"Conceivable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the marine garden comprised several acres in which were plants of almost every conceivable shape and form, and more or less bright and delicate in colour. Fancy may feign shrubs, standard and clipped; elaborate bouquets, bunches of grapes, compact cauliflowers, frail red fans. Rounded, skull-like protuberances with the convolutions of the brain exposed, stag-horns, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... assertion put forth. A single quotation will be sufficient to illustrate the spirit prevailing upon this point. It is from a letter on the subject published in South Australian Register of the 1st August, 1840:—"It would be difficult to define what conceivable proprietary rights were ever enjoyed by the miserable savages of South Australia, who never cultivated an inch of the soil, and whose ideas of the value of its direct produce never extended beyond obtaining a sufficiency of pieces ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... "That a man of intellect has doubts about his mistress is conceivable, but about his ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Margaret regarded her wonderingly. For all her exploiting of the Zenith Club of Fairbridge, she herself, unless she were the main figure at the helm, could realise nothing in it so exceedingly inspiring, but it was otherwise with Annie. It was quite conceivable that had it not been for the Zenith Club, she never would have grown to her full mental height. Annie Eustace had a mind of the sequential order. By subtle processes, unanalysable even by herself, even the record ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and recession of the sun. This observation, however, could not have been made until man had migrated from the tropical regions, and had reached a stage of mechanical development enabling him to live in subtropical or temperate zones. Even then it is conceivable that a long period must have elapsed before a direct causal relation was felt to exist between the shifting of the sun and the shifting of the seasons; because, as every one knows, the periods of greatest heat in summer and greatest ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... been common to assert that a balloon poised in space is the most delicate balance conceivable. Its intrinsic weight must be exactly equal to the weight of the air it displaces, and since the density of the air decreases according to a fixed law, amounting, approximately, to a difference in barometric ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... treatment of other conceivable alternatives he proceeds to show that as the existent had no beginning so it can have no ending in time. From this, by a curious transition which Aristotle quotes as an example of loose reasoning, ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... for which India is famous—every conceivable article which the fancy or ingenuity of man can possibly fabricate out of such commodities, as sandal wood, ebony, ivory, and porcupines' quills, richly and delicately carved, may be had here for a mere song if ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... Probably no conceivable circumstances would have better developed the character of this backwoods scholar. His hardy limbs found real pleasure in work, which kept his body braced and healthy, while the active mind was exerting its great faculties in the ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... Greece from the fall of the Byzantine Empire up to this hour is a tragedy, and the final deliverance in 1828 was more painfully sad and disappointing, more shamefully mismanaged and limited, more wretchedly hampered and hindered in every possible way, than is easily conceivable, considering the popular sentiment roused by such Philhellenes as Byron, Erskine, Gladstone, and the Genevan banker Eynard. Think of the massacre of Chios, and then hear men talking ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... been too suddenly sprung upon the masses. The autonomy granted to the provinces needs more control than the civil government originally intended, and ends in an appeal on almost every conceivable question being made to one man—the Gov.-General: this excessive concentration makes efficient administration too dependent on the abilities of one person. There are many who still think, and not without reason, that ten ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... individually worth a superlative, as a novel by Jane Austen or a sonnet by Wordsworth is. The Elizabethan lyrics are an immensely more precious possession than the plays. The best of the dramatists, indeed, were poets by destiny and dramatists by accident. It is conceivable that the greatest of them apart from Shakespeare—Marlowe and Jonson and Webster and Dekker—might have been greater writers if the English theatre had never existed. Shakespeare alone was as great in the theatre as in poetry. Jonson, perhaps, also came near being so. The Alchemist ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... course yet another possibility; it was conceivable that everything would not fall out as they, or rather Peggy, had imagined. Pargeter, for instance, might return sooner; and, if he did so, he would certainly require his wife's immediate presence in Paris, for the millionaire was one of those ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... despite every conceivable obstacle, it had managed to muddle through, and now it was ready for its work. It was not perfect, for there were fifty different ways in which it might be improved, some of them shamefully obvious. But it was fairly sound mechanically, had a little inherent ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... the superficiality of your cui bono, and shall make you the answer that I am willing for an exceedingly paltry honorarium to rush into the Gordian knot and write you the most superior essays on every conceivable and inconceivable subject under the sun, as per enclosed samples which I forward respectfully for your delightful and golden opinions, guaranteeing faithfully that all of your readers in every hemisphere and postal district will fall in love with ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... prison, in England. The injustice was monstrous. He saw those curates, and their mute brother, and the aggrieved mother of the three dogging him either to prison or to his deathbed! And how could he explain to Alice? Impossible to explain to Alice!... Still, it was conceivable that Alice would not desire explanation. Alice somehow never did desire an explanation. She always said, "I can quite understand," and set about preparing a meal. She was the comfortablest cushion of a creature that the evolution of the universe had ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... he, rehearsing his exclamation of astonishment and delight at meeting her, 'by the most miraculous piece of good fortune conceivable, dear madam. And now comes the question, since you have condescended to notice a solitary atom of your acquaintance on the public highroad, whether I am to have the honour of doubling the freight of your carriage, or you will deign to embark in mine? But the direction of the horses' heads ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... am not to be bought. No rank, no dignity, no consideration, no conceivable expedient would induce me to change my mind. Let us have no more ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Vague as the phrase of knowing a good man when you see him may be, diffuse and indefinite as one must leave its application, is there any other formula that describes so well the result at which our institutions ought to aim? If they do that, they do the best thing conceivable. If they fail to do it, they fail in very deed. It surely is a fine synthetic formula. If our faculties and graduates could once collectively come to realize it as the great underlying purpose toward which they have always been ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... have picked out the porter who would give the best service; the stranger in need of help, and he who would offer it; and the guard most likely to be useful if it were necessary to cheat the company—it was conceivable that cheating companies might sometimes be necessary in her scheme ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... upon the opinion of France. After the experience of Luxembourg and Belgium no one now dreams of a neutralised buffer State. What does not become French or Belgian of the Rhineland will remain German—for ever. That is perhaps conceivable, for example, of Strassburg and the low-lying parts of Alsace. I do not know enough to do more ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... "Conceivable? I wish you would state to me, without any fear of offense, the whole body of your objection. I recognize, of course, that the Royal House, in the direct line, has made no such alliance for over two hundred ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... been for a week working on the wreck carrying off every conceivable object which might be of any possible use. He found the ship's books; but, owing to his ignorance of Spanish, he was unable to ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... one having equal authority with that as a standard. An ideal may be primal, or may be slowly developed even from failures and by negations; an ideal is meant to be perfect, not merely the thing that has been attained or is to be attained, but the best conceivable thing that could by possibility be attained. The artist's ideal is his own mental image, of which his finished work is but an imperfect expression. The original is the first specimen, good or bad; the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... nearing the bend that would shut them out from the sight of the great crowds gathered on either bank near the judges' boat. If the cheering diminished in volume at that point, it was taken up above, until one long wave of sound arose, every conceivable noise being used to create an uproar, from horns and whistles to megaphones, and class yells from ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... rambling through the thickets, with trickling rills and bubbling springs, so well-provided is the country with moisture. Some of the rivulets flow over a sandy and pebbly bed, and the banks of all are clothed with the most magnificent vegetation conceivable. I had the almost daily habit, in my solitary walks, of resting on the clean banks of these swift-flowing streams, and bathing for an hour at a time in their bracing waters; hours which now remain among my most pleasant memories. The broad forest roads continue, as I was told, a distance of several ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... said Winnifred, clasping her hands and falling on her knees in gratitude. "I am only a poor inadequate girl, but if the prayers of one who can offer naught but her prayers to her benefactor can avail to the advantage of one who appears to have every conceivable advantage already, let him know ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... religious motive will inspire men to sublimate personal interests in devotion to the community. Only through loyalty to the highest ideals of community life can the Kingdom of God be realized on earth. No conceivable cataclysm could make its existence possible without the voluntary allegiance of mankind, for the Kingdom of God is the kingdom of love; it can exist only as the minds and hearts of men are devoted to it. Nor can the community universal, the "beloved community," ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... importunate, are the correspondents who belong to literary societies, and who have undertaken to read, before these select circles, papers upon every conceivable subject, from the Bride of the Canticle to the divorce laws of France. They regret their own ignorance—as well they may—and blandly ask for aid. There is no limit to demands of this character. The young Englishwoman who wrote to ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... relations in the sixteenth century is hardly conceivable at this day. The Puritans of England and the Huguenots of France regarded Spain as their natural enemy, and on the high seas and in the British Channel they joined hands with godless freebooters to rifle her ships, kill her sailors, or throw them alive into the sea. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... work of the period as broadly divided into two great heads: the one embracing the elaborately languid succession of the Christian art of Rome; and the other, the imitations of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase of early organisation, on the edges of the empire, or included in ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... frequently called upon to exercise it in his camp meetings. These assemblies never failed to gather large crowds from all parts of the surrounding country, and among others came numerous rowdies, whose delight it was to annoy the preachers and worshipers in every conceivable way. Cartwright put up with the annoyance as long as he could, and then determined to put a stop to it. He believed in fighting the devil with fire, and put down many a disturbance. The following is the way ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Was it conceivable that Mary Standish, instead of working for John Graham, was working against him? Could some conflict between them have been the reason for her flight aboard the Nome, and was it because she discovered Rossland there—John Graham's most trusted servant—that she formed ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... contradiction in either supposition. The idea of cause is a necessary idea. An event being given, the idea of cause is necessarily implied. An uncaused event is an impossible conception. The idea of cause is also a universal idea extending to all events, actual or conceivable, and affirmed by all minds. It is a rational fact, attested by universal consciousness, that we can not think of an event transpiring without a cause; of a thing being the author of its own existence; of something ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... They were encamped about a mile to the south of our brigade upon a beautiful, broad, open plain between the surrounding hills, which gave them a superb parade and drill-ground. Upon this they had laid out a mile race track in excellent shape, and they had provided almost every conceivable sort of amusement that was possible to army life—matches in running, jumping, boxing, climbing the greased pole, sack races, etc. But the usual pig performance had to be omitted owing to the enforced absence of the pig. The appearance of a live porker would ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... of fact there exist vibrations of every conceivable degree of rapidity, filling the whole vast space intervening between the slow sound waves and the swift light waves; nor is even that all, for there are undoubtedly vibrations slower than those of sound, and a whole infinity of them which are swifter than those known ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... your imagination run away with you. What conceivable motive could she have had to ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the difficulty in the simplest manner conceivable. It is merely a very long rope which is suffered to trail from the car, and the effect of which is to prevent the balloon from changing its level in any material degree. If, for example, there should be a deposition of moisture upon the silk, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... intellectual and artistic ability could be so easily and fatefully overcome by a mere trinket. Still less does one like to believe that Spinoza fell in love with a girl whose mind was so far removed from the joys that are eternal and spiritual. But, of course, it is conceivable that the girl took the trinket symbolically; or else that Spinoza, who had given all his time to rabbinical and philosophical studies was, in the circumstances, ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... it was wrong to doubt him—I couldn't, when I thought of our last hour together, out on the hill in the moonlight. He said it was conceivable that life might keep him from me, but death never could. He told me that if he died, I would know, that he would come and tell me, and that in a little while afterward, we should ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... of his Highness, Olivia made no movement to accept the hand that he offered. Instead, she sat slightly at one side of the great glittering throne, looking up at him with something like the faintest conceivable smile which, while one saw, became once more her exquisite, girlish gravity. When the music sank a little her voice sounded above ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... that I had ever read a volume of political economy in my life. But I have. I have studied things. I have read dozens and dozens of books on Sociology, and Socialism, and Syndicalism, and every conceivable subject that bears upon the relations between your class and ours, and I can't come to any but one conclusion. There is only one logical conclusion. Violent methods are useless. The betterment of the poor must come about ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... love; they desire marriage. The root of legal monogamy does not lie (as Shaw and his friends are for ever drearily asserting) in the fact that the man is a mere tyrant and the woman a mere slave. It lies in the fact that if their love for each other is the noblest and freest love conceivable, it can only find its heroic expression in both becoming slaves. I only mention this matter here as a matter which most of us do not need to be taught; for it was the first lesson of life. In after years we may make up what code or compromise about sex ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... fusty garlands of flowers made of red and green baize. Fancy troops of girls giggling, chattering, pushing to and fro, amidst old black canvas, Gothic halls, thrones, pasteboard Cupids, dragons, and such like. Such dirt, darkness, crowd, confusion and gabble of all conceivable languages ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... beyond expression. The situation would have seemed inconceivable except that anything was conceivable in connection with Mrs. Middleton. The girl had almost forgotten that she was departing shortly, but realizing it, she was the more relieved. Only it would be all the ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... spending time to read and write observations, such as I find in the writings of many men of great attainments and of great influence, of which the following might be a general type: If the statesmen could attain to the requisite knowledge and wisdom, it is conceivable that the State might perform important regulative functions in the production and distribution of wealth, against which no positive and sweeping theoretical objection could be made from the side of economic science; ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... stock-yards and the Pit which had provided the money for its beauty. The millionaires did not interfere with the artists at all. They gave their thousands—and stood aside. The result was one of the loveliest things conceivable. Saint-Gaudens and the rest did their work as well as though the buildings were to endure for centuries instead of being burned in a year to save the trouble of pulling down! The World's Fair always recalled to me the story of Michael ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable motive, in his youth, at the threshold of his career he chose to disappear from the world—-which is to say, the little Indian station ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... beard, and his leathery cheeks were blue from the razor. His age may have been fifty; his air was mean and sycophantic. Finally he was dressed in a black gaberdine that descended to his knees, and he ended in a pair of the leanest shanks and largest feet conceivable. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... listened with growing interest to this gruesome story of the most malevolent genius conceivable to the mind of man. And he heard it perhaps without too great disgust, because of the light which it threw by contrast upon the bright, easy, happy, and spontaneous genius of the man who had fought ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... likely. Since I've gotten you so far into this horribly businesslike affair, I may as well go all the way through. As I said, I can't see how O'Connor can personally get any advantage out of this in any conceivable way, so long as he ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... the representation of the sexual by non-sexual objects and relations—reaches back into the years when the child is first learning to master the language. My attention has also been directed to a deficiency in the above-cited statement which for the sake of clearness described any conceivable separation between the two phases of autoerotism and object love as a temporal separation. From the cited analysis (as well as from the above-mentioned work of Bell) we learn that children from three to five are capable of evincing ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that species had not been independently created, but had descended, like ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... purpose of protecting another. And, any way, a little reflexion might show that the apparently benevolent intention comes into collision with a very extensive and very stringent social obligation, that of not impairing our confidence in one another's assertions. Without maintaining that there are no conceivable circumstances under which a man would be justified in committing a breach of veracity, it may at least be said that, in the lives of most men, there is not likely to occur any case in which the greater social ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... pastime of the Bachelors' Club had been largely bibulous, and the members thereof had exhibited small inclination to seek the ordinary methods of social relaxation as practised in Glencaid. Pink teas, or indeed teas of any conceivable color, had never proved sufficiently attractive to wean the members from the chaste precincts of the Occidental or the Miners' Retreat, while the mysterious pleasure of "Hunt the Slipper" and "Spat in and Spat out" had likewise ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... been provided with a handle. M. Mortillet, of France, who has had excellent opportunities of studying this question very thoroughly, thinks that the hatchet was the only type of implement they possessed, and that it was used for every conceivable purpose—but that their weapon was a club, all traces of which have, of course, long ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... beginning to lead, let Him lead you. Pour out your souls for others and with others. I believe that more souls are convinced in real prayer, than in speaking. I have noticed this many a time. I have seen at the bottom of a great hall or theatre, or in the gallery, a lot of the roughest men conceivable, behaving in the most unseemly manner, arrested by the influence of prayer. Perhaps, when the rowdyism has been ready to break into open tumult, a little woman has stretched out her hands over the congregation, and said, "Now, let us pray;" and I have seen the whole ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... in front of him; then a light seems to dawn on him and he says in amazement.) Are such things conceivable? Are such things possible? ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... account for the beauty of autumnal tints in woods, or coloured leaves in plants such as the Caladium? The beauty is of no conceivable ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... does not go out every morning before breakfast and, with ferula for Archimedean lever and Three R's for fulcrum, prize open the gates of day. The organization of infants of every conceivable degree of intellectuality into classes, and their formal elevation through successive "grades" by means of cunningly devised educational jack-screws or block-and-tackle, does not constitute the complete dynamics of the universe, President Winston to the contrary, notwithstanding. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... casual character of modern literature: everything about it is temporary and fragmentary. Look at a railway stall: you see books of every color,—blue, yellow, crimson, "ring-streaked, speckled, and spotted,"—on every subject, in every style, of every opinion, with every conceivable difference, celestial or sublunary, maleficent, beneficent—but all small. People take their literature in morsels, as they take sandwiches ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... London officially devoting a week to the recognition of the fact that fifty years had elapsed since the publication of a work of poetic genius! Yet I think we know quite as much about poetry in England as they do in France. Still less conceivable is the participation of an English Government in such an anniversary. In Paris last Thursday a French Minister stood in front of the Hugo statue and thus began: "The Government of the Republic could not allow the fiftieth anniversary ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... than stopping the games of the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land. Marcus Aurelius is the most intolerable of human types. He is an unselfish egoist. An unselfish egoist is a man who has pride without the excuse of passion. Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within. Any one who knows any body knows how it would work; any one who knows any one from the Higher Thought ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... carriages, and the poor struggling gentleman, perhaps a married curate, whose dwelling is bare, whose dress is poor, whose fare is scanty, whose wife is careworn, whose children are ill-fed, shabbily dressed, and scantily educated. It is conceivable that fanciful wants, slights, and failures, may cause the rich man as much and as real suffering as substantial wants and failures cause the poor; but the world at large will recognise the rich man's lot as one of success, and the poor man's as one ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the hut and diligently sought with it for traces of glittering metal. Common sense told him that if gold had ever been found here, it must have been carried away or stored against transportation, and in so crude a plant it was conceivable that specks of gold would be discovered somewhere about the floor. Thus he scrutinized every square foot of the floors of all the huts, pulling off roofs and knocking out walls wherever necessary to get sufficient light. But no trace ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... after a pretty thorough examination of the region, not more than twenty-five discharge icebergs into the sea. All the long high-walled fiords into which these great glaciers of the first class flow are of course crowded with icebergs of every conceivable form, which are detached with thundering noise at intervals of a few minutes from an imposing ice-wall that is thrust forward into deep water. But these Pacific Coast icebergs are small as compared with those of Greenland and the Antarctic region, and only a few of them escape from the intricate ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... referred to the apparent vagueness and casualness of war on its present scarcely conceivable scale. When you are with a Staff officer, you see almost everything. I doubt not that certain matters are hidden from you; but, broadly speaking, you do see all that is to be seen. Into the mind of the General, which conceals the strategy that is to make history, ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... hoof. In shady places sandal merchants and clothiers were established; while sample tents spotted the whole landscape. Hucksters went about with figs, dates, dried meats and bread. In short, pilgrims could be accommodated with every conceivable necessary. They had only to cry out, and the commodity was ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... order, which he desired to have executed; and not a voter could come upon the ground, whom there was the remotest chance to influence, that his vigilance did not at once discover and seize upon, through some one of these lieutenants. He resorted to every conceivable art, to induce the freemen to vote properly; and, when he could not succeed in this, his next study was to prevent their voting at all. The consequence usually was, that he secured his own election, or that of his chosen ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... all wrong,' said Kate. 'There is no such conceivable pleasure as saying No to a man that another woman is ready to accept. It is about the most refined ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... in the procession. His fellow passenger was Jack Stormways. As the new Speedaway shot from its mooring place and started down the river it seemed as though the old football days had come again, such a roar arose from human lungs, fish-horns, and every conceivable ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... disbelieving it," he answered quietly. "It is practically the only conceivable solution of the mystery of the ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... into his work, taking every conceivable position known to the equestrian world, and essaying many daring feats that he had never tried before. It seemed simply impossible for the boy to fall, so sure was his footing. Now he would spring from the broad back of the gray, and run across the ring, doing a lively handspring, then ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... external law. All that man sees has to do with man. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. The community of the centre of all creation suggests an interradiating connection and dependence of the parts. Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already imbodied. The blank, which is only a forgotten life, lying behind the consciousness, and the misty splendour, which is an undeveloped life, lying before it, may be full of mysterious revelations ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... righteous self-respect and dignity of the free man revolt against foreign domination, however superior. As Mr. Asquith said at the beginning of the War, such a condition was "inconceivable and would be intolerable." Why then is it the one conceivable system here in India? Why is it not felt by all Indians to be intolerable? It is because it has become a habit, bred in us from childhood, to regard the sahib-log as our natural superiors, and the greatest injury British rule has done to Indians is to deprive them of ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... letters for every conceivable emergency. "To a Young Man who has quarrelled with his Master," "Dismissing a Teacher," "Inquiry for Lost Baggage," "With a Basket of Fruit to an Invalid," and "To a Gentleman elected to Congress." Rare indeed, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... an empire of wagerers she knew; they wagered for and against every conceivable thing which had its ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... Innocent their history becomes one long harrowing tale of papal plots, interdicts, excommunications, of royal proscriptions and perfidies, of attack, of plunder, of rapine, of massacre, and of death in every conceivable and horrible way,—by the sword, by fire, and by unutterable tortures and torments. The Waldenses had no alternative but to submit to these, or deny their Saviour. Yet, driven to arms,—ever their last resource,—they waxed valiant ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... vexatious of all conceivable occurrences,' replied Besso, 'and yet it is about a person of whom you never heard, and whom I never saw; and yet there are circumstances connected with him. Alas! alas! you must know, my Eva, there is a young Englishman ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... desire good, love purity, aspire after him and his will. Therefore either he will not, or he cannot. If he will not, it must be because it would not be well to do so. If he cannot, then he would not if he could; else a better condition than God's is conceivable to the mind of God—a condition in which he could save the creatures whom he has made, better than he can save them. The truth is this: He wants to make us in his own image, choosing the good, refusing the evil. How should he effect this if he were always moving us ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... child acquires by degrees, by the same degrees changes him in respect to his nature. That the arts and sciences serve to improve and extend the human intellects is reasonable enough, but that they add any thing to the natural principles or faculties of man is not conceivable. ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... frail and short life, and to this end all efforts are to be referred. And because upon it depends the full and perfect happiness of men, therefore, to attain this end which has been mentioned, is of as much interest as is conceivable to every individual man. It is necessary then that a civil society, born for the common advantage, in the guardianship of the prosperity of the commonwealth, should so advance the interests of the citizens that in holding up and acquiring ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... that had recently been made gave very little satisfaction. By these the minimum price was fixed at one pound per acre; in consequence of which many predicted that millions of acres would be excluded from the market for ages to come, as it seemed not conceivable that any change could make them worth a quarter that sum, especially as on an average the natural grasses of the country will only support one sheep to four acres. The inevitable consequence was to prevent an augmentation of the emigration fund, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... an artist—or a wise woman who knew the value of relief—one note of colour was struck in the presence of a huge china bowl filled with tulips of every conceivable shade of flame and orange and yellow and red; but with that exception black and white predominated, and when Chloe Carstairs rose from her low chair near the window and advanced towards him, she, too, carried out the subtle suggestion of the ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the Punjab troubles were no doubt absorbing, but had the Viceroy or the Home member or the Commander-in-Chief or one of his responsible advisers proceeded in person, the moment the disorders were over, to Lahore or Amritsar, barely more than a night's journey from Delhi or Simla, is it conceivable that a halt would not have been forthwith called to proceedings which these high officers of state were constrained later on unanimously to deplore and reprobate? And if the Government of India were too slow to move, was there not a Secretary of State ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... universal literature, in which there will be expressed not only ideas about the world, but moods which will not be found expressed in national literatures at all. This literature might be the beginning of a solidarity in the world which is not now definitely conceivable. Such an extension of language, however, we should hardly expect to take place except in the course of development of practical relations which first stimulate the desire for ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... would always remain uneasy beneath the unretracted assertion of it; if she should never again seek to exercise it, she would be really yielding. It was idle to talk of such a state of affairs; it could not be brought about, even if it were conceivable that each side could be induced to repeal all its acts and resolves touching the subject,—and even this preliminary step was what no reasonable man could anticipate. In a word, when Franklin longed for the restoration of the status quo ante the Stamp Act, he longed for a chimera. ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... his usual well-bred calm and smoked cigarettes while he chattered. He touched on every conceivable subject but the one uppermost in Claire's mind, until she began to wonder whether delicacy or contempt veiled his conversation. A half-hour passed ... an hour ... two. Still the rain swept from the sullen sky. Twice Stillman made a futile attempt to remedy ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... place in small degree and gradually, and that many generations are required before a new character can become hereditary. He thinks that acquired characters are probably transmitted at the chemical level. It is conceivable that acquired form-changes are dependent on chemical changes, or are correlative with such, and that, since the germ-cells stand in close metabolic relations with the soma, these chemical changes may soak through to the ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... proud of being gentlemen, although they have been told in every conceivable tone that it was a foolish pride,—foolish in itself, foolish in that it did not have the heraldic backing that was claimed for it; the utmost concession being that a number of "deboshed" younger ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... as other forms. One great merit it has. It calls attention to the fact that ethics is a discipline which has no significance abstracted from the nature of man. It appears absurd to say that man ought to do what it is not in man, under any conceivable circumstances, to do. And, like other forms of intuitionism, it has the merit of avoiding that short-circuiting which may easily prove seductive to the egoist or the utilitarian. He who accepts as ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... perfunctory jests, and going again swiftly, to the patient's relief. Once, a court holiday falling opportunely, my lord had his carriage, and drove the child himself to Hermiston, the customary place of convalescence. It is conceivable he had been more than usually anxious, for that journey always remained in Archie's memory as a thing apart, his father having related to him from beginning to end, and with much detail, three authentic ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... modern schools of composition for the voice do not encourage the display of florid execution, a singer would be ill-advised indeed to neglect this factor, on the plea that it has no longer any practical application. No greater error is conceivable. Should an instrumental virtuoso fail to acquire mastery of transcendental difficulties, his performance of any piece would not be perfect: the greater includes the less. A singer would be very short-sighted who did not adopt an analogous line of reasoning. Without ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... ethical. And like all men in the same position, Mr. Mix was fiercely jealous of his prestige; by long practice he had warped himself into thinking that it belonged to him; and he was ready to defend it with every conceivable weapon. ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... anything else, but still the witch changed her into a reindeer, and smuggled her own daughter into her place as the Prince's wife. But now the child grew restless and cried, because it missed its mother's care. They took it to the court, and tried to pacify it in every conceivable way, ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... condemns him for being a criminal. It encourages and gives everything to the strong and discourages by taking everything from the weak. It originated with the primitive savages, and is the most beastly and debasing system conceivable. It keeps mankind in the very lowest stage of intelligence, and in a condition of helplessness on one side and slavery on the other. It has been saturated with so many idiotic laws and so-called remedies since its inception that it now resembles a great network of legalized corruption. Laws ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... speak lest it impede him in his task, may be accepted as the two varieties who are continually present with us—the vicious, lazy lout, and the toiling slave. They, too, have lost all faith of life being other than it is and has been. As in Africa, it is all trees trees, trees with no other world conceivable; so is it here—it is all vice and poverty and crime. To many the world is all slum, with the Workhouse as an intermediate purgatory before the grave. And just as Mr. Stanley's Zanzibaris lost faith, and could only be induced to plod on in brooding sullenness of dull despair, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Willis keenly, supporting, as it seemed to do, his idea that Coburn was in the power of the syndicate or one of its members. If, for example, one of these men, on the lookout for helpers in his conspiracy, had learned of the cashier's predicaments it was conceivable that he might have obtained his hold by advancing the money needed to square the matter in return for a signed confession of guilt. This was of course the merest guesswork, but it at least indicated to Willis ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... over and looked. Upon the page of folio, close to an illuminated capital, the black drop had flattened itself. Around the original sphere had been shed splashes of all conceivable shapes-rays, rockets, dotted lines, arrowheads, all the freakish impromptu of chaos. Next, the slope lending its aid, the channels had drained into one, and by this time a black rivulet was crawling downward to the margin. One or two readers near had risen, and now eyed me like examining ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... the sircar's belt and to "be present." And the camel is not more wonderfully fitted for the desert than is Luxumon for the discharge of these solemn responsibilities. He is like a carriage clock, able to sleep in any conceivable position; and such is his mental constitution that, when not sleeping, he is able to "be present" hour after hour without feeling any desire for change of occupation. Ennui never troubles him, time never hangs heavy on his hands; he sits as patiently as a cow and chews the cud of pan suparee, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... dollars of her government bonds, for which she had not even a receipt; that she depended upon him for the completion of her pecuniary arrangements for a contemplated trip to Europe; or, in other words, that she had nothing to gain and much to lose by his death, and that there was no conceivable emotional motive, such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... field of vision, there arises in the mind an "impression of sensation"—which we call red. It appears to me that this sensation, red, is a something which may exist altogether independently of any other impression, or idea, as an individual existence. It is perfectly conceivable that a sentient being should have no sense but vision, and that he should have spent his existence in absolute darkness, with the exception of one solitary flash of red light. That momentary illumination would suffice to give him the impression ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... no limit to their delight as they saluted Joel in every conceivable way best fitted to get him worked up. "How are you, snob? Don't you want your oar?" and such things, every boy contributing at least a few selections to the general hubbub, the black dog on the bank emitting shrill, ear-splitting barks ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... for Major Carstair was our guest and entitled to every courtesy, and inquired how it would be possible to restore blood to the Dalai Lama; it was not conceivable that the lost blood could be ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... concentrated power to preserve that life; the rare and subtle gifts which she herself possessed were daily exercised to their full in the suggestion of vitality; the most elaborate inventions of skilled mechanicians were employed in reducing the labour of living to the lowest conceivable degree of effort. The great experiment was being tried. What Keyork Arabian described as the embalming of a man still alive was being attempted. And he lived. For years they had watched him and tended him, and looked critically for the least signs of ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... two inches, and in any direction, up or down, to left or right, backwards or forwards; this by a great straining, fatiguing effort. I was stuck there on the surface of the world, desolate and undone. It was the most cruel situation that you can imagine; far worse, I think, than any conceivable physical torture. I am perfectly sure that I would have exchanged my state, then, for the state of no matter what human being, the most agonized martyr, the foulest criminal. I would have given anything, ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... iced water, and a waiter came immediately after and took my orders. All this being temporarily arranged, I went back to Suzee. She had changed in that short time from her scarlet dress into one of the palest blue, the most exquisite soft tone of colour conceivable. It was all embroidered round the edge of the little jacket and the wide falling sleeves in mauve and silver, and she had twisted some mauve flowers and heavy silver ornaments into her shining hair. Her great dark eyes flashed and sparkled, the pure tint of her skin ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... citizen of this glorious Commonwealth, a free an' equal member of a liberty-loving nation, a nation whose standard is, now and forever, 'Gimme liberty or gimme det', a nation that stands for all the conceivable benefits that mankind may enjoy, a nation that scintillates pyrotechnically over ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... having dwindled to a wart the size of a pea. This approach to the form of man is aided by another point of personal resemblance—long whiskers. That the tail should have been worn off against the rocks, or in climbing the fences to get at orchards and melon-patches, is easily conceivable. How the evolutionists account for the retention of the beard does not yet appear. The females carry their young as adroitly and carefully as do the Kabyle women, and ascend the rocks with them with much greater activity. A young monkey has a less neglected look than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the two sons, was born in the Poultry, on or about the 23d of May, 1799. He is stated to have been a retired child, with much quiet humor; chuckling, we may guess, over his own quaint imaginings, which must have come in crowds, and of all conceivable or inconceivable sorts, to judge from the products of his after years; keeping most of these fancies and surprises to himself, but every now and then letting some of them out, and giving homely or stolid bystanders an inkling of insight into ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... singular equipage, and a yelping, howling, screaming, leaping company of half-naked negroes ran all round them, goading them with sharp sticks, frantically seizing hold of their tails, and inciting them by every conceivable and inconceivable encouragement to quick motion: thus, like one of the ancient Merovingian monarchs, I was dragged through the deep sand from the settlement back to the river, where ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... the physical obstacles were insurmountable. To get it on board a train and drop it out, or on the top of an omnibus and drop it off, were equally out of the question. To get it on a yacht and drop it overboard, was more conceivable; but for a man of moderate means it seemed extravagant. The hire of the yacht was in itself a consideration; the subsequent support of the whole crew (which seemed a necessary consequence) was simply not to be thought of. His uncle and the houseboat here occurred in very luminous ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... from the ordinary run of noses; my lower lip certainly does project, but his does not particularly recede, and so on. But the imaginary contrast inspired him in the earliest days of our acquaintance, and started him on the warpath of pen-and-inking. He drew us in all conceivable and in some inconceivable situations. "Moscheles and I," he says on one page, "had we not been artists, or had we been artistically beautiful; then again, if we were of the fair sex, or soldiers, or, by way ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... conceivable nook and corner had been explored. Though it seemed absurd that the wrench should be lost, yet a fearful conviction began to settle down over the startled ones that it would not be ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... will touch it. Other plants are protected by thorns. In fact, the drier the region, the more thorny are its plants. A little shrub called the crucifixion thorn has no leaves at all, nothing but long, sharp spines. Besides the straight thorns there are curved and also barbed ones, for every conceivable form is represented among the plants ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... well, I mean, for any betrayal of the Gyp taint, however faded and feeble. The trouble appears to have been that while I on the one hand exorcised the baleful association, I succeeded in rousing on nobody's part a sense of any other association whatever, or of my having cast myself into any conceivable or calculable form. My private inspiration had been in the Gyp plan (artfully dissimulated, for dear life, and applied with the very subtlest consistency, but none the less kept in secret view); yet I was to fail to make out in the event that ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... this inorganization is the disgust which workmen feel for their employment, in addition to the insufficiency of their wages. And this is quite conceivable, for nothing is done to render their labor attractive, either by variety of occupations, or by honorary rewards, or by proper care, or by remuneration proportionate to the benefits which their toil provides, or by the hope of rest after long years of industry. No—the country ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... funny thing!" she said indignantly. "Every one says that girls are always late, and you three, except Eileen, are usually later than the average late ones. Yet here you are. And every one says that men are always prompt, and Nolan is certainly worse than the average man in every conceivable way. ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... understanding. She could not admit the uninstructed rashness which had led her to assume positively, on inadequate grounds, that her union with George Cannon had been fruitless. She must suffer, and he also must suffer. Rather than let him know, in any conceivable manner, that, all unwitting, she was bearing the child of another at the moment of her betrothal to himself, she preferred to be regarded as a jilt of the very worst kind. Strange that she should choose the role of deceiver instead of the role of victim! Strange that she would sooner be hated ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... superstitious people. The employment of Judas candles would, no doubt, if properly explained, turn out to mean to imply execration against the memory of Judas, wherever they may be used. But in the expression Judas bell, the greatest conceivable amount of discord is that which is intended ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... regions; yet one of the puniest of races, that of the Bushmen, maintains itself in Southern Africa, as do the dwarfed Esquimaux in the Arctic regions. The ancestors of man were, no doubt, inferior in intellect, and probably in social disposition, to the lowest existing savages; but it is quite conceivable that they might have existed, or even flourished, if they had advanced in intellect, whilst gradually losing their brute-like powers, such as that of climbing trees, etc. But these ancestors would not have been exposed to any special ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... he was an agent for brushes, and he opened his box and showed me the greatest assortment of big and little brushes: bristle brushes, broom brushes, yarn brushes, wire brushes, brushes for man and brushes for beast, brushes of every conceivable size and shape that ever I saw in all my life. He had out one of his especial pets—he called it his "leader"—and feeling it familiarly in his hand he instinctively began the jargon of well-handled and voice-worn phrases which went with that particular brush. It was ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... to tell a lie.' That is all the evidence against Smerdyakov produced by these three persons, who are all deeply concerned in the prisoner's fate. And yet the theory of Smerdyakov's guilt has been noised about, has been and is still maintained. Is it credible? Is it conceivable?" ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... from his original positions, Eck carried the matter to Rome. A theory so uncertain in its method, so imperfectly tested by the regulated comparison of authorities, might crumble to pieces if all its consequences were made manifest. It was conceivable that a man who had raised such a storm without looking up his books, without weighing the language of Councils or thinking out his thoughts, upon whom the very obvious objections of Cajetan and Eck came as a surprise, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... loft or storeroom lighted from above and while Mr. Pryzik and Uncle George chatted amiably together, Rollo looked about him eagerly noting many large groups of figures struggling and writhing in every conceivable posture. Some were covered with grey cloths which gave them a singularly ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell
... is not the question. You do not advance an inch in the argument after you have proved that premise of your case. You must show that they are not only inferior, but that they are so ignorant and degraded that they can not be safely intrusted with the smallest conceivable part of political power and responsibility, and that this is the case not on the plantations of Alabama and Mississippi, but here in the District of Columbia. Nay, you must not only prove that this is the general character ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... a seal, merely because it is a curiosity or a legacy, without knowing or caring anything about the condition of their ancestors in the Middle Ages. Then, again, there is a theory that he was of Jewish blood; a view which is perfectly conceivable, and which Browning would have been the last to have thought derogatory, but for which, as a matter of fact, there is exceedingly little evidence. The chief reason assigned by his contemporaries for the belief was the fact that he was, without doubt, specially and ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... under all conceivable circumstances was bound to be a priest. There was priestliness writ large upon his countenance. His manner, his tone, his beautiful style, with something at once pleading and threatening, and a kind of feminine attenuation in its vibrant ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... very earnest, would have deprived him of his senses. She did not, she could not, know what she had said! Yet she spoke with such cruel appearance of reasoning earnestness; was it possible for a diseased mind to assume so convincingly the modes of rational utterance? What conceivable circumstances could bring her to such a resolution? Her words, 'I do not love you,' made horrible repetition in his ears; it was as though he had heard her speak them again and again. Could they be true? The question, ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing |
