"Unthinkable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Allendyce had a vivid understanding of the tie that bound these two. And it was unthinkable that this man would let the girl go and do nothing. Yet it was not of any possible embarrassment he might suffer that Cornelius Allendyce thought at this moment; it was of the heartbreak of the father. He had not considered him at all; carried away by a mad impulse he had let himself listen ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... discourage a world war—would not permit it. There were increasing millions of people who had never seen a soldier, never seen a battleship. Would they want to pay the cost in blood and billions of treasure? It was unthinkable. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... many boats plying a coastal trade from one island to another. An escape attempt would have been quite feasible, assuming Ned Land managed to seize the skiff without the captain's knowledge. But in midocean it was unthinkable. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... moment he was the incarnation of the Triumphant Union on the altar of whose life every house had laid the offering of its first-born. The tragedy was stupefying—it was unthinkable—it ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... which these hideous things outraged. Whatever may have been the cause, he could not look upon a dead body without a loathing which had in it an element of resentment. What others have respected as the dignity of death had to him no existence—was altogether unthinkable. Death was a thing to be hated. It was not picturesque, it had no tender and solemn side—a dismal thing, hideous in all its manifestations and suggestions. Lieutenant Byring was a braver man than anybody knew, for nobody knew his horror ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... little, and scarcely ever in battle, and when we know nothing of bronze-plating on shields, the poet should constantly call a monstrous double- bellied leather shield, or any other Mycemean type of shield, "a bronze chiton," seems almost unthinkable. "A leather cloak" would be a better term for such shields, if cloaks ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... will be modified by many reactions upon the public consciousness, through a thousand manifestations of the great democratic movement which is developing all about us. Certainly we are safe in predicting that when the solidarity of human interest is actually realized, it will become unthinkable that one class of human beings should be sacrificed to the supposed needs of another; when the rights of human life have successfully asserted themselves in contrast to the rights of property, it will become impossible to sell the young and ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... institution Strindberg submitted his work—hopefully, as we know from his own statement. It was scornfully and ignominiously rejected, the main criticism being that a serious historical drama in prose was unthinkable. I shall make no comment whatever on that judgment, having in mind how several years later Edmund Gosse bewailed the failure of Ibsen to give a metrical form ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... character a sailor—and yet he who fights the scientific war-craft of the present day cannot be merely a sailor, like him of the olden kind, but must be what the New York Times, a few years ago, laughingly declared to be a combination quite unthinkable, "a ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... admonishingly at you from the back of a toothbrush every morning! Why, the name of Bedelle might become an execration! He saw himself pilloried among the oppressors of boykind, as unpopular as the compiler of a Latin grammar or the accursed Euclid! No, the idea was unthinkable! Skippy did not reject the Souvenir Toothbrush in toto. He bought a blank book ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... sharing of a beautiful secret; but it was strange to him to see how to Maud it seemed like the realisation and fulfilling of all desire, the entering into a kingdom; it was not only the satisfaction of all the deepest vital processes, but something glorious, unthinkable, the crowning of destiny, the summit of life. There was no reasoning about it; it was the purest and finest instinct. But with Howard it was not thus. He could not look beyond Maud; and it seemed ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... they had no fire and nothing to boil. He seemed to find an odious satisfaction in the fact, a satisfaction which Bompard faintly reflected, and for a moment the girl seemed to glimpse in the two men a lethargy of mind almost unthinkable. A lethargy and laziness, mulish, and kicking at anything that disturbed it, that actually fought against betterment because betterment meant exercise ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... until they had cantered up through the awakening bazaar, where unclean-looking merchants and their underlings rinsed out their teeth noisily above the gutters, and the pariah dogs had started nosing in among the muck for things unthinkable to eat. The sun had shortened up the shadows and begun to beat down through the gaps; the advance-guard of the shrivelling hot wind had raised foul dust eddies, and the city was ahum when she halted at last beside the big brick arch of the caravansary, where Mahommed Gunga's boots ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... details of this man-handling I shall say nothing. And after all, man-handling was merely one of the very minor unprintable horrors of the Erie County Pen. I say "unprintable"; and in justice I must also say "unthinkable." They were unthinkable to me until I saw them, and I was no spring chicken in the ways of the world and the awful abysses of human degradation. It would take a deep plummet to reach bottom in the Erie County Pen, and I do but skim lightly and facetiously the surface ...
— The Road • Jack London
... of his happiness a cloud had gloomed, spoiling for a time the perfection of it. He could not think of marriage while the mystery of Dacre Wynne's death remained unsolved. It seemed unthinkable. ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... resentful for the past year. I thought you would come back to your old self by and by. In my poor proud soul I thought I was punishing you. How little, dear, I dreamed of this! The thought of really losing you never once entered my heart. It was unthinkable. I do not believe it yet. Such love as ours, such tenderness and devotion as you gave to me once, the delirium of love's joy that found itself in my motherhood and wrought itself in the forms of our babies—no, Frank, it cannot die, unless God dies! And I shall not ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... Christian who would really and truly be willing to see a fellow-creature undergo it. There is no understandable sense in which justice could demand such a terrible sentence, even if it involved no more than everlasting unhappiness; how much more unthinkable it becomes if the punishment is to be everlasting, fiendish torment! If Salvation is first and foremost deliverance from this punishment, how is it that it does not take effect immediately? Justice would suggest that it ought to do so, for some sinners live a merry life until ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... high-minded youth setting out in such a Quixotic and fanatical enterprise. This feature of Schiller's plot, which has for us something of the burlesque about it, has been taken more than any other to prove his inexperience of life. But the fact is that the thing was after all not so unthinkable. Outlawry on a large scale was by no means unknown, and the romance of outlawry was familiar in literature. The Thirty Years' War had familiarized Germany with marauding bands who recognized no authority save that of their leader. Even in the eighteenth century the brigandage ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... glad they were dead. Life after what they had suffered had been unthinkable. He thanked God for that oblivion. He wished that he, too, might die in that violated shrine where he had peacefully ministered for so long a time. They had taken the flock, the shepherd must follow. He ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... revolution, on the other hand, consists in the endeavour of the classes without political influence to abolish their isolation from the community and from government. Their standpoint is that of the State, an abstract whole, which exists only in and through its separation from real life, which is unthinkable without the organized antagonism between the general idea and the individual existence of man. Consequently a revolution of political souls organizes a ruling clique in society, in accordance with the limited and doubly-cleft nature of these souls, ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... answer might be, she would see him again before leaving Vienna, although not that day perhaps. Indeed, anything else was quite unthinkable. Why, then, was she a prey to this dreadful agitation, as though all were over between them? But why was his answer so long in coming?... He had, in any case, gone out to dinner—of course, he had no one to keep house for him! So the earliest that he could ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... in the wild oats pilgrimage he threatened. He might waste his fortune on new-fangled farming, but to go literally wild after such years of self-restraint was an unthinkable thing. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... time in a Mexican prison for another man's crime. There in Chihuahua for fifteen years he had been lost to the world in that underground hole, blotted out from life so effectually that few now remembered there had been such a person. It was horrible, unthinkable, but none ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... Galilean. That an untutored fisherman could have written so elaborate and so highly philosophical an account of Jesus has always presented a thorny problem. And so to most scholars John's authorship of the Fourth Gospel is unthinkable." ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... all at once but piecemeal, Laevsky went soon after one o'clock next day to Samoylenko to ask for the money that he might be sure to get off on Saturday. After his hysterical attack, which had added an acute feeling of shame to his depressed state of mind, it was unthinkable to remain in the town. If Samoylenko should insist on his conditions, he thought it would be possible to agree to them and take the money, and next day, just as he was starting, to say that Nadyezhda Fyodorovna refused to go. He would be able to persuade her that evening that the whole ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the welfare of this continent it is inconceivable, unthinkable, that even altruistic Massachusetts should tolerate having her two Senators and thirteen Representatives neutralized by as many from Mindanao. Yet Mindanao has a greater population than Massachusetts, and ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... death in the thought that she could be false to herself, and her confession of love for him; but then, it was unthinkable. Let the whole world reek with foulness; his love must still shine above it, white and ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... made me suddenly understand the quiet ardour in his eye. All of a sudden I saw what he really meant. He really meant that this would be a splendid place to pick out another white horse. He knew no more than I did why it was done; but he was in some unthinkable prehistoric tradition, because he wanted to do it. He became so acute in sensibility that he could not bear to pass any broad breezy hill of grass on which there was not a white horse. He could hardly keep his hands off the hills. He could ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... yields double the profit per acre and four times the profit on capital. The moral of all this is clear. Unless the nation is willing to go back to protection for agriculture, which I am glad to believe in the general interest unthinkable, and unless it is willing to guarantee the farmer against loss from that method of agriculture which means most production and most employment, we must let the farmer set the tune and farm in the way it best suits him to farm. We must try, in fact, not to talk too much nonsense ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... a time, of a state of sexual excitement. I experienced an erection. It was absolutely reflex; no thought had entered into it. I was at once overwhelmed with a feeling of shame. I felt that I had been guilty of unthinkable indecency toward my betrothed. Then there arose a fear that it might be noticed. (Men at that time wore abominably tight clothing.) As a matter of fact, I now know that there was no real danger of this, for she was absolutely ignorant of the nature of the male sexual organs. But I made ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... speculate. It was not for this—and it could not be for that. As to that other thing it was unthinkable. ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... pretty good analogy of what I have done; you can understand now a little of what I felt as I stood here one evening; it was a summer evening, and the valley looked much as it does now; I stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable gulf that yawns profound between two worlds, the world of matter and the world of spirit; I saw the great empty deep stretch dim before me, and in that instant a bridge of light leapt from the earth to the unknown shore, and the abyss was spanned. You may look ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... on like this," Mrs. Willis protested. "It is unthinkable—to allow six children to struggle alone for a living on a barren little farm. Doesn't anyone take an interest in them—the Hildreths or any of the people who live near and who knew their father ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... on clearing everything up before he married? For to Lucy it was unthinkable that any girl in her senses would refuse him. Suppose he went back to Norada? He had not changed greatly in ten years. He had been well known ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... been inclined to talk round any ordinary politician, by pointing out how very flattering it was to him for people to wait upon his words and to desire to follow him, or to paint in romantic language what he, as a leader of men, owed to his followers. Anything of that sort was unthinkable with the Duke, and, if it had been tried, would first of all have puzzled him utterly and when it had at last dawned on him, would have put ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... hesitated. To betray her mistress was unpleasant. To betray herself—as she would if she confessed that she had most carefully and thoroughly read the voucher—was unthinkable. ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... is now, now that these things are clearly proved, now, when Germany finds but one servile nation in Europe—Turkey—that the French Government thinks fit to seek to draw closer to Germany! The thing is unthinkable, unbelievable! ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... scientists it is generally believed that the universe is "self-explained, self-contained and self-maintained;" and speaking on his own behalf of its creation out of nothing he says: "The improbability or absurdity of such a conception, except in the symbolism of poetry, is extreme, and it is unthinkable by ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... in glen, can I hope to feel that the Lord God is more near, more visibly walking and talking with men, than under that humble cottage roof of thatch and oaken wattles. Though everything else in religion were by some unthinkable catastrophe to be swept out of memory, or blotted from my understanding, my soul would wander back to those early scenes, and shut itself up once again in that Sanctuary Closet, and, hearing still the echoes of those ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... bedroom would have been unthinkable at Bedford Park. Still, in a flat.... Moreover, the idea had piquancy. The bedroom was sparsely furnished. Instead of a wardrobe it had a corner curtained off ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... blown to the winds. Political and economic safeguards go down like wooden fences before an angry sea. The customary foundations of society are shaken. We must surely have had such experiences as these during the past weeks and months. What was unthinkable has become a commonplace. The impossible has happened. Our working assumptions are in ruins. Common securities have vanished. And on every side men and women are whispering the question,—Where are we? We are all staggered! And everywhere men and women, in their own way, are ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... hand in government which assures their property rights. Whenever any of the successive forms and methods has failed its fate was doomed. In this temper of the masses, in the flight of the ruling class, in the distemper of the radical democracy, a constitutional monarchy was unthinkable. A presidential government on the model of that devised and used by the United States was equally impossible, because the French appear already to have had a premonition or an instinct that a ripe experience of liberty was essential to the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Government it would never venture to perform or permit the performance of the acts complained of. The entire power and the whole duty to protect the offending city or the offending community lies in the hands of the United States Government. It is unthinkable that we should continue a policy under which a given locality may be allowed to commit a crime against a friendly nation, and the United States Government limited, not to preventing the commission of the crime, but, in the last resort, to defending ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... high Brahman.[143] Brahman is very far off, and its attainments depends upon a knowledge of the Vedas. It is free from all pairs of opposites, it is divested of all qualities; it is eternal; it is endued with unthinkable qualities: it is supreme. It is by knowledge and penance that those endued with wisdom behold that which is the highest. Verily, they that are of untainted minds, that are cleansed of every sin, and that have ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... heroes of this legend two officers of infantry of the line, for example, whose fantasy is tamed by much walking exercise and whose valour necessarily must be of a more plodding kind. As to artillery, or engineers whose heads are kept cool on a diet of mathematics, it is simply unthinkable. ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... just solution of the bewildering puzzles and ghastly problems of human life as seen by the eyes of ignorance. She had grasped in its highest meaning the truth—that Man is really a living soul, living from eternity to eternity. An immortality with one end to it was to her an unthinkable proposition which could not possibly be true. For her, as for her father, Eternal Life and Eternal Justice were one. Where a man ended one life, from that point he began the next: for good or for evil, for ignorance or for knowledge. A life ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... lady in the yellow curl-papers is unforgettable. We really see very little of her, but she is real, and she would not be so real without her yellow curl-papers. A yellow-curl-paper-less lady in the Great White Horse Inn would be as unthinkable to us as a white-plume-less Henry ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... Attila and Genghis Khan he swept westward asserting sovereignty. The Sultan of the Turks recalled all his armies from Europe to meet this mightier and more insistent foe. A gigantic battle, which vague rumor has measured in quite unthinkable numbers of combatants and slain, was fought at Angora in 1402. The Turks were defeated and subjugated by the Tartars. Timur's empire, being founded on no real unity, dissolved with his death, and the various ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... annoying as it was intolerable to the land-hungry statesmen of Downing Street and the Quai d'Orsay. That a small and defenseless Oriental nation should be permitted to block the colonial expansion of two powerful and acquisitive European nations was unthinkable. ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... that was comfort in a bleak world, everything that was safe and tried and known in a world of unthinkable perils and mysteries. Only this he knew, still a child, still on the inside of his mother's house.... He knew now how terrible, how deep, how human were the cords that bound him to his mother, how fierce the love, by the fear and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... also the fact that he was very weary. He had had little sleep since Tuesday night, and not very much then; and much of the time had been spent in the saddle, a wearing thing to one so little accustomed to long rides. Worn as he was, it was unthinkable that he should go far to-night. He might get as far as Chavagne, perhaps. But there he must sup and sleep; ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... would gravely prejudice the lasting interests of Italy, for she would forfeit her political independence by so doing, and incur the risk of sinking to a sort of vassal state of France. Such a contingency is not unthinkable, for, in judging the policy of Italy, we must not disregard her relations with England as well ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... for the summer months of 1896. The human mind by this agency has made another stride into the depths of infinite space. Another universe is presently to be penetrated and revealed. A hollow sphere of space outside of the sphere already known is to be added to the already unthinkable universe which we inhabit. Every part of the immense observatory and of the telescope is of American production, with the single important exception of the cast glass disc from which the two principal lenses, the one double convex and the other plano-concave, are produced. These were ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... has happened. Yesterday it was September 8, Sunday; to-day, per the bulletin-board at the head of the companionway, it is September 10, Tuesday. There is something uncanny about it. And uncomfortable. In fact, nearly unthinkable, and wholly unrealizable, when one comes to consider it. While we were crossing the 180th meridian it was Sunday in the stern of the ship where my family were, and Tuesday in the bow where I was. They were there ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... by treachery; that is always the first thought! But in the case of the Jena, it was quickly discovered that treachery was impossible, unless it was that of the highest officers, for only they had access to her magazines. That was unthinkable, for all of them had served France for many years. More than half of them were killed. I myself investigated the life of every one of these men, for it was necessary to be absolutely certain—but not a breath could be ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... specimen of the group was "The Lure." It would be absurd to face this production from any aesthetic point of view. It would be unthinkable that a work of such crudeness could satisfy a metropolitan public, even if some of the most marked faults of construction were acknowledged as the results of the forceful expurgation of the police. Nevertheless, the only significance ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... the enemies of the Entente. By what right, and on what ground could they mutilate our country? The opinions once expressed by M. Venizelos, and since abandoned even by their author, do not constitute a sufficient ground for spoliation. The whole thing is an unthinkable outrage: it shows that our fears were justified and our demand for a guarantee was absolutely ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... trumpets of destiny; eternity unrolled before me, and on the vast plain I saw the bones of the buried dead uniting, as men and women from time's beginnings arose in an army, the number whereof is unthinkable. And oh! abomination of desolation, the White Horse, not Kalki the tenth incarnation of Vishnu, but the animal foretold in their Apocalypse, came through the lightnings, and in the whirlwinds of flame and thunder I saw the shining face of Him, the Son of Man! Where our Buddha? ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... perhaps gain more than they lose, and in the sum total at least hold their own. It is one advantage of being well distributed that opportunities increase. In that an individual is an unsalaried editor, extensive or expensive trips are unthinkable; that his calling affords necessities but a scant allowance of luxuries, leaves recreation in the Sierras out of the question; but that by the accidents of politics he happens to be a supervisor, certain privileges, disguised ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... their initial question and their habitual imaginative background are both psychological." This is so true that unless we make the substitution into psychic terms instinctively, the whole pragmatic view of things will seem paradoxical, if not actually unthinkable. For instance, pragmatists might protest against the accusation that "they never think about the facts upon which scientific theories are based," for they lay a great emphasis on facts. Facts are the cash which ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... to make the experiment until Laura suggested that he remain with Lolita while she summoned assistance; then, as no alternative appeared, his spirit broke utterly, and he consented to the trial, stipulating with a last burst of vehemence that the progress of the unthinkable pageant should ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... not the type to be intimidated by sulks and silences, and more definite steps might quickly carry the situation out of her hands. The present with Bert was difficult, but a future that did not include him was simply unthinkable. No, a woman who had four young children to consider had no redress; she could only endure. Nancy liked the martyr role, and frequently had cause, or imagined she had ...
— Undertow • Kathleen Norris
... to sell myself to her?" he wondered. "I've simply got to deliver, that's all. I've got to give her service that's DIFFERENT. If I fall down on this, she'll never speak to me again. Not only that, the firm will lose the old man's account. It's simply unthinkable." ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... North in 1876? Probably not. Before your Civil War the South only had individual states. The Boers, on the other hand, had republics with completely organized and independent governments. This is why it will take a long time before complete assimilation is accomplished. A second Boer War is unthinkable." ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... off his chair with surprise. That some philanthropist should rag Mill's study was only to be expected. Mill was one of the worst. A worm without a saving grace. But Trevor! Captain of football! In the first eleven! The thing was unthinkable. ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... extent that no one of them or of the others rose against him again. For the Gauls, who are unreasonably insatiate in all respects alike, know no limits in either their courage or their fear, but fall from the one into unthinkable cowardice and from the ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... can create itself. The creation itself in time as opposed to eternity was proved from the fact of the composite character of the world. Composition, it was said, implies the prior existence of the constituent elements, and the elements cannot be eternal, for an infinite past time is unthinkable. This method is common to Saadia, Bahya, ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... sudden death. Was it a murder? It was recorded as an accidental death in the inquest. If it was a murder then who did it? There is one possibility, but it is unthinkable. ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... sunshine of Bridgie's home made a difference between husband and wife seem something abnormal and shocking. Imagine Dick sneering at Bridgie! Imagine Bridgie snapping back and relapsing into haughty indifference! The thing was preposterous, unthinkable! Could that be the reason of Esmeralda's unrest, that she and her husband had outgrown their love? Pixie felt it equally impossible at that moment to sit quietly alone, or to talk naturally to her fellow-guests, ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... lampooned. (I have even known a man who was deeply disappointed when he was forced to believe that he had not been victimised.) But to be told we are one of a herd! This flesh and blood cannot tolerate. It is unthinkable; a living death. That we who "look before and after," and "whose sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught"; that we, lonely, superb, pining for what is not, misunderstood by our nearest and dearest, who don't ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... many problems they have solved and abolished, as the art of medicine has abolished diseases. When they hear speak of the eternal conflict between Nationality and Nationality, they often forget that a war between England and Scotland has long since become unthinkable and that the platitudes of St. Andrew's Day are still paradoxes in Central and Eastern Europe. When they are told of States where the spontaneous manifestations of group-life, non-conforming sects, workmen's associations, and ordinary ...
— Progress and History • Various
... sing at our work. Over the whirr and roar and hum all day long, and with iteration that is childish and irritating to the intelligent greenhand, float unthinkable adjectives and adverbs, addressed to jumbucks, jackaroos, and mates indiscriminately. And worse words for the boss over ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... highest ruler. And in order to secure the full advantage of authority, the supreme ruler must be raised to the highest possible pinnacle, must be apotheosized. That national laws should be the product of the unvalued units which compose the nation was unthinkable in an age when the worth of the individual was utterly unrecognized. The apotheosis of the Emperor was neither an unintelligible nor an unreasonable practice. But now that an individualistic, democratic ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... effect experienced in the body (the innervation), unites with the emotion of the spirit (the universal idea), and out of this there develops a lively unity which no technique, however scientific, can produce. Yoga practice is unthinkable, and would also be ineffectual, without the concepts on which Yoga is based. It combines the bodily and the spiritual with each other in an ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... then, is in the main negative. But in dealing with the problem thus it is not negative in its tendency, for it carries the reader to the verge of the only possible solution. For pure reason, as enlightened by modern knowledge, human freedom is unthinkable, and yet for any religion by which the pure reason and the practical reason can be satisfied the first necessity is that men should accept such freedom as a fact. But this argument does not apply to the belief in human freedom only. It applies ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... greatly extended are sufficient to prove that a strong feeling existed in favor of a Pacific Republic standing wholly aloof from the coming struggle. It is unthinkable that a Senator and a Congressman, and especially the Governor of the State, should have voiced such sentiments had there not been at least a probability that this might be the course adopted in case the Union was ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... him. And he was afraid that if he did, she would never consent. In spite of her shy, eager welcomes he could not believe she could care for him—for him. She liked him, she was sorry for him, but it was unthinkable that she, white, exquisite Lilith, could marry him and sit at his table and his hearth. He was a fool to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... I mean a man of education and careful upbringing, being driven, through force of circumstances, to rob a bank, or even to forge a signature to a cheque; but for such a man to sink to the level of a common housebreaker is unthinkable—don't ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... knowledge. Part is adapted to part; objects are accurately adjusted to each other; "wheels within wheels" move smoothly; every portion fits into and works in harmony with every other portion without discord or jarring. It is unthinkable that these effects should be due to chance or to a cause that is without intelligence. The perfect arrangement of parts that work together must have been planned by a living Being of infinite wisdom, knowledge, and power. This Being, whose creatures ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... things. I hold no brief for suffering nor for well-being either. I am standing for ... my caprice, and for its being guaranteed to me when necessary. Suffering would be out of place in vaudevilles, for instance; I know that. In the "Palace of Crystal" it is unthinkable; suffering means doubt, negation, and what would be the good of a "palace of crystal" if there could be any doubt about it? And yet I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... blockade all southern Russian ports. That such power should be in the hands of any nation is highly undesirable; that it should be in the hands of a corrupt despotism like Turkey, especially now that Germany, as things stand, can dictate to Turkey when and what she pleases, is a thing unthinkable by the most improvident of statesmen. Already we have paid dearly enough for the pusillanimity of a hundred years: it is impossible that we should ever allow a similar bill to be again presented. Whatever be the guardianship of ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... I pointed out what I have already mentioned; that, together with the ring, the Rhamda offered our only clues to the Blind Spot. Destroy the man and we would destroy one of our two hopes of rescuing our friends from the unthinkable fate that had ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... him; to do without her was unthinkable. For many years he had had voluptuous dreams of marriage, but he had gone on waiting and amassing money. He brooded with relish, in profound secret, over the image of a girl—virtuous, poor (she must be poor), very young, very pretty, of good birth and education, very timid, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... It is indeed unthinkable that we should turn Mindanao over to the Moros. Abandonment of it by us would in the end result in this, as they would take possession of the entire island in the course of time. Neither the other wild tribes nor ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... duty as women to do what we can to help our country in this war, because if the unthinkable thing happened, and Germany were to win, the women's movement, as we know it in Europe, would be put back fifty years at least; there is no doubt about it. Whether it ever could rise again is to my mind extremely doubtful. The ideal of women in Germany is ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin. It is unthinkable that any young Englishman should find himself in Razumov's situation. This being so it would be a vain enterprise to imagine what he would think. The only safe surmise to make is that he would not think as Mr. Razumov thought at this crisis of his fate. He would not have an hereditary ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... more freely, and so did his chums. Clearly if the professor had not seen the two girls he could not be in love with them. And the professor in love was something unthinkable. He never would have remembered, from one day to the next, the name of ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... have required but a brief experience of the war to convince Bestia and his council that a Numidian kingdom without the recognition of Jugurtha as king was almost unthinkable, unless Rome was prepared to enter on an arduous and harassing war for the piecemeal conquest of the land or (a task equally difficult) for the purpose of securing the person of an elusive monarch, who could take every ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... will ever give them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that freedom at our feet, and say: "Enslave, but feed us!" That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... many a month, if ever. His persistence had scared her badly on that night at Baronmead. She was horribly afraid of what he might feel impelled to say to her, almost terrified at the bare notion of an explanation, and the prospect of a possible apology was unthinkable. It was easier for her to sacrifice his good comradeship, though that of itself was no easy matter, and she could only thrust her sense of loss into the background of her thoughts ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... the criminal and his environing external conditions.'' (Liszt). Each particular deed is thinkable only when a determinate character of the doer is brought in relation with it—a certain character predisposes to determinate deeds, another character makes them unthinkable and unrelatable with this or that person. But who thinks to know the character of a man without knowing his view of the world, and who talks of their world-views with his criminals? "Whoever wants to learn to know men,'' says Hippel,[1] "must judge them according to their wishes,'' and it is ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... India would such an alliance between Hindus and Mahomedans have seemed only a few years ago more unthinkable. For nowhere else have we such a vision as in Delhi of the ruthlessness as well as of the splendour of Mahomedan domination in India. Nowhere can one measure as in Delhi the greatness of its fall, and its fall had begun before it ever came into conflict with the rising ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... of his own age. To her mind, one fusty old professor out-valued one hundred eager undergraduates, as source of inspiration to the young. Education, to her mind, lay in the desk-end of the classroom; it was unthinkable to her that Scott had lost the best of Andover, by reason of his solitary life there. As for college, the students, all but Scott, were bound to be full of the wiles of the devil. Scott's safety lay in his books, and in his keeping too ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... undeniable that population will increase prodigiously-just as it has increased prodigiously during the last few centuries, following upon the increase in food-getting efficiency. The magnitude of population in that future day is well nigh unthinkable. But there is only so much land and water on the surface of the earth. Man, despite his marvellous accomplishments, will never be able to increase the diameter of the planet. The old days of virgin continents will be gone. The habitable planet, from ice-cap to ice-cap, will be inhabited. And in ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... there is, somewhere in their organism, a power which will direct their lives into the channels of vice or crime just as irresistibly as the influence which makes the hair grow on the crown of their heads. It is unthinkable. It supposes a responsible person who cannot control himself. Which is ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... Others say, in the beginning there was that only which is not ([Greek: to mae hon]); one only, without a second; and from that which is not, that which is was born." But Uddalaka rejects this latter doctrine as unthinkable—which, indeed, many explorers of Hegel have found with pain and anguish of mind. And then the father traces all the multiformity of the Universe to the desire or will of the ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... him a moment, and then flushed in her turn. To let her cousin ride Bobs seventeen miles was unthinkable. She had the profoundest regard for her pony's back; and she knew that even Brown Betty's seasoned hide was giving way under the unskilled horsemanship of the city boy. It was very doubtful, moreover, that it would be safe to mount him on Bobs, who was already excited with the coming storm ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... in this journal. But it is the humiliating truth; and perhaps it's just as well that thought did come or I might have been tricked by pity and remorse into giving him some rash assurance. If Fred's nose were as handsome as his eyes and mouth some such thing might have happened. And then what an unthinkable predicament I should ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sick dislike that had grown stronger with the years. In her mind he remained unchanged. She saw him as the gawky, shrinking boy, his lips apart, his eyes looking at her with uncontrollable aversion. Oh, no! Life with Peter Champneys was unthinkable! There remained, then, Berkeley Hayden. It wasn't unpleasant to think of Berkeley Hayden. It made one feel safe, and assured; there was a glamour of gratified pride about it,—Nancy Simms,—Mrs. Peter Champneys,—Mrs. Berkeley ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... drinks. With the first drink he could eat a meal, and he could persuade himself that that was economy; with the second he could eat another meal—but there would come a time when he could eat no more, and then to pay for a drink was an unthinkable extravagance, a defiance of the agelong instincts of his hunger-haunted class. One day, however, he took the plunge, and drank up all that he had in his pockets, and went home half "piped," as the men phrase it. He was happier ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... like a beardless boy,—was that the sort of way he did things who had had merely to raise his voice to hear the approach of obsequious feet? ... Alice and the yacht and nothing but sea to a blank horizon? He laughed to think of it. It was, in fact, unthinkable. ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... countless particles called Corpuscles or Electrons, which at the last seem to be nothing but a unit of Electricity, tied up in a "knot in the Ether"—although just what the Ether is, Science does not dare to guess. And Energy, also seems to be unthinkable except as operating through matter, and always seems to be acting under the operation of Laws—and Laws without a Law giver, and a Law giver without mind or something higher than Mind, is unthinkable. And Mind, as we know it, seems to be bound up with matter ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... fissures to be one-tenth of the area of the land would be quite absurd, while that the area of the fissures could be one-half or more than one-half that of the land would be in a proportionate degree unthinkable. If we suppose the elevation to be due to the shrinking or subsidence of the land all round our assumed circle, we arrive equally at the conclusion that the area of the open fissures would be altogether insignificant as compared with that of the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... civilised she spends a great deal of time in the kitchen, and soon knows all the duties of the complete housekeeper; while, when the frivolous Eugenie becomes Braut she cannot cook at all. But frivolous as she is, she recognises that marriage is unthinkable without cooking, and straightway sets to work to learn. Then, too, the Backfisch is the ideal German maiden, cheerful, docile, and facetious; and constantly on the jump (springen is the word she uses) to serve her elders. Middle-aged Germans used to have a most tiresome ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... panic came over all. What—a General Staff ceasing to function even for a minute? It was unthinkable. The news would be flashed through to all concerned and become the subject of conversation in ten thousand messes that evening. It must not be. Never was there such a kneading and gnashing of teeth. But to no purpose. You cannot hurry Chockchaw; time, and time alone, will defeat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... without incentive is unthinkable. But Duchemin searched his memory in vain for anything he could have said or done to make anybody desire to discredit him in the sight of the ladies of the Chateau de Montalais. Still the attempt so to do had been unmistakable: ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... we not to have shown first of all that He is conscious? No, for the greater includes the less, and purpose is unthinkable apart from consciousness. In saying this we are aware that a philosopher like Eduard von Hartmann speaks of "the wisdom of the Unconscious," of "the mechanical devices which It employs," of "the direction of the goal intended by the Unconscious," ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... engagement to be broken off; and, explained the caller looking extremely pleased,—he was a man-caller, and therefore more willing to stop and talk—to proceed backwards from a state of war to the status quo ante might produce the unthinkable result of costing the ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... her pain she thrilled with pride at the discovery that such a possibility had long since become unthinkable to him. But she insisted. "That day at the Fulmers'—have you forgotten? When you said it would be sheer madness for us ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... But what if he should sometime begin to chafe? What if they two should, in days to come, degenerate into just the ordinary, everyday married folk, whom she saw about her everywhere, and for whom just such horrid books as this must be written? It was unbelievable, unthinkable. And yet, that ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... if one has nothing worth saying, the best possible style for him is just the most halting utterance that ever issued from empty skull. To make a good speech was the grand thing! what side it was on, the right or the wrong, was a point unthinkable with him. Even whether the speaker believed what he said was of no consequence—except that, if he did not, his speech would be the more admirable, as the greater tour de force, and himself the more admirable as ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... much he knows,—how many ideas he has,—any more than he knows how many blood-globules roll in his veins. Sometimes accident brings back here and there one, but the mind is full of irrevocable remembrances and unthinkable thoughts, which take a part in all its judgments as indestructible forces. Some of you must feel your scientific deficiencies painfully after your best efforts. But every one can acquire what is most essential. A man of very moderate ability ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... force, or vitality, had been thought of as something distinct in itself; and that there was any measurable relation between the powers of the living organism and the forces of heat and chemical affinity was of course unthinkable before the formulation of the doctrine of the correlation of forces. But as soon as that doctrine was understood it began to appear at once that, to a certain extent at least, the living body might be ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... It is unthinkable that these forces before mentioned should have originated themselves. It is equally so that they could maintain and continue themselves. There must be some continual upholding by a word ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... all agreed that, while the back seat was empty, there were two people in front, and that the one who was not driving was wearing a chauffeur's dress. Finally, the village of Swete Rowley lay but some twenty-two miles from the scene of the accident. But that was all. It was, of course, unthinkable that the offending car could have sustained no damage, but it was quite possible that it would have nothing more serious to show than a dented hub-cap and a battered wing; and, while hub-caps can be changed in five minutes, it is no great matter ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... to remain inactive while there was a chance to save her father's life was unthinkable. And so, for his sake, she kept on and the car ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... sensible as to meet once a week amongst themselves, to acquire proficiency and fluency in French, Spanish, or German, all of which languages they must presumably require at times for the purposes of their business. Every one knows that it is unthinkable. No Englishman could be bothered to take the trouble. Why is it that English people have this extraordinary reluctance to learn any foreign language? It is certainly not from want of natural ability to do so, though this natural aptitude may be discounted by the difficulty most ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... people and their new home stood these strange beings, a race so young that its age could readily be counted in millennia, but withal a strong, intelligent form of life. And to a race that had not known war for so many untold ages, it was an unthinkable thing that they must kill other living, intelligent beings in order that they ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... self-existent could not be thought in conjunction with attributes which either admitted any external influencing Him, or any external influenced by Him. The prevailing dualism he considered to be, as an ultimate theory of the universe, unthinkable and therefore false. Outside the Self-existent there could be no second self-existent, otherwise each would be conditioned by the existence of the other, and the Self-existent would be gone. Anything different from the Self-existent ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... of theological lyddite at Bruno, declaring that any Churchman who would so much as hold converse with such a wretch was disgraced forever, and that the propositions Bruno wished to argue were unthinkable to a self-respecting man. He declared that it was only the mercy of God that kept the lightning from striking Bruno dead as he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... mountains, as well as other places even lonelier, to which she and Tess could be abducted. Tess might be left, perhaps, to make her own way back and give her own explanation of flight with a maharajah's daughter; but for Yasmini abduction to the hills could only mean one of two things: unthinkable surrender, or sure death by any ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... sensitive, mean little soul away to Fremantle or somewhere in that direction. And of course the little girl went away with her too. What could poor Davidson have done with a little girl on his hands, even if she had consented to leave her with him—which is unthinkable. ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... and then comes under the head of "thwarted self-assertion"; but the question is whether it ever occurs willingly and affords satisfaction to the individual who yields. We certainly yield with good grace to one who so far outclasses us that competition with him is unthinkable. An adult may arouse the submissive response in a child; and the social group, by virtue of its superior power and permanence, may arouse it in the individual adult. Hero worship seems a good example of willing submission, agreeable ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... effeminizing process occurs in mind and character. As a result of this, he maintains, our men increasingly fear hardships and seek to avoid them; and life and even personal appearance are given a value which is absurd, considering the inevitableness of death in any event, the perfectly unthinkable number of myriads of human beings who exist, have existed, ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... If my head wasn't made of solid blue mush I'd have had a way figured out of this thing before now, but I can't. With that zone of force the Skylark would have everything imaginable—without it, we're exactly where we were before. That zone is immense, man—terrific—its possibilities are unthinkable—and I'm so cussed dumb that I can't find out how to use it intelligently—can't use it at all, for that matter. By its very nature it is impenetrable to any form of matter, however applied; and this calc here," slapping viciously the sheaf of papers containing his calculations, "shows that it ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... was crushed by the brave, pathetic letter in which he told me that his right leg had been amputated, and that he was lucky to get off so easily. That made me rebellious and very, very bitter. And it was against God that I felt worst—God who had allowed this unthinkable thing to be. ...
— The Comrade In White • W. H. Leathem
... either have gained by an exchange of lot? The one poem could only have been written by a man who knew 'the tragic heart of towns,' and the other by the man who knew the tranquil heart of Nature; but Hood, transported to Grasmere, would have written nothing, and Wordsworth in Fleet Street is unthinkable. As it was, Destiny took the matter in hand, and having men to work upon whose first principle of life was to fulfil and not to violate the instincts of their own nature, succeeded in producing two poets who served mankind ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... a trip! Where in the world do you want to go?" Such a thing as Mary going on a trip, and, above all, unaccompanied by himself, was unheard of and unthinkable. ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... originate with it? There is a great variety of opinion as to what is desirable; and it is only natural and right that it should be so, for otherwise we should be without any individuality, which means that we should have no real life in us—in fact such a world is unthinkable; it would be a world that had ceased to move, it would be a dead world. So it is the varied conception of "the Good" that makes the world go on. Uniformity means reducing things to one dead level. But on the other hand there must be Unity—unity of action ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... had not gone into society, and women to him were simply undeveloped men, to be treated kindly and indulgently. As mental companions, the idea was unthinkable. And love was entirely out of his orbit—all of his energies had been worked up into great thoughts. Doctor Bain says that at twenty-five John Stuart Mill was as ignorant of sex as a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard |
