speakers on my side for the ingenuity and sophistry which they must have shown in maintaining ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... renovate Liberalism, and though Liberalism (like every other party) is often conducted by claptrap, it has never been renovated by claptrap, but by great command of temper and the persistent exposition of persuasive and unanswerable truths. It is while we are in the desert that we have the vision: we being a minority, must be all philosophers: we must think for both parties in the State. It is no good our devoting ourselves to the flowers of mob oratory with no mob to address them to. We ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... resented its being forced upon them by one of their own number against a practical compromise to which the good sense of the majority of them assented. No reply was made to the pamphlet when first issued in 1698; and two or three years afterwards Defoe, exulting in the unanswerable logic of his position, reprinted it with a prefatory challenge to Mr. Howe, an eminent Dissenting minister. During the next reign, however, when a bill was introduced to prohibit the practice of occasional conformity, Defoe strenuously ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... surrounded the mathematical infinite is probably the greatest achievement of which our own age has to boast. Since the beginnings of Greek thought these difficulties have been known; in every age the finest intellects have vainly endeavoured to answer the apparently unanswerable questions that had been asked by Zeno the Eleatic. At last Georg Cantor has found the answer, and has conquered for the intellect a new and vast province which had been given over to Chaos and old Night. It was assumed as self-evident, until Cantor and Dedekind established ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... the unclosing of the idea which lies at our root, and is the vital power of our existence. The rose is the freedom of the rose tree. I should think, having lost his brain, and got nothing instead, a man would find himself a mere centre of unanswerable questions." ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... to what? That is the unanswerable problem of all religions; all philosophies; all science. If we return to a void, such as some interpreters of the Vedas declare, then surely this urge within mankind toward this annihilatory state would hardly be expected. It would be inconsistent ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... repeated games at cribbage" (he is writing to Coleridge), "I have got my father's leave to write; with difficulty got it: for when I expostulated about playing any more, he replied, 'If you won't play with me, you might as well not come home at all.' The argument was unanswerable, and ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... which continue to be practiced upon the revenue by false invoices and undervaluations constitute an unanswerable reason for adopting specific instead of ad valorem duties in all cases where the nature of the commodity does not forbid it. A striking illustration of these frauds will be exhibited in the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, showing the custom-house valuation of articles imported ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... his knees and the slight unsteadiness of the hand upholding glass or match. Vladimir de Windt, Ivan's acknowledged chum, was doubly concerned and doubly restless. He shuffled his chair from group to group, his eyes asking anxious and unanswerable questions of each comrade with whom he discussed the state of the weather. And, indeed, the great doubt in his mind was echoed in that of every man present: what would be the outcome of Ivan's audacity? If Brodsky took the remonstrance in bad part—and who doubted that he would?—what would be the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... is in the air to-day, few will dispute. It seems to be perpetrated unconsciously by the greater number, with no particular object in view, simply because other people do it. An unanswerable argument when used by one of ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... ignores the fact that there may be general laws of thought, according to which his mind must act in order to be a mind. Intelligence seems to have no nature, and may be anything. All questions regarding "those apparent other mortals" are consequently unanswerable to the poet. "Knowledge stands on my experience"; and this "my" is totally ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... for suspicion, I do not know; but it is quite certain that Haughton and Fisher were condemned solely on the ground of their answers on these occasions, and that no other evidence was brought against them. The government clearly preferred this evidence as the most direct and unanswerable, for in both those cases they might have produced other witnesses had they cared to ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... of Harry and Lucy, and your reasons for giving each, diverted me very much. Sophy and Margaret and I laughed over it and agreed that every reason was like Mr. Plunket's speech, "unanswerable." ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... who identify the Crag of Dumbarton with the Nemthur of the Saint's nativity, are faced by the unanswerable difficulty that though Nemthur may be the name of a tower, or may be the name of the district in which the tower stood, it cannot be the name of a town. The Saint in his "Confession" states that his ...
— Bolougne-Sur-Mer - St. Patrick's Native Town • Reverend William Canon Fleming
... better men gradually but surely slow down their gait to that of the poorest and least efficient. When a naturally energetic man works for a few days beside a lazy one, the logic of the situation is unanswerable: "Why should I work hard when that lazy fellow gets the same pay that I do and does ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... tendency to want to believe in something or other, so I had fine notions about the economy of nature—poetry of science. But this makes rather a joke of that, too—don't you think?" He paused, and Georgia could see the hot beating in his temples and his throat. And then he added, with a quiet more unanswerable than the passion had been: "So the beautiful thing about having no gods at all is that you're so fixed you have no gods ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... was the unanswerable reply. "Besides, we know that she was circulating in the halls at that time. I declare I have never known a worse business," this amiable man bemoaned. "Let me send for Sinclair; he is more interested than any one else in Gilbertine's relatives; or, stay, ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... that it cannot be sustained. To show the contrary, it is evident, must be the task of the republicans, or of nobody. Monroe's book is considered as masterly by all those who are not opposed in principle, and it is deemed unanswerable. An answer, however, is commenced in Fenno's paper of yesterday, under the signature of Scipio. The real author not yet conjectured. As I take these papers merely to preserve them, I will forward them to you, as you can easily return them to me on my arrival at home; ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to suffer many unpleasant things. Though he was the crown prince (and though his arguments were unanswerable), everybody shunned him for a coward. The queen, who did not believe in Firedrakes, alone took his side. He was not only avoided by all, but he had most disagreeable scenes with his own cousins, Lady Molinda and Lady Kathleena. In the garden Lady Molinda met him walking alone, and did not ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... went on a number of others equally distressing presented themselves. Having constituted herself his special protectress and the saviour of his reputation she tackled each of them with courage. In every case she found herself baffled by the fact that arguments which seemed to her unanswerable made no appeal to him, not because he wasn't anxious to see things with her eyes, but because they came within the area of a kind of blind-spot in his brain. She soon found that she couldn't appeal on moral grounds to an a-moral intelligence. She would have appealed on grounds material, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... that of a last judgment!" said he,—"a righting of all the wrongs of ages!—a solving of all moral problems, by an unanswerable wisdom! It is, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... believe in the Jewish and Christian revelation, are without a knowledge of the existence of a God! This gives completely a gain de cause to the disciples of Ocellus, Timasus, Spinosa, Diderot, and D'Holbach. The argument which they rest on as triumphant and unanswerable is, that in every hypothesis of cosmogony, you must admit an eternal pre-existence of something; and according to the rule of sound philosophy, you are never to employ two principles to solve a difficulty when one will suffice. They ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... made engagements with him and stipulated certain terms for certain work, and other details, never asked for paper, and even refused it when offered. Whatever came from those silent, resolute lips they knew unalterable, unanswerable, final, and absolute; they all trusted his word completely, and it passed amongst them ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... declares that the weaker shall prevail over the stronger, the false over the true. There may, as I have said, be cases where, for the quieting of titles, or the ending of controversies, a record or a certificate is made unanswerable; that is, though it might be truthfully answered, the law will not allow it to be answered. Such cases are exceptional, and the burden of establishing them rests upon him who propounds them. Let him, therefore, who asserts that ...
— The Electoral Votes of 1876 - Who Should Count Them, What Should Be Counted, and the Remedy for a Wrong Count • David Dudley Field
... remark Panda made no answer, perhaps because it was unanswerable, even in a land where it was customary to kill the supposed wizard first and inquire as to his actual guilt afterwards, or not at all. Or perhaps he thought it politic to ignore the suggestion that he had been inspired by personal enmity. Only, he looked at his daughter, ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... self-dependence, we have no right to assert that slavery is a necessary condition, if in the meaning of necessary we include the idea of permanence. It is not needful to present here other objections to this sweeping assertion. They are old, well-known, and unanswerable. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... unanswerable Reason with David, I was dumb, I opened not my Mouth, because thou didst it[y], and with good old Eli, under a severer Tryal than ours, It is the Lord, let him do as seemeth good in his Sight[z]. And shall We object against the Force of it? Was ...
— Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children • Phillip Doddridge
... and statesmen. The Peers in the course of the trial had taken the opinion of the judges frequently, and had followed it in deciding on the admissibility of evidence, a great deal of which was important to the prosecution. The report maintained, and with apparently unanswerable force, that when a legislature sits on offenses against the State, it constitutes a grand inquest which makes its own rules of evidence; and is not and ought not to be tied up by the rules administered in the ordinary ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... is said, when even full weight is given to the strategical pressure of the hour and the uncertainty of the weather, there still remains the unanswerable criticism of the officer of the Conqueror: that by an error of judgment Nelson spoilt his attack by unnecessary haste. The moral advantage of pushing home a bold attack before an enemy is formed is of course very great; but in this case the enemy had no intention ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... the power of reason, or rather to glory in being governed by reason. They should be instructed, that the only possible means of maintaining their opinions amongst persons of sense, is to support them by unanswerable arguments. They should be taught, that, to secure respect, they must deserve it; and their self-denial, or self-command, should never obtain that tacit admiration which they most value, except where ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... of the rank and file other professional brothers and sisters, and nowhere sadder, more impressive, or more unanswerable than where she speaks of the involuntary fall of the actor into social snobbishness and ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... native preachers not far from here made this unanswerable argument in a sermon on apostacsy. He said, "'If they shall fall away'—means that they cannot fall away, for anybody that knows anything about the English language, knows it is a verb in the impossible ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... watched her run across the meadow, leap the brook, and hurry on to a grove of quaking aspens at the edge of the forest. Then he lay back to consider the logic of the situation, with the following result, which appeared to him unanswerable: ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... meaning from century to century. Nothing remains but an almost absolute scepticism, for on such terms no certainty can be obtained. In a letter he states that the only problems which we can really solve are those of space and number; that even astronomy involves assumptions to which there are 'unanswerable objections'; that what is loosely called science, Darwinism, for example, is 'dubious in the extreme'; that theology and politics are so conjectural as to be practically worthless; and judicial and ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... lucky this time. I've screwed out some more for all of us—quite a large sum this time. I put forward unanswerable arguments—the expense of your outfit—our responsibilities—our debts, and all sorts of things, and then got your grandfather to include everything in one check. It's ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... whom I knew delivered the letters only once every three days, alleging, as unanswerable argument in his defence, that his brother's ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... to the real culprit. Among the Israelites, indeed, the casting of lots was divinely ordained as a method of ascertaining the Holy will, and its use on many interesting occasions is described in the Holy Scriptures. The simplicity of the process, and its unanswerable result, were appreciated by Solomon, who says: "The lot causeth contentions to cease, and parteth between the mighty" (Prov. xviii. 18). In New Testament times, again, Matthias was chosen by lot to "take ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... Puritan of patriotism with no taint of the slightest worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the only one in love with her; but it was I who had to hear oftenest her scathing criticism of my levities—very much like poor Decoud—or stand the brunt of her austere, unanswerable invective. She did not quite understand—but never mind. That afternoon when I came in, a shrinking yet defiant sinner, to say the final good-bye I received a hand-squeeze that made my heart leap and saw a tear that took my breath away. She was softened ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... actual University system; sometimes irreconcilable difficulties arose, e.g. when two students were (in 1599) summoned to explain why they had not attended one of the lectures required for the degree, and they presented the unanswerable excuse that the teacher in question had not lectured, having himself been excused by the University from the duty of giving the lecture. In fact the whole system would have been unworkable but for the power of granting 'graces' or dispensations, which has already been referred to: ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... astonished was Policeman Duffer. Ladies on all sorts of errands had consulted him. He had been presented with many tracts in his day; but rarely had a clear-voiced, earnest-eyed woman quietly confronted him with that name, as if it contained an unanswerable argument. However, he was not embarrassed; it took a great deal ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... pause dropped down upon creation, while they watched a looper caterpillar that clung to the edge of the illustrated paper and made futile circles in the air with the knob it called its head. Some one had forgotten to let down the ladder it expected, or perhaps it, too, was asking unanswerable questions of ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... written, on an outside scrap which was folded round the full-written sheet of paper, "Make it as smooth at Framley Court as possible." However strong, and reasonable, and unanswerable the body of Mark's letter may have been, all his hesitation, weakness, doubt, and fear, were expressed in this ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... which its moral and social consequences are so inexpressibly disastrous, so superlatively powerful in keeping the ordinary level of the aims and achievements of life low and meagre. The accurate and unanswerable reasoning no less than the noble elevation of this great argument; the sagacity of a hundred of its maxims on individual conduct and character, no less than the combined rationality and beauty of its aspirations for the improvement ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley
... douce fille, bold in nothing but kindness, with nothing to blush for but the fault of going too often to church. "Did you never hear that France should be made desolate by a woman and restored by a maid?" she said; and this would seem to have been an unanswerable argument. He had, henceforth, nothing to do but to promote her purpose as best he could ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... and unsanitary tenements is still permitted. Children work in "homes" on artificial flowers, finishing shoddy garments, sewing their very life's blood and that of the race into tawdry clothes and gewgaws that are the most unanswerable comments upon our vaunted "civilization." And to-day, we must not forget, the child-laborer of yesterday is becoming the father or the mother of the ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... paper containing the names of the captive French officers, though some of them were spelled in a way that defied recognition. Pouchot, feigning incredulity, sent an officer of his own to the English camp, who soon saw unanswerable proof of the disaster; for here, under a shelter of leaves and boughs near the tent of Johnson, sat Ligneris, severely wounded, with Aubry, Villiers, Montigny, Marin, and their companions in misfortune,—in all, sixteen officers, four cadets, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... fool, Peter had taken the one way to impress obedience upon Helen May. Had he urged and argued and kept on living, Helen May could have brought forth reasons and arguments, eloquence even, to combat him. But Peter had taken the simple, unanswerable way of stating his wishes, opening the way to their accomplishment, and then quietly lying back upon his pillow and letting death take him ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... dignified and restrained. A fortress of facts was presented impregnable to British reply, and highly creditable to the forethought and skill with which the American State Department had gathered the material for its case from the very beginning of the war. So strong and unanswerable was the proof against the Alabama that the British arbitrator voted in favor of the United States on the issue of British responsibility for ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... diagnosis of the case by an expressive gesture: Another poor fellow who was soon to answer the great roll-call! while on his perspiring face was again seen that expression of weariness and utter dejection, that hopeless, unanswerable: "What is the use?" since out of every ten cases that they assumed the terrible responsibility of operating on they did not succeed in saving four. He wiped his forehead, and set to work to draw down the flap of skin and ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... are proven. A proposition is then correct ("true") when it has been derived in the recognised manner from the axioms. The question of "truth" of the individual geometrical propositions is thus reduced to one of the "truth" of the axioms. Now it has long been known that the last question is not only unanswerable by the methods of geometry, but that it is in itself entirely without meaning. We cannot ask whether it is true that only one straight line goes through two points. We can only say that Euclidean geometry deals with things called "straight lines," to each of which is ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... Unanswerable as seem these arguments to the Western mind, they were by no means so to the mass of Chinese who are always fearful lest some sudden reshuffling in the relationships existing between foreign Powers exposes them to new and greater calamities. This Chinese ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... spent in gathering fresh impressions and disentangling bewildering experiences, and in small encounters with the unanswerable will of ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... therefore, that it has been reserved for a republican Government, in a land boasting of its free institutions, to set the first precedent of this kind? Our city councils, our courts of justice, every department of Government are approached by petition, however unanswerable, or absurd, so that its terms are respectful. None go away unread, or unheard. The life of every individual is a perfect illustration of the subject of petitioning. Petition is the language of want, of pain, of sorrow, of man in all his sad variety of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... (p. 736): "Mr. Evelyn gave him [Col. Morley] some visits to attemper his affection by degrees to a confidence in him, & then by consequence to ingage him in his designes; and to induce him the more powerfully thereunto, he put into his hands an excellent and unanswerable hardy treatise by him written and severall times reprinted, intituled An Apology for the Royall Party, which he backed with so good Argument and dextrous Addresses in the prosecution of them, that, after some private discourse, the Colonel ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... to carp at the doings of distinguished men, however unexceptionable their conduct may be. Free levees were said to savor of an affectation of royal state. In a letter to his friend, Dr. Stewart, Washington thus puts to silence this calumny, with his usual good sense and unanswerable argument: ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... more beautiful than ever, just touched already with evening mystery—it was better than ever to be alive. And the immortal wonder that has haunted man since first he became man, and haunts, I think, even the animals—the unanswerable question,—why joy and beauty must ever be walking hand in hand with ugliness and pain haunted us across those fields of life and loveliness. It was all right, no doubt, even reasonable, since without dark there is no light. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... well, and knew something of arithmetic. This was a proof that their education had not been neglected. And why should it? Were they not the descendants of the great Maguires of Fermanagh? Why, the very consciousness of their blood was felt as a proud and unanswerable argument against ignorance. The best education, therefore, that could be procured by persons in their humble sphere of life, they received. The eldest brother, whose name was Brian, did not, as is too frequently the case with the eldest ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... discussed with great ability the questions as to what constituted citizenship, and what were the "privileges and immunities of citizens" which were secured by Sec. 2, Art. 4, of the constitution, and they showed, by an unanswerable argument, that the term "citizens," as there used, was confined to those who were entitled to the enjoyment of the elective franchise, and that that was among the highest of the "privileges and immunities" secured to the citizen by that section. The court say that, "to be a citizen it is necessary ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... was the unanswerable question. For no wizard could use the name of God, no wizard could pray. So the Inquisition said; so Knupf said, so Knupf had to say, and so he had ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... irremediable? The only unanswerable connection between this old crime and Oliver lay in the evidence she had herself collected. As she had every intention of suppressing this evidence, and as she had small dread of any one else digging out the facts to which she only possessed a clew, might she not hope that ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... continual presence and advice were essential to her; and, in addition to this signal favour, she communicated to him the contents of all the despatches which she received, and followed his advice upon all matters of state as implicitly as though she considered it to be unanswerable. ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... volume of Karl Marks's, and carefully hid the book in his sack as if it were a great treasure. He behaved with reserve and indifference to all his comrades, except Novodvoroff, to whom he was greatly attached, and whose arguments on all subjects he accepted as unanswerable truths. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... by savage nations respecting the Supreme Being, and a future state, is always entitled to a most respectful consideration, because, when it admits the existence of a supreme, over-ruling, almighty intelligence, it furnishes the believer with an unanswerable argument for his creed. I have, therefore, devoted a few pages to the subject, which I presume no one will think misapplied. Hearne says, "Religion has not as yet begun to dawn among the Northern ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... past, Mr. Strawn, your contention would be unanswerable, but the moral tone and thought of the world is changing. You take it for granted that man must have in sight some material reward in order to bring forth the best there is within him. I believe that mankind is awakening to the ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... question pardieu! To fight, of course! Have you forgotten it?" "Fight! Why, sir, what are you thinking of? What would people say of me? A magistrate, a treasurer of France, put sword in hand? They would take us for a couple of fools." Which argument being unanswerable, according to the etiquette of the time, Saint-Foix leaves the dignitary—who himself takes good care to tell the story. It must be remembered—first that no actual challenge had passed, merely an ambiguous demand for addresses; secondly, that the treasurer, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... say they are too big for syllogisms; generally having found even one syllogism too big for them. If they complain either of your abstention from their cause or your adhesion to any other, you have an unanswerable answer. You will say, as you did say, that you did not break the Triple Alliance, even for the sake of peace. It was they who broke it for the sake of war. You, obviously, had as much right to be consulted about Servia as Austria had; and on ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... with a dogmatical air, as though his arguments were unanswerable, and shortly took his leave, after making us promise to breakfast with him the next day, and go and draw the money which was awaiting ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... unanswerable," I said hotly. "You haven't weighed our happiness against this unknown voice of your people, your birthright—he did it for you! His cold logic read the scales—not your heart or your conscience! He's built a wall around you like a cistern, and you can't see out. If it ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... unanswerable. I was just speaking of it to my friend here, Mr. Metternich Scribe. Allow me to introduce ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... you at the palace of St. Mark; and I know not why a man who has a right and is to eat in public with the doge and the senate of Venice should not eat in private with the Duke of Modena." Though this argument was unanswerable, it did not convince the ambassador; but we had no occasion to renew the dispute, as the Duke of Modena did not come ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... has not noticed him, so silent was he. But, alas, the other batteries do not fail to notice; to give fire; and, in fact, on being answered, and finding it a serious thing, to burst out into horrible explosion; unanswerable by the Saxon field-pieces; and surely perilous to human nature steering and towing those big River-Boats. "Loyal to our King, and full of pity for him; that are we;"—but towing at a rate, say of two shillings per head! Before long, the forty towing peasants fling down their ropes, first ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... attack should be made on the walls on the Marmora side, which were not so strong as those facing the Golden Horn. The Venetians, however, immediately took an exception, which everyone who knew Constantinople would at once recognize as unanswerable. On that side the current is always much too strong to allow vessels to be anchored with any amount of steadiness or even safety. There were some present who would have been very well content that the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... seemed fairly clear to him a few minutes before it had become more deeply mysterious than ever now. Even as the wolf-man rose from his knees, still mumbling to himself in incoherent exultation, the great and unanswerable question pounded in Philip's brain: "Who was this girl, and what was she to Bram Johnson—the crazed outlaw whom she feared and yet whom she did not wish him ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... by the unanswerable remark, that in England, according to the theory of the constitution during the sixteenth century, church and state were one. The proofs of this proposition are innumerable—not merely the act by which the supremacy was conferred on Henry VIII.—not merely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... by an unanswerable side of the argument. Las Vegas rolled on the grass in his mirth. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... natural to the human mind, of whatever is able to distend its faculties with wonder and astonishment, attached the majority of the company to the side of the Baron; and, though many of the Count's propositions were unanswerable, his opponents were inclined to believe this the consequence of their own want of knowledge, on so abstracted a subject, rather than that arguments did not exist, which were forcible ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Say's reasons for the abolition of the butcher's privilege are unanswerable; moreover, they apply to printers, notaries, attorneys, process-servers, clerks of courts, auctioneers, brokers, dealers in stocks, druggists, and others, as well as to butchers. But they do not destroy the reasons which have led to the adoption of these monopolies, and which ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Planche and M. Fontaney. The fact that exceptional payments were made on these occasions was conclusive evidence against simultaneous publication in Paris and St. Petersburg being the received practice. Moreover, as Balzac observes with unanswerable justice, even if this custom did exist, it would count as nothing against the agreement between him and Buloz. "M. Janin can take a carriage and go himself to carry his manuscripts to Brussels; M. Sue can get into a boat ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... intelligent and enlightened mortal though he be in comparison with his fellow-villagers, when questioned about it, he replies: "Inshalla! the water don't matter; if it is our kismet to take the fever and die, nothing can prevent it; if it is our kismet not to take it, nothing can give it to us." Such unanswerable logic could only originate in the brain of a fatalist; these people are all fatalists, and—as we can imagine—especially so when the doctrine comes in handy to dodge doing anything ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... according to strict precedence, each man spoke. With great amiability Colonel Starr presented the demands of the English Government; with greater amiability the Maharajah and his officers repelled them. But Colonel Starr was firm, and he had the unanswerable argument of three hundred well-armed men and two nine-pounders, which Maun Rao would have to meet with Petroff Gortschakin's cartridges. After duly and sadly reflecting upon this, the Maharajah concluded that ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... slightest explanation has been vouchsafed to the public, and we are, in common with five-sixths of the community, at present quite ignorant of the reasons given for this enormous expenditure: that there must be unanswerable reasons we have no doubt whatever, for have not the Council been unanimous to a man throughout. Not a single protest was entered. Not a single speech was publicly made against it. But more wonderful ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... that goes straight to Jimmie Archie's bush," explained Archie importantly, strutting ahead. "Ain't you glad I called for you, Uncle Duncan?" He dashed into the woods whooping and yelling, with Collie circling about him in noisy delight, and darted back again at short intervals to ask a dozen unanswerable questions. "What made the moon look so queer? And what was the moon made of, anyhow? Sandy said it was made of green cheese; but Don said if that was true they must have got a chunk of the moon to make Sandy's head. And Don ought ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... in the possession of the Government which seems to me to be unanswerable proof, both of the settled policy of the Richmond Government towards the Union prisoners, and of the relative merits of Northern and Southern treatment of captives. The document is a letter reading ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... lamentation were of no avail. The Japanese gendarmes commanded the streets, and the Japanese soldiers, behind them, were ready to back up their will by the most unanswerable ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, I can recall only one thing, to which he often and laughingly alluded. Motley, as the Chairman of the Committee on Education, made, as he thought, a most masterly report. It was very elaborate, and, as he supposed, unanswerable; but Boutwell, then a young man from some country town [Groton, Mass.], rose, and as Motley always said, demolished the report, so that he was unable to defend it against the attack. You can imagine his disgust, after the pains he had taken to render it unassailable, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... before his eyes. He had never read a line of the philosopher's writings, not even the charge to "hitch your wagon to a star" (not in the "Book of Arguments"). Sarah Austen had read Emerson in the woods, and her son's question sounded so like the unintelligible but unanswerable flashes with which the wife had on rare occasions opposed the husband's authority that Hilary Vane found his temper getting the best of him—The name of Emerson was immutably fixed in his mind as the synonym for incomprehensible, foolish habits and beliefs. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... beautiful head of a woman (No. 557 G in the Berlin Gallery) with soft, almost Leonardesque shadows, seen against the luminous hazy sea and sky, which remains absolutely unique in method and effect among his works, and makes one ask oneself unanswerable questions as to what might not have been the result if he could but have brought himself to accept the offered citizenship and salary, and stop on at Venice. A Duerer, not only secluded from Luther and his troubling denunciations, but living to see Titian and Giorgione's early ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... I owe you an apology for my heat, for the fact is that I've been in much of your position myself. There was a man once upon a time that I felt like thrashing—for much of your reason. But I didn't do it—for what seemed to me unanswerable reason. I did precisely the opposite—I did everything I could to ensure a miserable marriage for the being I loved best in all the world. I loathed the man, I loathed the bondage; but that's what I did. Now mark ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... shops of every description, it was necessary to lay in a large stock of dried goods, so that one should be able to supplement a meal on the arrival of unexpected visitors, and also be independent of the vagaries of parcel post. This was an unanswerable argument, and the colonel was the more inclined to acquiesce, since the menus of the last week had been all that even ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... tariff-reduction message to Congress one year prior to that election. An abler state paper has rarely been put forth. It was a clear, succinct presentation of existing economic conditions; in very truth an unanswerable argument for tariff reduction. It is not yet forgotten how promptly this message was denounced by the entire opposition press as a "free-trade manifesto," and how this cry increased in voice and volume until the close of the Presidential contest. And yet, in sending ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... barbarism, the opinions and manners of men grow different. They who observe from positions widely separate do not see the same things, or do not see them in the same light. Proof for a peasant is not proof for a philosopher; and arguments which in one age are held to be unanswerable, in another lose power to convince, or become altogether meaningless. It is not to be imagined that the hearts of Christians should again burn with the devotional enthusiasm and the warlike ardor of ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... unable to imagine what advantage you can expect from this licking of the dregs." "Advantage!" he murmured out of his stillness. "I am dashed if I do," I said, enraged. "I've been trying to tell you all there is in it," he went on slowly, as if meditating something unanswerable. "But after all, it is my trouble." I opened my mouth to retort, and discovered suddenly that I'd lost all confidence in myself; and it was as if he too had given me up, for he mumbled like a man thinking half aloud. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... worse than the Khyber Pass but both Birdwood and Godley say that their troops can tackle it. There are one or two in the know who think me "venturesome" but, after all, is not "nothing venture nothing win" an unanswerable retort? ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... He was a fluent and ready debater; he wrote for the college journal; his high animal spirits brought everybody about him, and his mind seemed ever eager and poised for flight: he was ready in wit; decried trifling subjects, yet would dispute for two hours over an absurdity; was dexterous and unanswerable in his syllogisms; would advance the crudest and most untenable theory, defend it, reducing the arguments of his opponents to meaningless folly, conquer apparently by both wit and reason, then turn his own hypothesis inside out, confute it, dash it into senseless ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... question was unanswerable, my dear, for duty said 'Yes,' while my heart said 'No.' The young dogs! What a knocking about they've got; but I expect that their opponents are in a worse position still. I've been thinking of taking proceedings against this Jones, for really this is such a flagrant affair; but, after all, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... among us than those of a good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the rights of mankind and of the free and independent states of America." As more than 100,000 copies were scattered broadcast over the country, patriots exclaimed with Washington: "Sound doctrine and unanswerable reason!" ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... were utterly unanswerable. She turned the bit of paper over and over in her fingers. She could not be mistaken about Tom's handwriting. He had penciled ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... 'You have been told, gentlemen, that the prisoner was bound by every obligation to avoid the supposed necessity of firing, by leaping behind a house near which he stood at that moment. Had he been attacked with a club, or with stones, the argument would have been unanswerable, and I should feel myself compelled to give up the defence in despair. But surely I need not tell you, gentlemen, how wide is the difference between sticks or stones, and double-triggered, loaded rifles cocked at your ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler |
