"Possibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well that it was a question of victory or death; for if they did not conquer, they must die, either by wounds on the field of battle, or else, if taken prisoners, by being hung as traitors, or beheaded in the Tower. All possibility of escape, entrapped and surrounded as they were in the very heart of the country, hundreds of miles from the frontiers, seemed utterly hopeless. They fought, therefore, with reckless and desperate fury, but all was in vain. They were repulsed and driven in on all sides, and ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... communicable; but with those who have falsified with themselves the genuine truths of the church, it is not communicable. The prevailing ignorance concerning love truly conjugial, or a negative doubting respecting the possibility of the existence of such love, is from persons of the latter description; and from the same source also comes the wild imagination, in the minds of the generality, that adulteries are not evils in a religious point ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Barnett, I am extremely obliged for your suggestion and for your offer of introductions. It is just the life that I should enjoy thoroughly. As you say, the chance that anything will come of it is extremely small, but at least there is a possibility, and I take it as a drowning man ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... of his face remained the same, and of his body. Only his hands clenched, and unclenched, and clenched again. It was a difficult position in which he found himself— how difficult only he might know. There lay before him a vast, spreading vista of golden possibility—a possibility of which he had never dared to think—even to dream. Possibly it were but a possibility—and yet surely it was that. A word from him would so make it. That he knew. On the ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... chic picked up in a tenth-rate school. He began to ask himself whether people tasteless enough to produce these inanities and imagine them artistic, could form even the subjects of art; he began to have doubts of his impression of the trotting-match, its value, its possibility of importance. The senseless ugliness of the things really hurt him: his worship of beauty was a sort of religion, and their badness was a sort of blasphemy. He could not laugh at them; he wished he could; and his first impulse was to turn ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... of her marriage, she reflected that even if Silver knew about it, he could do nothing. Unless, and it was this thought that made her turn red, Garvington had again risked contact with the criminal courts. The idea was not a pleasant one, but being a brave woman, she faced the possibility boldly. ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... period to our suspense by confirming Arthur's opinion, and our worst fears; the stranger had altered her course, her yards were braced round, and she was standing further out to sea. Still, however, there would have been a possibility of reaching her, but for the failure of light, for she had not so far changed her course, but that she would have to pass a point, which we could probably gain before her. But now, it was with difficulty, and only by means of the cloud of canvass she carried, that we could distinguish ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... beating of the pulse, according as it best pleased his brush. But whosoever shall consider the mural paintings of Polidoro and Maturino, will see figures in attitudes that seem beyond the bounds of possibility, and he will wonder with amazement how it can be possible, not to describe with the tongue, which is easy, but to express with the brush the tremendous conceptions which they put into execution with such mastery and dexterity, in representing the deeds of the Romans ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... While all other creatures are being borne away in the current of desire and passion, thou art perfectly indifferent to all acts appertaining to Religion, Profit, and Pleasure. Thou seemest to be in a state of quietude (without the possibility of agitation). Disregarding all objects of the senses, thou movest like an emancipated self, only witnessing everything (but never taking part in anything). What, O sage, is thy wisdom, what thy learning, and what thy behaviour (in consequence of which all this becomes possible)? Tell me this without ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... events leading to a happy ending," but endeavors to escape the inevitable conclusion, by the statement, utterly inconsistent with his own chronology, that, "if the play was as late as 1608, there is a possibility of Beaumont and Fletcher's influence just as ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... ceremonial observance than by all his substantial attacks upon their privileges. What we find it difficult to believe is not that result from that offence—this is no more than we should all anticipate—not that, but the possibility of the offence itself, from one so little arrogant as Caesar, and so entirely a man of the world. He was told of the disgust which he had given; and we are bound to believe his apology, in which he charged it upon sickness, that would not at the moment allow him to maintain a standing attitude. ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... to say something about this adventure to his instructor in the art of love, Mr. Archie Weil, but somehow he was not able to summon the requisite courage. He had a delicate sense that such a thing ought not to be repeated, where it might by any possibility bring a laugh. And about this time the novelist's attention began to be attracted toward the younger sister, who had till then ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... well known that each has his confidant, and that each has some mighty secret to reveal to another. As to what Edward Harris advances with respect to the plumstones, they might as easily have fallen from the pocket of another as from mine, and there is even a possibility that these very plumstones may have come out of the tart after they themselves had eat it. Upon the whole, I leave it to your lordship and this honourable court whether there be any other view in this ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... 1811.—The ice began to loosen in the bay of OKKAK, and to drive out to sea. On the 17th, the bay was quite cleared of it; but on the 18th, it returned, and seemed to preclude all possibility of setting out so soon as we intended. On the 19th, however, it ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... probably felt within his own bosom that the last judgment of all would depend in some way on terrestrial evidence, and was quite sure that it was by such that a man's conscience should be affected. If Goarly had so done the deed as to be beyond the possibility of detection, Nickem could not have brought himself to regard Goarly as a sinner. As it was he had considerable respect for Goarly;—but might it not be possible to drop down upon Scrobby? Bearside with his case against the lord would be nowhere, if Goarly could be got to ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... doubt as to whether a given object be or not a necessary incident of the military, naval, or any other power. As man is imperfect, so are his methods of uttering his thoughts. Human language, save in expressions for the exact sciences, must always fail to preclude all possibility of controversy. Hence it is that in one branch of the subject—the question of the power of Congress to make appropriations in aid of navigation—there is less of positive conviction than in regard to the general subject; and it therefore seems proper in this respect ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... By this time Domitius had prepared himself; and drawn out his army in array against Pompey; but there was a watercourse betwixt them, craggy, and difficult to pass over; and this, together with a great storm of wind and rain pouring down even from break of day, seemed to leave but little possibility of their coming together, so that Domitius, not expecting any engagement that day, commanded his forces to draw off and retire to the camp. Now Pompey, who was watchful upon every occasion, making use of the opportunity, ordered ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... secluded rural districts. The real evils—and they follow universally from such employment of juvenile females in great numbers in laborious but lucrative employment—are the emancipation of the young from parental control, the temptation held out to idleness in the parents from the possibility of living on their children, and the disqualifying the girls for performing all the domestic duties of wives and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... countenance fell. No Wild Man of the West at all! The bare possibility of such a crushing blow to all his romantic hopes and dreams caused his heart to sink. Bertram observed the change in his countenance, and, quickly divining the cause, added, "But I am of a sceptical turn of mind, and do not easily believe unless I see. There ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... information, which you will receive at the hands of one of our most trustworthy associates. You will please note the contents of this communication, so as not to fail in the execution of that part of the transaction assigned to you, and then burn the letter immediately, that you may prevent the possibility of its falling into other hands, which would lead to the most disastrous consequences—perhaps to the destruction of our organization. When taken, bring the horses at once to the rendezvous, with such ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... a starlit balcony with two such ladies as the Valcours, to do one's errands, such errands, in scrambling haste proved not even a military possibility. Their greeting inquiries had ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Whitman's poem 'To You.' Two ways of taking it. My friend's letter. Necessities versus possibilities. 'Possibility' defined. Three views of the world's salvation. Pragmatism is melioristic. We may create reality. Why should anything BE? Supposed choice before creation. The healthy and the morbid reply. The 'tender' and the 'tough' types of religion. ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... Alessandro his temporary substitute, was slowly coming to pass. The idea was working in the Senora's mind, that she might do a worse thing than engage this young, strong, active, willing man to remain permanently in her employ. The possibility of an Indian's being so born and placed that he would hesitate about becoming permanently a servant even to the Senora Moreno, did not occur to her. However, she would do nothing hastily. There would ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... possibility of help from his frightened flock it was ended by this ill-timed blow. The Prior and his fellows on the dais made not a single motion; and save for an excited swaying and whispering, the monks sat stolid on their benches, either too frightened to flee or too ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... soldier might think fit to take offence at them. These papers are all which I think it necessary to trouble your Grace with upon this occasion, as the facts will best speak for themselves, and prevent the possibility of a conjecture that any unfair ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... to work without any noise, any fuss. He was too foxy to shout until his purpose was beyond all possibility of failure. He simply disappeared from the camp for a week. His absence was noted, but no one cared. They were too full of their own affairs. The only people who thought on the matter were the Padre and Buck. Nor did they speak of it until he had been missing four days. Then it was, one ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... the absence of such evidence, can it be definitely dissociated from that peculiar class of Scottish buildings, because the portion of wall then remaining was not sufficiently high to exclude the possibility of these broch characteristics having been present at a higher level—a structural deviation which ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... nothing to allege against the empress's virtue, but with your leave I beg to entertain very strong doubts as to the possibility of the general exercise of that virtue ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... constantly hoped from the future, and this more from an instinctive feeling that this might be the best, than to subdue by philosophy every too vivid wish for an agreeable present time, because it was altogether so opposed to possibility. For some time, however, alas! it had been otherwise with me; I felt, and especially this evening, more than ever an inexpressible desire to have somebody to love,—to have some one about me who would cleave to me—who would be a friend ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... played exactly as its author had delivered it to the actors, without the change or the need of change in a single word, and with only the repetition late in the play of a line that had been spoken in an early act. That fact does not exclude the possibility of rewritings before the manuscript came to the company, but rather, in view of Bronson Howard's thoroness as a workman and his masterly sense of proportion, makes such rewritings the more probable. The effect, however, of his rewriting, ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... there is not the slightest necessity for this amendment. I hope gentlemen will stop interposing these useless propositions; they confound the sense of the article, and we are guarding against questions which by no possibility ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... general assumption that the curricula of schools must be of a more or less uniform pattern, and puts an end to the absurdity of the central authority prescribing subjects to be taught in all elementary schools, regardless of varying circumstances or the possibility ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... possibility, nay, the actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is, at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God, in various passages both of the Old and New Testament: and the thing itself is a truth ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... the cost of war by the use of methods which, while putting a soldier out of action, will not injure him beyond the possibility of repair for use in ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... of the Yore had become visible through the trees before it occurred to him that before riding away the man just might have removed the Sangraal from the black rohorse's croup. At first thought, such a possibility was too absurd to be entertained, but not on second thought. According to Le Morte d'Arthur, the fellowship of Sir Galahad, Sir Percivale, and Sir Bors had taken both the table of silver and the Sangraal to Sarras where, some time later, the Sangraal had been "borne ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... threatening him with lynch law. He would be far more liable to defy a mob than yield to its demands. Yet memory of those two helpless girls—more particularly that one over whose unconsciousness there hung the possibility of slavery—urged me strongly to attempt even the apparently impossible. I had it in my mind to fight the man personally if, in no other way, I could attain my end; at least I would face him with every power and authority ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... another, and a still more subtle, form of Partial or Religious Skepticism. It does not absolutely deny the possibility of religious knowledge, nor does it dogmatically affirm that man, with his present faculties, can have no religious convictions; it contents itself with saying, and attempting to prove, that the certitude ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... spending the close of summer—to neutralise the bad effects of Epsom chalybeates with a regimen of Kentish sulphur. If nobody at either resort drank deeper of the medicinal springs than Hyacinth—who had ordered her physician to order her that treatment—the risk of harm or the possibility of benefit was of the smallest. But at Epsom there had been a good deal of gay company, and a greater liberty of manners than in London; for, indeed, as Rochester assured Lady Fareham, "the freedom of Epsom allowed almost nothing to be scandalous." And at Tunbridge ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... to any of Pedro's remarks, but rode on sadly and moodily, dreading to find the truth of the dreadful report I had heard, confirmed, yet not daring to believe in its possibility. It was now necessary to proceed with great caution, for we were in a part of the country which had been inhabited chiefly by Spaniards; but we found that they had all fled or been destroyed, and the blackened ruins of farm-houses and hamlets met our sight every league we proceeded. Here ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Glencairn covered a territory so large that Angus could not by any possibility make his rounds in one day or even in one week. The Clan knew well where he had spent his time for the two preceding days, and they thought he would be likely to start in a different direction on the morrow. They did not dare count upon his doing so, however, and so Sandy was detailed to give ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... evening; supper was the final consummation, the glorious funeral pyre of day. One could be merry till bedtime without an interregnum. Nay, if in the ardour of convivialism one did,—I merely hint at the possibility of such an event,—if one did exceed the narrow limits of strict ebriety, and open the heart with a ruby key, one had nothing to dread from the cold, or, what is worse, the warm looks of ladies in the drawing-room; no fear that ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... recovered past all possibility of thinking she was not quite as well as usual, Mrs. Grey had reasoned herself into thinking, and talked Mr. Grey into believing, that there was so much that was injurious in the present mode of school ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... Beecher walks in his sleep! No more did I nor nobody else, 'n' I must say 't I do think 't the minister 'd ought to 'a' told some of us so's we could 'a' been a little prepared, for there's many a night 's I've left clothes out on the line 's I'd never risked 'f I'd been aware o' the possibility o' Henry Ward Beecher bein' broad-cast. Mrs. Brown says, though, 's it ain't his walkin' in his sleep as is troublin' her, it's his eatin' in his walkin'. Mrs. Lathrop, you never hear the like o' ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... since Larry the Bat had been caught in Jimmie Dale's home—and he would be accused of his own murder! It was quite humourous, of course, quite grotesquely bizarre—but it was equally an exceedingly grim possibility! There were ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... general paper were required, to obtain success. Still, the sine qua non was what the representative of the old Oxford in Matthew Arnold's Friendship's Garland calls "the good old fortifying classical curriculum." I could by no possibility have reached the heights of "Hittal," who, it will be remembered, wrote "some longs and shorts about the Caledonian boar which were not bad." Though English verses came so easily, Latin verses ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... examination; Babington and all his comrades were in the Tower. The Council was continually sitting to deliberate over the fate of the latter unhappy men, of whose guilt there was no doubt; and neither Lord Talbot nor Will Cavendish thought there was any possibility of Master Richard gaining permission to plead how the unfortunate Babington had been worked on and deceived. After the sentence should be pronounced, Cavendish thought that the request of the Earl of Shrewsbury might prevail to obtain permission ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thousands of ducats, in the great capital of Valladolid. Many a son of a distinguished race sought it, but he wished to bestow it upon Wolf. It would insure him more than a comfortable support, permit him to marry the woman of his choice, and, if he remained several years in Villagarcia, afford him the possibility of accumulating a neat little property, as he would live in Quijada's castle as a welcome guest and scarcely ever be obliged to open his purse strings. Besides, music was cultivated in Valladolid, and if Don Luis introduced him to the clergy ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seconds in order to collect his thoughts, then continued: "Now let us consider this question from every side, and then see to what conclusion we can arrive that will be for the best. Firstly, of course, there is the possibility of your following the example of the prefet of the Basses-Alpes and taking yourself and the money to a convenient ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... was poetry. A mythology which broods over us in our cradle, which mingles with the lullaby of the nurse, which peoples the day with the possibility of divine encounters, and night with intimation of demonic ambushes, is something quite other, as the material for thought and poetry, from one that we take down from our bookshelves, as sapless as the shelf it stood on, as remote from all present sympathy ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... industry. With the January 2005 expiration of a WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, Cambodia-based textile producers are in direct competition with lower priced producing countries such as China and India. Faced with the possibility that over the next five years Cambodia may lose orders and some of the 250,000 well-paid jobs the industry provides, Cambodia has committed itself to a policy of continued support for high labor standards ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... concluding an honorable peace, the terms of which offer the possibility and prospect of its duration. The bravery of my army, its unwavering courage, its ardent patriotism, its emphatic wish not to lay down its arms prior to the conclusion of an honorable peace, prevent me from submitting to terms which would shake the foundations of the empire, and dishonor us after ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... discovery to which I had found it hard enough to reconcile myself. But Carmel here in company with another at the very moment when I had expected the fruition of my own joy,—ah, that was to open hell's door in my breast; a possibility too intolerable to remain unsettled for an instant. Though she had passed out before my eyes in a drooping, almost agonised condition, not she, dear as she was, and great as were my fears in her regard, was to be sought out first, ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... when first this possibility of future fulfilment was pronounced a certainty was one of almost exalted beatitude, and when Doctor Geddis drove away down the Northern Avenue, Amaryllis seized a coat from the folded pile of John's in the hall, and walked out into the park hatless, ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... with the quiet cordiality which had hitherto characterised him, and it went a long way towards allaying the embarrassment she was conscious of at first. By and bye, however, she felt no embarrassment at all, in spite of the disturbing possibility that he might at some future time once more adopt the role of lover. In the meanwhile, she realised that in face of the efforts she made to think of him tenderly she was drifting further apart from Gregory; and she had, as it happened, two further offers of marriage before ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the worthy Tristram Shandy. But as Middleton recovered from his exhaustion he was fain to appease the boisterous temper of his associate, by admonishing him of the uselessness of such denunciations, and of the possibility of their hastening the very evil he deprecated, by irritating the resentments of a race, who were sufficiently fierce and lawless, even in ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... wickedest and the wittiest of them all marry one day or other, is it possible to believe, that if a man thought he should be for ever incapable of being received by a woman of merit and honour, he would persist in an abandoned way, and deny himself the possibility of enjoying the happiness of well-governed desires, orderly satisfactions, and honourable methods of life? If our sex were wise, a lover should have a certificate from the last woman he served, how he was turned away, before he was received into the service of another: ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... had disembarked his troops at Pondicherry, and, taking the field, immediately invested the fort of St. David, while the squadron blocked it up by sea, Two English ships being at anchor in the road when the enemy arrived, their captains seeing no possibility of escaping, ran them on shore, set them on fire, and retired with their men into the fortress, which, however, was in a few days surrendered. A much more resolute defence was expected from the courage and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... for details. That he had been unsuccessful of late they set down to his lack of nerve, dissipated in his encounter with Sandy. Their present lack of cash, the doubtfulness of being able to sell and deliver the horses, made ransom a glittering possibility. Hahn had some objections, but ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... in which Patsy was a prisoner was built of roughly hewn logs, the crevices and chinks being stopped with mud and clay. The ground beneath it was hard—rocky, in fact; so there was no possibility of digging under the logs without tools to do it, and even then it would have taken too much time ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... every now and then to ascertain how matters were proceeding. The report, however, I had to give when I returned below was anything but encouraging. I had no idea of deceiving people, as some persons do, when danger is threatening. I am certain that the more a person can contemplate the possibility of danger, the better able they will be to encounter it when it comes, if they have employed the meantime in reflection and in considering the best ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... breast, Like a white lily heaving on the tide Of some foul stream, the fairest woman slept These roving eyes have ever looked upon. Almost a child, her bosom barely showed The change beyond her girlhood. All her charms Were budding, but half opened; for I saw Not only beauty wondrous in itself, But possibility of more to be In the full process of her blooming days. I gazed upon her, and my heart grew soft, As a parched pasture with the dew of heaven. While thus I gazed, she smiled, and slowly raised The long curve of her lashes; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... of the light in his eyes and of the repressed feeling in his tones. She knew that she must repulse him if he wooed. Her emotions were mixed, but she was sure there was no love in her heart—all her thoughts were concerned with her quest. If love should by any possibility develop in her and she should allow him to see it, what would become of his man's appetite for fight and danger? She felt obliged to view surrender to him in that light. On the other hand, she could not afford to offend him deeply by allowing matters to come to a climax between ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... girl returned the look, but for some reason, probably one she herself could not have told, she did not smile. She merely looked at him, steadily, unwaveringly. "I have never thought of the possibility before, never questioned. Certainly nothing has come between us. To imagine—I never ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... Mrs. Halliday meant to make a friend of Jim and her object was not hard to see since Langrigg gave its owner some importance. Evelyn was curious about Jim; Mordaunt did not know if he attracted her, but the possibility of ruling at Langrigg had no doubt some charm. She ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... snow-shoes sank some four or five inches. It was just below the porch that he had tied his straps, and when he first moved forward he trod with one shoe on the top of the other. He had not expected this; he felt that no further progress was within the bounds of possibility. For some half minute he stood, his back to the door, his face turned to the illimitable region of drifts and feathery air, unable to conceive how to go forward and without a thought of turning back. When his pulses ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... two new children. I had never thought of that possibility. I heard my mother's voice warning the cubs that someone was coming, and as I appeared the young ones ran and smuggled up to her, and stared at me as if I was a stranger and they were afraid of me, as I suppose they were. ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... Comique far more than the Italiens," said I, remembering that Madame de Marignan had a box at the Italiens, and rapidly weighing the chances for and against the possibility of recognition. "At the first they sing in French—at the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... fellowship with all our Greek neighbors. As the mayor of Chicago was seated upon the right hand of the dignified senior priest of the Greek Church and they were greeted alternately in the national hymns of America and Greece, one felt a curious sense of the possibility of transplanting to new and crude Chicago some of the traditions of Athens itself, so deeply cherished in the hearts ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... of his own for all the matters familiar to his discourse. Blackwood's was the "sand magazine"; Fraser's nearer approach to possibility of life was the "mud magazine"; a piece of road near by that marked some failed enterprise was the "grave of the last sixpence." When too much praise of any genius annoyed him, he profest hugely to admire the talent shown by his pig. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... cleanliness and order. He knew that misery and wretchedness are the right and best condition of those who live so that misery and wretchedness are the natural consequences of their life. But there ought always to be the possibility of emerging from these; and as things were, over the whole country, for many who would if they could, it was impossible to breathe fresh air, to be clean, to live like human beings. And he saw this difficulty ever on the increase, through the rapacity of the holders ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... often pondered this possibility and had decided in such a case to attack at once before the enemy could entrench and bring up cannon. A rapid decision was now followed by rapid action. He had a moment's conversation with Vaudreuil. The French regiments on the right at Vaudreuil's ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... know all the British officers in France," said Hal, "but there is always the possibility ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... slowly creeping round and round my crazy structure, gradually edging his way nearer and nearer. Every moment I expected him to rush it; and the staging had not been constructed with an eye to such a possibility. If one of the rather flimsy poles should break, or if the lion could spring the twelve feet which separated me from the ground ... the thought was scarcely a pleasant one. I began to feel distinctly "creepy," and heartily repented my folly in having placed ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... character of each member of his family might be; but a sudden fear took possession of him that he might regret the act forever afterward. They were his nearest and dearest friends on earth, and in his boyish heart he loved them all and believed in their goodness and sincerity. The possibility of finding a bad character mark on any of their familiar faces made him shudder, and he determined then and there never to use the spectacles to view the face of a friend or relative. Had any one, at that moment, been gazing at Rob through ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... avoid. Next morning, at daybreak, the army began its march. The main body advanced so slowly, that the waggon was able to keep up with it; but active scouts were sent ahead, to feel every inch of the way, while the rest kept themselves concealed, so that there was no possibility of their being taken by surprise. For three days they advanced, when it was supposed that they were approaching their enemies; but the scouts brought in word that they had retreated to a position nearer the border. This showed that Umbulazi was ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... if I am once sure. I have guessed; but I must be certain beyond the possibility of mistake. Is my guess right? That ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... enterprise far beyond my capacity. It amazed me how I had managed to reach London. I must have come mechanically, in a heavy dream; for I had no hope, no energy, no vivacity, no interest. For many weeks my mind had revolved round an awful possibility, as if hypnotized by it, and that monotonous revolution seemed alone to constitute my real life. Moreover, I was subject to recurring nausea, and to disconcerting bodily pains ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... when Max mentioned the possibility of that disaster coming upon the unhappy valley, which would suffer seriously enough from the flood without that appalling happening coming ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the pulpit. You will have to read the lessons, conduct the service, and may address the congregation upon matters not homiletic nor doctrinal; preaching and actual entry into the pulpit are defended. But I see excellent possibility in you. Perform the duties punctually in this very lowly office, and high ranks of service in the church militant will ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... F. Butler's army had reached a small stream on the south side of the James, about four miles south of Richmond. If I could succeed in getting through by this road, not only would I have a shorter line of march to Haxall's landing, but there was also a possibility that I could help Butler somewhat by joining him so near Richmond. Therefore, after making the wounded as comfortable as possible, we commenced the march about 11 o'clock on the night of the 11th, and massed the command on the plateau ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... can see very well the Possibility, that a few Profligates, among a great many others, that were not so, might be kept in Awe by strict Discipline, and that Acts of Devotion might be serviceable even to those, who were present at them against their Wills. But this Possibility is ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... with pity for the young maimed creature; but the peevish image of the wife was swept away by the more truly tragic image of the husband. Eugenie might try to persuade herself of the possibility of Elsie's recovery; her real instinct denied it. Yet life was not necessarily threatened, it seemed, though certain fatal accidents might end it in a week. The omens pointed to a long and fluctuating case—to years of hopeless nursing ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... quitted the place immediately after flinging it aside, which would imply that some sound from without had startled him—or her. And, was it him—or was it her? There were certain features of the case which had inclined Brent of late to speculating on the possibility that his cousin had been murdered by a woman. And, to be sure, a woman was now in the case—Mrs. Mallett. If only he knew why Mrs. Mallett went to see ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... cotton-spinners and shop-keepers say 'This is the man!'" and join in one common press to defend his system. Be it so: now we know our true enemies, and soon the working-men will know them also. But if the present Ministry will not see the possibility of a coalition between them, and the workmen, I see no alternative but just what we have been straining every nerve to keep off—a competitive United States, a democracy before which the work of ages will go down in a few years. A true democracy, such as you and I should wish to see, is impossible ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... patroled their beats, rode in upon the reserves, careless, cheery, but with eyes vigilant for signs and with ears alert for sounds of the coming storm. Only the Mounted Police, however, and a few old-timers who knew the Indians and their half-breed kindred gave a single moment's thought to the bare possibility of danger. The vast majority of the Canadian people knew nothing of the tempestuous gatherings of French half-breed settlers in little hamlets upon the northern plains along the Saskatchewan. The fiery resolutions reported now and then in the newspapers reciting ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... looking from time to time with interest towards Miss Moorsom. The aged statesman having eaten a raw tomato and drunk a glass of milk (a habit of his early farming days, long before politics, when, pioneer of wheat-growing, he demonstrated the possibility of raising crops on ground looking barren enough to discourage a magician), smoothed his white beard, and struck lightly Renouard's knee with his big ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... experiments in form are interesting to study. Compare the prosiness of his verse with his efforts to use poetic cadence in The Triumph of the Egg. Does it suggest to you the possibility of developing a form intermediate between ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... find it hard to explain my reasons for saying so. But before you go to the Mother Superior, or speak of the matter to Sister Giovanna, there is something else to be done. This letter, by some strange accident of the post, may have been written before Giovanni Severi died. There is a bare possibility that it may have been mislaid in the post-office, or that he may have given it to a comrade to post, who forgot it—many things may ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... faculties to control and understand, he found himself haunted by the more ambitious projects of his helpmate. From his own knowledge of men, he doubted if Don Ramon, any more than himself, had ever thought of the possibility of a matrimonial connection between the families. He doubted if he would consent to it. And unfortunately it was this very doubt that, touching his own pride as a self-made man, made him first seriously consider his wife's ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... alarmed, and seeing no way open but in the direction of the disguised Indian, run towards him, and he, taking to flight, dashes on to the precipice, where he suddenly secures himself in some previously ascertained crevice. The foremost of the herd arrives at the brink,—there is no possibility of retreat, no chance of escape; the foremost may, for an instant, shrink with terror, but the crowd behind, who are terrified by the approaching hunters, rush forward with increasing impetuosity, and the aggregate force ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... dawning of the next day, required the united strength of two of his mates to control him. To leave her mother and brother in this extremity would have been a cruelty beyond the contemplation of Christina Binnie. Its possibility never entered her mind. All her anger and sense of wrong vanished before the pitiful sight of the strong man in the throes of his mental despair and physical agony. She could not quite ignore her waiting lover, even in such an hour; but she was not a ready writer, so her ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... one great hope for the Negro is to make himself an economic asset to his country. When this is accomplished, there will be little doubt as to the possibility of his securing full recognition as a citizen. He does not deplore the presence of obstacles but rather thinks that the salvation of the race will be in developing in the midst of this struggle the power to overcome ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... replied Collingwood. "At present matters are vague. One couldn't go to Pratt and demand something at which one is, after all, only guessing. Your mother, of course, would deny that she knows what it is that Pratt holds. But—there is the possibility of the duplicate to which Cobcroft referred. Now, I want to put the question straight to you—supposing that duplicate will can be found—and supposing—to put it plainly—-its terms dispossess you of all your ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... "ill-timed" the "pinch" was not in fact passed as the activities of Slidell and Mason and their friends soon indicated. For a fortnight the Cabinet, reacting to the repeated suggestions of Napoleon, the Northern defeats, and the distress in Lancashire, was seriously considering the possibility of taking some step toward mediation. On July 16, two days before the debate in the Commons, Slidell at last had his first personal contact with Napoleon, and came away from the interview with the conviction that "if ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... hay, looking up at the swallows again as he lived through some very memorable moments. Boy as he was, the thought of death coming suddenly to him, and in this way, might well make him sober; for it is a very solemn thing to be arrested in the midst of busy life by the possibility of the great change. There were no sins to be repented of, few faults, and many happy, dutiful years to remember with infinite comfort. So Rob had no fears to daunt him, no regrets to sadden, and best of all, a very strong and simple piety to sustain ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... invitation, and got the start in the race. As he darted through the trees, the brick merely grazed his hair. If it had hit him, it might have cost him his life; though his mischievous pupil had not reflected upon the possibility of such a result. ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... Alphonsine's tragedy, and therefore most of the causes of Marion's. The French thrift that had made her clean the shoes at home, and thereby maim herself into something that desired to assassinate love whenever she saw it, made her terribly exercised at the possibility that the family might have to support a fatherless baby. The affection for her sister Pamela which had made her perform these services had enabled her to bring up that lovely child through all the dangers of a poverty-stricken childhood in Paris, in spite of a certain ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... wind," as the sailors express it, would weather upon her track ere she could stretch over to the other shoal. Even the landsmen had some feverish suspicions of the truth, and the steerage passengers were already holding a secret conference on the possibility of hiding the pursued in some of the recesses of the ship. "Such things were often done," one whispered to another, "and it was as easy to perform it now ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... folly on his part to say the word that would set Dare free. Even if the American woman were not his wife in the eye of the law, she had a moral claim upon him. The possibility of Ruth's still marrying Dare was too hideous to be thought of. If her judgment was so entirely perverted by a morbid conscientious fear of following her own inclination that she could actually give Dare that promise, directly after the arrival of the adventuress, Charles would take the decision ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... great advantage to the Turks, whose spirits they revived, and whom they showed how to defend the fortress. But he committed a great fault in making sorties, which cost the lives of two or three hundred brave fellows without the possibility of success. For it was impossible he could succeed against the number of the French who were before Acre. I would lay a wage that he lost half of his crew in them. He dispersed Proclamations amongst my troops, which certainly shook some of them, and I in consequence published ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... make him a supply of these two liquids; and they promptly agreed. He felt he would have a fighting chance in combatting the enemy if he could but capture one of their flying forts. It seemed a strange task! Capturing so huge a machine with only the tiny Solarite—but Arcot felt there was a good possibility of his doing it if he but had a supply ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... nourishes an obvious wish to drive matters to extremities, while he thinks he has the game in his own hands. I was compelled to glide as gently away from each offensive topic, as if I touched red hot iron. I did but hint at the possibility of those erratic Countesses of Croye, ere they attained Liege (for thither I frankly confessed that, to the best of my belief, they were gone), falling into the hands of some wild snapper upon the frontiers, and, Pasques dieu! you would have ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... conversations in the galleries and on the staircases. Hubert had positively nothing to say to her; but she seemed quite happy as long as she was with him. And as they drove through the dawn Emily chattered of a hundred trifles,—what Edith had said, what Mabel wore, of the possibility of a marriage, and the arrival of a detachment of some cavalry regiment. Hubert found it hard to affect interest in these conversations. His brain was weary with waltz tunes, the shape of shoulders, and the glare and rustle of silk; but as she chattered, rubbing the misted windows from time to ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... be defined as artistic. If he does mean to say this, he is beyond answer and beneath confutation; in other words, he is where an artist of Mr. Whistler's genius and a writer of Mr. Whistler's talents can by no possibility find himself. If he does not mean to say this, what he means to say is exactly as well worth saying, as valuable and as important a piece of information, as the news that Queen Anne is no more, or that two and two are not generally supposed to ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... guests joined in Schrotter's request, Paul the most eagerly, for the idea of having to read through that thick, dry book had frightened him, and now he saw the possibility of knowing its contents in an agreeable ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... and I thought it was a vision that had passed. But now my father set my heart panting with questions as to the terrible possibility of us two ever being separated. In some way he painted my grandfather so black that I declared earnestly I would rather die than go to Riversley; I would never utter the name of the place where there was evil speaking of the one I loved dearest. 'Do not, my son,' he said solemnly, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... proprietor of the house in question). The place not being directly accessible from a railroad, was lonely and unmarked by those tokens of progress that the locomotive generally leaves in its track, hence it was the last spot where a scene of fraud and deception could find a possibility of a successful execution. The house was a humble frame dwelling fronting south, consisting of two fair-size parlours opening into each other, east of these a bedroom and a buttery or pantry, opening into one of the sitting rooms; and a stairway between ...
— Hydesville - The Story of the Rochester Knockings, Which Proclaimed the Advent of Modern Spiritualism • Thomas Olman Todd
... made out clearly that they proposed to shoot all their prisoners the next day, and that, besides those already in camp, they expected a number more from other estates which were to be attacked. There appeared only a possibility that our lives might be prolonged another day, till all their forces out on various expeditions were assembled. Little did those at home, looking at the map of Jamaica, fancy that, in the very centre of that beautiful island, there existed so numerous a band of savages ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... I part with more Money, I'll be certain what returns 'twill make me—that is, I'll see the Wench, not to inform my self, how well I like her, for that I shall do, because she is new, and Bellmour's Sister—but to find what possibility there is in gaining her.—I am us'd to these things, and can guess from a Look, or a Kiss, or a Touch of the Hand—but then I warrant, 'twill come to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... Rocinante and bade Sancho get down from Dapple and tie both beasts securely to the trunk of a poplar or willow that stood there. Sancho asked him the reason of this sudden dismounting and tying. Don Quixote made answer, "Thou must know, Sancho, that this bark here is plainly, and without the possibility of any alternative, calling and inviting me to enter it, and in it go to give aid to some knight or other person of distinction in need of it, who is no doubt in some sore strait; for this is the way of the books of chivalry and of the enchanters who ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to the women who have been working so hard for the amendment it should be passed at the earliest date, and if action is not taken on it soon after the resumption of business in the Senate there is every possibility that it will not be taken during this Congress, and the hard-won victory in the House of Representatives will have ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... again with pride, how hearty and cheering have always been the sympathy and assistance that men have rendered to women in this movement in England. At no time has there been a possibility of a feeling of bitterness between the sexes or a conviction that their interests were antagonistic, for the plain reason that there have always been men working side by side with women. Our suffrage meetings have been attended ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... 'Look at the generations of old; did any ever trust in the Lord and was confounded?' But these exact words, unfortunately, were only to be found in the Apocrypha. And there was a further distressing possibility, which has occurred to others besides Bunyan. Perhaps the day of grace was passed. It came on him one day as he walked in the country that perhaps those good people in Bedford were all that the Lord would save in those parts, and that he came too late for the blessing. True, ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... an act of justice to this gentleman to state that, for the voluntary performance of this service, he refused all pecuniary compensation. General Harrison subsequently, in a letter to major Oliver, in relation to this service, says, "To prevent the possibility of these orders coming to the knowledge of the enemy, they could not be committed to writing, but must be communicated verbally, by a confidential officer. The selection of one suited to the performance of ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... There is a possibility of two great events any springtime in Ceylon, and the prospect of either occurring is a theme of endless small talk in the offices and bungalow homes of everybody connected with "Government." One is the elephant kraal, planned for the edification of His Excellency ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... habit of occurring, and which are of more consequence than may, at first glance, be imagined. This person might also be beneficially employed in comparing the stores shipped with the receipts of the masters, so as to preclude all possibility of practices which are inconsistent with the welfare of the government, but which are too common, and can only be prevented by the adoption of such a measure as the one which I now propose. Whenever the governor of the colony should send over a requisition, this agent ought immediately to be ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... under the shade of a tree, against the trunk of which I reclined. The pain rapidly went off, and I was better able to consider our position, and the possibility of escape. ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... possibility of Zoroaster's unfaithfulness came and took shape before her. He had known and loved Atossa of old, perhaps, and now the old love had risen up and killed the new—he had sworn so truly under the ivory moonlight in Ecbatana. And yet—he had written to this ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... possibility of any mistakes arising from an admission just made, I hereby beg to state that we do not consider clothing as entirely superfluous. But we no longer regard it from any artistic or ornamental point of view; that would be ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... of his people being thus provided for, Columbus revolved in his anxious mind the means of getting from this island. His ships were beyond the possibility of repair, and there was no hope of any chance sail arriving to his relief, on the shores of a savage island, in an unfrequented sea. The most likely measure appeared to be, to send notice of his situation to Ovando, the governor at San Domingo, entreating him ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... infinite service to the Confederate cause. To both parties time was of the utmost value. The Federals were still over seventy miles from Richmond; and there was always a possibility, if their advance were not rapidly pressed, that Johnston might move on Washington and cause the recall of the army to protect the capital. The Confederates, on the other hand, had been surprised by the landing of McClellan's army. They had been long aware ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... sort? Let them keep to their own line, and tell us all that crucibles and scalpels can reveal, and we will listen as becomes us. But when they contradict their own principles in order to deny the possibility of miracle, we need only give them back their own words, and ask that the investigation of facts shall not be hampered and clogged with metaphysical prejudices. No! no! Christ made no mistake when He built His Church upon that rock—the historical evidence of a resurrection from the dead, though ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... trust me. Ah, you do not see that one false step with its terrible consequences has been such an awful and enduring lesson to me that I could not make another! I am safer now from the possibility of error than is the most innocent and carefully guarded child. Oh, can you not ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the ladder, blue flames with yellow points leaped forth from under the gap and licked the edges of the slate roof. The lightning had struck two feet below the point where the sheet of lead was lacking. A short hour ago he had been frightened by the thought of the mere possibility that the lightning could strike there and that he would have to climb up—a series of dark, deadly fever visions had risen before him: now, all had happened as he had pictured it—but the gap was like any other part of the tower-roof and he stood on the ladder, free from all dizziness, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... mother and my father to look favourably on a Northern suitor for their daughter's hand. My father? - he possibly might give up his pleasure for the sake of my happiness; with my mother I saw no such possibility. It was useless to hope they would let me write to an officer in the Union army. If any chance at all for my happiness were in the future, it must lie in changes not yet accomplished, or in Mr. Thorold's ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... visited her with pleasure, though I would not live with her. My visits soon taught me that it was unlikely even my occasional and voluntary society would long be indispensable to her. M. de Bassompierre, for his part, seemed impervious to this conjecture, blind to this possibility; unconscious as any child to the signs, the likelihoods, the fitful beginnings of what, when it drew to an end, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Prince, he having sent a written message to them by the Duke of York. It related to the removal. He says, that the opinion of the physicians, particularly of Addington, who had been desired to come over that day from Reading, was favourable as to a possibility, and even a prospect of recovery, and clear for removing ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... Brother Best, was it possible to state that their purpose was to injure certain individual persons who should purchase stock, when by no possibility could they know who the persons were that would become purchasers? If that could have been stated, can you suggest any name which in any way might have ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... of the Italians to use the knife, for the settlement of every dispute, is generally attributed by foreigners to the passionateness of their nature; but I am inclined to believe that it also results from their entire distrust of the possibility of legal redress in the courts. Where courts are organized as they are in Naples, who but a fool would trust to them? Open tribunals, where justice should be impartially administered, would soon check private assassinations; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... had been warned, and had taken refuge in the City of London; their absence, together with the dignified attitude of the remaining members, prevented the outrage ending in bloodshed: in a bloodshed the possibility of which it is even to-day impossible to contemplate ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... away leaving Tough McCarty to have his say. Both stood awkwardly, frightened before the possibility ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... no possibility of getting things to rights that night; though several people came in to help, and a comfortable supper was ready spread for the travellers on their arrival. Mrs. Forcythe was cheered by this kindness, but Mary could not be ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... Brother Nathan's explanation of Hosea's forecasting of Shakerism, and he had admitted to himself that, if Nathan was correct, there would be something to be said for Shakerism. The idea made him vaguely uneasy, because, that "something" might be so conclusive, that—But he could not face such a possibility. ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... leading features in the condition of the freedmen, particularly at Port Royal. The enterprise for their aid, begun in doubt, is no longer a bare hope or possibility. It is a fruition and a consummation. The negroes will work for a living. They will fight for their freedom. They are adapted to civil society. As a people, they are not exempt from the frailties of our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... atmospheric nitrogen which freely enters the pores of the soil; but who knows how much nitrogen is taken from the air by a given crop of clover? Not one in a thousand can answer this question; and meanwhile our continued agricultural and national prosperity depends in large part upon the possibility of wide dissemination and practical application of a quantitative knowledge of the ...
— The Farm That Won't Wear Out • Cyril G. Hopkins
... he was inclined to agree with Merriman, that the deceased had met his death at the hands of a member of the syndicate, and if so, it was not unlikely that all or most of the members were party to it. From the mere possibility of this it followed that the most urgent thing for the moment was to prevent the syndicate suspecting his knowledge. He turned again ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... impotence so keenly that it would willingly {64} have resigned its power. At the time of the elections to the States-General the Government had broken up Paris into sixty electoral districts for the sake of avoiding the possibility of large meetings. These sections, as they were called, had formed committees, and these committees, towards the middle of June, had been coming together again informally and tending towards permanence. On the 23rd of that month, ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... the range of possibility that you will marry," said the Doctor, tracing parallelograms on the arm of the chair. "Such things do ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... borrow their utensils of writing, which are more easy and most at hand; and in recompense shall, peradventure, keep a pound of butter in the market from melting in the sun:—[Montaigne semi-seriously speculates on the possibility of his MS. being used to wrap ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... child or by Paderewski—it has in itself no expressive value. In the case of the violin, the voice and all other instruments except the organ, the individual note may be modified after it is emitted or struck, and in this modification is contained the possibility of a whole ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... the events which led to the assault on Sumter. He declared that the reduction of the fort "was in no sense a matter of self-defense on the part of the assailants." They well knew "that the garrison in the fort could by no possibility commit an aggression upon them;" they were expressly notified that "the giving of bread to the few brave and hungry men of the garrison was all which would be attempted, unless themselves, by resisting so much, should provoke more." They knew that the National ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... sorry with all one's heart that men should fall to such conditions, and feel that it is a stigma on our social machinery that it should be so. Those two melancholy figures were a sad blot upon the wholesome countryside! Yet one may also discern a hope in the mere possibility of framing an ideal under such discouraging circumstances, which will be, I have no sort of doubt, a seed of good in the upward progress of the poor soul which grasped it; because indeed I have no doubt that the miserable creature ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... interfere with the practical conduct of their lives than it is in the case of just that novel-reader, who puts untruth and unreality from him, when he lays his book aside.—Another and weightier reason was, their slower brains could not conceive the possibility of such extraordinarily detailed lying as that to which Laura now subjected them. Its very ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... so—for this reason: the advocates of nothing, or incorporiety, can no more establish by arguments drawn from unquestioned facts, that incorporiety is than they can clearly show what it is. It has always struck the Author as remarkable that men should so obstinately refuse to admit the possibility of matter's necessary existence, while they readily embrace, not only as possibly, but certainly, true, the paradoxical proposition that a something, having nothing in common with anything, is necessarily existent. Matter is everywhere around and about us. We ourselves ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... heartless in not preparing them for this abrupt marriage. She was in such a state of nervousness, she wrote, that explanations would have caused a breakdown. The marriage was a sensible one; she had long contemplated it as a possibility; and, after thinking it over thoroughly, she had decided it was the only thing to do. She ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... which if the whole World had not been drunk, or otherwise infatuated, they would never have undertaken; even Satan himself could never have prevail'd with them to undertake such a preposterous Piece of Work, for it had neither End or Means, Possibility or ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... the embarkation as during the voyage, of the alarm given to France, and the preparations made along the French coasts from Brest and St. Maloes to Rochefort; the accidents that kept the fleet hovering along the coasts, and prevented the possibility of an attempt by surprise; the reports of all the gentlemen employed in sounding the coasts, so contrary to the intelligence given by Thierry the pilot; the opinion of the council of war, by which he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... She realized that he was growing worse, and though she chose to believe that the doctor had exaggerated the seriousness of the case in order to affront her, the thought came that he might die. She had never considered such a possibility before. What should she do? She would be a widow without children and without means, for she knew that Wilbur had laid up little if anything. She would have to begin life over again—a pathetic prospect, yet ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Mount Shasta, in a moral sense, and I shouldn't be surprised to hear of her taking out a building permit at the North Pole, if she thought duty called her. But, Dick, how can you be such an atrocious sceptic as to doubt the possibility of one's living above the clouds when ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... disturbed." So the matter was irremissible. She would not see her husband until the morrow—if he lived. For vainly did Boleslas convince himself that afternoon that he had lost none of his skill in practising before his admiring seconds; a duel is always a lottery. He might be killed, and if the possibility of an eternal separation had not moved the injured woman, what prayer would move her? He saw her in his thoughts—her who at that moment, with blinds drawn, all lights subdued, endured in the semi-darkness that suffering which curses ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 1823 Pennsylvania granted Stevens and his friends a charter to build a railroad from Philadelphia to the Susquehanna. In 1825 Stevens built a circular road at Hoboken and used a steam locomotive to show the possibility of such a means of locomotion. But all these schemes ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... caused to be disarmed, and grasped his sword afresh. But it was too late. His wavering had sown the seeds of treachery among those who were immediately around him; three of his confidants, Audas, Ditalco, and Minucius from Urso, despairing of the possibility of renewed victory, procured from the king permission once more to enter into negotiations for peace with Caepio, and employed it for the purpose of selling the life of the Lusitanian hero to the foreigners in return for the assurance of personal amnesty and further ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... great deal of information about coaling-stations for my chapter on Imperial Defence, in which I also had Charles Brackenbury's help to a considerable extent.'] He carefully considered the question of food-supply at home and the possibility of a commercial blockade of the United Kingdom. He did not think that such a blockade could be established or maintained. "Our manufactures would be seriously assailed, our food-supply would become precarious, but we should not be brought to the point of ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... down into the village, and returned bringing provisions, which the men almost immediately began to cook, after having posted a chain of videttes from one bank to the other of the precipitous ravine, so as to assure themselves that no possibility of escape was left to the besieged in any direction, by which they conceived escape ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... that every one of these stupid asses would be glad to kill me? But it won't happen, it won't happen. The time has come for my arrival, and I have arrived. Prepare yourselves. The time has come. You little insignificant thing there—you thought that by stealing one little possibility away from me you could rob me of all? Oh no—I am as rich ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... added, thoughtfully, "not that I know of." The suggestion struck him curiously as one who hears for the first time that there is a possibility that he may be selected ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... me know, somehow, I suppose, if there was anything much the matter—if—mamma had not got much better yet." For even to himself he would not allow the possibility of anything worse than her not being "much better." And yet she had looked very ill that last evening. He thought of it sometimes in the middle of the night, and started up in a sort of agony of fright, feeling as if at all costs he must ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... The possibility, indeed the probability, of Sam seeking out Buck and forming an alliance had occurred to me, and I was prepared for it. I shifted my grip on the automatic pistol ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... the possibility of calling her pony the Brown Princess, or by some similar title—the name of John's two charges seeming the very most striking a horse could ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, and of their children, and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. Unto this catholic visible church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God for the gathering and perfecting of the saints in this life to the end of the world; and doth by ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... of our childhood, and indeed from the literature and experience of our later periods of life, is that the fulfilment of wishes is often attended by the most unwelcome results. There had been a great many times when to our friend the possibility of being able to bid farewell to Homeville had seemed the most desirable of things, but confronted with the idea as a reality—for what other construction could he put upon David's words except that they amounted ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... with friends in Toronto, and I didn't want to go because"—she hesitated and then laughed softly—"well, because I have to be so horribly proper all the time, so I begged to come here instead, and as Mrs. Cameron had invited me and Mr. Monteith coaxed too, Uncle Walter consented. And there's a possibility they might not be back till Christmas. Oh, I wish they ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... of this book is well known. It showed the possibility of living a holy life in any station, amid the tumult of worldly cares, the seductions of prosperity, or the temptations of poverty. It brought new light to devout souls, and encouragement to all, whether high or low, who were desirous ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... something they've wanted very much for a very long time and sigh out "At last!" Some of them let out their satisfaction more than others,—Bernd's Colonel, for instance, who seems particularly hilarious. He was very hilarious last night, though not ostensibly about war. If the possibility of war is mentioned, as of course it constantly is, they at once all shake their heads as if to order, and look serious, and say God grant it may even now be avoided, or something like that; just as the newspapers do. And last night at dinner somebody added a hope, expressed ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... crying himself, poor man, so shaken was he by the events of the morning. And he could not help admitting to himself the possibility that so long and trying a journey for Thelma in her present condition of health meant little else than serious illness—perhaps death. The only comfort he could suggest to the disconsolate Britta was, that at that time of year it was very probable there would be no steamer running to ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... and in order to ease the strain on the rigging the necessary sail was shortened. Captain Bourne was aroused by the sombre music of the wind rustling through the rigging and making occasional discordant noises. His mind became centred on the possibility of the voyage being prolonged, and in order that his suspicions should be confirmed or otherwise, he called with a deep, agitated voice for the boy to come to him; and when he presented himself the captain asked in a tone ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman |
