"Insuperable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of February, they reached the drowned lands of the Wabash, where the ice had just broken up and everything was flooded, the difficulties seemed almost insuperable, and the march became painful and laborious to a degree. All day long the troops waded in the icy water, and at night they could with difficulty find some little hillock on which to sleep. Only Clark's indomitable ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... daughter of a prosperous farmer—a rich man, as riches are reckoned in Ireland. He was a clerk in a lawyer's office, and poorly paid. But he might have earned more. She would gladly have given up anything. And the objections of parents in such cases are not insuperable. But between these two there was something more. Denis Ryan was a revolutionary patriot. Mary Drennan's parents were proud of another loyalty. They hated what Denis loved. The two loyalties were strong and irreconcilable, like the loyalties of the South and the North when ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... they that want other things are masters of this. What is most profitable? Virtue; for by a right managery of other things she makes them all beneficial and advantageous. What is most pernicious? Vice; for it depraves the best things we enjoy. What is most strong? Necessity; for this alone is insuperable. What is most easy? That which is most agreeable to nature; for pleasures themselves are sometimes ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... government. I believe thoroughly in democracy, the extension of the franchise to all men, for all have a right to a voice in the making of the laws that govern them, and no nation has a right to place before any of its people an insuperable barrier to self-government. We would make no outcry against an educational standard, the necessary age limit, a certain term of residence in any place—in fact there is no regulation women would object to that applied to all ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... Runcorn and Kenyon—the one with his polyarchic commercialism, the other with his demagogic violence—had possibly a useful part to play at the present stage of things. He, however, could have no place in that camp. Too indiscreetly he had hoisted his standard of idealism, and by stubborn resistance of insuperable forces he had merely brought forward the least satisfactory elements of his own character. 'Hold on!' cried Malkin. 'Fight the grovellers to the end!' But Earwaker had begun to see himself in a light of ridicule. There was just time to ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... Not he! Any woman would do—provided his father was satisfied, and the money was all right. The obstacle which was really in his way was the obstacle of the woman whom he had ruined. Anne! The one insuperable difficulty was the ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... into another. I am {294} aware that two palaeontologists, whose opinions are worthy of much deference, namely Bronn and Woodward, have concluded that the average duration of each formation is twice or thrice as long as the average duration of specific forms. But insuperable difficulties, as it seems to me, prevent us coming to any just conclusion on this head. When we see a species first appearing in the middle of any formation, it would be rash in the extreme to infer that it had not elsewhere previously existed. So again when we find a species disappearing ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... Some position above its mouth, commanding the passage of the river, should be rendered sufficiently strong to cover the armed vessels which may be stationed there for defense, and in conjunction with them to present an insuperable obstacle to any force attempting to pass. The approaches to the city of New Orleans from the eastern quarter also will require to be examined and more effectually guarded. For the internal support of the country the encouragement of a strong settlement on the western side of the Mississippi, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... class hold the view which is termed cosmogonies than that of Moses, whether contained in the sacred books of religions that have long existed, or professing to be based on modern scientific discovery, raise difficulties that are insuperable. Whence came matter if not from the creative word of God? To assign eternity to it is to invest it with an attribute that is Divine, and Pantheists carry such an explanation to its logical conclusion when they ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... fortunate: I shall not be the only one who laments a disappointed passion. You too shall know, what it is to love without hope! I daily expect orders for restoring Agnes to her Parents. Immediately upon her arrival in Spain, She will take the veil, and place an insuperable barrier to your union. You may spare your supplications.' She continued, perceiving me on the point of speaking; 'My resolution is fixed and immoveable. Your Mistress shall remain a close Prisoner in her chamber till She exchanges this Castle for the Cloister. ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... controvert my suggestion. I could see that personally he was of the same mind. But he said that the forces he had to contend with were almost insuperable. The question of a retardation of building under the proposed Fleet Law was not susceptible of being treated apart from that of the formula of which he and the Emperor had both spoken. He suggested that we might agree ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... the piano-tuner, and everything veterinary held up its head. And all this again qualified, as everywhere, by the presence or absence of the social faculty, that magnetic capacity for coming, as Mrs Murchison would say, "to the fore," which makes little of disadvantages that might seem insuperable and, in default, renders null and void the most unquestionable claims. Anyone would think of the Delarues. Mr Delarue had in the dim past married his milliner, yet the Delarues were now very much indeed ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... that cage is the bird you seek; ask him which are the singing-tree and the yellow-water, and he will tell you. I have nothing more to say, except to beg you again not to expose your life, for the difficulty is almost insuperable." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... be singular, says MR. HICKSON; but means "is beyond all dispute plural," for Shakspeare talks of "a mean:" with news, however, there is the slight difficulty of the absence of the noun new to start from. Why is the absence of the singular an insuperable difficulty in the way of the formation of a plural noun from an adjective, any more than of plural nouns otherwise formed, which have no singulars, as clothes, measles, alms, &c. What says MR. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... my latest esteem. Our families were intimate, and our youthful intercourse occasioned an attachment which strengthened and expanded with our years. He solicited me of my father, but there appeared an insuperable barrier to our union. The family of my lover laboured under a circumstance of similar distress with that of my own—it was noble—but poor! My father, who was ignorant of the strength of my affection, and who considered ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... there would not have been the same insuperable difficulty, a sovereign lady holding high military office as a matter of course; but we have thrown aside some noble traditions, and America never has a ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... portions of it were, for longer or shorter periods, invaded by the sea; but any break of continuity was probably not prolonged; for Mr. Wallace's investigations in the Eastern Archipelago have shown how narrow a sea may offer an insuperable barrier to the migration of land animals. In Palaeozoic times this land must have been connected with Australia, and in Tertiary times with Malayana, since the Malayan forms with African alliances are in several cases distinct from those of India. We know as yet too little of the geology of ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... meek as Moses, but he tried to appear sturdy. 'My lord, I am in a difficult position,' he said mournfully; 'how difficult, nobody but myself can tell. I cannot explain; there are insuperable reasons against it. But will you take my word of assurance that I am not so bad as I seem? Some day I will prove it. Till then I only ask you to suspend ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... my wife it is my will and desire, that all the slaves which I hold in my own right shall receive their freedom—To emancipate them during her life, would tho earnestly wished by me, be attended with such insuperable difficulties, on account of their intermixture by marriages with the Dower negroes as to excite the most painful sensations—if not disagreeable consequences from the latter while both descriptions are in the occupancy ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... penetration; whose understanding is often obstructed by prejudice, and often dissipated by remissness; who comes sometimes to a new study, unfurnished with knowledge previously necessary; and finds difficulties insuperable, for want of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... expect that you would have thus returned any service I may have rendered you. I have been wrong, I confess, to permit the intimacy which has existed between you and all the members of my family; but I tell you at once that I have an insuperable objection to any one of my daughters marrying a man whose family is unknown to me. For yourself I shall always entertain the truest regard, and I must beg you to receive this answer as final. Though Mrs Leslie and I shall regret the loss of your society, you will see that, under the circumstances, ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... should make it imperative. As soon as the siege of Knoxville was raised, he applied himself earnestly to the question, What next? His first choice would have been to start from Chattanooga as a base, and make the Confederate Army his object. The insuperable obstacle to this was the impossibility, at the time, of supplying the forces already collected on the upper Tennessee. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxi. pt. iii. p. 503.] The railroad to Nashville must be practically ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... infancy in that profession; and were so attached to their indolent and dissolute way of living, as to prefer it to all other situations. They were not only unacquainted with all kinds of work, but had the most insuperable aversion to honest labour; and had been so long familiarized with every crime, that they had become perfectly callous to all sense ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... nor even a tuning-fork, in use at the Tabernacle. But the difficulties, apparently insuperable under these circumstances, of leading so vast a congregation in the singing of unpractised tunes is almost overcome by the skilful generalship of the gentleman who steps forward to the rails beside the preacher's table, pitches the note, and leads the singing. The hymn brought ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... no one but the author. But in truth the task of inventing an adequate system for notating the rhythm of prose, and securing a working agreement among prosodists as to a proper terminology, is almost insuperable. Those of us who sat in our youth at the feet of German masters were taught that the distinction between verse and prose was simple: verse was, as the Greeks had called it, "bound speech" and prose was "loosened speech." ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... his lovely daughter he might be induced to become his son-in-law. The colour of the young princess's complexion, which was of the most sable hue, shining lustrously with palm oil, although much admired in her native country, was to the British knight an insuperable objection to a closer alliance than that of the friendship he enjoyed, though he did not say so; but stated that he was anxious to go where glory awaited him, and that all matrimonial arrangements he must defer till he had won that ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... In the following Spring he returned to Cleveland and obtained a situation as helper in a hardware store. Here it became apparent to him that he was sadly deficient in an educational point of view, and that it offered an almost insuperable barrier to his advancement in life. To remedy this, so far as possible, he devoted all his leisure hours to study, and on the establishment of the evening schools the following winter, he availed himself of them, and the advantage ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... would secure friendship. The matter was much talked of. The proud queen-mother, Anne of Austria, was very solicitous to secure that alliance, as it would gratify her highest ambition. Mazarin professed warmly to favor it. He probably saw insuperable obstacles in the way, but hoped, by co-operating cordially with the wishes of the queen, to be able finally to secure the marriage of the king with ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... voice, when any obstacle checked the advance of his soldiery along that fearful wilderness which is called emphatically, "The Valley of Desolation." A single look or word was commonly sufficient to set all in motion again. But if the way presented some new and apparently insuperable difficulty, the Consul bade the drums beat and the trumpets sound, as if for the charge; and this never failed. Of such gallant temper were the spirits which Napoleon had at command, and with such admirable ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... was staring through the tree-tops again, hands clasped over one knee. "I could make a way for myself, a good way, without all this fever, with a woman like you to hold me straight. I know what I can do." A forlorn smile wrinkled his face not unpleasantly. "But there are two insuperable obstacles. The Workers wouldn't let me—and the woman wouldn't have me. . . . That's why I grow desperate sometimes, ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... cannot do this; but that is only because conditions are represented with only approximate realism, because the rules of the game may not be quite correct, and because sufficient correct data cannot be procured. The difficulties of securing absolute realism are of course insuperable, and the difficulties of getting absolutely correct data are very great. The more, however, this work is prosecuted, the more clearly its difficulties will be indicated, and therefore the more effectively the remedies can be provided. The more the game-board ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... throne in 608; cp. Winckler, Geschichte Israels, I. pp. 112 f. and F. Wilke (Alttestamentliche studien R. Kittel zum 60 Geburtstag dargebracht, 1913), quoted by John Skinner, Prophecy and Religion, pp. 42 f. n. 2. This would be an easy solution but for the insuperable objections to it that the Oracles in question far more closely fit the Scythian, than the Chaldean, invasion; and that Jer. I. 2, as distinctly covers prophecies of Jeremiah in the days of Josiah as v. 3 does ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... gazed on the temporary prison, of which he commanded a view from his balcony, and meditated how he should overcome the almost insuperable difficulties that opposed themselves to Herrera's rescue, there emerged from the door of the guard-room a man, whose gait and figure the Count thought he knew, although he was too far distant to discern his features. This man was in a sort of half-uniform; a blue jacket ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... chapter, generally more vigorous and fertile than their parents. On the other hand, species when crossed, and their hybrid offspring, are almost invariability in some degree sterile; and here there seems to exist a broad and insuperable distinction between races and species. The importance of this subject as bearing on the origin of species is obvious; and we shall hereafter recur ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... said there might be hindrances in the way of woman too great for her to surmount. Men in their straggles for liberty have sometimes met insuperable obstacles; there have been unsuccessful revolutions at all stages ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the reader's charitable consideration in respect of the first stanza, the insuperable difficulties of which seem to have been purposely contrived in order to warn off trespassers at the very boundary of the alluring domain. I have got over the inhibition—somehow—but David and the Sibyl must try to forgive me if they find ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... felt the old man's eyes upon him, and did not relish the implication. "Still, I fancy the same difficulty would be met with anywhere else, and that encourages me to ask if you would have any insuperable objections to myself?" ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... did not wish to return to England calling Hart's granddaughter her child. She said she had an insuperable objection and repugnance to the idea, and an aversion for the poor little creature began to ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... deception. The crystal that separated the water from the atmosphere had the density of millions of leagues,—an insuperable obstacle interposed between two worlds that do ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... that had been imported. Here, the planters are now urged to adopt for themselves measures of a similar kind. The whole course of proceeding in the two countries in reference to the negro having been so widely different, there are, however, difficulties in the way that seem to be almost insuperable. The power to purchase the slaves of the British colonies was a consequence of the fact that their numbers had not been permitted to increase. The difficulty of purchasing them here is great, because of their having been well fed, well clothed, and otherwise ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... upon the introduction of Polly. Dickens, however, conquered them all somehow. But to anybody else, setting forth the story histrionically, impersonating the characters as they appeared, these difficulties would by necessity have been insuperable or simply overwhelming. Catching the very little fair-haired girl's Christian name readily enough, when she comes up to him in the street, with the surprising announcement, "O! if you please, I am lost!" Barbox Brothers can't for the life of him conjecture what her surname ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... its mirth might be insuperable, not to be saddened by the most grievous song; nevertheless he did not turn back then, but softly climbed the stairs and, placing the agate bowl upon a step, struck up the chaunt called Dolorous. It ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... was in the same county, they remained as united as ever. Sambo held for many a year the important position of butler to Tom, then he found that one of the housemaids did not regard his color as any insuperable obstacle, and they were accordingly married. It was difficult to say after this exactly the position which Sam held. He lived at a cottage on the edge of the estate, where it joined that of Peter, and his time was spent in generally ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... but she knew now that she had loved him chiefly as the representative of Lucia's future safety and happiness. It had never occurred to her that her own strange marriage, that the race or the character of her husband, which had been recognized by both mother and daughter as insuperable obstacles in Percy's case, would estrange the nobler and truer nature. The whole miserable story would have to be told, she had thought, when the time came, but she had neither feared its effect ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... exclusively for respiration." "A swim-bladder has apparently been converted into an air-breathing lung." "We must be cautious in concluding that a bat could not have been formed by natural selection from an animal which at first could only glide through the air." "I can see no insuperable difficulty in further believing it possible that the membrane-connected fingers and forearm of the galeopithecus might be greatly lengthened by natural selection, and this, as far as the organs of flight are concerned, would convert it into a bat." "The framework of bones ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... possible, to remove the girl from the Ship before the arrival of Iver. The proposal of the Broom-Squire was opportune, and she was anxious to forward his suit as the best means for raising an insuperable barrier between her son and the girl, as well as removing her from Simon, who, with his characteristic wrong-headedness, might actually do ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... matter is simple enough, and the necessary measures to be taken to remedy it are no less simple—barring sentimental objections which will probably prove insuperable. A monarchy, even a sufficiently inane monarchy, carries the burden of a gentlemanly governmental establishment—a government by and for the kept classes; such a government will unavoidably direct the affairs of state with a view to income on invested wealth, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... through the dissatisfaction of a man like Charles Reade that an actress learns—that is, if she is not conceited. Conceit is an insuperable obstacle to all progress. On the other hand, it is of little use to take criticism in a slavish spirit and to act on it without understanding it. Charles Reade constantly wrote and said things to me which were not absolutely just criticism; ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... impoverishment of the land. And though Jackeymo learnedly endeavored to prove to the Squire that the flax itself contained particles which, if returned to the soil, repaid all that the crop took away, Mr. Hazeldean had his old-fashioned prejudices on the matter, which were insuperable. "My forefathers," quoth he, "did not put that clause in their leases without good cause; and as the Casino lands are entailed on Frank, I have no right to gratify your foreign whims ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... depreciation of our currency was in the main a necessary effect of the want of those funds, and its restoration is impossible for the same reasons, to which the general diffidence, that had taken place among the people, is an additional, and in the present state of things, an insuperable obstacle. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... It is their task to weld the assemblage of men, armed and maintained by the State, into an harmonious whole, skilled in technique and imbued with a psychological and mental attitude which will not admit that any obstacle is insuperable. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... the direct passage of the Frozen Strait; though, I confess, not without some apprehension of the risk I was incurring, and of the serious loss of time which, in case of failure either from the non-existence of the strait or from the insuperable obstacles which its name implies, would thus be inevitably occasioned ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... Notwithstanding the energy of his attack, Chungwan, the former bold defender of the place, had again the satisfaction of seeing the Manchus repulsed, and compelled to admit that the ramparts of Ningyuen presented a serious if not insuperable obstacle to their progress. Almost at the very moment of this success the Emperor Tienki died, and was succeeded, in 1627, by his younger brother, Tsongching, who was destined to be the ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... laughed. "I scarcely know whether or not it would be 'good form' to insist on fighting with your bare fists," he said, "but I know that it would be most unusual. Still, I am not sure that its singularity would constitute an insuperable bar to its acceptance by the seconds. At any rate there will be no harm in offering the suggestion to de Albareda; he is a thorough good fellow all through, and you may safely leave yourself in his hands. But, if you will pardon me for saying so, my ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... don't know that I should have ever summoned up courage to speak to you, if you had not taken me by surprise. It would be different if I were now as I was ten years ago, but I feared you might think my health an insuperable objection." ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... had been their idol. They had looked forward to the time when he, with irreproachable manners and reputation, would become their escort in the exclusive circles in which they were entitled to move. Now he was and would continue to be the insuperable bar to those circles; and by their sighs and manner he would be continually reminded of this fact. Fallen idols are a perpetual offence to their former worshippers, as they ever remind of the downfall of ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... transferred the apparent movements of the planets from them to ourselves, so, says our author, has science transferred the seeming inertness of Nature from it to us. The phenomenon of Nature is physical and inert: the being is spiritual and active and holy. And if we now seem to have an insuperable conviction that Man is not inert and that Nature is inert, it is not stronger than our apparent consciousness that the earth is unmoving. Man lives under illusion as to himself and as to the universe. Reason, indeed, furnishes him with ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... It is quite time that the public recovered possession of the valuable franchises which are its rightful property, and managed them for its own benefit. The legal difficulties in regaining the title to these franchises are certainly not insuperable, and the readjustment of capitalization can be made on the principle outlined in the case of steam railways. To illustrate: The city of "Polis" purchases the works which supply it with water from the ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... time there are insuperable difficulties in proposing any substitute for the family. In the first place, all society at present rests on this institution, so that we cannot easily discern which of our habits and sentiments are parcels of it, and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... But more than that, whilst I listened, an idea had of a sudden sprung up in my mind which did away with the necessity of gaining speech with Montresor—a contingency, moreover, that now presented insuperable difficulties. ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... it on sentimental grounds. But our choice would seem to be between unqualified citizenship, to depend on the ability to read and write, if you will, and setting the blacks apart in some territory by themselves. There are, we think, insuperable objections to this last plan. It would put them beyond the reach of all good influence from the higher civilization of the whites, without which they might relapse into barbarism like the Maroons ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... progress was now checked for long by a constitutional and insuperable aversion to angling with worm. If the gardener, or a pretty girl-cousin of the mature age of fourteen, would put the worm on, I did not "much mind" fishing with it. Dost thou remember, fair lady of the ringlets? Still, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... to work with zeal to study anew, and I considered myself bound in honor not to make farther advances with the daughter until I should feel satisfied with my proficiency with the law. It was all in vain. I had an insuperable repugnance to the study; my mind would not take hold of it; or rather, by long despondency had become for the time incapable of any application. I was in a wretched state of doubt and self-distrust. I tried to finish the work which I was secretly writing, hoping it would ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... grief, wondered that to him alone it was forbidden to weep. Yet after all, when she was gone, and he again alone, he could not but think death likely to prove to her the most happy of earthly boons. He was not sanguine of acquittal, and even in acquittal, a voice at his heart suggested insuperable barriers to their union, which had not existed ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... once already," said Heard. "I'll write and make an appointment, or go up again. By the way, Count—you remember our conversation? Wel, I have thought of an insuperable objection to your Mediterranean theory. The sirocco. You will never change the sirocco. The Elect of the Earth will never endure it all ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... from his fellow-men the fullest measure of independence which they were capable of maintaining. If America's intentions be as the world understands them, she is endeavouring to break down the obstacles which the Filipinos, desiring a lasting independence, would have found insuperable. America claims (as other colonizing nations have done) to have a "mission" to perform, which, in the present case, includes teaching the Filipinos the art of self-government. Did one not reflect that America, from her birth as an independent state, has never pretended to follow on ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... duty of caring for it and bringing it up is to be undertaken by the mother, aided, when necessary, by the State. This is a terrible injustice against the father and the child. It seems to me to be the great and insuperable difficulty against any scheme of State Endowment of Motherhood. I cannot enter into this question now, and will only state my belief that a child belongs by natural right to both its parents. The primitive form of the matriarchal family, which we shall study later, is realised in its most exaggerated ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... commence. As it rose in the distance it appeared to be no formidable barrier, but as they got near, lofty cliffs or precipices, and steep slopes covered with brushwood, seemed to rise out of the plain, such as must present an almost insuperable obstacle to the progress of the horses. Hector declared that no human being could ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... he fell once more to his hitherto futile scheming: How was he to get near his sister? To the whitest of lies he had insuperable objection, and if he appeared before her with no reason to give, would she not be far too offended with his presumption to retain him in her service? And except he could be near her as her servant, he did not see a chance of doing anything for her without disclosing facts which might ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... people in one or other of these houses adopt their neighbour's basket? Not because people are not amenable to conviction, for within a certain radius from the source of the invention they are convinced to a man. Nor again is it from any insuperable objection to a change of habit. The Stura people have changed their habit—possibly for the worse; but if they have changed it for the worse, how is it they do not find ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... And may we not draw a moral from the story of his life as faintly and imperfectly shadowed forth in the preceding sketch? Does it not show us how we may overcome obstacles deemed by us insuperable, and how we may seek to become something better than what we are? The poet's name will go down to future ages as the idol of his countrymen; may the beneficial effect produced by a mind like his upon the character and aspirations of the world ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... indiscriminately, must be in the mind of the agent when conscientiously deciding on the morality of the act. Otherwise he uses words without a meaning: for, that a rule even of utter selfishness could not possibly be adopted by all rational beings—that there is any insuperable obstacle in the nature of things to its adoption—cannot be even plausibly maintained. To give any meaning to Kant's principle, the sense put upon it must be, that we ought to shape our conduct by a rule which all rational ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... theory that the ministry of Jesus extended over but little more than one year is beset, however, by difficulties that seem insuperable. The first is presented by the three Passovers distinctly mentioned in the Gospel of John (ii. 13; vi. 4; xii. 1). The last of these is plainly identical with the one named in the other gospels. The second gives the time of year for the feeding of the five thousand, and ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... Maumee was almost unguarded. Isolated here and there were stockades containing a few dozen men beyond hope of rescue, frontier posts of what is now the Middle West. Plans of campaign were prepared without thought of the insuperable difficulties of transport through regions in which there were neither roads, provisions, towns, nor navigable rivers. Armies were maneuvered and victories won upon the maps in the office of the Secretary of War. Generals were selected by some inscrutable ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... export trade of Bergen consists of timber and salt fish, which are sent to the Mediterranean and Holland. The stench arising from the fish, which is packed in great heaps on the eastern quay of the harbour, is insuperable; and I leave the reader's imagination to reach that height of misery when an unfortunate sight-seeker and traveller like myself, loses his way, at broiling noon, in the vicinity of this market, the thermometer being at ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... short, are our principal modern difficulties with regard to belief in a life to come; do they, or do they not, present valid and insuperable obstacles ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... here that Godwin could not then take into consideration the laws of heredity, now better understood; how the criminal has not only the weight of bad education and surroundings against him, but also how the very formation of the head is in certain cases an almost insuperable evil. He considered many of the laws relating to property, marriage, &c., unnecessary, as people guided by reason would not, for instance, wish for wealth at the expense of starving brethren. Far in the distance ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... image was constantly before him, and refusing to be dismissed, connected itself with every object he beheld. At first he despaired of meeting her again; but as he gradually grew calmer, his hopes revived, and difficulties which seemed insuperable began to disperse. By the time Dick Taverner and his companions came up, he felt some disposition to talk, and Gillian's hearty merriment and high spirits helped to enliven him. Having ascertained, from one of the royal keepers whom he had encountered, that ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... forces, recently brought into play, and still struggling to manifest their undeveloped strength. Up to that time there had been nothing like society in the city of intelligence. Of course there was no dearth of scholars and clever, brilliant people, but insuperable obstacles seemed to prevent their social contact with one another. Outside of Moses Mendelssohn's house, until the end of the eighties the only rendezvous of wits, scholars, and literary men, the preference was for magnificent ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... said he, "you could accompany me to see actual service; you would then feel a just contempt for military martinets and parade exercise. Goring would, I know, delight in bringing forward a spirit like yours. But it is impossible. The barriers which detain you are insuperable. I myself know too well the power of beauty; yet, if you knew all that was said, even for Constantia's sake you might resolve, for a few months, to tear yourself from ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... which the subsequent slavery in the colonies must produce. For by your inhuman treatment of the unfortunate Africans there, you create the same insuperable impediments to a conversion. For how must they detest the very name of Christians, when you Christians are deformed by so many and dreadful vices? How must they detest that system of religion, which appears to resist the natural rights of men, and to give a sanction ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labour. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... very possibly to that instinct of contradiction of which I was speaking? A great deal of time is lost in profitless conversation, and a good deal of ill temper frequently caused, by not considering these organic and practically insuperable conditions. In dealing with them, acquiescence is the best of palliations ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... they would be disposed to offer for the full and permanent use of the inshore fisheries without the addition of any privilege as to the free admission of fish and fish-oil. The British Commissioners considered this to be an entirely inadequate estimate of the value of the fisheries and found insuperable difficulties in the way of an absolute and permanent ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... heavy burden on it to pay their ransom; and to paying it, no patriot or loyal citizen of the free States would raise the slightest objection. The objection therefore urged, though grave, need not be regarded as insuperable; and we think the advantages of the measure, in a military point of view, would be far greater than any disadvantage we have to ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... naval stores, in case of a war, must fall to the ground, both from this deficiency, and the quality of the timber growing here. Were it indeed possible to transport that of Norfolk Island, its value would be found very great, but the difficulty, from the surf, I am well informed, is so insuperable as to forbid the attempt. Lord Howe Island, discovered by Lieut. Ball, though an inestimable acquisition to our colony, produces little else than ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... richness and flexibility of Elizabethan English, have tried to write with the same copiousness of vocabulary and the same freedom of structure as the Elizabethans. Between these and their object lies an insuperable barrier, the formed and finished prose of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; between Fronto and his lay the whole mass of what, in the sustained and secure judgment of mankind, is the classical prose of the Latin language, from Cicero to ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... really seen and enjoyed. I found an aged Frenchman of modest mien perched on a little platform beneath it, behind a great hedge of altar-candlesticks, with an admirable copy all completed. The difficulties of his task had been well-nigh insuperable, and his performance seemed to me a real feat of magic. He could scarcely move or turn, and could find room for his canvas but by rolling it together and painting a small piece at a time, so that he never enjoyed a view of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... lose its motion by insensible degrees; it is demonstrated, that if the earth swims in a fluid, its density must be equal to that of the earth; and in case its density be the same, all the bodies we endeavour to move must meet with an insuperable resistance. ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... to the soaring swallow, so shall insuperable obstacles be overcome by the heart worn smooth with a fixed purpose,' said a voice beside her, and Yung Chang stepped from behind the cypress tree, where he had been waiting for Ning. 'O one more symmetrical than the chrysanthemum,' he continued, ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... officer, who, after a series of successes, amid the most discouraging difficulties, fell, at length, in a gallant attack upon Quebec, the capital of Canada, and to transmit to future ages, as examples truly worthy of imitation, his patriotism, conduct, boldness of enterprise, insuperable perseverance, and contempt of danger and death, a monument be procured from Paris, or other part of France, with an inscription sacred to his memory, and expressive of his amiable character and heroic achievements; and that the continental treasurer be directed to advance a sum, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... as I have described the work of the Quartermaster General is of an extremely onerous nature. Major Gen. Sir William Robertson has met what appeared to be almost insuperable difficulties with his characteristic energy, skill, and determination; and it is largely owing to his exertions that the hardships and sufferings of the troops—inseparable from ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... propensities of the native tribes are indeed formidable but not insuperable difficulties in the way of their elevation. The wildest of them may compare not unfavorably with those Northern barbarian hordes that swooped down upon Christian Europe, and who were so soon the docile pupils and proselytes of the peoples they had conquered. The Arapahoes and Camanches ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... on, and Jeanne gave way more and more to an insuperable hopelessness; it was no longer a keen, heartrending grief that she felt, but a dull, gloomy melancholy. There was nothing to rouse her from it, no one came to see her, and the road which passed before her door was almost deserted. ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... made the slightest impression upon Marye's Hill and the slopes were strewn with many thousands of their dead and wounded, including officers of all ranks, from generals down. The Union army was now divided into two portions, each in the face of an insuperable task. ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... greatness—that was his genius and glory. He confronted the spirit of the nation and of the age. I had almost said he set himself against nature, as if he had been a decree of God over-riding all these other insuperable obstacles. That was his function. Mr. Phillips was not called to be a universal orator any more than he was a universal thinker. In literature and in history widely read, in person magnificent, in manners most accomplished, gentle as a babe, sweet as a new-blown rose, in voice clear and silvery, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... without reference, and devoid of all business relations or acquaintance in Paris, it was at best a questionable expedient, and I probably would have had a take-down. But the accident at Marquise came and smoothed the apparently insuperable difficulties in my way. But I have found that something unusual does come to help a man on his way to the devil when he is anxious to get there, which he is pretty sure to do, if he is only diligent and careful ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... propounded in certain despatches are more powerful, and more regarded and reverenced, than any others, human or divine. A kind of moral gun-cotton, they drive through the most stupendous difficulties, and rend rocks that appeared to be insuperable barriers in the eyes of common sense or common justice. Judges are compelled to yield to their authority, and do violence to their own consciences whilst they help to lay the healing unction to those ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... succession, attain it. All other dignities and social advantages are open to the whole male sex: many indeed are only attainable by wealth, but wealth may be striven for by any one, and is actually obtained by many men of the very humblest origin. The difficulties, to the majority, are indeed insuperable without the aid of fortunate accidents; but no male human being is under any legal ban: neither law nor opinion superadd artificial obstacles to the natural ones. Royalty, as I have said, is excepted: but in this case every one feels it to be an ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... other hand, one is filled with admiration for the many immigrant girls who in the midst of insuperable difficulties resist all temptations. Such admiration was certainly due Olga, a tall, handsome girl, a little passive and slow, yet with that touch of dignity which a continued mood of introspection so ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... quite inconceivable. Even in the case of the Sun the motion represents over twenty-five million miles per hour, and the apparent motion of the Stars is thousands of times faster than Light travels. These insuperable difficulties were not swept away until, by the advance of Knowledge, the falsity of Conception, based only upon appearance, was made manifest, and it was seen that it was the Earth which revolved and not the Stars. Even then, owing to its supposed ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... care is above all to be recognised with regard to one point, which otherwise would, I think, have been a difficulty actually insuperable: I mean the manifestly imperfect moral standard, which in some cases is displayed in the characters of good men in the Old Testament. Put the gospel by the side of the law and history of the Israelites; observe what the law permitted, and public opinion under the law did not condemn; ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... representation in Parliament, or by treating Ireland as a Crown colony. Such steps, which could hardly be termed maintenance of the Union, might, as expedients for carrying through safely a course of reform, be morally and for a time justifiable. Their adoption is, however, liable to an almost insuperable objection. Democracy in Great Britain does not comport with official autocracy in Ireland. Every government must be true to its principles, and a democracy which played the ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey |
