"Plausible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... difficult to judge of the forces which may act in the conditions of what we are accustomed to call "another world," but a plausible explanation might be found in the Divine Word, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." The thoughts and affections appear to dwell for a time where they have been already fixed during life, but changes here, including the gradual ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... honestly or observes his neighbours with attention will deny value to an excuse because it may be merely plausible. After all, to wear even a transparent garment is not quite the same thing as to go naked. I do not maintain that Victoria's suggestion contributed decisively to the prosecution of my acquaintance with Coralie Mansoni, but it filled a gap in the array of reasons ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... Hosea, and not simply as an allegory. If it be objected, on the one hand, that the names of the last two children are not probable names, it may be urged, on the other, that Gomer seems to be an actual name, for which no plausible allegorical meaning ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... Justice Darling; but, however blameless he was, nobody can suppose that British soldiers would charge better with the bayonet because they had some particular kind of groceries inside them. But Krupp can make a plausible claim that the huge infernal machines to which his country owes nearly all of its successes could only have been produced under the equally infernal conditions of the modern factory and the urban and proletarian ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... been done for greedy interests; that manufacturers who had bought immunity by their contributions to Quay's campaign fund had been rewarded with increased protection. The farmers believed these charges, plausible though unprovable, for they were disposed to believe that both the great parties were interested only in selfish exploitation of the Government to ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... included, are covered with paintings. The effect clashes with Northern taste, but the absence of a columnar system affords a plausible reason for relieving the sameness of these large surfaces with colour. The Gothic style of the North, holding in itself such decorative resources, gains nothing from mural paintings, but always loses something ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... inhospitable wilds of Nova Scotia, or on the barren shores of the Bahama Islands. Parliamentary relief was extended to them; but this was obtained with difficulty, and distributed with a partial hand. Some, who invented plausible tales of loyalty and distress, received much more than they ever possessed; while others, less artful, were not half reimbursed for their ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... "sort-o'-friendly"—indeed more than half disposed to emancipate. The member of the Committee in Harrisburg had, it is probable, frequently left room for their great delusion, if he did not even go so far as to feed their hopes with plausible suggestions, that some assistance might be afforded by which an amicable settlement might be ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... persist in accompanying me," Hilda said to me, as we sat in our chairs on deck the first evening out, "I see what I must do. I must invent some plausible and ostensible ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... to look for the North-west passage which Cabot had failed to find. Thorne's ship was called the Dominus Vobiscum, a pious aspiration which, however, secured no success. A London man, a Master Hore, tried next. Master Hore, it is said, was given to cosmography, was a plausible talker at scientific meetings, and so on. He persuaded 'divers young lawyers' (briefless barristers, I suppose) and other gentlemen—altogether a hundred and twenty of them—to join him. They procured two vessels at Gravesend. They took the sacrament together ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... by much of the phraseology, to say the least, of the present day, was, indeed, quite contrary to this. He assumed freedom to exist only where law is not, that is, in the savage state, and to be surrendered, piece for piece, with every acknowledgment of social obligation. Seldom was ever so plausible a doctrine equally false. Law is properly the public definition of freedom and the affirmation of its sacredness and inviolability as so defined; and only in the presence of it, either express ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... the witness, a Sergeant Major, makes a suggestion which appears plausible, namely, that the German gunners use any conspicuous building as a mark to verify their ranges rather than for the purpose of destruction. It would be quite according to the modern system of what German writers call Kriegsraeson to hold that the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... think—to think that I allowed this plausible creature to thrust herself upon me! [He raises his head, glaring fiercely. She beats the pillow.] Oh! oh! my reputation in the hands of this ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... headlong precipitancy of public judgment, anaesthetics have not been more generally employed on this side of the water of late.) Certainly he is no physician, they say. But, on the other hand, a conjecture that he has been before the mast is as plausible a one as that ever Herman Melville was; there is the true sailor's-roll about him; nobody less skilful than the captain of a three-decker could have run the Agra through such a gantlet of broadsides and hurricanes; the manoeuvring of the ship, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... impossible exaggeration—the form of burlesque which Theodore Hook or Albert Smith might have attempted. It is, in fact, a real speech, which might have been delivered to a dull-headed audience without much impairing credibility. Apart from this it is a most effective harangue and most plausible statement of ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... to make the first attack. Both Lafayette and Hamilton were annoyed and apprehensive at this arrangement. "Washington is the shrewdest of men in his estimates until it is a matter of personal menace," said Hamilton, "and then he is as trusting as a country wench with a plausible villain. I thought we had delivered him from this scoundrel, and now he has deliberately placed his fortunes in his hands again. Mark you, Lee will serve us some trick before ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... been wrought into a somewhat plausible form by the brilliant and imposing generalizations of Aug. Comte. The religious phenomena of the world are simply one stage in the necessary development of mind, whether in the individual or the race. He claims to have ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... doubt that he could establish a plausible case. He assured himself that he had no intention of stealing the pelt. At most, he had been guilty only of sharp practice. He would pay for it. From the moment that Aaron Slade had told him about it, he had set his heart upon ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... plausible excuse, that's all. Thanks to you old Anazeh got into El-Kerak with twenty men. Two might not have been enough, even with ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... genius from making the attempt." We have already seen, indeed, that in a certain type of play—the broad picture of a social phenomenon or environment—it is preferable that no attempt should be made to depict a marked crisis. There should be just enough story to afford a plausible excuse for raising ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... her thoughts were too busy, her brain too much tormented with trying to find some plausible answer to the riddle which agitated her: "Who had planned this abominable robbery? Was it indeed Victor de Marmont himself? or had a greater, a mightier mind than his discovered the secret of this swift journey ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... This plausible explanation of Florine's magnificent offers appeared to satisfy the hearer. "I can now understand the high wages of which you speak, mademoiselle," resumed she; "only I have no claim to be patronized by the charitable persons who direct ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... chose—and it was his usual mood—to exercise his blandishments on men, he rarely failed to captivate them, while his pleasant wit, courtly ways, and natural gallantry towards women, exercised with the polished seductiveness he had learned in the Court of Louis XV., made Francois Bigot the most plausible and ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... over the seam certainly did not collect these ashes and spread them there as a floor on which they rested their structures afterwards. The combustion of a large wooden building would not have given the same uniformity on such a large scale. Sr. Vigil has suggested to me the following very plausible explanation: In order to burn or bake their pottery, the present pueblo Indians of New Mexico build large but low hearths on the ground of small wood, sticks, and other inflammable rubbish and refuse, on which ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... recall the distress of bitter disillusionment which has followed the collapse of some plausible system of "sweet reasonableness" under the granite-like impact of a rock of reality which has knocked the bottom out of it and left it a derelict upon the waves? This collapse of an ordered and reasonable system ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... crop, not by the buyers' wages. If I were hammering at an anvil I would take my increased wages and pay increased prices if I had to, and feel pretty sure I was going to be benefited. There are some theories, like this one and free-trade, that sound very plausible, but do not stand any chance when actual tests are made in every day life. The cry of all merchants to-day should be, 'Pay decent wages to your help and add it to your goods.' And any factory that held out ought to be boycotted. I know it's ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... refutes the inferences of all reasonable conjectures on the subject. I was out of my place, uneasy, ashamed, proud, and resentful; in short I occupied a FALSE POSITION, and unluckily one from which I saw no plausible retreat except by falling back on Lombard street or by cutting my throat. Anna alone—kind, gentle, serene-eyed Anna—entered into all my joys, sympathized in my mortifications, and appeared to view me as I was; neither dazzled by my wealth nor repelled ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... refer to the remote ancestors and their descendants equally as "Greeks and Romans," is an anachronism as marked as would be the calling of the ancient Keltic Gauls, or the Insubres, Frenchmen. As a matter of fact this is true. But, besides the very plausible excuse that the names used were embodied in a private letter, written as usual in great haste, and which was hardly worthy of the honour of being quoted verbatim with all its imperfections, there may ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... this is plausible," Pamela confessed, "but you are only pointing out a very obvious danger, for which I imagine that we are already ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... the deduction therefrom that induced currents in alternating machines have, like those of the Ruhmkorff coil, a definite direction, which would be that of currents having the greatest tension, that is to say, that of direct currents. This hypothesis seems to us the more plausible in that Mr. J. Van Malderem has demonstrated that the attraction of solenoids with the currents, not straight, of magneto-electric machines is almost as great as that of the same solenoids with straight currents; and it is very likely that the difference ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... witches of 1633 were the direct outcome of the Lancashire witches of 1612. The story is a weird one. An eleven-year-old boy played truant one day to his cattle-herding, and, as he afterwards told the story, went plum-gathering. When he came back he had to find a plausible excuse to present to his parents. Now, the lad had been brought up in the Blackburn forest, close to Pendle Hill; he had overheard stories of Malking Tower[2] from the chatter of gossipping women;[3] he had shivered as suspected women were ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... Cyllenian Argiphont 515 Winked, as if now his adversary was fitted:— And Jupiter, according to his wont, Laughed heartily to hear the subtle-witted Infant give such a plausible account, And every word a lie. But he remitted 520 Judgement at present—and his exhortation Was, to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Professor Hering of Prague had treated the connection between memory and heredity; to show, again, how substantial was the difference between Von Hartmann and myself in spite of some little superficial resemblance; to put forward a suggestion as regards the physics of memory, and to meet the most plausible objection which I have yet seen brought against ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... the rest of my father's, was plausible enough, and my uncle Toby had but a single word to object to it—in which Trim stood ready to second him—but my father ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... exceedingly plausible fellow," Thomson explained, "and as you are just back from the Front, and brought dispatches, he might very possibly regard ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... canons, and, indeed—also like the others—he seemed generally to think very little of the meaning of the words. He was serious and sincere enough, no doubt, but the man was a peasant, and in many respects his mind was a peasant's. He had quite a plausible excuse or reason to give for the note of jollity which prevails in his Masses. When he thought of God, he said, his heart was filled with joy, and that joy found a voice in his music. He spoke in perfect good faith, but with a little more brains he would have had other feelings than ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... my part in this matter," he said at last, "I have only this to say. The circumstances of my birth—with which I am, as you rightly suppose, quite familiar—were such as to render the sort of notion you have got hold of plausible enough. I don't want what you call proofs—though you'll want them badly if you mean to pursue your present line. I have my own proofs—perfectly in order, perfectly satisfactory. That's all I have to say ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... everything of the scenery and dresses that give it so much vogue upon the stage; but it had at least the charmingly suggestive music, the wonderful linking of sound to sense, the droll and inimitable intermixture of the plausible and the impossible which everybody has admired and laughed at ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... adventures enough of my own for a bit and I lost sight of you until I came across you and your gang road-making, and I am bound to admit that you saved my life. That's neither here nor there. I asked about Monty and you told me some plausible tale. I went to the place you spoke of—to find him of course spirited away. We have met again in England, Scarlett Trent, and I have asked once more for Monty. Once more I am met with evasions. This morning I granted you a week—now ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the pier, where a tackle had been prepared for the purpose of upsetting her. This was an interesting point in the proceedings, because few there had seen a self-righting boat, and, as usual, there was a large sprinkling in the crowd of that class of human beings who maintain the plausible, but false, doctrine, that "seeing ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... 'That's plausible, cousin Mary. But remember that when a man chooses his calling he chooses it for life. A girl cannot but remember that if she marries her calling at once changes. The old business ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... of a letter to the 'Times' advocates the claims of the ex-Governors, on the plausible plea that it is exactly the very men who best represent the dignity of the station—best reflect the splendour of the Sovereign—who come back poor and penniless from the high office: while the penurious ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... never was a more fertile head, or superior knowledge of the human heart, and the means of ruling it. She was, however, proud and haughty; hurrying forward directly to her ends, without regard to the means; but still, if possible, clothing them with a mild and plausible exterior. She was nothing by halves; jealous and imperious in her attachments; a zealous friend, unchangeable by time or absence, and a most implacable and inveterate enemy. Finally, her love of existence ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... few articles were then actually dearer, they were comparatively unimportant and were balanced by other articles even more than ten times as cheap. But a dollar will buy so many articles now which did not exist in former ages that a plausible case can be made out for the paradox that money is now worth more than it ever was before. If an ounce of gold would in Luther's time exchange for a much larger quantity of simple necessaries than it will purchase now, on the other hand a man with an income of $5000 ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... follow her example, though, much to the king's vexation, he held out, and rendered a trial necessary. On this trial, however, there was nothing like satisfactory evidence—the peers were prepared to convict, and they did so on a few trifling attestations, which gave them a plausible excuse for their verdict. The illustrious Bacon aided the king in his object. He had on other occasions shewn abject servility to James—using towards him such expressions of indecorous flattery as these: 'Your majesty ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... indeed, a very plausible reason for this. For, you say, those who are learned men will prefer reading philosophical treatises in Greek, and those who are ignorant of Greek will not read them even in Latin. However, tell me now, do you really agree with your own argument? I would rather say, those ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... not acquainted with the lady's antecedents nor with her remarkable history; but she told a plausible story, and was very fluent and indignant, as may be gathered from the following extract from the affidavit which was drawn under her instructions at ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... thought they became panic-stricken. The wealthiest were the most alarmed, seeing themselves already compelled, in order to redeem their lives, to pour bags of gold into the hands of this insolent soldier. They racked their brains to find plausible and acceptable lies, conceal their wealth, pass themselves off as very poor, very poor. Loiseau took off his watch and chain and hid it in his pocket. The approaching night filled them with apprehension.—The lamp was lighted, ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... man exhibited with much gusto a medium-sized "poke" partly filled with coarse gold and nuggets which they had panned (they affirmed) from the gravel bed of the stream after cutting away the ice sufficiently; and with these and other plausible tales were the good people ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... planet. The rate of approach he estimated at about fifty-seven English miles a year, or 11,000 miles during the 194 years elapsed since the time of Huygens.[1110] Were it to continue, a collapse of the system must be far advanced within three centuries. But was the change real or illusory—a plausible, but deceptive inference from insecure data? M. Struve resolved to put it to the test. A set of elaborately careful micrometrical measures of the dimensions of Saturn's rings, executed by himself at Pulkowa in the autumn of 1851, was provided as a standard of future ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... mention, came to Bath with Miss Elliot and Sir Walter as long ago as September (in short when they first came themselves), and has been staying there ever since; that she is a clever, insinuating, handsome woman, poor and plausible, and altogether such in situation and manner, as to give a general idea, among Sir Walter's acquaintance, of her meaning to be Lady Elliot, and as general a surprise that Miss Elliot should be apparently, blind ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... cause, by representing her as an abandoned and worthless woman, ungrateful towards him, and undeserving of sympathy from others; allegations which he supported by the ready affirmation of some of his West India friends, and by one or two plausible letters procured from Antigua. By these and like artifices he appears completely to have imposed on Mr. Manning, the respectable West India merchant whom Dr. Lushington had asked to negotiate with him; and he prevailed so far as to induce Dr. Lushington ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... workmanship of the Odes from that of the Epodes, and can partly be traced step by step in the autobiographic passages of the second book of Satires and the later Epistles. We are ignorant in what circumstances or under what pressure the Epodes were published; it is a plausible conjecture that their faults were just such as would meet the approbation of Maecenas, on whose favour Horace was at the time almost wholly dependent; and Horace may himself have been glad to get rid, as it ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... When many times upon the Santa Maria and as often on the Pinta and the Nina some one had cried "Land!" and the ships been put in commotion and the land melted into air before our eyes, and another as plausible island or coast formed before us only to vanish, despair seized us again. Witchcraft and sorcery and monstrous ignorance, and fooled to our deaths! "West—west—west!" till the west was hated. The Pinzons thought we should change course. If there were lands we were leaving them in the north ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... Edward said again, "To my own mind the hypothesis is so plausible, that I have no doubt whatever the event occurred on the coast of Patagonia, but still I will have inquiries made in Glasgow, as to the destination of the BRITANNIA, and we shall know if it is possible she could have been wrecked ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... was the lady's impulse not quite crushed out of me by the occupation circumstances had compelled me to take up)—my next, to put out my own light and seat myself at the post of observation thus afforded me. The excuse I gave myself for this was plausible enough. Mrs. Packard had been placed in my charge and, if all was not right with her, it was my business ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... a magnificence of parade, which, though to a certain point politic to assume, was carried to an extent which if it did not conspire to produce his downfall, has served the Romans with an excuse for their own cowardice and desertion, and historians with a plausible explanation of causes they had not the industry to fathom. Rienzi returned his wife's caresses with an equal affection, and bending down to her beautiful face, the sight was sufficient to chase from his brow the emotions, whether severe or sad, which ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... upon four spindle-shanks, of which the practiced eye of D'Artagnan had appreciated the strength and safety beneath the thick mass of hair which covered them. Jogging along, the traveler took notes, studied the country, which he traversed reserved and silent, ever seeking the most plausible pretext for reaching Belle-Isle-en-Mer, and for seeing everything without arousing suspicion. In this manner, he was enabled to convince himself of the importance the event assumed in proportion as he drew near to it. In this remote country, in this ancient duchy of Bretagne, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... news of the South American republic showed what an accomplished liar old Efaw Kotee could be. Very plausible, indeed, and an adequate excuse for keeping her in ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... a plausible and piteous tale of ill-treatment, and, indeed, actual abuse. Mrs. Morris listened with a ready ear, and loudly expressed her horror and indignation. Mrs. Freeman was more guarded. There was something in the old lady's appearance ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... to you, my dear," he said casually, "that, if Bob were out of the way, the aunts might be persuaded to sell their farm for an absurdly small sum? A convincing talker might make any argument seem plausible, and neither Miss Hope nor Miss Charity are business women. They are utterly unversed in business methods or terms, and are the type of women who obediently sign any paper without reading it. I intend to see that you grow up with a knowledge of ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... remembered in your country, where he passed some years as an emigrant, but was, in fact, a spy of Talleyrand. I am told that, by his intrigues, he even succeeded in swindling your Ministers out of a sum of money by some plausible schemes he proposed to them. He is, as well as all other apostate priests, a very dangerous man, and an immoral and unprincipled wretch. During the time of Robespierre he is said to have caused the murder of his elder brother ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... leasehold estate into a fee on which the debt is secured in the shape of mortgage, there is little left in the way of security to the affluent and unrepresented. They must unite their means to prevent destruction; and woe to that land which gives so plausible an excuse to the rich and intelligent for combining their means to overturn the liberties of a nation, as is to be found in abuses like those just named. We very well know that the idea is prevalent among ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... deny the principle involved. The possibility that some fluid, when swallowed, could have a particular specific action on stones in the bladder, without affecting the rest of the body, he considered quite plausible through the analogy that quicksilver has an affinity with gold but has no effect upon iron. Furthermore, a substance than can corrode a solid body may nevertheless be unable to "fret" a different body which is considerably softer and thinner, if the "texture" ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... Agesilaus; but privately wrote to him, to act as he should find it best for the profit of the commonwealth. Upon receipt of his orders, he at once changed sides, carrying all the mercenaries with him to Nectanabis, covering with the plausible presence of acting for the benefit of his country, a most questionable piece of conduct, which, stripped of that disguise, in real truth was no better than downright treachery. But the Lacedaemonians, who make it their first principle of action to serve their ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... aware that all men knew that his most potent and strenuous magic had failed as utterly as that of the youngest novice in the craft. His only chance to retrieve a portion of his lost reputation was to invent a more plausible excuse for failure than any other ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... depends upon him—well you know With plausible harangue 'tis his to paint Defeat like victory—and blind the mob With truth-mix'd falsehood. They, led on by him, And wild of head to work their own destruction, Support with uproar ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... Only a few minutes later, they were joined by an acquaintance of Samuel's, who seems to have been of a curious turn of mind, and cross-questioned him as to where he was going and why. Samuel, with more readiness than could have been expected from his recent behaviour, invented a story that sounded plausible enough, explaining Johnstone to be a young man whom he had picked up on the road, and had taken into his service at low wages, owing to his want of a character. The stranger was satisfied, and after a prolonged drink they separated, when ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... there was a collection of valuable MSS. in the market he often prided himself on having secured it long before any other library had the money ready. Now and then, it is true, he allowed himself to be persuaded by a plausible seller of rare books or MSS., but generally he was very wary. He was not always very courteous to visitors, and still less so to his under-librarians. The Oriental under-librarian Professor Reay, in particular, who was old and somewhat infirm, had much to ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... a comfortable-looking little man, smooth and sleek, pleasant and plausible, reasonable honest, too, as the world goes; a nice man to have to do with; the world went so easy with his affairs that you were sure he would make no unnecessary rubs in your own. He came now fresh and brisk to the side of the wagon, with that uncommon ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was obliged to pass through the Parker yard and, although he went on tiptoe, each footstep sounded, in his ears, like the crack of doom. He tried to think of some explanation to be made to Kenelm in case the latter should hear and hail him, but he could think of nothing more plausible than that he was taking a walk, and this was far ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the young officer finally, "Mr. Holmes has told me what a very thorough search was made after the alarm had been given. But no sign of the missing money was found. Have you any idea on that head? Can you make even a plausible suggestion as to how the money was taken care of by ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... expected to say; he had mercilessly expressed what would have been his own judgment had he been asked to pronounce an opinion concerning any other man and woman in like circumstances. As he voiced them they had sounded tragically plausible and stoically just. He knew he was inflicting almost unbearable pain upon himself and upon the woman whose whole love was his; but that pain seemed necessary to the tragic demands ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... charm, sustained interest, and a wealth of thrilling and romantic situations." "So naively fresh in its handling, so plausible through its naturalness, that it comes like a mountain breeze across the far-spreading ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... to showing it to me?" continued Cesarine, pleased that the enthusiasm gave an excuse for her not entering into an explanation of her absence which, even if more plausible than that Hedwig had doubtingly received, would require all of Antonino's affectionate faith in her to win credence. "I do not object. Even those experienced in the old weapons can inspect it and not learn much," he went on, with ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... to the primitive ideal. If the existence of the body politic be endangered, force may be used: "Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body; which means nothing else than that he shall be forced to be free." Equally plausible and dangerous was his teaching as to the indivisibility of the general will. Deriving every public power from his social contract, he finds it easy to prove that the sovereign power, vested in all the citizens, must be incorruptible, inalienable, unrepresentable, indivisible, and indestructible. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... All this was so plausible that the Professors gave up their permit without a word but thanks. They bundled their curiosities hurriedly into "the poor foreign devil's" blanket, reserving a more careful packing till they were out of the preserves. They ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... application of the mind. The study is averse to indolent intellectual ways; it will not put up with a "there or thereabouts," any more than mathematical ideas admit of being made to seem "extremely plausible." He who writes, and who may venture to offer himself as an example, is naturally of a most slovenly and slatternly mental habit. It is his constant temptation to "scamp" every kind of work, and to say "it will do well enough." He hates taking trouble and verifying references. And ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... attempting a course at variance with the order's wishes was invariably shortened by monastic influence. Every abuse leading to the revolutions of 1896 and 1898 the people charged to the friars; and the autocratic power which each friar exercised over the civil officials of his parish gave them a most plausible ground for belief that nothing of injustice, of cruelty, of oppression, of narrowing liberty was imposed on them for which the friar was not entirely responsible. The revolutions against Spain began as movements against ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... to persuade; In ev'ry wish, to serve him they were made. Among his people boldest hearts he chose, And to their view would Paradise disclose Its blissful pleasures:—ev'ry soft delight, Designed to gratify the sense and sight. So plausible this prophet's tale appeared, Each word he dropt was thoroughly revered. Whence this delusion?—DRINK deranged the mind; And, reason drowned, to madness they resigned. Thus void of knowing clearly what they did, They soon were brought to act as they were bid; ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... Ruth's house. Perhaps it would be better to ride there direct, and make the necessary inquiries. Perhaps—God knows how I hoped it—she was still in the house, Wilfred not having been able to concoct a plan sufficiently plausible to get her away alone. If so, I should meet her, and be able ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... indigenous to England, was powerfully stimulated by the philosophy of Shaftesbury and Voltaire, by Rousseau's sentiment and Fielding's fiction. This theory may have something to say for itself, and indeed it is antecedently plausible; but I can hardly believe that purely literary influences counted for so very much in the sphere of practice. I doubt if any considerable number of Englishmen were effectively swayed by that humanitarian ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... I have sinned, that it would do no good to go. It seems to be making Christ a Minister of Sin to go straight from the swine-trough to the best robe.' But he came to see that there is no other way, and that all his plausible reasonings were but the folly of his own beclouded heart. 'The weight of my sin,' he writes, 'should act like the weight of a clock; the heavier it is, the faster ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... nature escaped him, in spite of all his arts to disguise it; that even from his early infancy he had been trained up in an imperial house; that consulships and triumphs had been accumulated upon him while but a youth. Not even during the years of his abode at Rhodes, where under the plausible name of retirement, he was in fact an exile, did he employ himself otherwise than in meditating future vengeance, studying the arts of simulation, and practising secret and abominable sensualities. That to these considerations ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... To such plausible arguments, pleaded by one who confessed that he loved her, and to whom she was (as she now realised) far from indifferent, Miss Linley could not remain deaf. And before the coach had travelled many miles from Calais ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... fashion must also be taken into account. A number of them after the first panic recaptured the failing demand by advertising very simple modifications of their ordinary supply. Some, for instance, turned to the manufacture of equally plausible superfluities of military equipment—such as silver and gold identity disks and watches with luminous dials and queer little hieroglyphs in place of the ordinary figures. Trades already so well organised for exploitation could ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... notice briefly the main arguments that have been employed in Congress and elsewhere against the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District. One of the most plausible, is that "the conditions on which Maryland and Virginia ceded the District to the United States, would be violated, if Congress should abolish slavery there." The reply to this is, that Congress had no power to accept a ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... half as long, and is a well-written and extremely plausible story about a house owned by an old gentleman of ancient lineage, where there is a collection of gold plate which was said to be an "incubus", that is, the subject of a curse. As indeed there turns ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... lifetime of Archbishop Stephen Langton. Other opponents were weakened by the audacious stroke of 1223, when the justiciar suddenly announced the resumption of all the castles, sheriffdoms and other grants which had been made since the king's accession. A plausible excuse was found in the next year for issuing a sentence of confiscation and banishment against Falkes de Breaute. Finally in 1227, Hubert having proclaimed the king of age, dismissed the bishop of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... scholastic husks of its superficial knowledge. What he had learned came from inborn capacity, from desultory reading, and from the untutored imaginings of his garden at Brienne, his cave at Ajaccio, or his barrack chambers. What more plausible than that he should first turn to the land of his birth with some hope of happiness, usefulness, or even glory! What more mortifying than the revelation that in manhood he was too French for Corsica, as in boyhood he had been too Corsican ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... these mutual suspicions find a place? Once more I issue this announcement; if you, my fellow countrymen, do indeed place the safety of China before all other considerations, it behooves you to be large- minded. Beware of lightly heeding the plausible voice of calumny, and of thus furnishing a medium for fostering anarchy. If evilly disposed persons, who are bent on destruction, seize the excuse for sowing dissension to the jeopardy of the situation, I, Yuan Shih-kai, shall follow the behest of my fellow-countrymen ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... I can tell you. Of course my idea of a secret marriage was at the best only a plausible hypothesis; and I hardly dared to hug myself with the hope that it might turn up trumps. My idea was based upon two or three facts, namely, the character of the young man, his long residence in London away from the ken of respectable relatives and friends, and the extraordinary state of the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... forcible enforcible gullible horrible sensible terrible possible visible perceptible susceptible audible credible combustible eligible intelligible irascible inexhaustible reversible plausible permissible accessible digestible responsible admissible fallible flexible incorrigible irresistible ostensible tangible contemptible divisible discernible corruptible edible legible ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... infusion in his consciousness—an element in his life which altered the relations of things. He was not easy till he had found the right name for it—a name the more satisfactory that it was simple, comprehensive, and plausible. A new "distraction," in the French sense, was what he flattered himself he had discovered; he could recognise that as freely as possible without being obliged to classify the agreeable resource as a new entanglement. ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... seemed plausible enough to Virginia, although she could not repress a little pang of regret that her father had been willing to go on to the harbor before he knew her fate. However, she explained that by her belief that his mind was unbalanced through ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... are more of a fatalist than a materialist. In my heart I feel, I know, you are wrong. What you say seems so plausible as to be true; but my very soul revolts at it all. There is a deep undertone of sadness in your words, and they point to a possibility that would imbitter every moment of the remnant of my life. Suppose you should fall, what remedy would there be for me? Oh, in anguish I have ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... give a word or two of advice. I would strongly deprecate forming a hurried opinion for or against the theory. Naturalists in Europe are canvassing the matter with the utmost diligence, and a few years must show whether they will accept the theory or no. It is plausible; that can be decided by no one. Whether it is true or no can be decided only among naturalists themselves. We are outsiders, and most of us must be content to sit on the stairs till the great men come forth and give us ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... delightful parrots who have "been here before" and know more about the country than Louis Napoleon knows now or ever will know—tell us these things, and we believe them because they are pleasant things to believe and because they are plausible and savor of the rigid subjection to law and order which we behold about ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... no cheerful mood. Before I came within sight of Las Palomas near evening, my horse turned his head and nickered, and in a few minutes Uncle Lance and June Deweese galloped up and overtook me. I had figured out several very plausible versions of my adventure, but this sudden meeting threw me off my guard—and Lance Lovelace was a hard man to tell an undetected, white-faced lie. I put on a bold front, but his salutation penetrated it at ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... breathing heavily. Then passion marked him for the thing he was. Garrison saw confronting him not the unctuous, plausible friend, but a hunted animal, with fear and venom showing in his narrowed eyes. And, curiously enough, he noticed for the first time that the prison pallor was strong on Crimmins' face, and that the hair above his outstanding ears was clipped to ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... their schemes, that they could not agree about their chief good, or wherein to place the happiness of mankind; nor had any of them a tolerable answer upon this difficulty to satisfy a reasonable person. For to say, as the most plausible of them did, "That happiness consisted in virtue," was but vain babbling, and a mere sound of words to amuse others and themselves; because they were not agreed what this virtue was or wherein it did consist; and likewise, ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... O'Malley and the galling sense of inferiority it carried with it; but once on the highroad again the smart returned and the sting lingering behind the man's scorn was not to be allayed. It required every excuse his wounded dignity could muster to bolster up his pride and make out for himself the plausible case that had previously comforted him and lulled his conscience to rest. It was now more impossible than ever for him to make any confession, he decided; for having denied in his father's presence O'Malley's acquaintance it would be ridiculous to acknowledge ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... anguish even, to be found in his tone made this story, strange and incredible as it seemed, appear for the moment plausible. ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... impressed in spite of himself and falling back upon the last resort of baffled argument. "It is all very plausible, but I do not believe ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... shot from his pistol with the silencer fitted and then removed the silencer and fired another shot without it, thereby killing himself, or that the second shot was fired by the person whose interest it was to get rid of the silencer. There is no possible or plausible reason why Parrish should have fired first one shot with the silencer and then one without. Therefore, I find myself irresistibly compelled to the conclusion that the shot heard by Mary Trevert was fired by the person who killed Parrish. Do I ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... would go up and say "Good-night," but for the moment she must be alone. Alone to face the doubts which were facing her. Suppose, oh, suppose, that the things which Roger had told her about his marriage had been distorted to make his story sound plausible? Suppose the little wife had suffered, had been driven from him by coldness, by cruelty? One never knew the real inner histories of such domestic tragedies. There was Leila, for example, who knew nothing ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... indifferent Latin verses, in which he bestows the highest praises on the author of the Inferno. At that time, half the world believed that Petrarch was jealous of Dante's fame; and the rumour was rendered plausible by the circumstance—for which he has accounted very rationally—that he had not a copy of ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... altogether rueful. Life had not been very kind to him and he very naturally longed for some opportunity to dodge continued hardship. He wished that he might, like the boy Edison, make opportunity, but that sounded more plausible in lectures than in real life. He was moodily silent now, while the others engaged in a spirited discussion started by ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... the humblest beginnings, his ready wit, his multifarious accomplishments, and his indomitable assurance speedily carried him to the topmost wave of social prosperity. A brief instruction in surgery gave him such a plausible appearance of proficiency in the art as to permit his public lectures to be favorably received, and to lead to his employment in the royal household. George I. made him Anatomist to the Court, and, as a token of especial ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... superstition seemed more plausible, had Butler's mind been very accessible to them. Was this indeed the Roaring Lion, who goeth about seeking whom he may devour? This was a question which pressed itself on Butler's mind with an earnestness that cannot be ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... corporeal substance should appear, and render itself visible to our eyes, than a substance purely spiritual; but this is not the place to reason on a philosophical question, on which different hypotheses could be freely grounded, and to choose that which should explain these appearances in the most plausible manner, even though it answer in the most satisfactory manner the question asked, and the objections formed against the facts, and against the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... from the ore and sell it very cheaply to the traders for beads. The project of going in canoes now appeared to the half-castes so plausible, that they all tried to get the Bagenya on the west bank to lend them, and all went over to mix blood and make friends with the owners, then all slandered me as not to be trusted, as they their blood-relations were; and my slaves mutinied ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... situation. I was married; but, knowing that in getting an office where there is a restriction of this kind, leaving one's wife behind is always accepted as a fulfilment of the condition, I left her behind for awhile. The other reason is, that these terms of yours afforded me a plausible excuse for escaping (for a short time) the company of a woman I ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy |
