"Impossibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to be diverted. Going back to the state-room for a wrap she returned to wait for the clerk's reappearance. This final pause soon proved to be the severest trial of all. The minutes dragged leaden-winged; and to sit quietly in the silence and solitude of the great saloon became a nerve-racking impossibility. When it went past endurance, she rose and ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... binding upon all. Zarlino, however, made a new departure. He not only assigned the true intervals of the major scale, according to perfect intonation, but argued strongly for equal temperament, and demonstrated the impossibility of chromatic music upon any other basis. Purists may still continue to doubt whether this was an absolute advantage to the art of music, since it carries with it the necessity of having all harmonic relations something ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... of no reason why we should not be friends," he replied, quietly, knowing he could say that much with all candor, yet feeling that friendship between them was an utter impossibility, and that of this Walcott was as conscious ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... combining two different kinds of glass, the colours can be extinguished, still leaving a residue of refraction, and he employed this residue in the construction of achromatic lenses—lenses yielding no colour—which Newton thought an impossibility. By setting a water-prism—water contained in a wedge-shaped vessel with glass sides (B, fig. 8)—in opposition to a wedge of glass (to the right of B), this point can be illustrated before you. We have first of all the position (dotted) of the unrefracted ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... well-known local gentleman being reported to have gone as far as publicly to undertake to eat the first engine which ever crossed that formidable gulf. But engineers and craftsmen set to work with a will, and before long what had appeared an impossibility was rapidly taking shape as an actuality. Eight hundred yards in length, the greater portion was constructed on timber piles, over 500 in number, in 113 spans, driven into the sand. The navigable channel, at the Barmouth end, was crossed by an iron-work construction, of seven fixed ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... to open at the feet of the unhappy family. For an instant a terrible doubt possessed him, and in that doubt he found a new reason for a certain changed and altered tone in Maruja's later correspondence with him, and the vague hints she had thrown out of the impossibility of their union. "I beg you will not press me to greater candor," she had written, "and try to forget me before you learn to hate me." For an instant he believed—and even took a miserable comfort in the belief—that it was this hideous secret, and not some ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... which was to extend British influence from the Cape to the southern shores of Lake Tanganyika. The activity of the Germans on the west, and of the Boer republic on the east, had brought home to both the imperial and colonial authorities the impossibility of relying on vague traditional claims. In May 1884 treaties were made with native chiefs by which the whole of the country north of Cape Colony, west of the Transvaal, south of 22 deg. S. and east of 20 deg. E., was placed under British protection, though a protectorate was not formally declared ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... imprudent in me to assign my reasons for this opinion, as it would be insulting to your conception to suppose you stood in need of them. A moment's reflection will convince every dispassionate mind of the physical impossibility of carrying either proposal into execution. There might, gentlemen, be an impropriety in my taking notice, in this address to you, of an anonymous production,—but the manner in which that performance has been introduced to the army, together with some other ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... 1915 Frances wrote to my mother: "Gilbert remains much the same in a semi-conscious condition—sleeping a great deal. I feel absolutely hopeless; it seems impossible it can go on like this. The impossibility of reaching him is too terrible an experience and I don't know how to go through with it. I pray for strength and you ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... estate, in its distribution, there are one or two things of interest to the general reader. One of these was the fate of the Golden House, as it was called. Mrs. Mavick had hurried back to her town house, determined to save it at all hazard. The impossibility of this was, however, soon apparent even to her intrepid spirit. She would either sacrifice all else to save it, or—dark thoughts of ending it in a conflagration entered her mind. This was only her first ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... all odds the most exciting hunt we have had," said Ayrault, "both on account of the determined nature and great speed of the attack, and the almost impossibility of finding ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... after hardship, in pleasant society after loneliness. Even with the knowledge that it could not last, that beyond the near future lay a whole lifetime of complete solitude and that greatest of all miseries, the desire of an obvious impossibility—even with this she was happier than he; because she loved him and she saw him daily getting stronger; because their relative positions brought out the best and the least romantic part of a woman's love—the subtle maternity of it. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... that the mountain possesses the miraculous property of expansion, so as to admit an indefinite number of the faithful upon its summit. The law ordains that the wakfe, or position of the Hadj, should be on Djebel Arafat; but it wisely provides against any impossibility, by declaring that the plain in the immediate neighbourhood of the mountain may be regarded as comprised under the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... Does he give him authority to claim a created equality and unalienable right to be on a level with the white man in civil and social relations? No. To ask the first would be to ask a great evil; to claim the second is to demand a natural and moral impossibility. No. God tells him to seek none of these things. But he commands him to know the facts in his case as they are in the Bible, and have ever been, and ever will be in Providence:—that he is not the white ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... give a faint idea of the excessive issue to state that the only difficulty was the impossibility of examination by the President and Cashier, and of their jointly signing the notes, which was made obligatory by the regulations; hence they asked power from Congress to grant this right to the Presidents and Cashiers of the Branch ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... cruel, cowardly manner, and that the knowledge of this act of his must prevent him, not only from finding fault with any one else, but even from looking straight into other people's eyes; not to mention the impossibility of considering himself a splendid, noble, high-minded fellow, as he did and had to do to go on living his life boldly and merrily. There was only one solution of the problem—i.e., not to think about it. He succeeded in doing so. ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... fell. The mystery surrounding his death will probably never be solved in a satisfactory manner, owing to the impossibility of placing any reliance on statements made by the Indians. The way in which the command was annihilated and the soldiers' bodies mutilated, should go a long way towards disproving many of the theories now in existence concerning the alleged ill treatment ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... the existence of a one-horned quadruped other than the rhinoceros, it may be safely stated that the insertion of a long and solid horn in the living forehead of a horse-like or deer-like animal, is as near an impossibility ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... The impossibility of separating the nomenclature of a science from the science itself, is owing to this, that every branch of physical science must consist of three things; the series of facts which are the objects of the science, ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... use of, and managed with Prudence, are sufficient to satisfy the divers Indications of this second Class, provided the terrible Prejudice of the Impossibility of a Cure, the Consternation, and the Despair, do not suspend their Action: And we could, if the Time would permit, give several Instances of such, as being supported by their Hopes, Courage, and Firmness, have experienced the good and wholsome Effects ...
— A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles - Its Symptoms and the Methods and Medicines Used for Curing It • Francois Chicoyneau
... after all my hopes had been abandoned, the consciousness of the impossibility of my escape once for all extinguished also my painful alarm and liberated my mind, which was then already inclined to lofty contemplation ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... almost as much butter as bread. In talking of the French and the present times, their language was what most people would call Jacobinical. They spoke much of the oppressions endured by the Highlanders further up, of the absolute impossibility of their living in any comfort, and of the cruelty of laying so many restraints on emigration. Then they spoke with animation of the attachment of the clans to their lairds: 'The laird of this place, Glengyle, where ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... he was a perfect honey-comb, overflowing with kindness and affection, expressed in such a profusion of warm and sugary words, that it was next to an impossibility to doubt ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... the head of the channel; so we must turn entirely around in the puddle—and the wind blowing as described. It was done, and beautifully. It was done by help of a jib. We stirred up much mud, but did not touch the bottom. We turned right around in our tracks—a seeming impossibility. We had several casts of quarter-less 5, and one cast of half 4—27 feet; we were drawing 26 astern. By the time we were entirely around and pointed, the first buoy was not more than a hundred yards in front of us. It was a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... conceived as such in being conceived as a Cause; the second to show that the Absolute cannot be conceived under different aspects at different times—first as Absolute, and then as Cause. It was the impossibility of this latter alternative which drove Cousin to the hypothesis of a necessary causation from all eternity. Mr. Mill entirely omits the latter part of the argument, and treats the former part as if it were the whole. ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... listens to the Rabbi's tale, he will forbid my marriage to please the accursed Jew, and I—may blow my brains out. Suppose I marry at once—But how? Lady Cecil not many weeks dead! I must manage it, however," he continued, pacing the apartment, while Robin, who had ascertained the impossibility of rousing the ill-governed menials from their state of hopeless debauchery, amused himself by counting the number of times the Master of Burrell walked up and down the room. At length, finding such dull watching ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... carrying out of her wishes. For by her predeceasing her daughter the latter would have come into possession of the property, and, even had she only survived her mother by five minutes, her property would, in case there were no will, and a will was a practical impossibility in such a case, have been treated at her decease as under intestacy. In which case Lord Godalming, though so dear a friend, would have had no claim in the world. And the inheritors, being remote, would not be likely ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... and examples, to mark the operations of his principles, to see him emerging into youth, to follow him through various scenes and trying vicissitudes, and mark the uniformity of his integrity? Who would have predicted his future conduct? Who would not have affirmed the impossibility of an action ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... you just why it is that 24th June is so much hotter and longer than 24th December—why it is so in England, I should say. For I believe (and they will correct me if I am wrong) that at the equator the days and nights are always of equal length. This must make calling almost an impossibility, for if one cannot say to one's hostess, "How quickly the days are lengthening (or drawing in)," one might as well remain at home. "How stationary the days are remaining" might pass on a first visit, but the ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... supposed to harden the skin and render their shoes superfluous. It was also felt to be the first real step towards independence; they looked down at their ensanguined extremities and recognized the impossibility of their ever again crossing (unwashed) the ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... that the earliest Christians were absolutely certain that the body of Jesus after the resurrection was the body of Jesus as they had known it before, although apparently it possessed some new and mysterious attributes. In my judgment, also, insistence upon the impossibility of a physical resurrection presumes an essential distinction between matter and spirit which I cannot admit. The philosophy underlying the New Theology as I understand it is monistic idealism, and monistic idealism recognises no fundamental distinction between matter and spirit. The fundamental reality ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... power of even genius to triumph over an impossibility. During the first part of Bonaparte's life it was possible to paint or chisel Bonaparte's protuberant skull, his brow furrowed by the sublime line of thought, his pale elongated face, his granite complexion, and the meditative character of his countenance. During the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... however, Constance's only trouble. Her conscience was already uneasy at the impossibility of getting to evensong on Christmas Day. She had been to an early Celebration without asking any questions, and had got back before Herbert had come down to breakfast, and very glad she was that she had done so, for she found that her mother regarded it as profane ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... naval officers who have had experience, and within the last ten years of the nineteenth century, of the difficulty, and sometimes of the impossibility, of getting sufficient supplies for a large number of ships in rather out-of-the-way places. In 1588 the comparative thinness of population and insufficiency of communications and means of transport must have constituted obstacles, far greater than any encountered in our own day, ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... he continued, "I wonder why these churchmen, who would talk about the impossibility of putting asunder those whom God has joined together, don't begin by asking themselves how and when and where God joins them. Is it in church, when they stand before the altar and are asked a few questions, and give a few answers? If so, then God ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... of the will consists in the impossibility of knowing actions that still lie in the future. We could know them only if causality were an inner necessity like that of logical inference.—The connexion between knowledge and what is known is that of logical necessity. ('A knows that p is the case', has no sense ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... inevitable. Mine, after all, to prevent the very thing that I had come to do! My gorge had long since risen at the deed; the unforeseen circumstances had rendered it impossible from the first; but now I could afford to recognize the impossibility, and to think of Raffles and the asthmatic alike without a qualm. I could play the game by them both, for it was one and the same game. I could preserve thieves' honor, and yet regain some shred of that which I ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... formost, who, as the Mariners terme it, sprang their luffe, and fell vnder the lee of the Reuenge. But the other course had beene the better, and might right well haue bene answered in so great an impossibility of preuailing. Notwithstanding out of the greatnesse of his minde, he could not be perswaded. In the meane while as hee attended those which were nearest him, the great San Philip being in the winde of him, and comming towards him, becalmed his sailes in such sort, as the shippe ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... Lady Sunderbund's flat to see the plans and drawings for the new church in which he was to give his message to the world. They had brought home to him the complete realization of Lady Sunderbund's impossibility. He had attempted upon the spur of the moment an explanation of just how much they differed, and he had precipitated a storm of ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... the need of water; that is, all felt that the need would become an urgent one before daylight should come and a chance be given to land and replenish the limited amount which they knew must now be in the radiator, owing to the impossibility of getting water ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... demands, and then he produces an example of that very kind of evidence. Having done this, he abandons (as Mr. Wallace observes) his original assertion that the evidence does not exist, and takes refuge in alleging 'the absolute impossibility' of the events which the evidence supports. Thus Hume poses as a perfect judge of the possible, in a kind of omniscience. He takes his stand on the uniformity of all experience that is not hostile to his idea of the possible, and dismisses ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... to do anything for a moment: it sounded such a monstrous impossibility that a King should wish to run after a stick. But Bruno was equal to the occasion, and with a glad shout of "Hi then! Fetch it, good Doggie!" he hurled it over a clump of bushes. The next moment the Monarch of Dogland had bounded over the bushes, and picked up the stick, and came ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... [Footnote: D. 46, 3, 1.] When performance became impossible, without any fault of the debtor, such as when the specific subject had perished by unavoidable accident, the obligation was extinguished; but if the impossibility was caused by the fault of the debtor, he was still liable. This was a great modification of the severity of the ancient code, when a debtor could be sold into slavery for his debt. As certain contracts are formed by consent alone, so they could be extinguished by the mutual consent of the ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... Master Peter Ribadeneira, [7] assistant [general] for the Spains and procurator for the Indias [or Philippines], made answer as follows: That his clients were not bound thereto, inasmuch as the said ordinances could not be carried into effect by reason of impossibility, since the brethren who were given the habit [of the order] in the Indias are fewer in number than the offices [or positions] to be filled [by the same]; wherefore the decree de alternativa [8] cannot be complied with in the conferral of the said offices. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... the edge of the hole. After his first throw Wade was unable to hit the beast with a stone, although his efforts had the temporary effect of frightening it. Gradually, however, it grew bolder, and was restrained from springing upon him only, as it seemed, by some sixth sense which warned it of the impossibility of getting out of the fissure after once getting in. Baffled and furious, the lion sniffed and prowled about the rim of the hole until the ranchman began to think it ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... engaging of a superior force to wrest the body from the surgeon's crew, a set of sturdy miscreants with whom to do battle a considerable mob was needed; but, with money grown very scarce and time so short, the thing could not be managed, and Reuben tried to tell Joan of its impossibility while they two were walking to a place in which it had been agreed they should find some one with a message from Eve, who, together with Adam, was in hiding on board the vessel Captain Triggs had spoken of. But instead of the messenger ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the promisor to enable him to pay the money at Carthage. Accordingly, if a man at Rome stipulates thus, 'Do you promise to pay today at Carthage?' the stipulation is void, because the performance of the act to be promised is a physical impossibility. ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... perfection in the future. Hence the preaching of Christ, crucified for our sins and ever present with his people, is to the Buddhist a revelation so novel and so entrancing, that it captivates and transforms him. Christianity humbles pride, but it saves the soul. It shows the impossibility of obtaining salvation by merit of our own, and our absolute dependence upon the grace of God. Christianity awakens gratitude, and leads to unselfish devotion. It turns a Saul into a Paul, and makes him ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... had different companions, different occupation, different surroundings, then indeed I would grow in grace, and bring forth the fruit of a holy life. But as I am, and where I am, it is a simple impossibility; I can never, under existing circumstances, live near to God, or be what I often long to be, ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... the landlord mind is that it is foolish to go on borrowing money under the Act of 1879 during the present uncertain condition of tenure and impossibility of getting in rents. Hence the Scariff drainage works, for which 34,000l. was to be borrowed by the owners of the property affected by the scheme, have been suddenly abandoned, and will not be carried any further, at least during the present winter. One consequence of this decision will ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... started to phrase the first crazily happy greeting, my throat lumped, as I'd known it would, with the awful melancholy of all that was forever lost, with the uselessness of any communication, with the impossibility of recreating the past, our individual pasts, any pasts. And as it always does, ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... procession came down the street with a brass band and a hero on a white horse, we should think it odd to be told that he had been very patient with a half-witted maiden aunt. Yet some such pantomime impossibility is the only measure of the innovation of the Christian idea of a popular and recognized saint. It must especially be realized that while this kind of glory was the highest, it was also in a sense the lowest. The materials of it were almost the same as those of labour and ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... been light the reeds and undergrowth would have hindered him from seeing anything, and in that darkness the impossibility was emphasised the more strongly; but all the same the faint splash, the light rubbing of wood against wood as the pole seemed to touch the side of the boat, the soft dripping of water, and the silky brushing rustle of the boat among the reeds and withes, joined in painting a mental picture ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... great interest some months later, you assert that the wall was sheer. That was not literally true. A few small footholds presented themselves, and there was some indication of a ledge. The cliff is so high that to climb it all was an obvious impossibility, and it was equally impossible to make my way along the wet path without leaving some tracks. I might, it is true, have reversed my boots, as I have done on similar occasions, but the sight of three sets of tracks in one direction would certainly ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... can the Infinite Mind be used to create finite minds, shapes, forms, and things, without it being lessened in quantity—how can you take something from something, and still have the original something left? An impossibility! And, we cannot think of the Absolute as "dividing Itself up" into two or more portions—for if such were the case, there would be two or more Absolutes, or else None. There cannot be two Absolutes, for if the Absolute were to divide itself so there would be no Absolute, but only two Relatives—two ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... no longer convulsed from center to circumference by such disputations. The day has gone by when the whole fabric of the Christian religion could be shaken to its foundation by the discovery of an error in biblical chronology, or the impossibility of a large whale swallowing a small prophet. Gradually the worship of the Creator is grounding itself on general principles and Christian apologetics is slowly but surely mounting above the particularists, spreading & broader opinion, leaving to the antiquary ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... I exclaimed indignantly, "that this is too much! It is, really. I was getting hardened; I could stand a mere impossibility or two and not blink; but this! It is beyond the bounds. I shall begin to see green ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... party of travelers on their way to a distant country were obliged to pass through a dense forest to reach it. Their leader went forward, and, seeing the darkness of the dense woods, was convinced of the impossibility of his people going through it, without the aid of a light to guide them. He sat beside the mossy stones at the entrance, trying to devise some means by which to light up the darkness. There seemed but one way, and that almost hopeless, as ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... honour, would guard Ortensia as jealously as the dragon guarded the Golden Fleece. Moreover, as to getting in by the window, a man would first have to get access to the walled garden below, which Pignaver regarded as another impossibility, for the wall was high, he himself kept the key of the postern that opened on the canal, and the gardener ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... feeling. She had dreamed of a friendship with him, perhaps more perfect and helpful than any she had yet known; but they had met, and in that one glance had been revealed to her a natural affinity deeper than any of which she had ever dreamed, and the impossibility of a calm, Platonic friendship between kindred spirits ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... are more or less objections to the use of the ordinary spring pistons, owing to the changing tension of the springs, the necessity of frequent adjustment, and the impossibility of the packing rings adapting themselves to the varying pressures of the steam on the piston. A number of attempts have been made to produce a self packing or steam expanding piston, which will act always with the pressure of the steam and the velocity of the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... is your gate, and there are you, and here am I; I mean that I know it to be a moral impossibility that any person can stray in at that gate from any point of the compass, with any sort of experience, gained at first hand, or derived from another, that can confute me ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... forth to crush them; that Jefferson Davis and the Southern leaders had created a nation; that the republican experiment had failed and the Union had ceased to exist. But the crowning argument to foreign minds was that it was an utter impossibility for the government to win in the contest; that the success of the Southern States, so far as separation was concerned, was as certain as any event yet future and contingent could be; that the subjugation of the South by the North, even if it could ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... greatest difficulties in giving to the public a book of this type is the impossibility of keeping pace with the events and changes of a movement that is now, throughout the world, striking root and growing. The changed attitude of the American Press indicates that enlightened public opinion no longer tolerates a policy of silence upon a ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... evils resulting from this system may be put forward. What I want to point out now is the impossibility of our attaining to attractive labour under this system, and to repeat that it is this robbery (there is no other word for it) which wastes the available labour-power of the civilized world, forcing many men to do nothing, and many, very many more to do nothing useful; and forcing those ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... interminable dinners, and cellars of which I avail myself less. It is impossible to form an idea of all the elaborate comfort which reigns in the English mansions. The Queen having passed this year some weeks in Scotland, all England followed her, partly out of courtesy, partly because of the impossibility of going to the disturbed Continent. Everything here has become doubly splendid, except the sun, which has done nothing more than usual; moreover, the winter advances, and I do not know yet what will become of me. I am writing to ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... felt at being arrested in the middle of the street; thus, although during the whole drive he uttered not a single word, it was plain to see that a terrible storm was gathering, soon to break. But he preserved the same impossibility both at the opening and shutting of the fatal gates, which, like the gates of hell, had so often bidden those who entered abandon all hope on their threshold, and again when he replied to the formal questions ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... consternation. Mr. Levinski (absolutely furious) had a hasty consultation with the author (also furious), in the course of which they both saw that the Fourth Act as written was now an impossibility. Poor Prosper, who had almost immediately recovered his sanity, tremblingly suggested that Mr. Levinski should announce that, owing to the sudden illness of Mr. Vane the Fourth Act could not be given. Mr. Levinski was kind enough to consider ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... vigorously in the spring and draw upon the soil-moisture, if allowed to grow, fully as heavily as a crop of wheat or corn. The dry-farmer must not allow a weed upon his land. Cultivation must he so continuous as to make weeds an impossibility. The belief that the elements added to the soil by weeds offset the loss of soil-moisture is wholly erroneous. The growth of weeds on a fallow dry-farm is more dangerous than the packed uncared-for topsoil. Many implements have been devised for the ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... something about the impossibility of disputing with a Swedish woman. Should now anybody wish to know how it happens that one finds Harald so continually in Susanna's company in the brewhouse, in the store-room, in the dairy, we can only reply that he must be a great lover of beer, ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... Wochenschraft'—an astonishing thing. A woman, who had taken morphine and barbital, was found apparently dead after a night's exposure in some lonely spot. There were no reflexes, no pulse, no respiration or heart-beat. Yet she was alive—existing without oxygen—an impossibility as we had always supposed. Seeing no actual evidence of death, the physicians injected camphor and caffein and took other restorative steps, with the result that in an hour the woman breathed again! Twenty-four ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... the sake of certain advantages which were to be gained by other producers in their country through a favoured entry into our market. That one side of the bargain could be suddenly removed, without inflicting injustice on the other party to the bargain, appears to me an impossibility. ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... severity of the chestnut blight throughout the section where it has made its appearance, the rapidity with which it has spread since its discovery, and the present practical impossibility of keeping it under control have put the future of the chestnut industry of this country much in doubt. As has already been made clear during the present meeting, this disease has resulted in the entire destruction of thousands of forest and park chestnut trees in the sections ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... grammatical and logical consistency for the ear,—what could be put together and represented to the eye—these poets took from the ear and eye, unchecked by any intuition of an inward impossibility;— just as a man might put together a quarter of an orange, a quarter of an apple, and the like of a lemon and a pomegranate, and make it look like one round diverse-coloured fruit. But nature, which works from within by evolution and assimilation according to a law, cannot do so, nor ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... many branches of astronomy that are receiving the most valuable aid at present from photography; but the very value of the gift that is bestowed should make exaggeration an impossibility. Photography can well afford to be generous, but it must first be just, in its estimate of the work that has still to be done in astronomy independently of its aid; and although the older science points with just pride to what is being done for her by her younger sister, still she must not ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... said Mr. Randolph, softly, as he felt rather than heard the heavy sobs so close to him. But to speak was an impossibility, and so he knew, and did not repeat his question; only he held Daisy fast, and it was in his arms that she wept out the first overcharged ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... At length, three o'clock of Saturday morning, February 16th, having arrived, an adjournment was brought about by means of a very long amendment proposed by Mr. Henderson as a substitute for the entire bill. This opening up a new discussion, the friends of the pending bill saw the impossibility of coming to a speedy vote, and consented ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... died, and was succeeded by James, Duke of York. From his intimate association with James it might have been supposed that a long period of official life was still before Pepys, but the new king's bigotry and incapacity soon made this a practical impossibility. At the coronation of James II. Pepys marched in the procession immediately behind the king's canopy, as one of the sixteen barons of ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... years of the repression which was past. When you know that nothing you can do or say is of any use, and that whatsoever struggle you may make will be wholly ineffectual to change your lot, it is comparatively easy, in the composure of impossibility, to keep yourself down; but when all at once you become again master of your own fate, even a temporary curb becomes intolerable. Mrs. Warrender went into her room by the compulsion of her son and conventional propriety, and was supposed to lie down on the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... required for production, it was a sheer impossibility to put into effect any fresh devices that might be adopted for dealing with submarine warfare for many months, and all that could be done was to try new methods of approach to the coast and, as the number of small craft suitable for escort duty increased, to extend gradually the convoy ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover. I would entreat the wise and prudent fathers to consider the difference between matters of opinion ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Church, an outcome of the Reformation, supported by the State. It was necessary for the welfare of the people and for their future salvation that we should have one, and it was given us, large grants of land being made for its support. A hereditary nobility was an impossibility, for the entire revenue of the Province in its early days would not have been a sufficient income for a noble lord. Still, there were needy gentlemen of good families, as there always have been, and probably ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... that the distance, and his advanced age, might dispense with his attendance at the church and the school, acted accordingly; but for this neglect, Kahumanna drove him from his home. He sought her presence, implored her compassion for his destitute condition, and represented the impossibility of learning to read at his age. But in vain! The Queen replied with an angry gesture, "If you will not learn to read, you may ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... moment Mainwaring sat like one petrified. Had a thunderbolt fallen from the silent sky and burst at his feet he could not have been more stunned. He was like one held in the meshes of a horrid nightmare, and he gazed as through a mist of impossibility into the lineaments of the well-known, sober face now transformed as from within into the aspect of a devil. That face, now ashy white, was distorted into a diabolical grin. The teeth glistened in the lamplight. The brows, twisted into a tense and convulsed frown, were drawn ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... arm-chair at one end of a small table; as before, we secured her ankles by looping a long tape about them and nailing the two ends to the floor behind her. Mrs. Fowler introduced an innovation by sewing the tape to the sleeves of our psychic. This made slipping out of the tape an impossibility, but, to push security still further, I drove a long brass tack down through both tape and doubled sleeve. Not content even with this, Fowler put a second tape about each wrist, to add further security and to take off the strain ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... little democratic we are till we come in contact with the real article. Can you conceive what would be the commercial chaos of America to-morrow if the humblest laborer had the quick personal pride of the millionaire? With all our alleged democracy, we realize the impossibility of ringing Mrs. Vanderbilt's doorbell and asking her to sell us a few flowers from her conservatory or to direct us to a good dressmaker, though we can take just such liberties with houses where the evidences that money would ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... was of the monstrous incongruity of the thing, the almost physical impossibility of a mesalliance of the sort Mary Standish had revealed to him. He saw her, young and beautiful, with face and eyes that from the beginning had made him feel all that was good and sweet in life, and behind her he saw the shadow-hulk of John Graham, ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... covered with the utmost show of kindness and civility. It was provoking beyond sufferance; but with several strokes which I considered important, I bore it with saint-like patience. I remonstrated mildly but firmly on the waste of my money, and on the impossibility of any good to the country while the rajah conducted himself as he had done. I urged upon him to release the poor women whom he had kept confined for nearly five months; and I guarantied the peaceful disposition of the people if it were done. I might as well have whistled to the winds, or ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... always felt that if her heart could be touched she would be all right," was her first remark. "I think, somehow, you have touched it. She has been a great and dreadful trial to me—her extraordinary spirits, the way she fears nothing, the impossibility of giving her ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... revived it had become plain that she could only live for love. Her hands had met the hands seeking hers, inevitably, instinctively. To refuse, to stand aloof, to cause pain—that had been the torment, the impossibility, for one who had learnt so well how to give and to make happy. There was in it no sensual element—only Augustine's 'love of loving.' Yet her stricken conscience told her that, in her moral indecision, if the situation had lasted much longer, she ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... man wrote on trying to demonstrate the utter impossibility of his ever loving the lovable unfortunate, until the midnight tolling of the cathedral ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... [4] In reiterating the impossibility of finding a passage from ocean to ocean, either northeast or northwest, no disparagement is cast on such feats as that of Nordenskjoeld along the north of Asia, in the Vega ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... the usual impossibility of reconciling theory and practice. When his opponents were in power, their purposes, he thought, were accomplished through violations of the constitution. An equally dangerous exercise of power by his friends failed to excite his alarm. Feeling conscious within himself ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... the opposite end, then came back, and this time he approached a little nearer to the bench. He even got to within three intervals of trees, but there he felt an indescribable impossibility of proceeding further, and he hesitated. He thought he saw the young girl's face bending towards him. But he exerted a manly and violent effort, subdued his hesitation, and walked straight ahead. A few seconds later, he rushed in front of the bench, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... now began to tremble. Philip's favorite counsellors advised him to yield to the popular despair; but nothing could change his determination to pursue his bloody game to the last chance. He had foreseen the impossibility of reducing the country to slavery as long as it maintained its tranquillity, and that union which forms in itself the elements and the cement of strength. It was from deep calculation that he had excited the troubles, and now kept them alive. He knew that the structure ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... nor dispute; neither does it delay nor murmur. It goes directly to work to fulfil the commands laid upon us, or to refrain from doing that which is forbidden. "Sir," said the Duke of Wellington to an officer of engineers, who urged the impossibility of executing his orders, "I did not ask your opinion. I gave you my orders, and I expect them ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... exaggerate. It is hardly possible to copy a natural spray of flowers in cross stitch and keep it very naturalistic. The stitch being square and alike all over gives a formality of treatment to every part of the design, also, some detail is perforce omitted owing to the impossibility of putting it in; all of this tends to a right method of treatment, which renders the sampler an admirable lesson not only in workmanship but ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... field of vision may be increased, and the eyeballs moved easily in any direction. But this hardly accounts for the eyebrows being so greatly raised as is the case, and for the wild staring of the open eyes. The explanation lies, I believe, in the impossibility of opening the eyes with great rapidity by merely raising the upper lids. To effect this the eyebrows must be lifted energetically. Any one who will try to open his eyes as quickly as possible before a mirror will find ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... point of view, all the operations which took place were those of the siege of a fortress; as when at length St. Elmo fell the Turks turned their attention to the fortress of Il Borgo. The time-honoured method of the attack on a fortress, of approaching it by sap and mine, was here almost an impossibility, as the island of Malta is composed of solid rock through which it was practically impossible to drive trenches. It is true that the rock is of an exceptionally soft nature, easily cut through with proper tools; but ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... bankers. And though this also holds true of merchant vessels, yet not by any means to the same extent as with whalemen. For besides the great length of the whaling voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution of the fishery, and the impossibility of replacing them at the remote harbors usually frequented, it must be remembered, that of all ships, whaling vessels are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds, and especially to the destruction and loss of the very things upon which the success of the voyage ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... illusory conclusions of the reason, and of the value of induction; but he does not conceal from himself the fact that observation is merely the first step in the process of cognition, leaving the chief role for the understanding. This, supplementing the defect of experience—the impossibility of observing all cases—by its a priori concept of law and with its inferences overstepping the bounds of experience, first makes induction possible, brings the facts established into connection (their combination under laws is thought, not experience), reduces them ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... fold of the abdominal nerves. It is natural that the effect felt by the horses should be more powerful than that produced upon man by the touch of the same fish at only one of his extremities. The horses are probably not killed, but only stunned. They are drowned from the impossibility of rising amid the prolonged struggle between the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... recipient assumes that the phrase 'That criminal' is elliptical and not merely demonstrative. In fact, pure demonstration is impossible though it is the ideal of thought. This practical impossibility of pure demonstration is a difficulty which arises in the communication of thought and in the retention of thought. Namely, a proposition about a particular factor in nature can neither be expressed to others nor retained for repeated ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... Your knees to me? to your corrected son? Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach Fillip the stars; then let the mutinous winds Strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun,; Murdering impossibility, to make What cannot be, ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... grave and serious; the kind of man who invariably marries a butterfly, if he can find one to make him miserable. He was exceedingly patient; but after the birth of little Broona, Adeline became so homesick and depressed and discontented that, although the journey was almost an impossibility at the time, Gerald took her back to her people, and left her with them, while he returned to his duties at Trinity College. Their life, I suppose, had been very unhappy for a year or two before this, and when he came home to Dublin without his children, he looked a sad and broken man. He was ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... assistance. He has spoken to all the Ministers, collectively and individually, and has recommended the granting of my petition in the strongest manner, pointing out the terrible condition of the people at present who are without religious instruction of any kind, and the impossibility of exercising any species of government over a nation of atheists, which the Spaniards will very shortly become if left to themselves. Whether moved by his arguments or by a wish to oblige a person of so much importance ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... have the pleasure of startling you a little by a prodigy that you denominate an impossibility! Clara Day and Traverse Rocke were betrothed with full knowledge and cordial approbation of the ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... imprisoned for several years. But he was always treated with kindness, and was finally released, without having received the slightest injury. He was intrusted, when sent away, with a message to the Russian government, setting forth the impossibility of any understanding between the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... impossibility, my lad, as I werry well know. You sit still while I fetch you something to put in your empty locker. Didn't know I was ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... fro between doubts and fears, the poor boy kept changing the course of the sloop in a way that would have soon rendered the hitting of the wreck an impossibility, when a sudden and rather sharp puff of wind caused the Nora to bend over, and the foam to curl on her bow as she slipped swiftly through the water. Billy decided at that moment to miss the wreck when he was close upon it, and for ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... it is that I no longer regard this as a fantastic impossibility. I no longer reject it. I am not terrified or horrified by the thought, but almost welcome it, since it offers an explanation of what has happened that does not involve madness. I am either possessed by an evil spirit or ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... a final little pressure, patted and released it. He felt, somehow or other, immeasurably grateful to her, flattered by her confidence, curiously exalted by her hesitating words. Speech, however, he found an impossibility. ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that any one in Virginia City or Carson City would for a moment take any stock in the wild invention, yet so graphic was it that nine out of ten on first reading never stopped to consider the entire impossibility of the locality and circumstance. Even when these things were pointed out many readers at first refused to confess themselves sold. As for the Bulletin and other California papers, they were taken-in completely, and were furious. Many of them wrote and demanded the immediate discharge ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... W. Emerson claims for him. In a recent letter to me, Dr. Emerson writes: "He carried the old New England undemonstrativeness very far. He was also, I believe, really shy, prospered only in monologue, except in a walk in the woods with one companion, and his difficulties increased to impossibility in a room full of people." Dr. Emerson admits that Thoreau is himself to blame for giving his readers the impression that he held his kind in contempt, but says that in reality he had neighborliness, was dutiful to parents ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... with his sister was well-nigh an impossibility. Had he been detected, he would have been immediately treated as a spy, and the suspicion thus excited would have been a dangerous preparation for the King as well as for himself; nor was there any pretext for ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reports, based upon imperfect evidence, and leading to no definite conclusion, the literary commission, as Llorente informs us, was silent altogether; whereupon Llorente attributing, not unnaturally, this preternatural silence on the part of the three French savans, to the impossibility of finding any thing to say, after the lapse of a year and a half publishes his arguments, and appeals to literary Europe as the judge "en dernier ressort" of this important controversy. Llorente, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... multifarious and minute rivulets in the various doctrines of relativity, in pragmatism, the subjectivism of the neo-realists, and in the superior place generally ascribed by present thinking to value judgments as against existential ones. His central insistence is upon the impossibility of any knowledge of God as an objective reality. Speculative reason does indeed give us the idea of God but he denies that we have in the idea itself any ground for thinking that there is an objective reality corresponding to it. The ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Platon—wretched man—was done for. Now if Peter had only been able to step in at this moment with a red bouquet, his little hopes might have made gigantic strides. A woman's gratitude under such circumstances would have been boundless—but it was practically an impossibility. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the maid at that window, but I saw also the impossibility of communicating properly with Madame by that channel. So, in spite of your sentinel's vigilance, I crossed the balustrade to the garden, and there had the honour of presenting myself to the Countess. I acquainted her with the fate of Monsieur de Merri. Her demeanour ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Sabin said, turning to the Prince, "I sympathise entirely with your feelings at the present moment. I myself have suffered in precisely the same manner. The fact is, intrigue in this country is almost an impossibility. At Paris, Vienna, Pesth, how different! You raise your little finger, and the deed is done. Superfluous people—like myself—are removed like the hairs from your chin. But here intrigue seems indeed to exist only within the pages of a shilling novel, or in a comic opera. The ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... abstracted his mind from the passion of fear; he must have rapidly turned his attention upon a variety of ideas unconnected by any former associations with the exciting motive—falling from a height—fractured skulls—certain death—impossibility of reasoning or wrestling with a madman. This was the train of thoughts which we might naturally expect to arise in such a situation, but from all these the man of presence of mind turned away his attention; ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... patent moral to this "Canterbury tale." It reads about as follows: Twenty-five years after the Canterbury persecution, its repetition would have been an impossibility. Twenty-five years after the Quitman persecution—or any other acts, in any southern state, of ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various |
