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More "Unlikely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "You say that a man without money is the image of death, that he is a very wretched animal. I learn with regret that I am unlikely to see you at the approaching Festival of the Ascension . . . that you hope to see me once more before dying . . . . You make me laugh, telling me that at Vienna a balloon was made which arose in the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... become acquainted with the true facts about the family this girl gave us most extensive accounts of various phases of her home life which included the most unlikely and contradictory details. For instance, they had a large house with beautiful grounds, yet before she left home she bought a sewing machine for her mother, which she is paying for on weekly installments. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... The jailers never could find out the source of that music, for when they came to search his cell, the bar was replaced in the chair, and there was no apparent possibility of flute-playing; but when the jailers departed the music would mysteriously recommence. It is very unlikely that this legend is founded upon fact, or indeed that Bunyan was a musician at all (although we do have from his pen one touching and beautiful reference to the finest music in the world being founded ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... confidence was naturally her inseparable Lucien Levy-Coeur, who had no reason for keeping it secret, the story went the rounds, and was embellished by the way: a note of ironic pity for Olivier, who was represented as a victim, was introduced, and he cut rather a sorry figure. It seemed unlikely that the story could be very interesting to anybody, since the heroes of it were very little known: but a Parisian takes an interest in everything that does not concern him. So much so, that one day Christophe heard the story from the lips of Madame Roussin. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... not be induced to resume the command of his old ship, or voyage again to the West Indies. He determined to change the scene of his future labours and sail to the Frozen Seas, where the aspect of every object, even the ocean itself, would be very unlikely to recall the circumstances of ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... to watch affairs in their interest and send them intelligence, and that, the better to disguise the design, he pretended compliance with the existing powers, meaning to obtain the degree of M.D. from Oxford, and set up cautiously as a medical practitioner. It is very unlikely that such a dangerous game could have been safely tried under eyes like Thurloe's; and the fact seems to be that Cowley was honestly tired of exile and willing to comply, in a manly way, for the sake of life once more at home. One of his first ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... were few pearls in edible oysters. The beds about Cape May were meant to supply the family table, not the family jewels. Of course, it was true, the Captain admitted, that a pearl did appear now and then in an ordinary oyster. Yet this was an accident and most unlikely to occur. ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... because the enemy cruiser would hear. The cruiser couldn't hear the helmet communicators, though, because they carried only a short distance. The cruiser was close enough so that a helmet communicator turned on full volume might barely be heard, although it was unlikely. ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... had entered Parliament by another door as Baron Shalem, of Wireskiln, in the county of Suffolk. Success had crowned the lady's efforts as far as the achievement of the title went, but her social ambitions seemed unlikely to make further headway. The new Baron and his wife, their title and money notwithstanding, did not "go down" in their particular segment of county society, and in London there were other titles and incomes to compete with. People were willing to worship the Golden Calf, ...
— When William Came • Saki
... to Cettinje was without incident. After the defeat of the mountaineers the lads felt safe, for they were once more within the borders of Montenegro and were unlikely, they knew, ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... has been attributed to different individuals, male and female; but it is more than probable that the writers whose names have been mentioned in this connection are precisely those who have had nothing whatever to do with them. It is not unlikely that, in due time, the publisher of this volume may be in possession of authentic information on this head, and that the name of the author may ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... sometimes differ so considerably, that it will seem at first sight as if they could not possibly be reconciled: and yet (2ndly), That a single word of explanation, the discovery of one minute circumstance,—perfectly natural when we hear it stated, yet most unlikely and unlooked-for,—will often suffice to remove the difficulty which before seemed unsurmountable; and further, that when this has been done, the entire consistency of the several accounts becomes apparent; while the harmony which is established ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... was always said with a countenance expressive of very sublime happiness,—but as if her hearers were not capable of comprehending it. I shall feel very anxious to hear the results of your own experience; for it appears to me that you are in a state of mind equally unlikely to mistake truth for falsehood, or falsehood for truth." Upon receiving a second pamphlet treating on the same subject, Mrs. Trollope wrote as follows: "The document you have sent me, my dear Sir, is indeed full of interest. Had it been less so, I should not have retained ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Endymion; "we must bear these haps. But the truth is, I think it is not unlikely that there may be a change in my life which may be incompatible with retaining my ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... to see those hotspur Senses at it: they say they have gallant preparations, and not unlikely, for most of the soldiers are ready in arms, since the last field fought against their yearly enemy Meleager[201] and his wife Acrasia; that conquest hath so fleshed them, that no peace can hold them. But had not Meleager ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... know Chonita better since that dance," I said to him. "Polar stars are not unlikely to have volcanoes. Better let the deeps alone, my friend; the lava might scorch you badly. Women of complex natures are interesting studies, but dangerous to love. They wear the nerves to a point, and ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and have often five eggs at a time, and I believe that they leave these countries because their nests are full of broken egg-shells, and because the winter is setting in, and because they dislike cold weather; and, thus disliking cold weather, it is unlikely that they would fly to the North Pole where the cold is very intense, and where, moreover, there is little food to be found, saving polar bears and Esquimos, a form of victual for which birds have only the scantiest relish. My own ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... know that they have sudden temptations—but that a strong will can overcome them. I was very much moved about your grief that afternoon, and the suppressed emotion, and the exasperation you had caused me, unbalanced me—I am quite unlikely ever to feel again—if you will marry me, I will give you my word I will never touch you, or expect anything, of you except what you agree to give in the bargain. You can lead your own life—and I ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... be caught like foxes which they smoke in their holes. The enemy held every avenue. I went to a window in the rear, and saw that it looked out on a yard, and that the yard had no gate except in front. I thought it not unlikely that the Austrians, in revenge for the loss we had inflicted upon them, might put us to the point of the bayonet. It would have been natural enough. Thinking thus, I ran back to a room, where a dozen of us yet remained, and there I saw Sergeant Pinto leaning ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... behaved irreproachably. One must do him that justice. Not even an appearance accused him. He was faithful, unlikely as that may seem in a man of his kind; he never left his wife. He had hardly ever gone out without her; they were a couple of ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... with its feet, or sometimes sucks a piece of it, it is the persistence of the habit of pressing the mammary glands and sucking during kittenhood." Mr. Wallace goes on to say that infantine habits are generally completely lost in adult life, and that it seems unlikely that they should persist in a few isolated instances.) If you have ever actually observed a kitten sucking and pounding, with extended toes, its mother, and then seen the same kitten when a little older doing the same thing on a soft ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... which were thus economised, would scarce have shook the credit of the New Bedford owners. And the act itself was simply murder. Tari's life must have hung in the beginning by a hair. In the grief and terror of that time, it is not unlikely he went mad, an infirmity to which he was still liable; or perhaps a child may have taken a fancy to him and ordained him to be spared. He escaped at least alive, married in the island, and when I knew him was a widower with a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a new alliance in the house of Montagu: that Lord Hinchinbrook(804) is to marry the sole remaining daughter of Lord Halifax; that her fortune is to be divided into three shares, of which each father is to take one, and the third is to be the provision for the victims. I don't think this the most unlikely part of the story. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... acceptance of utter strangers, without a word spoken in their behalf, except what they spoke for themselves, seem strange, unlikely, impossible? It did not seem strange to John, till he came to think of it afterward as he walked home. Face to face with these kind people, their mutual interest seemed natural enough. In thinking about it, as he went swiftly on in the moonlight, he did wonder ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... wise for him to express his full mind on some of the subjects brought up. His fellow-pupils were all Protestants, and some of them well-informed and talented young men. His views would be new to them, and so would many of his authorities for his statements of fact, and he thought it not unlikely that a commotion might sometimes be raised which would not at all commend itself to the teacher of the institution. He concluded, however, to throw prudence to the winds, and on controverted points to express his sentiments freely ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... occurred to him, from the appearance of the sky, that he was at least an hour too early for his purpose, and that it would be better not to appear at the place of rendezvous till nearer the time assigned. Other gallants were not unlikely to be on the watch as well as himself about the house of the Fair Maid of Perth; and he knew his own foible so well as to be sensible of the great chance of a ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... national Concern went on with Vigour, and the prodigious Success of the Queen's Arms, left every Soul without the least Pretence to a Murmur. But now on my Return, I found them on their old Establishment, perfect Contraries, and as unlikely to be brought to meet as direct Angles. Some arraigning, some extolling of a Peace; in which Time has shown both were wrong, and consequently neither could be right in their Notions of it, however an over prejudic'd Way of thinking might draw them into one or the other. But Whig ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... he ought to take for getting into Italy, but even beginning to reflect a little on the chances and risks of such an expedition. He had found no sympathy anywhere except with Ludovico Sforza; so it appeared not unlikely that he would have to fight not the kingdom of Naples alone, but the whole of Italy to boot. In his preparations for war he had spent almost all the money at his disposal; the Lady of Beaujeu and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... rank of the schools for these states, then the statistical facts presented in the following pages may seem to be a rather moderate statement regarding the failures of high school pupils for the states referred to. It must be noted in this connection, however, that it is not unlikely that such schools, with their adequate records, will have the facts concerning failure more certainly recorded than will those whose records are incomplete, neglected, or ...
— The High School Failures - A Study of the School Records of Pupils Failing in Academic or - Commercial High School Subjects • Francis P. Obrien
... Raven Rock and the Thirty Black Devils leaping high and merrily in the morning. As I ran down the last hill, with an eye on the light glowing in the kitchen window of Skipper Tommy Lovejoy's cottage, I made shift to hope that the old man had made harbour from Wolf Cove, but thought it most unlikely. ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... probably their move that induced Lorenzo Costa to follow them. In that way the Ferrarese school became somewhat complicated with the Bolognese school, and is confused in its history to this day. Costa was not unlikely the real founder, or, at the least, the strongest influencer of the Bolognese school. He was a painter of a rugged, manly type, afterward tempered by Southern influences to softness and sentiment. This was the result of Paduan methods meeting at Bologna with ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... senatorial province. As the province changed hands so often and was so soon after this placed under imperial control, it is possible that Tacitus made a mistake and that Pacarius was an ex-praetor. Those who feel that Tacitus is unlikely to have made this error, and that Pacarius can hardly have been anything but governor, adopt the suggestion that Corsica did not share the fate of Sardinia in A.D. 67, but remained under the control of an imperial procurator. There is no clear evidence of this, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... I have place for, but as yet we have no distinct chemical knowledge as to whether the fats put on under alcohol or morphia, or rapidly by the use of oils, or pathologically in fatty degenerations, or in anaemia, vary in their constituents. It is not at all unlikely that such is the case, and that, for example, the fat of an obese anaemic person may differ from that of a fat and florid person. The flabby, relaxed state of many fat people is possibly due not alone to peculiarities of the fat, but also to want of tone and tension ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... grandchildren played any part in bringing about a change in the rule of descent, this must have been based on a review of the changes that would be brought about in the position of the son's and not the daughter's offspring. But this is unlikely. ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... dangerous. They are of great value if so qualified as to be used only in real emergencies, as where a clique has got control of the government and is running it for its self-interest, but as a regularly and frequently functioning institution they are unlikely to result ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... equals in his time. His exercises are for the most part very ingenious and useful to advanced players, but when some of them are transposed into other keys as their composer demands they become practically impossible to play with the proper touch, etc. Furthermore, one would be very unlikely to find a passage demanding such a technical feat in the compositions of any of the great masters of the piano. Consequently, such exercises are of no practical value and would only be demanded by a teacher with more respect ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... is not unlikely to be a true foreboding of Antonio's," said Giannozzo Pucci. "If this pretty war with Pisa goes on, and the revolt only spreads a little to our other towns, it is not only our silver dishes that are likely to go; I doubt whether Antonio's silver saints round the altar of San Giovanni will not some ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... separate impurity and pleasure, which indeed soon fly asunder when the improvident would unite them. But never believe that tenderness of heart signifies corruption of morals, if you happen to find it (which indeed is unlikely) in the direction you have taken; on the contrary, no two qualities are oftener found together, on mind as on matter, than ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... hero, this demi-god in a top-hat, may be said to reach his supreme moment and typical example about the time when Dickens was writing that thundering and thrilling and highly unlikely scene in Nicholas Nickleby, the scene where Nicholas hopelessly denounces the atrocious Gride in his hour of grinning triumph, and a thud upon the floor above tells them that the heroine's tyrannical father has died just in time to set her free. That ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... approximately twelve hours' flying time. Under ideal weather conditions, they could make the journey in considerably less time, but it was the season for the well-known monsoons of the Indian Ocean, and it was quite unlikely that they would be able to wing their way across the fourteen hundred odd miles of sea without encountering some of ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... course of admiration of their neighbours' wives, as fate or fancy leads them, and wear their time away without ever having known the meaning of such love as this. There is no fixed rule about it; the most unlikely, even the more sordid and contemptible of mankind, are liable to become the subjects of an enduring passion; only then it raises them; for though strong affection, especially, if unrequited, sometimes wears and enervates the ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... should have had the journey only for that, mother. 'Twas so unlikely a morning, I never thought to hear of a swarm to-day. I'll start at once, and you go home quietly. You're sadly out of breath. ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... without answering. He knew next to nothing of Vyse's history, of the mischance or mis-management that had brought him, with his brains and his training, to so unlikely a pass. But a pang of compunction shot through him as he remembered the manuscript of "The Lifted Lamp" gathering dust on his ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... other news that morning, however. Cascade Pass was closed with snow. A miner who lived alone somewhere up the gorge had brought in the information. It was a serious moment. We could get to Doubtful Lake, but it was unlikely we could get any farther. The comparatively simple matter thus became a complicated one, for Doubtful Lake was not only a detour; it was almost inaccessible, especially for horses. But we hated to acknowledge defeat. So again we voted ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... activity undertaken. Gathering was a surety, assuming of course that there was a harvest to gather. With the wide variety of plants available within the Washo territory during the spring, summer, and fall it seems highly unlikely that the failure of one species of plant created a serious problem. This, of course, was not true of the pine nut. A failure of the pine-nut crop was a harbinger of a starvation winter. The gathering of pine nuts, in contrast to the gathering of other plants, was the subject of a ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... "Sounds rather unlikely," says Mr. Robert. "Still, you seem to have an uncanny instinct for being right in such matters. Perhaps we ought to go ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... last evening, sir. He was saying how awkward it would be if some of these natives who have come in were to fire the town, just as a strong attack was going on, and most of the troops engaged with the enemy. It was not unlikely that, if such a plan had been formed, the prisoner would know of it; and that he might very well believe what my man said, that some men had been sent into the town, with ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... Federal army substitutes, white or black, for loyal sons of unmilitary temperaments, other sons, rebellious, and more enterprising, would elect to represent the family in some one of Morgan's regiments. It is not unlikely, then, that a record of these men, written by one who has had every opportunity of learning the true story of every important and interesting event which he did not witness, may be favorably received by the people of Kentucky. The class of readers who will be gratified by an account of such adventures ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... (Metrosideros amboinensis). An idea was entertained of making a settlement on one of them, and in 1769 an officer with a few men were stationed there for some months, during which period the rains were incessant. The scheme was afterwards abandoned as unlikely to ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Without knowing much of Perez, he had gained a strong impression from what little he had seen of him, that he was of a frank, impulsive temperament, sudden and fierce in quarrel, perhaps, but incapable of a brooding revengefulness, and most unlikely to cherish continued animosity toward enemies who were at his mercy. And as I would not have the reader do the young man injustice in his mind, I hasten to say that the doctor's view of his character ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... gave any reason for the appearance. And Themistocles replied, that Chrysippus only proposed such things by the by, as instances to correct us, who easily assent and without any reason to what seems likely, and disbelieve everything that seems unlikely at the first sight. But why, sir, are you concerned at this? For if you are speculative and would inquire into the causes of things you need not want subjects in your own profession; but pray tell me why Homer makes Nausicaa wash in ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... even a wound in return; for of what avail were high-power guns, automatic pistols, and machetes against invisible enemies? Yet there was assurance in Lourenco's confident air, and reassurance in the thought that these tribemen would be unlikely to assail a band avowedly on its way to visit their chief. Besides—Knowlton smiled grimly—even if the Mayorunas hungered for human flesh it would be more economical of labor to let the meat travel ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... on God so unconvincing, that it can hardly have convinced himself. It amounts to little more than an argument that God is the most probable of hypotheses, and it admits that there may be two or several gods as well as one. It is not unlikely that Voltaire thought it necessary for his peace in the world to protest against so outspoken a book ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... trivial circumstances are able to put an end to our gratifications; they are like beds of roses, where it is very unlikely all the leaves should be smooth, and even one that is doubled suffices ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... him a sense of negative relief. It was much simpler for him to judge Miss Bart by her habitual conduct than by the rare deviations from it which had thrown her so disturbingly in his way; and every act of hers which made the recurrence of such deviations more unlikely, confirmed the sense of relief with which he returned to ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... an escort to the ambassador royal of France and Scotland who came behind, rode the Earl of Avondale and his five sons, noble young men, and most unlikely to have sprung from such a stock. James the Gross rode a broad Clydesdale mare, a short, soft unwieldy man, sitting squat on the saddle like a toad astride a roof, and glancing slily sideways out of the ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... we had had with the strange hooked sword of the yellow man and his cuplike shield made it seem rather unlikely that either of us could pass this final test, but there was the chance that we might be quartered in the palace of Salensus Oll for several days after being accepted by Sorav before the Jeddak of Jeddaks would find time to put ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... precipitate. He has contrived, by the good offices of his lay confessor, to square matters with the hierarchy of Adonai, who belongs to the Latin persuasion; he has changed his name, adopted a third profession, and is so safe in retreat that his friends are as unlikely to find him as are the enemies who thirst for ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... unlikely that Savage might by his imprudence expose himself to the malice of a talebearer; for his patron had many follies, which, as his discernment easily discovered, his imagination might sometimes incite him to mention too ludicrously. A little knowledge of the world is sufficient ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... knew the latitude and longitude of the smoking mountain—and being familiar with the Bering Sea, all hands admitted that he might well know it—the ambergris was most certainly lost to them, unless, as was most unlikely, the Dawn had had even worse luck with the weather than the Cohasset. But if Carew did not know Fire Mountain's location, they had a chance, though Carew was probably cruising adjacent waters, on the lookout for them—and if they encountered him, they might prepare ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... inconsistent with his general character; but it is evident that the men of Calais had given him strong provocation by attacks on his shipping—piracies which are not easily forgiven—and that he considered that he had a right to make an example of them. It is not unlikely that he might, after all, have intended to forgive them, and have given the Queen the grace of obtaining their pardon, so as to excuse himself from the fulfillment of some over-hasty threat. But, however this may have been, nothing can lessen the glory of the six ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conceived. I stood for full a minute staring at the coins, the candle in my hand. Then, reflecting that the young sparks at the Court would be very unlikely to spend such a sum on a jest, I hesitated no longer, but putting down the candle, drew the bolt of the door, purposing to confer with my visitors outside. In this, however, I was disappointed, for the moment the door ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... Long rows of hundreds of white field-tents are ranged about the position on the level greensward; the place presents an animated scene, with the soldiers, some in the ordinary blue, trimmed with red, others in cool, white uniforms especially provided for the summer, but which they are not unlikely to be found also wearing in winter, owing to the ruinous state of the Ottoman exchequer, and one and all wearing the picturesque but uncomfortable fez; cannons are booming, drums beating, and bugles playing. From the military headquarters to the city is a splendid ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Interstate Commerce Commission now find it practically impossible, with its present membership and organization, to perform its great functions promptly and thoroughly, but it is not unlikely that it may presently be found advisable to add to its duties still others equally heavy and exacting. It must first be perfected as ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... occurred to him. And he has told me lately that she refused him with such considered firmness that it seemed unlikely ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... boys of native birth. Somewhat similar conditions exist in the blacksmithing trade. Changed methods of production have largely done away with the old-time blacksmith, who survives only in horse-shoeing and repair shops. The proportion of native blacksmiths is steadily declining, and it is unlikely that any considerable number of boys from the public schools will enter the trade. The boiler making trade employs relatively few men, the total number of native born boiler makers at the time of the last census being less than 600. The trade seems to be at a standstill. The increase during the ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... Kensington. Those who knew him best, while refusing to express an opinion upon this particular statement, are unanimous in asserting that he was a man of a sober and scientific turn of mind, absolutely devoid of imagination, and most unlikely to invent any abnormal series of events. The paper was contained in an envelope, which was docketed, "A Short Account of the Circumstances which occurred near Miss Allerton's Farm in North-West Derbyshire in the Spring of Last Year." The envelope was sealed, and on the other side was written ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... them with our notions of what a Revelation ought to be. Thus the capricious dictates of reason are made to decide the quality of revealed truth. Besides, wherever a mysterious account is contained in a book which in the main is accepted, such mystery is cast out as altogether unlikely, probably the poetic version of some early legend. A miracle is recounted; one of the best attested of all. "It could never have happened," the Rationalists say, "for ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... made our way towards the two silent ships. It seemed a quiet, peaceful world: an unlikely place for tragedy. The air was fresh and clean, although, as Dival had predicted, rarefied like the air at an altitude. The willow-like trees that hemmed us in rustled gently, their long, frond-like branches with their ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... entirely to the late third and the fourth centuries, and end with two silver of Honorius (Virtus Romanorum, Cohen 59). He detects a Roman road running east from Burgh Castle towards Gorleston, preserved (he thinks) in an old road sometimes called the Jews' Way; this, however, seems unlikely. He also maintains the view, which others have held, that the fort had no defences towards the water. This again seems unlikely. Burgh Castle, like Richborough, Stutfall, and other forts of the Litus, may well have had different arrangements on its water-front from the ...
— Roman Britain in 1914 • F. Haverfield
... delayed to replace the expended with fresh batteries. This is out of the question. The Faure batteries must all be carried on one vehicle or engine, which could be changed for another, like a locomotive. Even then no advantage would be gained. As to cost, it is very unlikely that the stationary engines which must be provided to drive the dynamo machines for charging the batteries would be more economical than locomotive engines; and if we allow that the dynamo machine only wasted ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... the way the light broke in in the case of particular individuals, often the most unlikely, and quelled their opposition. ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... are any the more to be touched and felt by the ordinary senses than are those I talk of." I was not denying the power of other beings to take upon themselves a clothing of mortal substance, but only that simple invocations, such as he spoke of, seemed unlikely to do more than cast the mind into trance, and thereby bring it into the presence of the powers of day, ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... reconnaissance we found that he was a real killer. His trail was marked by many bloody episodes. It seemed quite probable that he was the bear that two years before burst in upon a party of surveyors in the mountains and kept them treed all night. It is not unlikely that he was the same bear that caused the death of Jack Walsh. He seemed too expert in planning murder. We saw by his tracks how he lay in ambush watching a herd of elk, how he sneaked up on a mother elk and her recently born calf on the outskirts of the band, and with a ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... he's not more than five feet ten, while this man, I think, is extra-tall—see the length of his stride where he came down the bank. Whoever he is, though, Phil, he's an experienced prospector. He hasn't wasted his time, as we have, trying unlikely places, but has chosen this spot and gone slap down through snow and everything, just as if he knew that the black sand would be found at ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... interesting to discover how far Pitt and Grenville were at this time aware of the secret designs of the French Executive Council. On this topic I have found no definite evidence. It is very unlikely that on 13th January they knew of the aggressive plans which the Executive Council had formed three days before. But it is certain that such plans were set on foot on 10th January. On that day the Executive Council drew up secret ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... lest she might have overslept herself—that Essec Powell or Shoni might have discovered her intentions and prevented their fulfilment; perhaps even she might be shut up in one of the rooms in that gaunt, grey house! Nothing was too unreasonable or unlikely for his fears, and as he approached the church he was firmly convinced that something had happened to frustrate his hopes; nobody was in sight, the Berwen brawled on its way, the birds sang the ivy on ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... weighed the pros and cons of overtaking her. It was most unlikely that she had yet heard of the accident. And yet she might ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... began to demonstrate how unlikely it was that Satan would give advice how to subdue himself; "For how then could his kingdom stand?" as the Lord said (Luke xi.). So the Duke listened, and grew thoughtful—at last exclaimed, "Well, come, we'll settle that over the wine-cup; and to spite the knave, we'll keep up the carouse till morning; ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... my dear," responded her husband meekly; "and I think it not unlikely that Master Raymond may have thought the same, and planned to keep you away—but it was evident to me, that if the 'afflicted girls' had taken one side or the other in the matter, it would not have been yours. Why, even our own daughter Ann, was laughing and joking with him when I entered the ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... right, brother," he said; "this is a fine gem. I tell you what I'll do. I'll ride, myself, to Sentinum and exchange this for cash, part gold and part silver. Sentinum seems an unlikely place in which to find a cash purchaser for a gem like this, but our King has a friend there who acts as his agent in several respects; among others he keeps cash in hand to exchange any time for precious loot; ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... "In the unlikely event of a claimant establishing his right to the earldom, he would also inherit the Kilfinnan estates," answered the lawyer; "but you will remember there are the estates in Derry, which were formerly separated from the Kilfinnan ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... north of Spitzbergen, it seemed unlikely that he would ever be heard of again; if, however, the winds had carried it southward, he might have taken refuge on an ice-pack, and would be floated southward with ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 50, October 21, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Sulla is said to have still further stimulated the pursuit of Marius by setting a price on his head. [Sidenote: Sulpicius slain.] Sulpicius was killed at Laurentum, and, according to Velleius Paterculus, Sulla fixed up the eloquent orator's head at the Rostra, a thing not unlikely to have been done by a man to whose nature such grim irony was thoroughly congenial. [Sidenote: Stories of Sulla.] He evinced it on this occasion in another way, which may have suggested to Victor Hugo his episode of Lantenac and the gunner. ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... they tell, for news, such unlikely stories! A letter from one of us is such a present to them, that the poor souls wait for the carrier's-day with such devotion, that they cannot sleep ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... like the scent of a flower, is diffused unconsciously. It has its own aims and laws, and knows none other. And the only person who ever fully acknowledged this truth in aesthetics is, of all persons most unlikely, the author of Sartor Resartus. That any one who dressed so very badly as did Thomas Carlyle should have tried to construct a philosophy of clothes has always seemed to me one of the most pathetic things in literature. He in the Temple of Vestments! ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... nothing, she possessed all things; and her secret escapes you if you are aware only of her splendid paganism. She never speaks the language of religious resignation like Anne and Charlotte. It is most unlikely that she relied, openly or in secret, on "the merits of the Redeemer", or on any of the familiar consolations of religion. As she bowed to no disaster and no grief, consolation would have been the last thing in any religion that she looked for. But, for height and depth ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... was selected for the hero because it is an uncommon one, and consequently unlikely to be confounded with any more frequently-used designation. If by an unlucky chance there is a ZOZIMUS, he is assured that the coincidence ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... that recommendation into effect, I would suggest that authority be given for investing the principal, over the proceeds of the surplus referred to, in good securities, with a view to the satisfaction of such other just claims of our citizens against China as are not unlikely to arise hereafter in the course of our extensive trade ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... though it is very unlikely. But I must provide against all contingencies. I have made the organization as simple as possible. I have a chief agent in every country, and on receipt of my message by the chief of the organization, it will be repeated to the agents, who also have ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... the men were numbered in ten thousands by being packed close together and having a circle drawn round them. After the first ten thousand had been so measured a fence was put where the circle had been, and the subsequent ten thousands were driven into the enclosure. It is not unlikely that they piled their weapons before being so measured, and Lucan's account would then be made to agree with that of Herodotus. Francken, on the other hand, quotes a Scholiast, who says that each hundredth man shot off an arrow. ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... very much annoyed when he learnt that his orders had been thus disobeyed. The Lorraines plastered over the affair by representing that they feared an affront from M. de Mantua, and indeed it did not seem at all unlikely that M. de Mantua, forced as it were into compliance with their wishes, might have liked nothing better than to reach Italy and then laugh at them. Meanwhile, Madame d'Elboeuf and her daughter embarked on board the royal galleys and started for Italy. On the way they were fiercely ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... his wells but served to increase the envy of the Philistines, for he had come upon water in a most unlikely spot and, besides, in a year of drouth. But "the Lord fulfils the desire of them that fear Him." As Isaac executed the will of his Creator, so God accomplished his desire.[64] And Abimelech, the king of Gerar, speedily came to see that God was on the side of ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... Ruth had desired to choose Dr. Cuyler to listen to rather than some other names on the programme, because, from the nature of his subject she had judged it most unlikely that he should have about him any arrows that would touch home to her. Not that she put it in that language; she did not admit even to herself that any of the solemn words that had been spoken at Chautauqua had reference to her; ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... not easy to believe, in the exact shape in which it is given, since it is unlikely that the Scottish nobles were such fools as it presupposes; but that it is founded on some tragical fact is highly probable. The same is the case with the story of Wallace's retribution for this crime. When ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... a little surprised and embarrassed at this unexpected and informal proceeding, which she knew would greatly shock the countess; but, taking the card, answered, courteously, "I fear nothing is more unlikely than that I should cross the ocean; but, if such an unlooked-for event should ever occur, I ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... ear at Dick, as he came up, but took no further notice, being engaged in picking nutriment out of some scraps of as unlikely looking vegetation as could be found in the fen. Perhaps it was the thistly food he ate which had an effect upon his temper and made him the awkward creature he ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... with Mr. Lee, Wade, Evett, and workmen to the Tower, and with the Lieutenant's leave set them to work in the garden, in the corner against the mayne-guard, a most unlikely place. It being cold, Mr. Lee and I did sit all the day till three o'clock by the fire in the Governor's house; I reading a play of Fletcher's, being "A Wife for a Month," wherein no great wit or language. Having done we went to them at work, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... ardour of his search after professional information, still retains its buoyancy and freshness; and he wreaths with roses the hours which he passes in the dissecting-room, although the world in general looks upon it as a rather unlikely locality for those flowers to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... at the grotesque thing. The mummy had disappeared from the Sailor's Rest at Pierside some weeks ago, and now unexpectedly appeared in a lonely garden, surrounded by marshes. How it had been brought there, or why it should have been brought there, or who had brought it to such an unlikely place, were questions hard to answer. However, the most obvious thing to do was to question Mrs. Jasher, since the uncanny object was lying within a stone-throw of her home. Lucy, after a rapid word ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... against him found him out, and arrested him for the amount, while riding in the Park, with all the insulting vexation that the greatest publicity could create. That he could raise the sum required for his release, appeared very unlikely indeed, under the present circumstances, to be accomplished. When within the precincts of the jail, Henry Meynell did not hesitate to write imploringly to the wife he had outraged and the uncle he had so often deceived, praying that they would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... for very little," Heneage declared. "The things which surprise us most in life come often from the most unlikely people. We none of us mean to be deceitful, but a perfectly honest life is a luxury which few of us dare ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "out of four thousand quotations made by him it was unlikely that some would not be found wherein he might have erred, as he was human, but he was quite sure that it was never in bad faith." He then said that, being pressed for time, he had not yet been able to collate more than nineteen out of the sixty quotations specially ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... "That is not unlikely," said Meiklewham; "but so is Sir Bingo Binks, and yet he's had the better of you, St. Ronan's, this ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... most ancient Calliope, the heavenly Urania, and the amorous Erato, concerning the conversation of their votaries. If they are truly the children of song, they will indeed forget their own resentments; but your conversation would be so unlikely to make a favourable impression on the tuneful sisters, that it may be well for you the insects ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... them, yet of these there has not been one, not even Philip of Spain, so bad as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero or Domitian, who were four in twelve among the Roman Emperors." When we find David Hume thus putting the matter, in his Essay on "Civil Liberty," it makes us at once see how highly unlikely it is that all the badness of human nature should have been concentrated in a few individuals who lived at a particular period and in a particular country, those individuals being Emperors, that particular period the commencement of the Christian aera and that particular ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... by, and that they will sure to guard—to watch, at any rate. Let us divide, as to surround them. The cliff towards which they make runs far to the left without a break. That to the right we cannot see from this spot; but from the nature of the ground it is not unlikely that it turns round in this direction, making the hither end of the valley like a vast pocket or amphitheatre. As they have studied the ground in other places, they may have done so in this, and have come hither as to a known refuge. Let one ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... journey. Whether on the train, at the hotels, or on board the ocean steamer, I never exchanged a friendly word with any fellow-traveller but I was certain to be interrupted. In every place, on every side, the most unlikely persons, man or woman, rich or poor, became protectors to forward me upon my journey, or spies to observe and regulate my conduct. Thus I crossed the States, thus passed the ocean, the Mormon Eye still following my movements; and when at length a cab had ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... barrack again. Beside him, just outside the door of the living-room, hung a small framed notice, which stated that Constable Moriarty was on guard. He looked at it. Then he peeped into the living-room and satisfied himself that the sergeant was still sound asleep. It was exceedingly unlikely that Mr. Gregg, the District Inspector of the Police, would visit the barrack on such a very hot day. Moriarty buttoned his tunic, put his forage cap on his head, and ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... grasses to represent the jungle and a river with overhanging trees arranged with bits of broken looking-glass, and twigs with tiny scraps of green tissue paper glued to them for leaves. The exercise of your own ingenuity in using all sorts of unlikely materials which you will find all about you is the best part of ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... career of philanthropy and the composition of the "Principia" would not in many minds suffice to overthrow. We believe it is authentic that General Grant never got over the impression produced on him by seeing that Mr. Motley parted his hair in the middle, and it is said—and if not true is not unlikely,—that Mr. R. H. Dana's practice of wearing kid gloves told heavily against him in his memorable contest with Butler in the Essex district. We may all remember, too, the gigantic efforts made by Mr. Sumner and others in Congress to have ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... such pressing appeal. For the captive girl, her surprise once past, is but too willing to embrace the opportunity so unexpectedly offered, and by one so unlikely to offer it. Therefore, without further hesitation, she signifies acceptance, saying, "I will trust you, Nacena. You have called me your white sister, and I believe you sincere. You would not speak so if you meant me harm. Take me where you will; ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... afraid than he had been at any time since he had overheard Howells catalogue his case to Graham in the library. Why, even in so much confusion, had Graham and he failed to think of those tell-tale marks in the court? They had been intact when he had stood there just before dark. It was unlikely any one had walked across the grass since. He saw Graham's elaborate precautions demolished, the case against him stronger than it had been before Howells's murder. Graham's face revealed the same helpless comprehension. They followed Robinson downstairs. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... organisms are probably chiefly confined to the soil, and do not usually occur in rain or in the atmosphere. That, however, they are found in spots which we might be inclined to think extremely unlikely, is shown by some recent interesting researches carried out by Muentz, who discovered that the bare surfaces of felspathic, calcareous, schistose, and other rocks at the summit of mountains in the Pyrenees, Alps, and Vosges, yielded large numbers of them, and that they occurred to a considerable ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... from the territory of Brandenburg, safe-conduct to Dresden for the purpose of a renewed investigation of his case, on condition that, within three days after sight, he lay down the arms to which he has had recourse. It is to be understood, however, that in the unlikely event of Kohlhaas' suit concerning the black horses being rejected by the Tribunal at Dresden, he shall be prosecuted with all the severity of the law for arbitrarily undertaking to procure justice for himself. Should his suit, however, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... institutions. However, economic progress was badly hurt by slumping oil prices and the resumption of armed conflict in December 1998, which worsened the Republic of the Congo's budget deficit. Even with the IMF's renewed confidence and high world oil prices, Congo is unlikely to realize growth of more than 5% in 2001-02. With the return to fragile peace, the IMF approved a $14 million credit in November 2000 ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of the 'appiest evenings together that Sam 'ad ever known; and Mr. Goodman would 'ave been just as 'appy too if it hadn't ha' been for the thoughts o' that five pounds. The more 'e thought of it the more unlikely it seemed that 'is wife would blame it on to the sweep, and one night he took the match-box out of 'is pocket and shook his 'ead over it till Sam ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... editor of his journals has selected the relatively unimportant records of his earlier studies, and left us in the dark as regards this far more interesting period. He was such an indefatigable diarist that it is unlikely that he neglected to keep a journal in this crisis of his studies. But it has not been published, and it may have been destroyed. All that we have is this short paragraph ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... generation. Even had he been an exact contemporary,[252] Santa Maria's statements would call for careful examination, for he does not appear to have had a critical intelligence, since he commits himself to two assertions, one of which is certainly false and the other—intrinsically unlikely—is without a shred of corroboration. Santa Maria avers that Philip II showed his displeasure by forbidding the Augustinians of Castile to elect Luis de Leon as their Provincial. It is on record, however, that Luis de Leon was elected ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... vague idea that a cunning man might choose the most unlikely places for the concealment of compromising property, he was ransacking the kitchen from floor ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... had been glad to let her go out of his life, for she had made arrangements by which he kept more than half her money. There was no danger that he would try to snatch her back again; and as for European friends and acquaintances, it was unlikely that such worldly persons would care to come to the place she meant to select. It would be far from the ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... sure that an excessively artificial style like that of the French Empire is not best left to contemporaries to reproduce. At any rate, a really good new translation of Corinne would be a task unlikely to be achieved except by rather exceptional talents working in labour of love: and I cannot blame the publishers of this issue for not waiting till such ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... prothonotary Giorgio Cesarini who, on the death of that pope, had helped Rodrigo's brother Don Pedro Luis when he was forced to flee from Rome. Both Girolama and her youthful spouse died in 1483. Was she also a child of the mother of Lucretia and Caesar? We know not, but it is regarded as unlikely. Let us anticipate by saying that there is only a single authentic record which mentions Rodrigo's children and their mother together. This is the inscription on Vannozza's tomb in S. Maria del Popolo ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... would be safe from pursuit and might either wait to join the next uprising or proceed to a different part of the country, where he was unknown and where, owing to the difficulty of intercourse, detection would be unlikely. Instances have occurred more than once where an escaped malefactor has become a "general" of other outlaws and by threatening to raise an insurrection has induced the government to pardon him ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... societies are the love of truth, and the love of parents, and a stable marriage tie, how sure such feelings would be to make a tribe which possessed them wholly and soon victorious over tribes which were destitute of them, we shall begin to comprehend how unlikely it is that vast masses of tribes throughout the world should have lost all these moral helps to conquest, not to speak of others. If any reasoning is safe as to pre-historic man, the reasoning which imputes to him a deficient sense of morals ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... communicating with each other at their bottom. They were about three feet apart, and appeared to have been dug with sharp sticks. I have not the slightest idea for what purpose they were intended. They were most certainly not dug to obtain roots; and it seemed unlikely for wells; for the water, even in this unusually dry season, ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... at different periods of the poet's career. These reiterated opinions frequently touch the conditions of well-being or calamity in civilised society; they often deal with man in civic or social relation with his neighbour; they define the capabilities of his will. It is unlikely that observations of this nature would be repeated if the sentiments they embody were out of harmony with the author's private conviction. Often we shall not strain a point or do our critical sense much violence if we assume that these recurring thoughts are Shakespeare's ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... African War. The most unfriendly critics in the foreign staff offices have paid tribute to the excellence of the British soldier: sometimes, however, sneering at him as a mercenary, whom, by a curious perversion of the probabilities, they profess to think unlikely to be as efficient as their own conscripts who are forced into military service; but they never hold him responsible for the ill-success of the war. Throughout their criticisms there lurks a feeling of pained astonishment that the British "mercenary" proves himself to be as good or ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... Fromentin and Pierre Loti in French. It is almost impossible in descriptive verse to obtain those vivid and impassioned appeals to the imagination which are of the very essence of genuine poetry, and it is unlikely that descriptive poetry, as such, will again take a prominent place in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... Frederick the Great had already become somewhat distrustful of the roving marquises and counts whom France sent to Berlin. Marquis de Barbasson, my worthy grandfather, received, therefore, no office and no money, and a time of distress set in, such as he would previously have deemed utterly unlikely to befall the descendant of his ancestors. He left Berlin with his family, to make his living somewhere else as a teacher of languages. He travelled from one place to another, and arrived at length at a small town called New Brandenburg. ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... property to personal property, and from property to liberty, and from liberty to life. In truth, those persecutors who use the rack and the stake have much to say for themselves. They are convinced that their end is good; and it must be admitted that they employ means which are not unlikely to attain the end. Religious dissent has repeatedly been put down by sanguinary persecution. In that way the Albigenses were put down. In that way Protestantism was suppressed in Spain and Italy, so that it has never since reared its head. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... previously done—he is equally acceptable whether he has been in Sing Sing or at Harvard and we do not even inquire from which place he has graduated. All that he needs is the desire to work. If he does not desire to work, it is very unlikely that he will apply for a position, for it is pretty well understood that a man in the ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... would be safer to have the thing hidden somewhere for a time—in some place where no one would dream of hunting for it. And it struck him that down at the bungalow where he had spent those quiet weeks, and which he supposed was all shut up and deserted, would be as unlikely a spot as any to be suspected of hiding such a thing. He supposed that the one next door—this one—was closed also, or I do not think he ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... would act on the new constitution. Whether the constitution was adopted or rejected was, in itself, unimportant; in either case, Aditya would have a government recognizable as such by the Empire, which was already recognizing some fairly unlikely-looking governments. In either case, too, Aditya would make nobody on any other planet any trouble. It wouldn't have, at least for a long time, even if it had been left unannexed, but no planet inhabited by Terro-humans could be trusted to remain permanently peaceful and isolated. There ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... perfectly understand beyond what mortal men can do. We have a constant proof of this in the corps candles, whose appearance is an infallible sign that death will follow, and they never fail going the way that the corps will go to be buried, be the way ever so unlikely that it should go through. But to give some instances ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... is the history of my thinkings and doings in connection with this ill-advised confraternity: and now that their cabala is known to others—to how many others they cannot guess—I think it is not unlikely that we shall hear little more ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... free men have been few in number. With the continued spread of herd mentality the number seems not unlikely to grow smaller yet. No matter! For the sake of these very multitudes who surrender to the slothful intoxication of collective passion, we must cherish the flame of liberty. Let us seek truth everywhere; let us cull it wherever we can find its blossom or its seed. Having found ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... confront us on every side while digressions and sub-plots add to the general atmosphere of confusion and complexity. It is idle to hope that this vast panorama can arouse great interest in the West and even in India it is unlikely that many would now approach its gigantic recital with premonitions of delight. It is rather as a necessary background that its main outlines must be grasped, for without them Krishna's character and career can ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... tabooed, and lastly, not only the artificial rules of rhyme, but rhyme itself, is being done away with: assonance may take its place. If the constitution of the French language did not make it unlikely that these reforms should prove permanent, the vehicle of French poetic thought would become mere ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... originally domesticated, and yet be unknown to ornithologists; and this, considering their size, habits and remarkable characters, seems improbable; or they must have become extinct in the wild state. But birds breeding on precipices, and good flyers, are unlikely to be exterminated; and the common rock-pigeon, which has the same habits with the domestic breeds, has not been exterminated even on several of the smaller British islets, or on the shores of the Mediterranean. Hence the supposed extermination of so many species having ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... n.) considers it unlikely that the armies could have possessed artillery at so early ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... was laid For them to follow on their shifting road. Again I front my appointed ministry.— But why the Indian lot to me? Why mine Such fearful gospelling? For the Lord knew What a frail soul He gave me, and a heart Lame and unlikely for the large events.— And this is worse than Baghdad! though that was A fearful brink of travel. But if the lots, That gave to me the Indian duty, were Shuffled by the unseen skill of Heaven, surely That fear of mine in Baghdad was the same Marvellous Hand working again, to guard The landward ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... with the idea of founding there a permanent pirate principality, the inhabitants of which should not consider themselves English, French, or Dutch, but plain pirates, having a nationality and country of their own. Had the seed thus planted by Mansvelt and Morgan grown and matured, it is not unlikely that the whole of the West Indies might now be owned and inhabited by an independent nation, whose founders were the ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... suppose that at home they find little appreciation of any high sentiments, but are driven, in self-defence, to be rather flippant, rather "worldly." The greater number of house mistresses, meanwhile, if one may judge from their own complacent conversation, behave in a way most unlikely to contribute to their servants' self-respect. It is hard to believe that any really high sentiment is to be learnt from women who, for all the world as if they were village louts, make light of a girl's feelings, and ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... wish to be too hard on these two men, but I think they're frauds, and they may have complices that we don't know nothing about. If they have, won't the complices get away with that bag of gold Peter Wilks left? It ain't unlikely. If these men ain't frauds, they won't object to sending for that money and letting us keep it till they prove ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... She is truly devoted to me and suffereth this distress for my sake. Separated from me, she may perchance wander to her relatives. Devoted as she is to me, if she stayeth with me, distress will surely be hers; while it is doubtful, if I desert her. On the other hand, it is not unlikely that she may even have happiness some time." Reflecting upon this repeatedly, and thinking of it again and again, he concluded, O monarch, that the desertion of Damayanti was the best course for him. And ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... wept over the idea, and at night, when the Prince returned, she told him of her fears; but he laughed at them, saying his life lay in safety, and it was very unlikely any ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... hour will surely be sufficient," the major said. "She is travelling at eight or nine knots an hour, and she is evidently bound for port. It would be unlikely in the extreme that her commander would beat back ten miles on what, after all, ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... was doubtless the half brother later to be knighted for his distinguished public services, Sir John Fielding; and, adds Mr Austin Dobson, "it is extremely unlikely the lady so discourteously characterised could have been any other than his wife, who Lady Stuart tells us 'had few personal charms.' There remain the 'three Irishmen' who may, or may not, have been perfectly presentable members of society. At all events, their ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... anything more unlikely," returned the doctor, "unless the same conditions conspire, which is scarcely supposable, as I could easily prove to you. You can understand, Mr. Lynde, that this has been a sore trial to Denham and his wife; they have had no children, and their hearts are bound up in Ruth. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... dark night, and set fire to the brig; and then come back here, get the cutter under weigh, and be off at once. But this even can only be done in the event of there being no one left on board at night, and this I consider very unlikely." ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... purpose—it would express his notion more clearly, perhaps, to say for a price. Of the methods of Fleet Street, he was profoundly ignorant, but his impressions of them were all cynical. Upon reflection, however, it seemed unlikely to him that Lord Plowden had secured the insertion of these rumours. So far as Thorpe could fathom that nobleman's game, its aims would not be served by premature publicity of ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... letters to write, and, as we shall see, as soon as the sun had well risen it was not likely that he would be altogether his own master. Thus we find Cicero on a February morning writing to his brother before sunrise,[417] and it is not unlikely that the soreness of the eyes of which he sometimes complains may have been the result of reading and writing before the light was good. In his country villas he could do as he liked, but at Rome he knew that he would have the "turba salutantium" ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... editors or from other reasons, the text is in a most deplorable condition. Yet this is not in itself sufficient to account for many positive misstatements. Either the editors used a very free hand in altering the rough manuscript, or—which is not in itself unlikely, and is borne out by other facts—Caesar's own prodigious memory and incomparable perspicuity became impaired in those five years of all but superhuman achievement, when, with the whole weight of the ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Donna Lucrezia d'Este, which took place, though little to his taste, for she was old enough to have been his mother.' 'The Duchess wished to return to Ferrara, where she subsequently chose to remain, a resolution which gave no annoyance to her husband; for, as she was unlikely to bring him a family, her absence mattered little.' 'February 15, 1598. Heard that Madame Lucrezia d'Este, Duchess of Urbino, my wife, died at Ferrara during the night of the 11th.' (Dennistoun's Dukes of Urbino, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Roumanian army moved forward toward Bessarabia, could have been hot on the heels of the flying Russians, and might, according to all human calculations, have brought about a complete debacle. It is not unlikely that the collapse which later took place in Russia might have come about then, and after a success of that nature, with no "America" as yet on the horizon, we might perhaps have brought the war to an end. Two things, ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... lived for twenty years in the firm conviction that she would die in the poorhouse—as, indeed, seemed not unlikely—before she would ask a favour of Andrew Cameron. And so, in truth, she would have, had it been for herself. But for Sylvia! Could she so far humble herself ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... closer consideration of circumstances would have shown that 40,000 of the best infantry in the world under Buonaparte, behind strong lines of circumvallation round Mantua, had so little to fear from the 50,000 men coming to the relief under Wurmser, that it was very unlikely that any attempt even would be made upon their lines. We shall not seek here to establish this point, but we believe enough has been said to show that this means was one which had a right to a share of consideration. Whether Buonaparte himself ever thought of such ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... say for me. I must go up to their confounded chatter again. Tell her there's no fear, none whatever. You all hate us, naturally; but you know that Austrian officers are gentlemen. Don't speak my name to her just yet. Unless, of course, she should happen to allude to me, which is unlikely. I had a dismal idea that her husband was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not, John. Unless Morris should chance to make a good marriage, which is unlikely, for, as you know, he is an odd fish, I can see nothing before us except ruin. Indeed, at my age, it does not greatly matter, but it seems a pity that the old house should come to an end in such ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... in the money market matrimonial. All these notions I have to contend against. Things can't be done at once. If I give him a shock—well, we'll drop any consideration of the consequences. Write to your sister to tell her to bring your father. If they make particular inquiries—very unlikely I think—but, if they do, put ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... considers it to be his duty at the present time to show how an abundance of excellent and nourishing food may be obtained from the most unlikely materials. In doing this he is aware that he is merely following the example set him by countless culinary experts, who have communicated their ideas to the daily press; but Mr. Punch is not to be deterred from doing a helpful action ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... 'Not unlikely,' she said in an indifferent tone, and did not speak again for some minutes; then said, 'Yes, I see! I am thankful it did not tell on me sooner,' and her look brought the tears into ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... belongings had been examined three times that day, the next step would probably be another search of his person. Unless in the mean time he could definitely establish his innocence of purpose, which was unlikely, it behooved him to rid himself of the weapon without delay. This, however, was a problem. He could not bring himself to throw the thing away, and his bare bedroom offered no place of concealment. Late that evening ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... other nation, feel for the misfortunes of an honourable foe. The Poems of Ossian had by their popularity sufficiently shown that, if writings on Highland subjects were qualified to interest the reader, mere national prejudices were, in the present day, very unlikely ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... capital, with the decision to offer defence there? She could not believe it. It seemed more probable that he had hurried down the river toward Zalapata to meet his antagonist, who may have turned and fled to his own town. Even this looked unlikely, but it was the only explanation that presented itself. She would have liked to converse with her friend, but the circumstances were unfavorable. The continual shifting of conditions compelled her to keep a firm seat and rein and to watch every ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... must have been to Charles for 'tis very unlikely Mr. Surface should go to fight in ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... evening paper, and then stole upstairs to look at the poor babies as they lay asleep. She was not a mother, and never would be. People, indeed, called her an old maid, and with reason enough, though she was little over thirty; for had she been seventy, she could not have been more unlikely to marry. It was not her vocation. She had plenty to do in the world without that, and was satisfied with her life. The sad reflection that the children whom she tended were not her own, did not visit her ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... religion was composite) brought the priests into intimate relations with adults and children. As the priests, apart from their monstrous sacrificial functions, appear to have been intelligent and humane, it is not unlikely that their general moral ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... enormous personal value, are of no practical value in inheritance whatever; that to wed "ability" to "ability" may breed something less than mediocrity, and that "ability" is just as likely or just as unlikely to be prepotent and to assert itself in descent with the most casually selected partner as it is with one picked with all the knowledge, or rather pseudo-knowledge, anthropology in its present state can ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... from an attack on the part of the Indians, and also to let the latter gentry know that we were on the look-out. It was arranged that we should all keep watch until the arrival of our friends, to be the better prepared for any danger which menaced us and them; for we thought it not unlikely that the Indians were hovering about the camp, and might attempt a surprise. Exhausted, however, by excitement and fatigue, one by one we dropped off to sleep. I was wakened up by the report, as I thought, of a rifle, which was immediately ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... the cattle to the foothills, along which they were expected to graze for an indefinite time. Hustlers were abroad, and the occurrences of the previous day had inflamed the feeling between them and the cowmen. It was not unlikely that, having been beaten off, some of them might take the means of revenging themselves by stealing ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... with the fly in his mouth. He weighed three-quarters of a pound. The next one was equally eager in rising and sharp in playing, and the third might have been his twin sister or brother. So, after casting for hours and taking nothing in the most beautiful pools, I landed three trout from one unlikely place in fifteen minutes. That was because the trout's supper-time had arrived. So had mine. I walked over to the rambling old inn at Goisern, sought the cook in the kitchen and persuaded her, in spite of the lateness of the hour, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... had left her umbrella in the train. How she could do such a thing upon such a day! Her memory was not her strongest point, poor lady, and it was a good umbrella, and she could not afford to buy another. Perhaps they would find it for her, but it was very unlikely. ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... world; and indeed most strangers on their first entrance were observed to grow extremely thoughtful, as weighing and pondering in their minds whether the upper rooms were only approachable by ladders from without; never suspecting that two of the most unassuming and unlikely doors in existence, which the most ingenious mechanician on earth must of necessity have supposed to be the doors of closets, opened out of this room—each without the smallest preparation, or so much as a quarter of an inch of passage—upon two dark winding flights of stairs, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... English point of view that young man at Rome, without a status, without a settled prospect in life, would have seemed an amiable dreamer, destined to wake suddenly, and not very pleasantly, to the stern realities of life. If anything seemed unlikely, it was that an English gentleman, a man of good birth and of independent fortune, should give his daughter to this poor young German at Rome. Yet this was the very thing which a kind Providence, that Providence in which Bunsen trusted amid all ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... believe that this woman was really in earnest, as well as being Saxe Leinitzer's jackal. We were friendly enough in Paris that year. She is unscrupulous enough, of course. Always with some odd fancy for the grotesque or unlikely. I wonder—" ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... compromising document. He knows that all his rooms will be secretly searched for it, so he puts it in a torn envelope and sticks it up where anyone can see it on his mantle-shelf. The result is that the woman who is ransacking the house to find it looks in all the unlikely places, but passes over the scrap of paper that is just under her nose. Sometimes the papers and packages they give us to carry about Europe are of very great value, and sometimes they are special makes of cigarettes, and orders to court-dressmakers. Sometimes we know what we are carrying and ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... and crying that she should be late and must run, the little maid picked up her paraphernalia (not forgetting the red bergamot), and fled down the lane. And Jack, with equal haste, snatched up the tell-tale heap of flowers and threw them into a disused pig-sty, where it was unlikely that Daddy Darwin would go to look ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... another jar of olives he found a similar hoard of silver denarii. Of these we took as many as were necessary to replenish the store of coins Chryseros had furnished us with. Even of silver we dared not carry too much. The hoard was so large that the handful of coins we took was unlikely ever to ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... circumstances, it evidently became expedient to endeavour, by sawing, to get the ships as close in-shore as possible, so as to secure them either to grounded ice or by anchoring within the shelter of a bay at no great distance inside of us; for it now seemed not unlikely that winter was about to put a premature stop to all further operations at sea for this season. At all events it was necessary to consult the immediate safety of the ships, and to keep them from being drifted back to the eastward. ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... realized that even if her mother lived she was very unlikely to be found at Ellsworth now. Her bitter enemies would have driven her ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... but reach the mountains of the interior, which are almost entirely uninhabited, he would be safe from pursuit and might either wait to join the next uprising or proceed to a different part of the country, where he was unknown and where, owing to the difficulty of intercourse, detection would be unlikely. Instances have occurred more than once where an escaped malefactor has become a "general" of other outlaws and by threatening to raise an insurrection has induced the government to ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... a close, and Scholastica had never seen an opera or a play. Armelline wanted to see a ball, and I had at last succeeded in finding one where it seemed unlikely that I should be recognized. However, it would have to be carefully managed, as serious consequences might ensue; so I asked the two friends if they would wear men's clothes, to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... not take advantage of me in such a discussion. I don't claim to know what sins may be included in the phrase 'wild oats.' Let us speak frankly—can you say that you think it unlikely that Roger Peyton has been ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... as he lay with eyes bandaged and a knowledge that to-morrow was the day fixed for the destruction of the bridge, was his own incapacity. It was unlikely that his head or his eyes would be right by to-morrow, or that Rockwell would allow him to get up. He felt in his own mind that the injury he had received was a serious one, and that the lucky horseshoe had done Maxchand's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Shoeing.—A horse should not be sent on a journey or any other hard work immediately after new shoeing;—the stiffness incidental to new shoes is not unlikely to bring him down. A day's rest, with reasonable exercise, will not be thrown away after this operation. On reaching home very hot, the groom should walk him about for a few minutes; this done, he should take ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... anything," murmured the lady; and indeed it was unlikely that she could distinguish anything in such a ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... it, I have not said it; and if Master Cap is ready to testify to the fact, unlikely as it seems, I am willing to try to think it true. I think it every man's duty to believe in the power of God, however difficult it ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... had her holiday this month," remarked Mrs. Mills, glancing with pride at her niece, "but she preferred not. I don't feel sure whether she did right or whether she did wrong in giving them up. There's more unlikely places than a seaside boarding-house to pick up a future husband." She gave details of a case of a young woman living in Harrow Road, who, in the summer of 1900, met at Eastbourne a gentleman with ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... was most likely to depend. All beyond the bridge was a plain open field, excepting a few thickets of no great depth, and, consequently, was ground on which the undisciplined forces of the insurgents, deficient as they were in cavalry, and totally unprovided with artillery, were altogether unlikely to withstand ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... morning we had to pull with all our strength, and in 4 1/2 hours we covered 3 1/2 miles. Last night it was overcast and thick, surface bad; this morning sun shining and surface as bad as ever. One has little to hope for except perhaps strong dry wind—an unlikely contingency at this time of year. Under the immediate surface crystals is a hard sustrugi surface, which must have been excellent for pulling a week or two ago. We are about 42 miles from the next depot and have a week's food, but only about 3 to 4 days' fuel—we are as economical of the latter ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... to proceed to Rendezvous Y, which according to Admiralty instructions was off Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, where a flotilla of small craft was patrolling day and night, as a precautionary measure in the unlikely event of any hostile craft forcing the formidable defences of the western ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... romance? Or is it a glorified version of some real adventures? Or can it be an old tale, perhaps dating from the early dawn of human history, readapted and fitted on to the person of an historical Rama? The first of these hypotheses seems unlikely, though by no means impossible. The second suggestion has found much favour. Many have believed that the story of the expedition of Rama and his army of apes to Lanka represents a movement of the Aryan invaders from the North towards the South; and this is supported ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... Nevertheless, he set about it energetically, sparing no expense and yet preserving a certain caution in order not to embarrass the Countess. He reasoned that if Cardi and Narcone had fled their own island they would be unlikely to seek an utterly foreign land, but would probably go where their own tongue was spoken; hence the Countess was doubtless in one of the Italian cities. When several weeks had been spent without result ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... the world from the eyes of the immigrant who has lost all his illusions of the land where dollars grow on the street and where everyone has an equal chance to be president, and if you do not cringe in abject humility, you are not unlikely to be insufferably self-asserting, considering that the world has robbed you and that now it is your turn to get all that is coming to you. So you make loud demands in a rude, ordering voice. The nurse is there to wait upon you—and finally ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... was deformed. The idea that he might become her lover or that her meeting him could cause disapproval in that light, had not occurred to her; and Philip saw the absence of this idea clearly enough, saw it with a certain pang, although it made her consent to his request the less unlikely. There was bitterness to him in the perception that Maggie was almost as frank and unconstrained toward him as ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... who was planning a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences as a means of extrication from his embarrassments. In such circumstances, it was not unnatural for Goldsmith to revert to his own past travels, and to the reflection that he was unlikely again to set out upon them, unless sheltered like Johnson behind a pension. He assured Boswell that he would never be able to lug the dead weight of the Rambler through the Highlands. The enthusiastic pioneer, however, was loud in the praises of his companion; Goldsmith thought ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... to the Vaughans; and Crofton Croker gives, in his Fairy Legends, a fac-simile of a portrait, drawn by a Welsh peasant, of a Pwcca, which (whom?) he himself had seen sitting on a milestone,[45] by the roadside, in the early morning, a very unlikely personage, one would think, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the tap-root penetrates, it is not unlikely the succory derived its name from the Latin succurrere to run under. The Arabic name chicourey testifies to the almost universal influence of Arabian physicians and writers in Europe after the Conquest. As chicoree, achicoria, chicoria, cicorea, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... promulgate such changes upon recommendation of the Tariff Commission after exhaustive investigation. Changes by the Congress in the isolated items such as those to which I have referred would have been most unlikely both because of the concentrations of oppositions in the country, who could see no advantage to their own industry or State, and because of the difficulty of limiting consideration by the Congress to such ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Herbert Hoover • Herbert Hoover
... particular in this description of my journey, and shall be so of my first entry into that city, that you may in your mind compare such unlikely beginnings with the figure I have since made there. I was in my working dress, my best clothes being to come round by sea. I was dirty from my journey; my pockets were stuffed out with shirts and stockings, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... God of my Heaven is as a child in my arms. Ah, I am happy, the world is good, and now the spring is coming. We rejoice in the growth of the year; Gabriel longs for the first primrose. He is so hard at work that I think it unlikely we shall get married before the end of April; the poem is writing itself at present; it would be a sin to interfere with its progress. I think, too, that if he can possibly finish it, he will be able to go away with a greater content upon him, with the satisfaction that only achievement brings. ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... belligerents in 1870, nor at the time of the American War of Secession, and I am not sure that Messrs. Mason and Slidell were not trotted out. The Foreign and Home Secretaries, the very distinguished civil servants declared, would not unlikely be agitated when they heard of the shocking affair. Soldiers, no doubt, were by nature abrupt and unconventional in their actions, and the Foreign and Home Offices would make every allowance, realizing that we had acted in good faith. But, hang it all—and they ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... on the other hand, by doing what she has foreseen, you are not obeying a suggestion against which you could not fight except by violently doing the opposite to what it demands of you, which again would be a case of inverted suggestion. None therefore would have any value save predictions of unlikely happenings, clearly defined and outside the sphere of the person ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... hate her in the end. At last he had been glad to let her go out of his life, for she had made arrangements by which he kept more than half her money. There was no danger that he would try to snatch her back again; and as for European friends and acquaintances, it was unlikely that such worldly persons would care to come to the place she meant to select. It would be far from the ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... involved, of her most intimate affairs, with a stranger and her social inferior. All sorts of suspicions, indeed, ran through her mind as to the motives that could have prompted Mrs. Meadows to hurry up to Scotland, without taking even the decently polite trouble to announce herself, bringing this unlikely and trumped-up tale. Most probably, a mean jealousy of her husband, and his greater social success!—a determination to force herself on people who had not paid the same attention to herself as to him, to make them ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... to me unlikely that a man of genius will be a fish reporter shortly I will myself do the best I can to paint the tapestry of the scenes of his calling. The advertisement in the newspaper read: "Wanted—Reporter for weekly trade paper." Many called, but I was chosen. Though, doubtless, no ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... country between this and Cromwell's post," Leslie said, "and he would have difficulty in finding his way hither. There is more than one broad morass to be crossed, and without a guide he would scarce attempt it. It is for this reason that he is so unlikely to send out foraging parties in this direction. It was this reflection which caused me to wonder why we ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... was that of the Lossie Burn, flowing along in the starlight through the grounds of the House. Of this he satisfied himself afterwards; and then it seemed to him not unlikely that in ancient times the river had found its way to the sea along the cave, for throughout its length the action of water was plainly visible. But perhaps the sea itself had used to go roaring along the great duct: Malcolm was no geologist, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... untidiness on their streets and literally shamed those communities into cleaning up the plague-spots. Had he been a commonplace editor with his main thought on the subscription list he would have avoided controversy by confining his leading articles to subjects unlikely to offend any one, but he would not pursue any policy that meant a surrender of his ideals. When occasion demanded he did not hesitate to hit squarely from the shoulder. Whether the public agreed with him or not, it knew that The Journal was very much in earnest whenever ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... here, that the Lord has used some of the most unlikely persons during the past twenty-two years, in providing me with means for His service. So it was particularly in the case of this brother in the Lord, from whom I received the last-mentioned donation of 110l. I had not the least natural ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Fourth Part • George Mueller
... is the land of the Albanians, whom the Turks conquered by force of arms, like all the rest of the Balkan peninsula. They are a distinct race by themselves; it is supposed that they are the descendants of the ancient Illyrians, those wild tribes of whom the ancient Greeks wrote. Nor is this unlikely, for in such a country as theirs the inhabitants are most likely to remain pure from generation ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... daylight, sir," suggested my skipper. "It's not unlikely, in these days of torpedoes, that the entrance to places may be ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... made, and whether it be not an improving of their condition to make them the slaves of civilized masters? There is a variety in the character of the tribes. Some are brutally and savagely ferocious and bloody, whom it would be mercy to enslave. From the travelers' account, it seems not unlikely that the negro race is tending to extermination, being daily encroached on and overrun by the superior Arab race. It may be, that when they shall have been lost from their native seats, they may be found numerous, and in no ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... which case I should perish of starvation. It was conceivable that I might, in attempting to avert this fate, fall upon the Sun, though this seemed exceedingly improbable, requiring a combination of accidents very unlikely to occur. On the other hand, I might by possibility attain my point, and yet, failing properly to calculate the rate of descent, be dashed to pieces upon the surface of Mars. Of this, however, I had very little fear, the tremendous power of ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... round after tea, or having them in his own room —as he could fit it in—for the parish was a very large one, and Mr. Floyd, like his father before him, visited cottages miles away on the moors, and, like old Mr. Floyd, was a great scholar, which made it so unlikely—she had never dreamt of such a thing. Ought she to have guessed? But let alone being a scholar he was eight years younger than she was. She knew his mother—old Mrs. Floyd. She had tea there. And it was that very evening when she came back from having tea with old Mrs. Floyd that she found ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... of working-class conditions in Germany is unlikely to think clearly unless he distinguishes between such terms as Social Democracy, Socialism, Trade Unionism, and Labour party. Social Democracy is a species of Socialism. All Social Democrats are Socialists, but not all Socialists Social ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... distraction. We—You may possibly have heard that the family is in great distress of mind over the disappearance of my young nephew. Helen has suffered particularly, because she is convinced that the boy has met with foul play. I myself think it very unlikely—very unlikely indeed. The lack of motive, for one thing, and for another—Ah, well, a score of reasons! But Helen refuses to be comforted. It seems to me much more like a boy's prank—his idea of ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... just the right mixture of friendliness without impertinence and restraint without servility. Mr. WENMAN as a superabundant gum-chewing impresario, and Mr. EILLE NORWOOD as head villain, were quite plausible in the interesting and unlikely situation. I must say I like this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... established, having Mr. Browning for its principal object. It has a president, two secretaries, male and female, and a treasurer. You pay a guinea, and you become a member. A suitable reduction is, I believe, made in the unlikely event of all the members of one family flocking to be enrolled. The existence of this society is a great relief, for it enables us to deal with our unwieldy theme in a light-hearted manner, and to refer those who have a passion for solid information and profound philosophy to the printed transactions ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... were yielded by sources near Dalaki, which were certainly known to the ancients. Sulphur was deposited upon the surface of the ground in places. Some of the mountains contained ordinary lead; but it is not unlikely that this ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... a separate sheet of paper addressed for signature. The messenger brought back the sheet of paper with strange initials, "J. L. for S. A.," and there was no reply. There remained the possibility of absence from Calcutta, of illness. That he should have gone away was most unlikely, that he had fallen ill was only too probable. Hilda looked from her bedroom window across the varying expanse of parapeted flat roofs and mosque bubbles that lay between her and College street, and curbed the impulse in her feet that would have resulted in the ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... engraved as a talisman!... The mysterious Adonis who loved her and suffered for her sake!... All that story seems very unlikely; and I wonder whether, Lupin though you be, you did not just drop upon a pretty love-story, absolutely genuine and ... none ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... sole reward. With Leo it is different, and often and often I bitterly envy him his happy lot, for if She was right, and her wisdom and knowledge did not fail her at the last, which, arguing from the precedent of her own case, I think most unlikely, he has some future to look forward to. But I have none, and yet—mark the folly and the weakness of the human heart, and let him who is wise learn wisdom from it—yet I would not have it otherwise. I mean that ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... the death of my friend. After I had once made up my mind to make him steal the securities his disappearance seemed to be the only way to insure my safety. Of course no one could know I was connected with this matter. I would not go near the bank, and unless he was followed, which was most unlikely, as he had been with the bank some years and was a thoroughly trusted official, there would be absolutely no chance of ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... place. Mrs. Cliff frequently spoke of him as a valued friend, and there was reason to believe that in the various adventures and dangers of which they had heard, Mr. Burke had been of great service to their old friend and neighbor, and it was not unlikely that his influence had had a good deal to do with her receipt of a portion of the treasure discovered by the commander of ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... that bishops did not wear mitres, according to high authority, until after the year 1000, it is unlikely that any of the ancient chessmen in which the Bishop appears in a mitre should be of earlier date than the eleventh century. There is one fine Anglo-Saxon set of draughts in which the white pieces are of walrus ivory, and the black ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... each fakir striving in this respect to eclipse his fellows. It is only necessary to open a book of Indian travel to find descriptions of fakirs in abundance; and such descriptions might seem exaggerated or unlikely were they not so concordant. The following are a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... child now left him had been a son, heir to the family property and so on, he might have behaved quite otherwise, and he would have been bound to do so. But having only a female child, who might never grow up, and, if she did, was very unlikely to succeed, he must have resolved at least to wait. And perhaps he confirmed himself with the reflection that even if people believed his tale (so long after date and so unvouched), so far as family annals were concerned, the remedy would be as bad as the disease. Moreover, ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... Kublai's third son, who governed the provinces of Shen-si and Sze-ch'wan, with the title of Wang or king (supra ch. ix. note 2), died in 1280, a circumstance which limits the date of Polo's journey to the west. It seems unlikely that Marco should have remained ten years ignorant of his death, yet he seems to speak of him ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... burned rye. Anna was always cold; she cannot remember that the house was ever warm enough to be comfortable; still she enjoyed life and made up her mind to go to college, to be a preacher, and to be worth one hundred thousand dollars. She named this amount because it seemed so unlikely she would ever have any money. Often she would steal away and preach in the woods ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... can conceive so hidden and treacherous a means of destruction? Of course the book might have come fortuitously into the possession of the occupant of the dug-out, might even have been left there and forgotten by some passing British soldier when the place was captured; but the latter at least is unlikely. When inquisitiveness had such dire results no one did much prying until everything had been examined and pronounced safe. But that the wells were safe was the great thing and their importance could hardly ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... with mercy, and that all, righteous and wicked alike, should not again be destroyed. A problem continually in Ezekiel's thoughts was this very question of wholesale divine punishment, as exemplified in the case of Judah; and it would not have been unlikely that the literary structure of the Babylonian extract may have influenced the form in which he embodied ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... opportunity for lady 'bus-conductors to recuperate after the rigours (the more remunerative rigours) of service on a single 'bus. These statements of mine are open to extensive correction. Jay's hours always struck me as so very confusing that it is unlikely I should be able to retail the information correctly. However, ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... proportion then as they are loosened from the one, they will go to the other. Next, because many doctrines which I have held, have far greater, or their only scope, in the Roman system. And, moreover, if, as is not unlikely, we have in process of time heretical Bishops or teachers among us, an evil which ipso facto infects the whole community to which they belong, and if, again (what there are at this moment symptoms of), there be a movement in the English Roman Catholics to break the alliance of O'Connell and ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... council, working primarily for its own survival. Unless the Allies insist upon the presence of representatives of Saxony, Bavaria, and so forth, and demand the evidence of popular sanctions—a thing they are very unlikely to demand—that is what "Germany" will signify at the conference. And what is true of Germany will be true, more or less, of several other of the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... truly amazing performance. Moldini was not astonished, however, for he had heard the songs, and he knew Crossley's difficulties through Estelle Howard's flight. Also, he knew Crossley—never so "weak and soft" that he trifled with unlikely candidates for his productions. Crossley had got up because he knew what to do and when ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Jim ate the few biscuits they had baked and some raw bacon. Then they counselled with one another. Their thirst was so great, it was agreed they must have water at any cost. They knew the Indians were unlikely to attempt another attack until dawn, and so they decided to attempt to reach the stream shortly after midnight. Although it was scarcely more than fifteen hundred yards, that was a terrible journey for Loving. Compelled to crawl noiselessly to avoid alarming the enemy, Jim could give ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... conflicted with some preconceived theory. It would have been easy now, for instance, to assume that this prim spinster was mistaken in declaring that she had seen the pistol thrown from the window of Number Seven. That, of course, seemed most unlikely, since the shooting was done in Number Six, yet how account for the woman's positiveness? She seemed a truthful, well-meaning person, and the murderer might have gone into Number Seven after committing the crime. It was evidently important ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... no means unlikely to have suggested the doggerel of Sir Benjamin Backbite; and the scandalous conversation in this scene, though far inferior in delicacy and ingenuity to that of Sheridan, has somewhat, as the reader will see, of a parental ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... over much likely and unlikely craft, we finally decided on a two-masted schooner of trim but solid build, the Maggie Darling, 42 feet over all and 13 beam; something under twenty tons, with an auxiliary gasolene engine of 24 horse power, and an alleged speed of 10 knots. A staunch, as well as a pretty, little boat, with good ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... strolled down to see, was hurrying to pass the boys and wade out with an oar over his shoulder behind the line of corks, ready to splash and beat the water should there, by any chance, be a shoal of mullet within—no unlikely event, for these fish swam up with the tide to feed upon the scraps and odds and ends which came from the village down the little streamlet. And often enough their habit was, when enclosed, to play follow-my-leader, and leap the cork line and ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... would it sound, "I have an immersion to be immersed with, and how am I straitened?" &c. "Are ye able to be immersed with the immersion that I am immersed with?" I believe that sprinkling was the original mode of Christian baptism. And it seems to me unlikely that God would appoint an ordinance, and not appoint, by precept or example, the mode of it. I believe that the mode of baptism was appointed, as well as the rite itself, and I see no instance of baptism in the New Testament by immersion. Pouring, whether more or less copiously, has ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... Riley, and accepted these friendly offers, though he afterwards remarked to Winn that as they were searching for a lost raft, and not for a gang of counterfeiters, he thought it unlikely that he should ever ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... Muncy—Fort Muncy—and Lock Haven—Fort Reed; but Fort Muncy was some twenty-odd miles east of the Fair Play territory and Fort Reed was beyond the Great Island at its western extremity. As a result, these outposts were unlikely meeting places for the tribunal or for its election.[12] Unfortunately, there is no recorded evidence of a specific meeting of ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... as skilfully as they who practised this art in Egypt's palmiest days. Nay, it is doubtless far within the truth to claim that better than they did we could do; and we are actually apprised of better methods and results than they employed or could attain, and it is not unlikely that we shall hear of better methods still. But Egypt's method, or its modern counterpart, will hardly now be popular. It involves too much mutilation and too much transformation. When it has done its work little is left but bone and ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... rites of ghost-worship, possibly also rallying places of the tribe on stated occasions. But whether this ghost-worship was ever transmuted into the cult of a god at the circles is uncertain and, indeed, unlikely. The Celts would naturally regard these places as sacred, since the ghosts of the dead, even those of a vanquished people, are always dangerous, and they also took over the myths and legends[961] associated with them, such, e.g., ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... of the train, Rich," I said, with what I suppose was elaborate carelessness, "I don't want you to get a wrong impression. I am rather unlikely to see her again, but even if I do, I—I believe she is already 'bespoke,' or next thing ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that a cunning man might choose the most unlikely places for the concealment of compromising property, he was ransacking the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the case, I reasoned that it was altogether unlikely that the trivial impression as to President Byxbee had been the only one which I had received in that state. It was far more probable that it had remained over in my mind, on waking from the swoon, merely because it was the latest of a series of impressions received while outside the body. That ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... any other, and is not to be passed over in summing up the forces of the conflict. "A soldier without religion," says a Prussian officer, who knew our army as well as the German, "is an instrument without value"; and it is not unlikely that the knowledge of the part that faith played in sustaining the Southern people may have lent emphasis to ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... thinking that her love of Ussher was strong enough to induce her to take almost any step that he might desire; and that that love, joined to her own obstinacy and determined resistance to the advice of those to whom she should have listened, was such as to render it most unlikely that she should be induced to give him up; but though he so well understood the weakness of her character, he was not aware of, for he had had no ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... set, except that it was slightly larger. There were a number of regular wire telephones scattered throughout the woods, to aid in fighting forest fires, so that anybody traveling along the path would have been unlikely to give this outfit more than a passing glance, if they noticed it at all. Had the radio boys not chanced to see the black-moustached man listening, with wireless headphones over his ears, the fact that the box contained a wireless receiving outfit ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... into effect, I would suggest that authority be given for investing the principal, over the proceeds of the surplus referred to, in good securities, with a view to the satisfaction of such other just claims of our citizens against China as are not unlikely to arise hereafter in the course of our ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... get on capitally with the regiment. I can't say as much for that young fellow Stapleton. He seems to be completely puffed up with the sense of his own importance, and to be an unlicked sort of cub altogether. However, I have known more unlikely subjects than he is turn out decent fellows after a course of instruction from the boys; but he will have rather a rough time of it at first I expect. You will be doing him a kindness if you take an opportunity to tell ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... of you," I replied. She looked about, incredulous, as it seemed an unlikely place for a nest of any sort, so open was it, and so easily swept by the ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... right sorry that the time of our parting was so near; but Clarendon gave him a warm invitation to visit us in Virginia. Captain Cobb did not think it at all unlikely that we might have a visit from his son one of these days, for New England boys think nothing of being a ...
— Hurrah for New England! - The Virginia Boy's Vacation • Louisa C. Tuthill
... again, I stretched my limbs back and forth as strenuously as I could, and as silently, for I wished no sound to give any hint that I was still alive, if, indeed, sound could penetrate to the passage, which is unlikely. Even before the last of the water had run away from the cell, I lay stretched out at full length on the floor, hoping I might have steadiness enough to remain death-quiet when the men came in with the lantern. I ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... safe-conduct to Dresden for the purpose of a renewed investigation of his case, on condition that, within three days after sight, he lay down the arms to which he has had recourse. It is to be understood, however, that in the unlikely event of Kohlhaas' suit concerning the black horses being rejected by the Tribunal at Dresden, he shall be prosecuted with all the severity of the law for arbitrarily undertaking to procure justice for himself. Should his suit, however, terminate otherwise, we will show mercy to him and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... hillside long before they reach you. Should you see them, you will of course close the door, enter each of you one of the sarcophagi, lie down in the inner case, close the lid of the sarcophagus, and place the lid of the inner case over you. I think it unlikely in the extreme that any search will be made for you, or at any rate a search only of untenanted tombs. The fact of the stone here being left uncemented is a mere accident probably known only to myself and its owner. It is ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... obliged to drive over the Taygetus range, over which there has never yet been a road for wheeled vehicles. It is plain therefore that the audience for whom the "Odyssey" was written was one that would be unlikely to know anything about the topography of the Peloponnese, so that the writer might take what liberties ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... large circle of acquaintances in the city," I said. "It is not unlikely that I knew or knew of some of them. Perhaps I may have known them well. Wouldn't it be interesting if I should chance to be able to tell you all ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... examined. Hans, who had heard every syllable that passed, was not, however, so manageable a subject as the plaintiff expected to find him. Whether, like Toby Allspice in the play, he 'made it a rule never to disoblige a customer;' or whether, which was not unlikely, he owed Karl Gurtler a grudge, either for stopping him on his route, or for some previous disagreement with that conscientious public functionary; or whether, which was likeliest of all, he feared to compromise his claim for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... the ashes from his pipe by striking it against the heel of a work-gnarled hand. He looked about him thoughtfully and said, "Yes, perhaps you're right. I am an old man and life has been good. I suppose I should be glad that I'll unlikely live to see ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... is not the only ending defeat might bring to the two islands. We must proceed then to discuss No. 2, the alternative fate reserved for Ireland in the unlikely event of a great British overthrow. This is, that if the existing partnership were to be forcibly dissolved, by external shock, it would mean for Ireland "out of the frying pan into the fire." The idea here is that I have earlier designated as the "bogey man" ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... its feet, or sometimes sucks a piece of it, it is the persistence of the habit of pressing the mammary glands and sucking during kittenhood." Mr. Wallace goes on to say that infantine habits are generally completely lost in adult life, and that it seems unlikely that they should persist in a few isolated instances.) If you have ever actually observed a kitten sucking and pounding, with extended toes, its mother, and then seen the same kitten when a little older doing the same thing on a soft ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... good indemnity, or even a province in Italy?" Surprised at this abrupt question on a subject which I was far from thinking of, I replied that I did not think the pretender would relinquish his claims; that it was very unlikely the Bourbons would return to France as long as he, Bonaparte, should continue at the head of the Government, though they would look forward to their ultimate return as probable. "How so?" inquired he. "For a very simple reason, General. Do you not see every day that your agents conceal the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of so many restrictions on commerce, and by the practical science which has overcome so many difficulties connected with the transport of slain meat and other perishable commodities. England seems not unlikely to become a wonderfully cheap country to live in, unless some new turn of events interferes with the processes which during the last two decades have so increased the purchasing power of money that, as is confidently stated, ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... other prisoners in the same ward. He could hardly file through the bars of the window unnoticed by them, and they would naturally wish to share in his flight; but where one person might succeed in evading the vigilance of the guard, it was unlikely in the extreme that twenty would do so, and the alarm once given all would be recaptured. He was spared the trouble of making up his mind as to his plans, for by the time he had finished his letter the hour that the hucksters were allowed to sell their goods was passed, and the gates were ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the commander-in-chief, Colonel Alexander Champion aforesaid, "thought nothing could be more honorable to this nation than the support of so exalted a character; and whilst it could be done on terms so advantageous, supposed it very unlikely that the vakeel's proposition should be received with indifference"; that he did accordingly refer it to the administration through Warren Hastings, Esquire, then Governor of Fort William and President of Bengal; and he did at the same time inclose ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... on at the bar, Pleading or Sessions. I have failed in the former, I shall now try the latter. Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo!" I was, I confess, amongst those of his friends who were not sanguine as to his prospects of success at the bar, regarding him as unlikely to attract favourable notice in court practice. Shortly after he had attended at the Sessions, however, he began to obtain a little employment in petty cases there; and, contrary to expectation, became very successful in defending prisoners: his acuteness, vigilance, ingenuity, and legal knowledge—particularly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... ceased to think on the subject—perhaps my first girlish misery was true, and there is in me something repulsive—something that would prevent any man's seeking me as a wife. Therefore, even if my own feelings could change, it is unlikely there will ever come any soothing after-tie to take away the memory ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Bala believed that he found traces of Lake-dwellings in Bala Lake, and the people in those parts have a tradition that a town lies buried beneath its waters—a tradition, indeed, common to many lakes. It is not therefore unlikely that if the lakes of Wales are explored they will yield evidences of lake-dwellers, and, however unromantic it may appear, the Lady of the Van Lake was only possibly a maiden snatched from her watery home by a ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... was killed in the act of reading the summons. This is also denied by Washington, and rests only on the assertion of the Canadian who ran off at the outset, and on the alleged assertion of Indians who, if present at all, which is unlikely, escaped like the Canadian before the fray began. Druillon, an officer with Jumonville, wrote two letters to Dinwiddie after his capture, to claim the privileges of the bearer of a summons; but while bringing forward every other circumstance in ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... they became the three tributary countries (sankan) dependent on Japan. Although this invasion of a foreign country without cause or provocation must be pronounced indefensible, yet it is not unlikely that the subject kingdoms were quite as safe and free under the distant and little intermeddlesome dominion of the Japanese empire, as they had been in the past or were likely to be in the future from their troublesome neighbors, China and the restless Mongolian tribes. To Japan the connection ...
— Japan • David Murray
... action was unlikely to confuse the war issues in the manner Germany looked for. Whatever hopes Germany built upon that freedom did not deter Secretary Lansing and Mr. Balfour from hastening to counteract misleading impressions current that America would be embarrassed in its postwar foreign policy ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... emphasis—nothing can keep them apart. Soul rushes to soul,— heart leaps to heart,—and all form and ceremony, custom and usage crumble into dust before the power that overwhelms them. These sudden storms of etheric vibration occur every day among the most ordinary surroundings and with the most unlikely persons, and Society as at present constituted frowns and shakes its head, or jeers at what it cannot understand, calling such impetuosity folly, or worse, while remaining wilfully blind to the fact that in its strangest aspect it is nothing but ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... their move that induced Lorenzo Costa to follow them. In that way the Ferrarese school became somewhat complicated with the Bolognese school, and is confused in its history to this day. Costa was not unlikely the real founder, or, at the least, the strongest influencer of the Bolognese school. He was a painter of a rugged, manly type, afterward tempered by Southern influences to softness and sentiment. This was the result of Paduan methods meeting ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... goods? We are here in a desert place, and there is no likelihood of your getting horses." "My lord," answered one of the prisoners, "the black robbed us of our camels as well as our goods, and perhaps they may be in the stables of this castle." "This is not unlikely," replied Codadad; "let us examine." Accordingly they went to the stables, where they not only found the camels, but also the horses belonging to the sultan of Harran's sons. There were some black slaves in the stables, who seeing all the prisoners ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... cross was found broken at its foot, probably by the country iconoclasts of the day. I have brought the interesting fragment again into light, and placed it conspicuously opposite to an old Scotch fir in the churchyard, which I think it not unlikely was planted by Townson on his restoration. The accumulation of the soil of centuries had covered an ascent of four steps at the bottom of this record of silent hours. These steps have been worn in places, from the act of frequent prostration or kneeling, by the forefathers of the hamlet, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... that there were peaceable relations between Praeneste and Cave in the fifth and sixth centuries B.C., but that the two towns were on terms of equality is impossible, and that Cave was a dependency of Praeneste, and in her domain, is most unlikely both topographically and epigraphically. And more than this, just as an ancient feud can be proved between Praeneste and Rome from the slurs on Praeneste which one finds in literature from Plautus down,[23] if no other proofs were to be had,[24] just so there is a very ancient grudge between ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... importance, as a British possession, if not exaggerated on the whole, was unduly magnified in several important particulars. Thus Lord Minto, in a speech delivered at a county meeting, and afterwards published, affirms, that supposing (what no one could consider as unlikely to take place) that the court of Naples should be compelled to act under the influence of France, and that the Barbary powers were unfriendly to us, either in consequence of French intrigues or from their own caprice and insolence, there would not be a single ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the signification of "Lord"—a term implying personality, and when used specially of one Being, implying absolute mastery and lordship, an exclusive right to worship, homage, and devotion. It is not unlikely that the "Disk-worshippers" were drawn on towards their monotheistic creed by the presence in Egypt at the time of a large monotheistic population, the descendants of Joseph and his brethren, who by ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... Thinking it very unlikely that two snakes had got on board at the same time, I turned in and went to sleep; but having all the time a vague dreamy idea that I might put my hand on another one, I lay wonderfully still, not turning over once ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... has been retarded and interrupted in this Island, shall not onely be taken out of the way, but shall turn to the advantage and furtherance of it at last. The onely wise God can and will bring about his holy purposes by unlikely, yea by contrary means: And God forbid that either our Brethren in England or our selves should give way to despondency of Spirit, and cast away the hopes of that so much prayed for and so much wished for Reformation of Religion, and Uniformity in all the parts thereof according ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... not know of anyone to suit Bates's requirements, and he did know that the neighbourhood of Chellaston was the most unlikely to produce such servants, but, having that which was disappointing to say, he said it by degrees. Bates ordered a glass of cooling summer drink, and had his pipe filled while they discussed. The one tasted to him like gall, and the fumes of the other were powerless to allay his growing trepidation, ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... a long ways better than that, you'll admit, Cynthia," broke in Tucker, with a peaceful intention. "I can't help reminding you, my dear, to be thankful that it wasn't so unlikely a person as ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... direction for miles, whilst the creek presented only occasional rocks of flat water-worn sandstone, and the screw-palm 'Pandanus Spiralis' occurred in all the water-courses, a tree that from its peculiarity would scarcely have been unnoticed or undescribed. As it was quite unlikely that he should have misrepresented the country, the natural presumption was, that Mr. Richardson must have been in error as to their true position; this was in reality the case, the error in his assumed longitude ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... of a supernatural character. He considered that the ways of the Gods are not as our ways, and that it is rather the rule than the exception with them to accomplish their designs in the most circuitous manner, and by the most unlikely instruments. He also reflected upon the history of the Sibyl and her books, and shuddered to think that unseasonable obstinacy might in the end cost the temple the whole of its revenues. The result of his cogitations ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... analogy in the fact that the elder woman (in both plays a strong and determined character) has in Scribe's comedy a cowardly suitor, while in Ibsen's tragedy, or melodrama, she has a cowardly husband. In every other respect the plays are as dissimilar as possible; yet it seems to me far from unlikely that an unconscious reminiscence of the Bataille de Dames may have contributed to the shaping of The Feast at Solhoug in Ibsen's mind. But more significant than any resemblance of theme is the similarity ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... out of the line of travel to Patesville. Rena had no acquaintance with people of social standing in North Carolina; and with the added maturity and charm due to her improved opportunities, it was unlikely that any former resident of Patesville who might casually meet her would see in the elegant young matron from South Carolina more than a passing resemblance to a poor girl who had once lived in an obscure part of the old town. It would of course be necessary for Rena to keep ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... not prevail. I do not see that any good can possibly come of giving publicity now, to our proceedings. On the contrary, in the present excited condition of the country, I can see how much harm might result from that publicity. It is not unlikely that wide differences of opinion will be found to exist among us at the outset. These we shall attempt to harmonize, and if we succeed, it will only be by mutual concessions and compromises. Every one should be left free to make these concessions, and not subject ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... in his own room —as he could fit it in—for the parish was a very large one, and Mr. Floyd, like his father before him, visited cottages miles away on the moors, and, like old Mr. Floyd, was a great scholar, which made it so unlikely—she had never dreamt of such a thing. Ought she to have guessed? But let alone being a scholar he was eight years younger than she was. She knew his mother—old Mrs. Floyd. She had tea there. And it was that very evening when she came back from ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... ever. The sun gaed doun amang unco-lookin' clouds; it fell as mirk as the pit; no' a star, no' a breath o' wund; ye couldna see your han' afore your face, an' even the auld folk cuist the covers frae their beds an' lay pechin' for their breath. Wi' a' that he had upon his mind, it was geyan unlikely Mr. Soulis wad get muckle sleep. He lay an' he tummled; the gude, caller bed that he got into brunt his very banes; whiles he slept, an' whiles he waukened; whiles he heard the time o' nicht, an' whiles a tyke yowlin' up the muir, as if somebody was deid; whiles he thocht ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... In this quiet backwater of a seaport village the passage of time was deliberate, and the development of hard-worked apothecaries was slow. Ibsen's nature was not in any sense precocious, and even if he had not languished in so lost a corner of society, it is unlikely that he would have started prematurely in life or literature. The actual waking up, when it came at last, seems to have been almost an accident. There had been some composing of verses, now happily ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... vary a little, cleeks and irons differ much, but mashies are more unlike each other than any of them. So much depends upon this part of the game, and so much upon the preferences and peculiarities of the player, that it is unlikely that the first mashie in which he invests will go alone with him through his experience as a golfer. To his stock there will be added other mashies, and it is probable that only after years of experiment will he come to a final determination as to which is the best for him to use. In ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... remarkable of all about an orchid is that this marvel of colour and form and of texture of fabric unfolds itself from within a most ungainly, unsightly, unlikely-looking tuber. From shapeless, colourless tubers, which attach themselves to trunks and branches of trees and cling on to rocks, there emerge these peerless aristocrats of the flower-world, finished, polished, immaculate, and reigning ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... out from unexpected places. So she now proceeded cautiously round the room, peeping into dark corners and behind curtains, as if some dangerous animal were lurking there. There was no place too small or too unlikely that she did not thoroughly examine, but it was Philippa who at last caught sight of a pair of green eyes gleaming in ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... said, and he had no qualms about making that vow, for Fred and Charlie were in splendid health, and it was very unlikely that they would become seriously ill during ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... him. In those days it used to take six months to get a letter to Australia, and another six to get word back, so the baby was more than a year old when Uncle Phil wrote that if he didn't marry in the meantime and have a son of his own—which was very unlikely—he would make young Phil his heir and come out after him, too, one ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... a talented young preacher had taught unsound doctrine. She cited his words. I showed her that the words were taken verbatim from the "Confession of Faith," which is our Scotch Thirty-Nine Articles. I think it not unlikely that she would go on telling her tattling story just the same. I remember hearing a stupid old lady say, as though her opinion were quite decisive of the question, that no clergyman ought to have so much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... from the Ital. bugnone, a swelling, but, according to the New English Dictionary, the late and rare literary use of the word makes an Italian derivation unlikely; there is an O. Eng. word "bunny," also meaning a swelling, and an O. Fr. buigne, modern bigne, showing a probable common origin now lost, cf. also "bunch"), an inflamed swelling of the bursa mucosa, the sac containing synovial fluid on the metatarsal joint of the big ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... capacity, even had the will been admitted, to meet the required outlay in money and men. Another question, too, was prominent in men's minds, and indisposed them to contemplating a subjugated South. They would ask, "What is to be done with the South, on the unlikely supposition of its being conquered? Is it to become an American Poland?" All these considerations inclined the great majority of the nation to believe that the South would succeed; and, of those who so believed, a large proportion held the Southerners to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... baffled. If one can't solve a chess problem by starting off with the most unlikely-looking thing on the board, one can't solve it at all. However, I copied down the position and said I'd glance at it.... At eleven that night I rose from my glance, decided that Herbert's problem was the more immediately pressing, and took it to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... Lady Locke thought him the last boy in the universe to lay a plot for the obtaining of a fortune. Had he, then, conceived a light passing fancy for her? She thought this possible, though a little unlikely. He was so different from the other men whom she had known, that she could never "place" him, or feel that she knew at all what his mind was likely to do under given conditions, or in cut and dried situations. Undoubtedly he had begun to think about her as well as about himself, an unusual conjunction, ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... true lover Redworth, it might be only Percy Dacier. So filmy of mere sensations are these little ideas as they flit in converse, that she did not reflect on her friend's ignorance of Redworth's love of her, or on the unlikely choice of one in Dacier's high station ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the princess must return to Germany. She was bitterly grieved at parting with the Terror, and assured him that she would certainly come to England the next summer, or even earlier, perhaps at Christmas, to see him again. It seemed not unlikely that after her short but impressive association with the Twins she would have her way about it. Nevertheless, in spite of her exhaustive experience of the strenuous life, and of the firm ideals of those who led it, at their parting she cried in the ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... see the force of Mivart's objection to the theory of production of the long neck of the giraffe (suggested in my first Essay), and which C. Wright seems to admit, while his "watch-tower" theory seems to me more difficult and unlikely as a means of origin. The argument, "Why haven't other allied animals been modified in the same way?" seems to me the weakest of the weak. I must say also I do not see any great reason to complain of the "words" left out by Mivart, as they do not seem to me materially ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... heaven knows how many minutes of interested observation, Roger discovered his identity again—and loathed it. His conduct appeared to him indescribably beneath contempt, his situation deplorable. Margarita, sobbing quietly in her corner, seemed unlikely to raise either his spirits or his estimate ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... nearness to the mainland has prevented any such fatal crystallization of its organisms as we see in islands like St. Helena. That any English species would be exterminated by foreign competition is extremely unlikely; whether we introduce exotic birds or not, the only losses we shall have to deplore in the future will, like those of the past, be directly due to our own insensate action in slaying every rare and beautiful thing with ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... the conclave were determined by motives of petty interests, personal jealousies, and local considerations, to such an extent that the election seemed finally to be the result of chance or inspiration. We find the most unlikely candidates, Caraffa and Peretti, attributing their elevation to the direct influence of the Holy Ghost, in the consciousness that they had slipped into S. Peter's Chair by the maladroitness of conflicting ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the greatest number of moons, would be likely to retain some of his inner rings unbroken; that the earth would be likely to have a long day and Jupiter a short one; that the extreme outer planets would be not unlikely to rotate in a retrograde direction; and so on, through a long list of interesting and striking details. Not only, therefore, are we driven to the inference that our solar system was once a vaporous nebula, but we find that the mere contraction of such a nebula, under the influence of the enormous ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... that, possessing nothing, she possessed all things; and her secret escapes you if you are aware only of her splendid paganism. She never speaks the language of religious resignation like Anne and Charlotte. It is most unlikely that she relied, openly or in secret, on "the merits of the Redeemer", or on any of the familiar consolations of religion. As she bowed to no disaster and no grief, consolation would have been the last thing ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... lawyer, with a smile; "but if he has no children of his own, as I believe is the case with him, it seems unlikely that he would risk his substance in a rash attempt to turn out those ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to those who offered him adoring service on his triumphal march, and that the murmur of the wronged belonged to the more serious side of life for which his full-flowing Greek blood had small patience. Such strange, unlikely tales ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... taken by belligerents in 1870, nor at the time of the American War of Secession, and I am not sure that Messrs. Mason and Slidell were not trotted out. The Foreign and Home Secretaries, the very distinguished civil servants declared, would not unlikely be agitated when they heard of the shocking affair. Soldiers, no doubt, were by nature abrupt and unconventional in their actions, and the Foreign and Home Offices would make every allowance, realizing that we had acted in good faith. But, hang it all—and they gazed ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... of militarism which western civilization is presently carrying, have unbalanced budgets, which lead to inflation and to onerous burdens of debt and taxes. It seems unlikely that a group of warfare states like the top western European powers can escape the economic contraction which presently threatens them and regain solvency and stability through fiscal reforms or readjustments ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... Sunday was second again in the Grand Prix de Paris, Thurio passing him only by a head. Making the passage again—and this was his fourth voyage within fifteen days—he gained the Ascot Derby. It is not unlikely that if this remarkable horse had remained permanently in the one country or the other he would have carried off the principal ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... appears to have shared the opinions then prevalent among the Liberal party that the colonies would soon be detached from the mother country. On the appointment of a Governor-General of Canada, shortly before his resignation of office, he observes in a diary that it is not unlikely to be the last ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... settled, and never could be. Sam Clemens's tendency to somnambulism would seem to suggest that he really might have taken on a hypnotic condition, while his consummate skill as an actor, then and always, and his early fondness of exhibition and a joke, would make it not unlikely that he was merely "showing off" and having his fun. He could follow the dictates of a vivid imagination and could be as outrageous as he chose without incurring responsibility of any sort. But there was a penalty: he must allow pins and needles to be thrust ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... people, you know, dear; and it is dark at four, and that is as late as they could well have heard, and nothing could have happened since—very unlikely. We have come very fast; it is only a few minutes past ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... charged his Apostles to 'baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.'" But "He may perfectly well have said: 'Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.'" The one formula seems to Arnold anachronistic and unlikely, the other perfectly natural. This is all very interesting and may be very true; but it is too dogmatic to be convincing. In such a case one may respectfully cry out that Letters are overstepping their ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... are filled with such terrible lies and unlikely things that any sensible boy or girl should see their foolishness at once. Think, for example, of a book relating how two boys defeated and killed or captured several hundred Indians! Is that likely? The truth is, if two Indians shook their tomahawks at ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... Wiser Men than these, propos'd to Unite with them, hear their Reasons, and do them Right. These indeed were the only Men that were in the right Method of concluding this unhappy Broil, and for that Reason, were the most unlikely to succeed. ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... "I think it very unlikely that Lupin will look for the coronet in M. Gournay-Martin's bedroom. He would know very well that that is the last ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... notion that HOMER was really the name of some early Greek Co-operative Stores, and that the Iliad and Odyssey were parts of a gigantic scheme of advertisements. This is very illuminative and indicates that a real desire for efficiency exists in the most unlikely quarters. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... fears were not unlikely to be realised. He therefore gave the rope to the seaman who had first come ashore, with ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... inner hall of legislation, this will not prevent, but rather stimulate, to a greater earnestness in the contest between truth and falsehood—between light and darkness—in the outer field of society; nor will the result of such a contest in favour of what is right and good be at all the more unlikely, that the families of the land have been raised by the helping hand of the State to a higher platform than before, whether as respects their health, or their physical comfort, or their economic condition, or, last of all, their place in the scale of intelligence ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... outset, nothing was more unlikely than that these two should advance by smooth paths to a clear and utter understanding. His one glimpse of her face dethroned his cold logic and moved him very deeply; she was so white, so pitifully sad-looking. She, too, had suffered; God knew that she had battled through hours of anguish. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... and he was sure, from the way she glanced up at the window, and from her position in the shrubbery, that she had seen the signal. Madame did not look displeased. On the contrary, though an alliance with Christine now seemed unlikely, because of the state of Ferrol's health and his religion and nationality, it pleased her to think ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... said I, "it's rather unlikely we shall come across him in a crowded court like that, knowing neither the name nor the house ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... likes work for work's sake, apart altogether from honeyed praises, is now beyond question, for the campaign she has just inaugurated is unlikely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... deprived of all offices, and that recent letters to the King denouncing him as a rebel should be publicly contradicted. When Berkeley heard of these demands, he swore he would rather suffer death than submit to them. But the Burgesses, who thought it not unlikely that they might soon have their throats cut, advised him to grant whatever was demanded.[603] So a letter was written to the King, and signed by the Governor, the Council and the Burgesses, expressing confidence in Bacon's loyalty and justifying his past actions.[604] Several of Berkeley's ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... was twenty-six years of age, had therefore the youngest and smoothest of faces; care had never touched her life, and wrinkles were unlikely to visit her. ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... of all these pleasant happenings strange misgivings began to mix with John's days and cross and darken his hours of rest. Every morning he got his London letter, always full of love and satisfactions, yet uncalled-for and very unlikely apprehensions came into his thoughts and had power to shake his soul as they passed. He was angry at himself. He called himself ungrateful to God who had so wonderfully helped him. He prayed earnestly for a thankful, joyful spirit, and he assumed the virtue of cheerfulness though he was far ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... categorical answer as to what you would do in the event supposed." Strangely enough, to this pointblank question, the Foreign Secretary appeared to be unable to reply. The whole matter, he said, was extremely complicated, and the contingencies mentioned by His Royal Highness were very unlikely to arise. The Prince persisted; but it was useless; for a full hour he struggled to extract a categorical answer, until at length Palmerston bowed himself out of the room. Albert threw up his hands in shocked amazement: what could one ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... footsteps on the grass! There was no one in any sort of authority to notice him There went the past! To seem to be respectable was to be Too afraid of committing himself in any direction Trees take little account of time Unfeeling process of legal regulation Unknowable Creative Principle Unlikely to benefit its beneficiaries Wanted things so inexorably until she got them Waves of sweetness and regret flooded his soul Weighing you to the ground with care and love Went out as if afraid of being ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... not easy even to shoot anything inside a fir plantation at night: as for the noose, it is almost impossible to use it. The lowest pheasant is taken first, and then the next above, like fowls perched on the rungs of a ladder; and, indeed, it is not unlikely that those who excel in this kind of work base their operations upon previous ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... do you separate impurity and pleasure, which indeed soon fly asunder when the improvident would unite them. But never believe that tenderness of heart signifies corruption of morals, if you happen to find it (which indeed is unlikely) in the direction you have taken; on the contrary, no two qualities are oftener found together, on mind as on matter, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... absolutely nothing of this kind in the intercourse of the American author with the American railroad magnate, it may be safely stated that the general tone of society in America makes such an attitude rare and unlikely. There social equality has become an instinct, and the ruling note of good society is of pleasant cameraderie, without condescension on the one hand or fawning on the other. "The democratic system deprives people of weapons that everyone does not equally ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... absurd tales, and they were not only solemnly published by the anti-Bolshevik press, but believed by the most unlikely persons-Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviki who had always been distinguished by their sober devotion ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... Bagshot, in Surrey, i.e., Bag or Badger’s holt; Bagley, near Oxford; Badgeworth, near Cheltenham (from which last neighbourhood the writer has a badger-skin), &c. An alternative derivation, of course, is the word Bag, or Bage, i.e., “turf,” for fuel, which might be not unlikely in Lincolnshire; but as “Bag” enters into place-names all over the kingdom, where the word “Bag,” for turf, is not used, this ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... now from an outbreak of the imagination which exhibits itself in politics and the most unlikely places. The German Emperor, for example, is neither a tyrant nor a lunatic, as used to be absurdly represented; he is simply a minor poet; and he feels just as any minor poet would feel if he found himself on the throne of Barbarossa. The revival ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... Adonis and Adonai, and has the signification of "Lord"—a term implying personality, and when used specially of one Being, implying absolute mastery and lordship, an exclusive right to worship, homage, and devotion. It is not unlikely that the "Disk-worshippers" were drawn on towards their monotheistic creed by the presence in Egypt at the time of a large monotheistic population, the descendants of Joseph and his brethren, who by this time had multiplied greatly, and must have attracted attention, from their numbers and from ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... dinner, and during the day had been heard to express to each other all that adverse criticism as to the affairs of the hunt in general which appeared a few lines back. Walker and Watson were very good fellows, popular in the hunt, and of all men the most unlikely to ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... been roused towards morning by those soft sounds in the second room, which he had heard more than once in the passing weeks. In his feverish moments, it had not seemed unlikely that his wife might be there, coming back to haunt, with her gentle presence, the familiar rooms. There was, indeed, her light step, the rustle of her ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... suffereth this distress for my sake. Separated from me, she may perchance wander to her relatives. Devoted as she is to me, if she stayeth with me, distress will surely be hers; while it is doubtful, if I desert her. On the other hand, it is not unlikely that she may even have happiness some time." Reflecting upon this repeatedly, and thinking of it again and again, he concluded, O monarch, that the desertion of Damayanti was the best course for him. And he also thought, "Of high fame and auspicious ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... to his mirror and examined himself critically, Why not? he asked himself. He was very pleasing. Women had always been wax in his hands; he had a personality, an air, an irresistible something that had won him many conquests. It seemed not unlikely that Hilda had been shocked into a new and keener realization of his many admirable qualities and was ready to make up, if, or when, he graciously chose ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... listen to sallies of fancy, scientific discussion, episodes of likely and unlikely adventures, tales that make one burst with laughter, histories that fill the eyes with tears, real dramas that freeze the soul with horror, and of which the historian is almost always the hero. In the midst of all this ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... relished the conversation, and did not join in it, is more unlikely. In his charge to Boswell, he very likely pointed out that what was said within was not to be reported without. Boswell gives only brief reports of the talk at the Club, and these not openly. See post, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... been prohibited it is unlikely that the Slate Club Secretaries' Sprinting Handicaps will be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... history of Israel was itself a prediction, a great supernatural system of types and shadows, and that all the interventions of the divine hand are one in principle, and all foretell the great intervention of redeeming love, in the person of Jesus Christ. Nor need that be unlikely in the eyes of any who believe that Christ's coming is the centre of the world's history, and that there is in prophecy a supernatural element. We are not reading our own fancies into Scripture; we are not using, in allowable freedom, words ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the Arab lad, Ahmed, disappeared. It happened during the midday halt, when the rest of the party were drowsing. No one knew when he went or how, but he vanished as if a hand had plucked him off the face of the earth. It seemed unlikely that he would have wandered into the bush, but this was the only conclusion that they could come to; and they spent the rest of the ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the whole tale was so unlikely that, by degrees, as he gazed at the wreck, now completely bathed in moonlight, he began to persuade himself that his eyes ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... known to, and not only officially connected with, the natives. While I feel very strongly that in many ways intercourse occasionally resumed with the home clergy must be very useful to us, yet if you can understand that there is no one to take one's place, you see how very unlikely it must be that I can move from this hemisphere. I say "if you can understand," for it does seem sad that one should really be in such a position that one's presence should be of any consequence; but, till it please God that the Bishop shall receive ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his extreme good-nature, the serious, unsmiling good-nature of a fat, swarthy man with coal-black moustache and steady eyes; but he might have been a bit of a diplomatist, too. His enticing suggestions I used to repel modestly by the assurance that it was extremely unlikely, as I had not enough experience. "You know very well how to go about business matters," he used to say, with a sort of affected moodiness clouding his serene round face. I wonder whether he ever laughed ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... our visitors, who therefore stayed over the forenoon. It made our Christian population look fairly formidable, and certainly very reputable as a force for uplifting and regenerating society. It looks but yesterday that they were a horde of the most unlikely and unresponsive people one could approach, and yet the Gospel has made of them already something to prove that it is the power of God unto salvation to a people and to an ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... the thought, or at least I thought I did so. I tried to picture Enid's work on the Coast, to remember the short time she had been in the East. It was possible Millard had known her before she went to Los Angeles, but unlikely. ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... heap. These heaps are more or less scattered, and are exposed to the rain, and snow, and frost. The horse-manure is quite likely to ferment too rapidly, and if in a large heap, and the weather is warm, it not unlikely "fire-fangs" in the center of the heap. On the other hand, the cow-manure lies cold and dead, and during the winter freezes into ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... just as Hillyard had been. Harry Luttrell had meant to pay his farewell visit to Stella Croyle, knowing well that he was unlikely ever to come back, and understanding that he owed her it. But an incident drove the whole matter from his thoughts, and the incident was just one instance to show how wide a gulf now ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... of this essay are, I imagine, very largely composed of people who would be shocked to be regarded as anything but enlightened Protestants. It is not unlikely that those of them who have accompanied me thus far may be disposed to say, "Well, this is all very amusing as a story, but what is the practical interest of it? We are not likely to believe in the miracles worked by the spolia of SS. Marcellinus and Petrus, or by those ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the colon. Your goal is to empty the entire bag into the colon before sensations of pressure or urgency to evacuate the water force you to remove the nozzle and head for the toilet. Relaxation of mind and body helps achieve this. You are very unlikely to achieve a half-gallon fill up on the first attempt. If painful pressure is experienced try closing the clamp for a moment to allow the water to begin working its way around the obstacle. Or, next time try hanging the bag ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... a few lines below. The written 'r' is easily and often confounded with the written 'n'. The compositor read the first syllable 'court', and—his eye at the same time catching the word 'courtier' lower down—he completed the word without reconsulting the copy. It is not unlikely that Shakspeare intended first to express, generally the same thought, which a little afterwards he repeats with a particular application to the persons meant;—a common usage of the pronominal 'our,' where the speaker does not really mean to include himself; and the word 'you' is an ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... his name to certain poems and thus settled the question of their authorship. We know nothing of his life except what we infer from his poetry. He was probably born near the middle of the eighth century, and it is not unlikely that he passed part of his youth as a thane of some noble. He became a man of wide learning, well skilled in "wordcraft" and in the Christian traditions of the time. Such learning could then hardly have been acquired outside of some monastery ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... a heart not to pause at hearing a story which, however unlikely, was not impossible. He fastened his penetrating gaze on the farmer, who submitted to the examination with a plentiful supply of ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... to this insult. He and Jerry settled in their places at the oars, with Frank at the stern for ballast, and Dave up ahead to watch the channel, for Plum Run, unbelievably deep in places, had a trick of shallowing at unlikely spots. More than once had the Big Four had her paint scraped off by a jagged shelf of ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... observations made by you to me, relative to the error you suppose I have fallen into in mistaking the Wizard Peak of Captain King for the hill named by him Mount Fairfax, and I find I have certainly fallen into this error — a by no means unlikely one, considering the very similar character of the singular group of hills called Moresby's Flat-topped Range, and the circumstances ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... to go into partnership with the lady to keep him down," said Murdock with a grin. "I've formed more unlikely alliances than that in my time. Why, good Lord! what's that?" he exclaimed for the second time ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... "It is not unlikely you have among your students some future great inventors—perhaps some Edison, Bell or Morse—time will only determine this. America is a nation of inventors—the leaders in this mechanical age. Study, close application, the not too stringent adherence to formulae ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... a half, but about two and a half miles. Moreover, after crossing the spruit and the railway, the track traverses the northern slopes of a stony irregular underfeature which guards the approaches to the Kissieberg from the south and west. Progress over this ground was unlikely to be rapid. Roberts' homestead is 10-1/2 miles from Molteno. The troops had, therefore, already marched rather further than was originally anticipated; and, as they had halted for a short time every hour, their rate of marching had been fast for night-work over such country. ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... "Now, if I wanted to make the test, I should take another course from these men. I should not pick out something strange, or big, or unlikely. I should choose some every-day object, some little matter—" She paused as ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... window that looked towards the fields. Casting up his eyes by chance, he saw a gentleman walking up and down as if for his diversion, whereupon a thought immediately struck him, that it would be an easy matter to rob him, and by his appearance it was not unlikely but that he might prove a good prize. Without reflecting, he resolved upon the thing, and putting on over his nightgown an old great coat which he had in his closet and with a case of pistols in his breast, he slipped out at the garden ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... "Not unlikely," said the mate, smiling. "Don't lift your lances till they are wanted, and then handle them carefully. I don't say though that I shall strike a fish," he continued, as he rose in his place and stood ready, with one foot on the side. "Now ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... any one may fail, not one should be wanting, this to me is extremely improbable, and even cousin-german to impossible. So that the assurance hereof is like a machine composed of an innumerable multitude of pieces, of which it is strangely unlikely but some will be out of order; and yet, if any one be so, the whole fabric falls of necessity to the ground: and he that shall put them together, and maturely consider all the possible ways of lapsing and nullifying a priesthood in the Church of Rome, will be very inclinable ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... she examined the ins and outs of character in man or woman; and he felt that he was always more or less under this "lens," looked at as carefully as a scientist might study bacteria, and that as a matter of fact it was as unlikely as the descent of the moon-goddess to Endymion that she would ever submit herself to his possession. Nevertheless, he argued, stranger things ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... in Florida two Government officials who had done splendid work in behalf of labour. I mean the labourers who were decoyed by false promises and brutally abused on their arrival in the camps. They were both modest men—men unlikely to enter politics for personal advancement. I cut my articles out of the magazine and sent them to President Roosevelt, calling his attention to the conditions and commending these men to his notice. The result was that ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... sex, but without the appearance of arrogance or presumption; and she avoided an error too common among women, who, when they think themselves sensible, become for the most part insupportable." It is evident that if women were generally held in as high esteem as men, it is altogether unlikely that the expression "superior to her sex" would have been employed, and the latter part of the sentence leads to the further inference that pretentious and pedantic women of the kind referred to were not ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... be held in forms in which this uncanny doctrine of absolute identity was avoided; but at the best it meant an endless monotonous iteration, which was singularly unlikely to stimulate speculative interest in the future. It must be remembered that no thinker had any means of knowing how near to the end of his cycle the present hour might be. The most influential school of the later Greek age, the Stoics, adopted the theory of cycles, and the natural ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... Woods Agreements have now been approved by the required number of countries, both the International Monetary fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development will commence operations during 1946. The organization of these institutions will undoubtedly take some time, and it is unlikely that their operations will reach any appreciable scale before the beginning of the fiscal ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... how the Delphic oracle found out the right answer, but various easy methods of fraud at once occur to the mind. However, the procedure of Croesus, if he took certain precautions, was relatively scientific. Relatively scientific also was the inquiry of Porphyry, with whose position our own is not unlikely to be compared. Unable, or reluctant, to accept Christianity, Porphyry 'sought after a sign' of an element of supernormal truth in Paganism. But he began at the wrong end, namely at Pagan spiritualistic seances, with the usual accompaniments of darkness and fraud. His ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... perhaps, as a courtly flourish, rather than as conveying truth with mathematical precision. If not, we should be driven to suggest an alternative to the favourite simile of lying like an epitaph. But I think it unlikely that Marie suffered with a morbidly sensitive conscience. There is little enough real devotion to be met with in her "Lays"; and if her last book—a translation from the Latin of the Purgatory of St. Patrick—is on a subject she avoids in her earlier ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... streets," where half-clothed, underfed children shiver for warmth and food at the knees of women gaunt and haggard with the suffering which hopeless poverty inflicts on them; and by way of explanation of these grisly phenomena I would take him to the dock gates in the early morning, where not unlikely he would see men literally fighting for entrance because there is not work enough to go round. If that does not point him out the cause with sufficient clearness I would suggest an examination of the employment returns ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... wonder among them, then, and no little admiration, when this stranger who had come into that unlikely place on a bicycle leaped into the saddle so quickly that old Whetstone was taken completely by surprise, and held him with such a strong hand and stiff rein that his ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... likelihood of your getting horses." "My lord," answered one of the prisoners, "the black robbed us of our camels as well as our goods, and perhaps they may be in the stables of this castle." "This is not unlikely," replied Codadad; "let us examine." Accordingly they went to the stables, where they not only found the camels, but also the horses belonging to the sultan of Harran's sons. There were some black slaves in the stables, who seeing all the prisoners released, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the older man, in fact had a stern visage at first glance, until one learned to know it as the face of a man trained to restraint and endurance. As for the boy, no one could long resist the shrewd, kind youngster, who could spend an hour with the most unlikely invalid and leave him all the better for it. I was unusually busy just then, Clelie frankly hated and feared the man upstairs, my mother had her hands full, and there were many heavy and lonesome hours which Laurence set himself the task of filling. I left ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... only to add that the volume was given me by the sister of the late President of the English college at Valladolid, and that he obtained it during his residence in Spain. It is not unlikely it may have been carried thither by some of the English Catholics, who resorted to that country for education. In 1625 it seems to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... Dallaway's Constantinople, a book which Lord Byron is not unlikely to have consulted, I find a passage quoted from Gillies's History of Greece, which contains, perhaps, the first seed of the thought thus expanded into full perfection by genius:—"The present state ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... that Ralph and Sim had not taken the direct road home to Wythburn, for if they had done so he must have met them as he came from Staveley. There was the bare possibility that he had missed them by going round the fields to the old woman's cottage; but this seemed unlikely. ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... my own countrymen and strongly against this union—though, on the other hand, my daughter and her happiness are my first consideration in this world. Ethelrida was twenty-six yesterday, and she is a young woman of strong and steady character, unlikely to be influenced by any foolish emotion. Therefore, if you have been fortunate enough to find favor in her eyes—if the girl loves you, in short, my dear fellow, then I have nothing to say.—Let us ring and have a glass ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... letters, or anything else, blandly convinced that everything French is superlative and that nothing not French is worthy of attention. Although he appears rather frequently, he plays no real part in the story, and, unless there was some personal grudge to pay off (which is not unlikely), it is difficult to imagine why Madame de Stael should have introduced a character which certainly does her skill as a character-drawer very ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of course, but very unlikely. If I did, I never spoke to her, or I should have remembered her. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... considered a stranger in the place. Mrs. Cliff frequently spoke of him as a valued friend, and there was reason to believe that in the various adventures and dangers of which they had heard, Mr. Burke had been of great service to their old friend and neighbor, and it was not unlikely that his influence had had a good deal to do with her receipt of a portion of the treasure discovered by the commander ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... wrote a Project for the Advancement of Religion, addressed to lady Berkeley; by whose kindness it is not unlikely that he was advanced to his benefices. To this project, which is formed with great purity of intention, and displayed with sprightliness and elegance, it can only be objected, that, like many projects, it is, if not generally impracticable, yet evidently hopeless, as it supposes more zeal, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... "It is unlikely," I said, as I handed it to him, "that any other should bear precisely this monogram, and yet be in all other ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... many women are swayed too easily by their emotions. We must recollect, however, that for some thousands of years woman has been carefully drilled to believe that she is an emotional creature. If a dozen people conspire to tell a man that he is looking badly, it is not unlikely that he will feel ill. Certainly Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton exhibited no lack of firmness on the shambles of battlefields; and there are few men living who cannot recall instances of women who ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... cold, and a heavy drift blowing. Thorgaut was in the habit of coming home when it was half-dark, but on this occasion he did not return at his usual time. People came to church, and they now began to think that things were not unlikely to fall out as they had done before. Thorhall wished to make search for the shepherd, but the church-goers refused, saying that they would not risk themselves in the hands of evil demons by night, and so no ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... outside the door of the living-room, hung a small framed notice, which stated that Constable Moriarty was on guard. He looked at it. Then he peeped into the living-room and satisfied himself that the sergeant was still sound asleep. It was exceedingly unlikely that Mr. Gregg, the District Inspector of the Police, would visit the barrack on such a very hot day. Moriarty buttoned his tunic, put his forage cap on his head, and stepped out of ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... hear the helmet communications, though, because they carried only a short distance. The cruiser was close enough so that a helmet communicator turned on full volume might barely be heard, although it was unlikely. ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... be broken down in quotient. Two must ultimately be eliminated—barring, of course, the possible emergence of any minor factor to status of Prime, which at this stage seems unlikely. It is estimated that by today or tomorrow at the latest Carmack's murderer will be brought ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... of this play, it is difficult now to find the reason: it certainly has, in a very great degree, the power of fixing attention and exciting merriment. From the charge of disaffection he exculpates himself, in his preface, by observing, how unlikely it is, that, having followed the royal family through all their distresses, "he should choose the time of their restoration to begin a quarrel with them." It appears, however, from the Theatrical Register of Downes, the prompter, to have been popularly ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... into the open enclosure, and then sent them scampering back with shrieks of alarm as they saw the strange object in the air. A glance sufficed to assure Smith, as he wheeled round the village, that it contained no white men, unless they had been taken inside the huts, which was unlikely. Without loss of time he steered as nearly as he could towards the point at which he had diverged from his settled course, and returned to the camp, pausing once to examine a small tract where the trees were somewhat thinner, allowing him ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... that Obed's body never came to land. Panic-stricken by his death (I was told), our surviving comrades turned and fled into the woods: and from that hour no more was heard of them. Probably they perished of weariness and hunger; it is at least unlikely in the extreme that they found their way back ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... his friends, with some embarrassment. It was unlikely that the events of the summer had remained a secret; for that, there was a clique in the place over-much on the alert for scandal, to which unfortunately the name of Louise Dufrayer lent itself only too readily. He could not decide what position to take up, with regard to their present intimacy; ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... said Meldon, "Lorimer's, I daresay. At least she looks as if she had plenty, and that's the same thing in this case. If Simpkins marries her, it's extremely unlikely that he'll live long enough to find out whether she really has a large fortune, or is simply ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... that the "terra Flandrensis" of my charter signified land of the same description as the Dutch polders; the art of thus redeeming land being probably introduced from the Low Countries. It is not unlikely that, in that day, lands so brought into cultivation were designated as "terre Flandrenses," and the term ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... true, I believe, what you suggest, that Lord North showed a disposition to give up the contest, but was diverted from it not unlikely by the representation of the Americans in London, who, in connection with their coadjutors in America, have been thorns to us indeed on both sides of the water; but I think their career might have been stopt on your side if the executive officers had not been too timid in a point which I so strenuously ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... and eyes! I cannot, said I, give this treatment a name! The end so unlikely to be answered by means so low! I know whose the whole is! He that could get my uncle Harlowe to contribute his part, and to procure the acquiescence of the rest of my friends to it, must have the power to do any thing with them ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... chairs in the parlour and real Brussels," she anticipated. Peter affected to think it unlikely that she could be spared by the highly mythical person who was to carry her off to keep house for himself. Somehow Peter could never fall into the normal Bloombury attitude of thinking that if you had hip disease, your life was bound to be different from everybody's and you might as well say ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... which would give them approximately twelve hours' flying time. Under ideal weather conditions, they could make the journey in considerably less time, but it was the season for the well-known monsoons of the Indian Ocean, and it was quite unlikely that they would be able to wing their way across the fourteen hundred odd miles of sea without encountering ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... who had differed from me on this question, especially Governor Long, of whose brilliant administration of the Navy the people of the Commonwealth were so proud, had pressed his candidacy for the office in opposition to me, as has been the custom in like cases in other States, it is not unlikely that he would have ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... sent Jeff ranging far in those days. He made friends out of the most unlikely material. Some of the most radical of these were in the habit of gathering informally in his rooms about once a week. Sometimes the talk was good and pungent. Much of ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... superficial resemblance between the treatment of the actual encounter of Cain and Abel, and the conventional rendering of the same incident in the Ludus Coventriae, and in the Mistere du Viel Testament; but it is unlikely that he had closely studied any one Mystery Play at first hand. On the other hand, his recollections of Gessner's Death of Abel which "he had never read since he was eight years old," were clearer than he imagined. Not only in such minor matters as the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... supposing it possible to manage this by an inch at a time, it is quite impossible to manage it at a greater distance. If, therefore, you have to shorten both reins a foot, you cannot effect it without twenty-four operations. This is not at all an unlikely occurrence in riding unruly horses, for such horses are commanded by being made to bend or collect themselves. Their most frequent defence is jerking their heads away and extending themselves; and the facility of adjusting the length of the reins to the degree in which they extend or ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... their journeys backwards and forwards, visited their faithful brethren scattered throughout Italy. The barbes, indeed, possessed a house in each of the cities of Florence, Genoa, and Venice. As regards numbers, it is not unlikely that the Waldenses in Italy, France, and Germany at this time (the close of the fourteenth century) were about eight hundred thousand. Venice alone contained six thousand Vaudois, it is said, at ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... well-informed on the state, condition, and doings of everybody. Acting on this previous knowledge, they can often tell your past to perfection, and in many cases they predict future events—which their judgment informs them are not unlikely to occur. When ignorant, they work pretty much on the same lines as the Oracle of Delphi; they give an answer that may be taken as you please. Then, if things do not occur in the way they predicted, they simply make it an excuse for extorting more money out of their victim under the plea that ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... "Civilised" households in the island apparently numbered only three. Now, if my spy were working single handed he might conceivably be some better educated farmer who had lived abroad and turned traitor, but it seemed to me most unlikely that he should have no confederates, and it was scarcely possible for two or three men of that particular type to be gathered in so small a community. Brains and education seemed implied in every step of the dangerous game they were playing. Therefore it was ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... searched for—"who alone could show him clear as the day, or dark as the night." He asserted that Percy had obtained money from him by falsehood: and seeing how exquisitely little value most of these worthy gentlemen seem to have set upon truth, it was not at all unlikely. Lady Northumberland wrote an impulsive letter to Lord Salisbury, entreating him to stand her friend by "salving" her husband's reputation, "much wounded in the opinion of the world by this wretched cousin": but the only ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... to the entire outjutting region of America surrounding the Gulf of St. Lawrence—that part of this continent which is by far the nearest Ireland. Besides the facts above stated, certain coincidences of real geography and of these old maps favor that belief, and they are quite unlikely to have been guessed or invented. Thus certain maps, beginning with 1375, while keeping the circular external outline of Ireland, reduce the land area to a mere ring, enclosing an expanse of water dotted with islands; and ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... of Spain, so bad as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero or Domitian, who were four in twelve among the Roman Emperors." When we find David Hume thus putting the matter, in his Essay on "Civil Liberty," it makes us at once see how highly unlikely it is that all the badness of human nature should have been concentrated in a few individuals who lived at a particular period and in a particular country, those individuals being Emperors, that ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Presented in some twenty or so small towns, where it would soon be forgotten, a play something like. Most plays were something like. Our friend would produce his version and reap a rich harvest; ours would disappear. If by any unlikely chance discussion should arise, the advertisement would be to his advantage. So soon as possible we would replace it by a new piece altogether. A young man of my genius could surely write something better than hotch-potch such as this; experience was all that I had lacked. As regarded one's ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... adequate evidence to prove, as Bruce contended, that a few grants had been made prior to this time, even prior to 1617; but no record has been preserved in the Virginia Land Office. However, even if such grants were authorized, it is unlikely that the proper surveys were ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... most material part of the story to me," continued Lord Delacour; "for otherwise, you know, Mr. Vincent would be no more to me than any other gentleman. But in that point of view—I mean as a lover of Belinda Portman, and I may say, not quite unlikely to be her husband—he is highly interesting to my Lady Delacour, and to me, and to you, as ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... red St. George's Cross; but there is no reason to suppose that this inspired the flag of the colonies. Bunting was scarce and Franklin was always a thrifty soul. If that committee of three did design the flag, it is not at all unlikely that Franklin suggested utilizing the standards they already had, and changing their character by stitching on white stripes. To deface the flag of Britain was a serious offense, and maybe it was ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... deck, where the steward, a Goa man and the most assiduous and tactful of his trade, will place a mattress and blankets for you. You must expect to suffer somewhat from sea-sickness if you are subject to that ill, for the passage is not unlikely to be rough. On the way you see Lahaina, and a considerable part of the islands of Maui and Hawaii; in fact, you are never out of sight ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... Affectation! How do I know that the fellow writes with a quill? A most unlikely habit!" To that I answer you are right. Less assertion, please, and more humility. I will tell you frankly with what I am writing. I am writing with a Waterman's Ideal Fountain Pen. The nib is of pure gold, as was the ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... alarmed as was Lyons, but they were disturbed, nevertheless, and long preserved a suspicion of the American Secretary of State. May 23, Palmerston wrote to Russell in comment on Lyons' despatch of May 2: "These communications are very unpleasant. It is not at all unlikely that either from foolish and uncalculating arrogance and self-sufficiency or from political calculation Mr. Seward may bring on a quarrel with us[222]." He believed that more troops ought to be sent to Canada, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... is it a glorified version of some real adventures? Or can it be an old tale, perhaps dating from the early dawn of human history, readapted and fitted on to the person of an historical Rama? The first of these hypotheses seems unlikely, though by no means impossible. The second suggestion has found much favour. Many have believed that the story of the expedition of Rama and his army of apes to Lanka represents a movement of the Aryan ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... you there are things more unlikely. John thinks much of Lady Elizabeth, and is just one of the men to marry a plain quiet girl, fancying she would be the more domestic; and for yourself, you would find Emma very accommodating—never in ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "It's not only unlikely," said a voice, "but absolutely opposed to the facts, to the results of the investigation, in short, to the ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... 'it is a great mess, but they are to have a regular cabinet, when Richard has time, or Aubrey has money, two equally unlikely chances.' ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at issue, on each side, were the status of the Committee, the authority of the Governor to command its disbandment. The Committee had expressed the desire or the intention to have Casey committed to their custody, alleging that his escape from the jail was not unlikely for certain reasons. The Governor at length acceded in general terms to the propositions of the Committee, and measurably assured them his support. The Law and Order leaders were amazed, incensed and disgusted at the weakness of Governor Johnson. He had ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... ruefully, "I can't thrash a white-haired villain who is old enough to be my grandfather, even if I could get to him, which is unlikely. You know he has an inner office 'way off from the rest and sneaks in and out, up and down the back stairs. A suit for libel wouldn't do any good and the publicity would hurt more than the satisfaction I might get out ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... is, Did Milton carry out this intention, and pay Stowmarket a visit? Professor Masson thinks he may have been there in the memorable summer and autumn of 1630. The Rev. Mr. Hollingsworth, the Stowmarket historian argues that it is not unlikely that several, if not many, visits, extending over a period of thirty years, while the tutor held the living, were made by the poet to the place. Tradition has constantly associated his name with the mulberry-trees of the Vicarage, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... the Miscellanies is wholly occupied with the remarkable work entitled the History of the Life of the late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great. As in the case of the Journey from this World to the Next, it is not unlikely that the first germ of this may be found in the pages of the Champion. "Reputation"—says Fielding in one of the essays in that periodical—"often courts those most who regard her the least. Actions ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... Wilbur that it was not unlikely that he might have to come back to the spring a second time for more water, and he did not wish to risk another encounter. He thought to himself that if he did return and interrupted the wild-cat a second time he would not escape as easily as he had on this occasion, and consequently ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... part to the men. I think myself that it's most unlikely they would go beyond that. I've had our guides here make up a whole lot of resinous torches. They'll burn very brightly, and for a long time, and each of us will take as many as she can carry, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... It is not unlikely that the inquiry may be made, where Mr. Weller was, all this time? We will state where he was, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... lording him, to show that they were quite two. The fact is that they are in a huge difficulty with this appropriation clause, which served their turn for a while (when it turned out Peel and cemented their alliance with the Radicals), and now it hangs like a millstone round their necks, and is not unlikely to produce the dissolution of the Government. Strange that this Irish Church in one way or another is the insuperable obstacle to peace and tranquillity in Ireland, and to the stability of any Administration here; and yet it is fought for as if the prosperity or ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... no reason to accept Mr. Wallace's suggestion (The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, p. 34, note 7) that "it seems questionable, but not unlikely, that the timber framework was brick-veneered and plastered over." Mr. Wallace mistakenly accepts Wilkinson's view of the second Fortune ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... of exile. Possibly he may, in this long series of years, have become changed into a Persian. I understand your little lip, Fausta, and your indignant frown, Lucius; but what I suggest is among things possible, it cannot be denied; and can you deny it?—not so very unlikely, when you think what the feelings of one must have been to be so wholly forgotten and abandoned by his native country, and that country, Rome, the mistress of the world, who needed but to have stretched forth the half of her power to have broken for ever the chains of his slavery, as ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... was passed over, and these two foes helped each other in that friendly darkness. How much actual truth there was in this story I do not know, but I do know that there was considerable fresh beef among the men in the morning, and it was not at all unlikely that the Johnnies also profited by the presence of that "fresh" between the lines. Soldiers of either army would run almost any risk to get a bit of ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... innocent contents would divert from him further suspicion. The careless way in which he had thrown his satchel on the floor beside him, favored this theory. It seemed, on sober thought, extremely unlikely that the bearer of so valuable a piece of property would be so thoughtless as to place it loosely in an unlocked handbag. Even now the real package might be reposing safely ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... field itself inspired solemn reflections and noble pride in the mind of the sower. It was his own! He had carved it out of a wilderness! Here was soil which had never been opened to the daylight. Here was ground which perhaps for a thousand, and not unlikely for ten thousand years, should bring forth seed to the sower; and he had cleared it with his own hands! Generations and centuries after he should have died and been forgotten, men would go forth into ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
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