"Improbability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... infamous stories of Procopius. A rehabilitation of Theodora is not a theme calculated to provoke enthusiasm, and is impossible besides from the entire want of adequate evidence. But a thoughtful writer would not have lost his time, if he referred to the subject at all, in pointing out the moral improbability of the current accounts. He might have dwelt on the unsupported testimony of the only witness, the unscrupulous Procopius, whom Gibbon himself convicts on another subject of flagrant mendacity. But he would have been especially slow to believe that a woman who had led the life of ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... reluctantly to her feet. Standing so, her deformity was even more visible than it was when she was seated; and it took all my nerve and power of will to take the measure of the mis-shapen shoulders without shrinking from the touch. And then I saw the improbability, I might say the impossibility, of finding in any ready-made-clothing store, a dress which would fit the twisted form. One must be made on purpose; one which would set at defiance all rules of symmetry; and how to have it ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... Close to the falling water, seated on the edge, his back supported by the rock, and his legs hanging over the precipice, I now beheld the savage who left the cave before me. The noise of the cascade and the improbability of interruption, at least from this quarter, had made him inattentive to ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... patient, lodging near Madame Zenobie's house. The proximity of the young couple occurred to him at once, but he instantly realized the extreme poverty of the chance that he should see them. To increase the improbability, the short afternoon was near its close,—an hour when people generally ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... the poker does throw an air of improbability over the whole. Minus that and the knees, I am afraid it is only too true. I suppose it ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from any participation in the causes which occasioned the original estrangement between Herbert and herself. Desirous too, as all mothers are, that her daughter should be suitably married, Lady Annabel could not shut her eyes to the great improbability of such an event occurring, now that Venetia had, as it were, resigned all connection with her native country. As to her daughter marrying a foreigner, the very idea was intolerable to her; and Venetia appeared therefore to have resumed ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... absurdity, enough will remain to show the unreasonableness of supposing that in point of fact matter ever has existed without being caused and controlled by Mind. The argument for Idealism may, I hope, have at all events exhibited incidentally the groundlessness and improbability of materialistic and naturalistic assumptions, and left the way clear for the establishment of Theism by the arguments which rest upon the discovery that Causality implies volition; upon the appearances of intelligence in organic life; upon the existence of the moral ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... was in many minds of hope and fear as to the meeting him or speaking to him, under the consciousness of the possible defection from his Church, and the doubt and dread whether to confide her secret and consult him. However, the extreme improbability of her being able to do so made the yearning for the sight of a Winchester face predominate, and her vigil of the night past made the nursery authorities concede that she had fairly earned her turn to go to church in the forenoon, since she was obstinate enough to want to run after an old heretic ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... minor events. On the other hand it seemed odd that Maria Consuelo should be at liberty to go whithersoever she pleased. She could not reasonably be supposed to have a guardian in every city of Europe. The more he thought of this improbability the ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... judge, whether his be a worthy one, tried by this rule: And whether, knowing the impetuosity of his own disposition, and the improbability there is that my father and family will ever be reconciled to him, I ought to encourage ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... regard to fertility given in the last two paragraphs, when we reflect on the inherent improbability of man having domesticated throughout the world one single species alone of so widely distributed, so easily tamed, and so useful a group as the Canidae; when we reflect on the extreme antiquity of the different breeds; and especially when we reflect on the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... This Gomez, says he, flew upon him like a dragon, got him down, the Devil being strong in him, and gave him bastinado on bastinado, and buffet on buffet, which the poor Colonel, being prostrate, suffered with a most Christian patience. The improbability of the fact never fails to raise mirth in the audience; and one may venture to answer for a British House of Commons, if we may guess from its conduct hitherto, that it will scarce be either so tame or so weak as ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of dissimulation. His colour was high, and his expression, indeed, a little idiotic; and he declared afterwards that he felt like a sandwich-man, with the news printed in red letters before and behind. Honora knew that the intense improbability of the truth would save them, and it did. Mrs. Holt remarked, slyly, that the game of golf must have hidden attractions, and regretted that she was too old to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... musical ear or much power of imagination. It is not going too far to say that of the highest possibilities of poetry he had no conception. He imagines he has disposed of Lycidas by exhibiting its "inherent improbability" in the eyes of a crude common sense: a triumph which is as easy and as futile as his refutation of Berkeley's metaphysics by striking his foot upon the ground. The truth is of course that in each case he is beating the air. The stamp upon the ground would have been a triumphant ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... SS. Ailbhe and Ciaran, he preceded St. Patrick in the Irish mission and was a co-temporary of the national apostle. Objection, exception or opposition to the theory of Declan's early period is based less on any inherent improbability in the theory itself than on contradictions and inconsistencies in the Life. Beyond any doubt the Life does actually contradict itself; it makes Declan a cotemporary of Patrick in the fifth century and a cotemporary likewise of St. David a century later. In any attempted solution ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... who alone had the necessary knowledge of antiquities, we are still met by the improbability of old Mrs. Hogg being engaged in the hoax. Moreover, Leyden was probably too keen an antiquary to take part in one of the deceptions which Ritson wished to punish so severely. Mr. Child expresses his strong and natural suspicions of the authenticity of the ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... we have just alluded, of the revelation of the name Jehovah, is also told in ch. iii., where it is connected with the incident of the burning bush. Apart from the improbability of the same document telling the same story twice, the very picturesque setting of ch. iii, is convincing proof that we have here a section from one of the prophetic documents, and we cannot long doubt ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... near a minute. During this interval, he was thinking of the improbability of any but a bona-fide Englishman's dreaming of giving a vessel an appellation so thoroughly idiomatic, and was fast mystifying himself, as so often happens by tyros in any particular branch of knowledge, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... possible that the protest of the Bishop of Orleans is as hollow-hearted as the protests of censors nearer home. But such a world-wide outbreak of cynicism without a cause is a somewhat improbable event, and the improbability is increased when we remark the silent acquiescence of the women of America and the Continent in the justice ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... of improbability in this tale, and it leavened the whole lump. Ganders do not roost; there is not one in a hundred of them that could sit on a fender long enough to say Jack Robinson. So, as the Frau lived a thousand years before the birth of ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... the rain never ceased for an instant, we were by this time drenched to the skin, and looked with no very agreeable feelings to the prospect of passing the night in wet clothes. At length the night began to close in, and the guides talked of the improbability of reaching the English station before night. It was still raining hard; but we dismounted, and took our dinner as cheerfully as possible, and hoping for clearer weather the next day. On remounting, we soon discovered that the road was no longer ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... he says, "there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting; whatever images it can supply are easily exhausted, and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction on the mind. When Cowley tells of Hervey that they studied together, it is easy to suppose how much he must miss the companion of his labours and the partner of his discoveries; but what image of tenderness can be ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... emotion has been created; but he seizes on the attention, by showing us the effect they produce on his feelings; and his poetry accordingly gives the same thrilling and overwhelming sensation which is caught by gazing on the face of a person who has seen some object of horror. The improbability of the events, the abruptness and monotony in the Inferno, are excessive: but the interest never flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power is in combining internal feelings ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... which aroused the wonder and fear of the negroes. Tanganyika was too far away; there remained only the supposition that Kali's nation had its seat somewhere nearer. For this reason their meeting with the Wahimas was not an utter improbability. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... word being loosely applied to any type of prose fiction in contrast with the short story or tale. But here, at an early date, the severance is plainly indicated between the study of contemporary society and the elder romance of heroism, supernaturalism, and improbability. It is a difference not so much of theme as of view-point, method ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... are!" muttered Disco in surprise; but presently the improbability of sand being very nutritious food, even for crabs, forced itself on him, and he muttered his conviction that they "was ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... he begged to be informed of the state of the case, whereupon the matter was laid before him in all its details. He was not slow in taking a fair view of it, and spoke well and eloquently in my behalf—insisting on the improbability that a person of my habits and position would be wilfully mixed up with a transaction like that of which it appeared I was suspected—adding, that as he was fully convinced of my innocence, he was ready to enter into any surety with respect to my appearance at any time to ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... saw any other Moors than those whom he accompanied thither, and the ten by whom they were ransomed; and he understood from the Moors themselves, that they were not allowed to go in large bodies to Timbuctoo. This statement bears on the face of it a certain degree of improbability; but it loses that character when it is considered that Timbuctoo, although it is become, in consequence of its frontier situation, the port, as it were, of the caravans from the north, which could not return across the desert the same season, if they ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... and went panting down the street. In the midst of this headlong career, however, she was violently arrested. She heard the cry of "Stop thief!" behind her, and glancing back, saw two men, accompanied by some boys, in full pursuit. Too astonished and frightened to consider the improbability of their pursuing her, she ran harder than ever. She felt horrified, and dreaded their rudeness should they reach her. Down side-streets and across byways she dashed, the crowd in pursuit increasing each moment. At last she found that she had ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... so thoroughly displeased and annoyed that she durst not discuss the subject with him, lest she should rouse him to take some strong authoritative measures against it. He had always trusted to the improbability of her meeting with a situation before his departure, when, between entreaty and command, he had reckoned on inducing her to go home; and this engagement came as a fresh blow, making him realize what he had brought on those nearest and dearest to him. Even praise ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... detractor, and the partisans, who are numerous, of the persons you will attempt to expose will raise a cry against you, that will infinitely overpower the equivocal proofs you can produce. It will become a question of veracity, and yours will be invalidated by the improbability, if not of the guilt, at least of the folly of your persecutor's conduct. You cannot reform them, will do yourself much harm, and the world no good. You will not only misemploy your time for the present, but impede your ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... from some of the new denizens of the monastery, were spent on the improbability of his finding sister or lands; if it were in the Barony of Glenuskie, the House of Albany had taken the administration of that ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the suggestion that the whole affair may be a travestie—a freak of the younger, and more frolicksome members of the colonist fraternity. Notwithstanding its improbability, the idea takes, and is entertained, as ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... Notwithstanding the improbability of the explanation, he did not hesitate. He murmured a few soft words of reproach and placed her in the hands of her maid, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... been busy upon this theme, but here again I must refer to the lady of the store, and say, that if many of the sister Shakers resemble her, I treat all such slander as bearing on its face the strongest marks of wild improbability. But that they take as proselytes, persons so young that they cannot know their own minds, and cannot possess much strength of resolution in this or any other respect, I can assert from my own observation of the extreme ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... from this reproach is rather our good fortune than our merit. It is by favor of our stars, not by virtue of our own, that we turn not aside from the plain path of truth to the by-ways of supernaturalism and improbability. Yet we refrain with difficulty from a breath of self-praise; there is a proud and solid satisfaction in holding an unassailable position could we but catch the world's eye, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... every inferior magnitude, from the tenth to such as by their multitude and minuteness constitute irresolvable nebulosity, extending over tracts of many square degrees. Were there but one such object, it might be maintained without utter improbability that its apparent sphericity is only an effect of foreshortening, and that in reality a much greater proportional difference of distance between its nearer and more remote parts exists. But such an adjustment, improbable enough in one case, must be rejected as ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... that in my forest cabin I have an assortment of the best wines and whiskies, notwithstanding the improbability of being able to offer a glass to my friends, but those bottles remain well corked, waiting for their legitimate owner to feel indisposed, when a draught of their contents will restore his lost strength ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... patents—he might have had documents pertinent to some affair of such importance that ill-disposed folk, eager to seize them, might have murdered him in order to gain possession of them. There were many possibilities, and there was always—to Allerdyke's mind—the improbability that James had died through ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher
... this accusation, without giving himself time for a moment's reflection, which would have shown him the improbability of the story, burst into so ungovernable a fury that he became almost frantic, and it was with the utmost difficulty his knights prevented his instantly putting his son to death. The states of Foix and Bearn, to whose judgment he was at length induced to refer ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... elaborate controversy on the subject between Mr. Lang and myself, carried through the transactions of the Folk-Lore Congress of 1891, the introduction to Miss Roalfe Cox's "Cinderella," and in various numbers of "Folk-Lore," I urged the improbability of this explanation as applied to the plots of fairy tales. Similar states of mind might account for similar incidents arising in different areas independently, but not for whole series of incidents ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... statements, "documents" of indifferent or inferior authority? It takes a special reason to induce us to take the trouble to examine into the origin and value of a document on the history of yesterday; otherwise, if there is no outrageous improbability in it, and as long as it is not contradicted, we swallow it whole, we pin our faith to it, we hawk it about, and, if need be, embellish it in the process. Every candid man must admit that it requires a violent effort to ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... The appearance of our heroes, and their communication of the speedy arrival of the troops, was not without effect. The criminals trembled at the idea; Don Silvio was mad with rage he pointed out to the men the necessity of immediate attack—the improbability of the troops arriving so soon, and the wealth which he expected was locked up by Don Rebiera in his mansion. This rallied them, and they advanced to the doors, which they attempted to force without success, losing several men by the ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... Koordish women waylaying and capturing them on the roads through Koordistan, and subjecting them to barbarous treatment. I have smiled, and thought them merely "travellers' tales;" but I can see plain enough, this morning, that there is no improbability in the stories, for, from a dozen pairs of female eyes, behold, there gleams not one single ray of tenderness: these women are capable of anything that tigresses are capable of, beyond a doubt. Almost the first question asked by the men of these camps is whether the English ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... of the despatches I am the bearer of; the uncertainty and improbability of receiving any others here; my giving intelligence at Versailles may be for the advantage of both nations; the inconvenience of detaining the fine frigate, on board which I return, and the danger of losing all the men, who desert very fast, are ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... cone of luminosity, to disappear again behind, a new impression thrust itself upon me. I call it an impression, not an observation. It is very hard to say, what was reality, what fancy on a night like that. In spite of its air of unreality, of improbability even, it has stayed with me as one of my strongest visions. I nearly hesitate to ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... time they met was at the Admiralty: "Little unexpected Cabinet meeting after dinner. Lords John Russell and Palmerston, who talked War with France till bedtime. I hope papa tells the truth as to its improbability." Two days later she writes: "Lord John Russell again surprised us by coming in to tea. How much I like him." The next evening she dined at his house: "Sat between Lord John and Mr. E. Villiers. Utterly ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... and of histories of saints and monks, which it was necessary to work through and sift for my strictly limited object, I came upon a narrative (in Cotelerius Ecclesiae Grecae Monumenta) which seemed to me peculiar and touching notwithstanding its improbability. Sinai and the oasis of Pharan which lies at its foot ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the sworn friend of France, and that it was her business to go back to Germany and eat humble pie. Whatever the audience may have felt about these reflections on the conduct of England, they must at least have been irritated by the fantastic improbability of the girl's motive. Very fortunately at this juncture the voice of the paper-boy is heard in the street conveying the thrilling news of our tardy entry into the quarrel; and a glad Margaret, having recovered her respect for her native land, consents to return ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... atmosphere of their own, and it would be hard to recall any play at the St. James's that has been less in keeping with the local climate than this comedy, so described, of Mr. VACHELL'S. On the score of impropriety and improbability it might in the old days have appealed to the Criterion management; but its lack of broad humour must have negatived these advantages. In any case Sir GEORGE ALEXANDER'S house was no place for a farce so out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... was a look of incredulity chiefly; yet I could see nothing to impale for improbability in the play as far as it had gone. I was but lightly attending, for my own purposes, as you youngsters skim your betters for review; but thus far the situation struck me as at once feasible and promising. Also it seemed ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... his eyes to the carpet. "There must have been some misunderstanding," he stammered. "The invitation was delayed—or it miscarried. Perhaps it went to the store and got mixed up with the mail there," he ventured; any improbability would do ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Against all this improbability Mr. Darwin brings forward the supposed advantages which these variations give to their possessors. But here again a new element is introduced into the calculation. It is assumed, in the very statement of the question, that the process of adaptation has already ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... unexpected revelation upon the young Virginian was as if an adder had suddenly fastened upon his bosom. It woke a suspicion, involving indeed an improbability such as his better reason revolted at, but full of pain and terror. But wild and incredible as it seemed, it received a kind of ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... of notice, that Lear is the only serious performance of Shakspeare, the interest and situations of which are derived from the assumption of a gross improbability; whereas Beaumont and Fletcher's tragedies are, almost all of them, founded on some out of the way accident or exception to the general experience of mankind. But observe the matchless judgment of our Shakspeare. First, improbable as ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... at the improbability of such things befalling. I carried in my bosom too large a heart, and one that was the property of every wench I met—for just so long as I chanced to be in ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... the possibility of doubt that the line was composed of American soldiers, I returned to my friend and again urged him to charge. But there was an infatuation upon him that night for which I have ever been unable to account: he insisted that I must be mistaken; he spoke of the improbability which existed that any part of the enemy's army should have succeeded in taking up a position in rear of the station of one of our outposts, and he could not be persuaded that the troops now before him were not the 95th Rifle corps. At last it was agreed between us ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... can give you is that you have softened the hard opinion that I had formed of some of his actions. But that I should marry Mr. Cashel Byron is simply the most improbable thing in the world. All questions of personal inclination apart, the mere improbability is enough in itself to appal ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... "Ethiopics," the last-named has again had his copyists in the "Hysminias and Hysmine" of Eustathius or Eumathius, and the "Dosicles and Rhodanthe" of Theodorus Prodromus, the latter of whom was a monk of the twelfth century. In these productions of the lower empire, the extravagance of the language, the improbability of the plot, and the wearisome dullness of the details, are worthy of each other; and are only varied occasionally by a little gross indelicacy, from which, indeed, none but Heliodorus is wholly exempt. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... know in what manner Seymour had conducted himself, and soon obtained from Emily the information which she required. She then pointed out to her, as her husband had done to Seymour, the improbability, if not impossibility, of any happy result to their intimacy, and explained the honourable motives by which Seymour had been actuated,—the more commendable, as his feelings on the subject were even more ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... this matter and endeavour to get an equitable and comprehensive law passed for the preservation and increase of the breed of Salmon? It is a matter of even national importance, and if duly provided for and properly attended to, I see no improbability in the supposition that Salmon would again be as abundant as they were when the apprentices on the banks of the Ribble stipulated that they should not be compelled to eat Salmon oftener than three days in the week. The ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... Watson; for it is evident that they must either kill her or else secure her in such a way that she could not give immediate notice of their escape. But at any rate I have shown, have I not, that there is a certain element of improbability about the lady's story? And now on the top of this comes the incident of ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ability to pick men. He knew men, and in no small measure was this knowledge responsible for his success in dealing with men. He had been certain that Jean and Hedin would eventually marry, and secretly he longed for the day. He had watched Hedin for years and now, despite the improbability of the story, he believed it implicitly. And it was with a heavy heart that he had watched the studied coldness of each toward the other. McNabb was a man of snap decisions. He would teach these young fools a lesson, and at the same time find ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... instant. If I had had time to think, I am perfectly certain that I should not have profited by the extraordinary warning that had just been addressed to me. The suspicious appearance and manners of the stranger; the outrageous improbability of the inference against the credit of the bank toward which his words pointed; the chance that some underhand attempt was being made, by some enemy of mine, to frighten me into embroiling myself with ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... quoting M. Du Chaillu's work, then, it is not because I discern any inherent improbability in his assertions respecting the man-like Apes; nor from any wish to throw suspicion on his veracity; but because, in my opinion, so long as his narrative remains in its present state of unexplained and apparently inexplicable confusion, it has ...
— Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... a lie behind me. I confirmed my assertions with an oath that I had spoken the truth, and that I was not guilty of anything, except that the glitter of the gold had dazzled me, and that I had not perceived the improbability of the story of the stranger. "Did you not know Bianca?" he asked me. I assured him that I had never seen her. Valetti now related to me that a profound mystery rested on the affair, that the Governor had very much accelerated my condemnation, and now a report was spread ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... confessed he would have taken had he lighted on it.' To which my Lord Chancellor said, 'Why, you would have been a pirate.' 'Oh,' quoth he, 'did you ever know of any that were pirates for millions? They only that wish for small things are pirates.' Now, setting aside the improbability that Raleigh should go out of his way to impeach himself to the man whom he must have known was set there to find matter for his death, all, we say, depends on how it was said. If the Lord Chancellor ever said to Raleigh, 'To take the Mexico fleet would be piracy,' it would have been ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... that the stage has seen. He is the most pathetic figure of the play. One touch of verisimilitude is lacking; none of the guests gives him a tip, yet he maintains his urbanity. As Mr. Shaw has not yet visited America he may be unaware of the improbability of this situation. ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... La regained consciousness. Spellbound, she stood above her victim watching the spectacle. It seemed incredible that a human being could best the king of beasts in personal encounter and yet before her very eyes there was taking place just such an improbability. ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... improbability of Lear's conduct it may be observed, that he is represented according to histories at that time vulgarly received as true. And perhaps if we turn our thoughts upon the barbarity and ignorance of ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... the improbability of this find meaning anything at all to her against the coincidence of another author using the quotation in writing a scenario. She did not know what to think. Which supposition was the ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... Buddhism, like many other False Systems, Claims Christ as a Believer in its Principles—The Theory that the Life of Christ is Modelled after that of the Buddha—The Superior Authenticity of the Life of Christ—The Unreliable Character of Buddhist Legends—The Intrinsic Improbability that a Religion claiming a Distinct Derivation from Jewish Sources would Borrow from a far-off Heathen System—The Contrast of Christ's Loving Recognition of the Father in Heaven with the Avowed Atheism of Buddhism—The General Spirit of the System ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... shrank into the corner; for in that moment his excited imagination had traced a strange resemblance to the figure he had left in Rosherwich Gardens. The inherent improbability of finding a classical statue seated in an omnibus did not occur to him, in the state his mind was in just then. He sat there fascinated, until lights shone in once more, and he saw, or thought he saw, the figure slowly raise her hand ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... his eyes on some imaginary object in the blaze of the fire, and his countenance indicated a concentration of thought, as if to call back from the shadowy past the coming tale, the more attractive, perhaps, by its extreme improbability. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... deemed of high importance for classification. They are, moreover, embryonic in their nature; and embryonic parts, as is well known, possess the highest classificatory value. From these considerations, and looking to the actual facts as exhibited in the following table, the improbability that the parasites of S. vulgare and S. Peronii, so utterly different in external structure and habits one from the other, and from the Cirripedes to which they are attached, should yet have absolutely similar ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... were endowed with a movement of rotation, the atmosphere surrounding it must participate in that movement. Ptolemy did not know this, and consequently he came to the conclusion that the earth did not rotate, and that, therefore, notwithstanding the tremendous improbability of so mighty an object as the celestial sphere spinning round once in every twenty-four hours, there was no course open except to believe that this very improbable thing did really happen. Thus it came to pass that Ptolemy adopted as the cardinal doctrine of his system ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Bethlehem and then stopped stationary over the house of Joseph and Mary. Alas! that these vulgar traditions of the ignorant multitude should have served so long to obscure a beautiful mystic occurrence, and which by their utter improbability and unscientific nature should have caused thousands to sneer at the very true legend of the "Star of Bethlehem." It remains for the Mystic traditions to clear away the clouds of ignorance from this beautiful story, and to re-establish it in the ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... their melancholy forebodings. At one time they conjectured that the whole party had fallen through the ice; at another that they had been waylaid and cut off by the Dog-Ribs. In vain did we urge the improbability of the former accident, or the peaceable character of the Dog-Ribs, so little in conformity with the latter. "The ice at this season was deceitful," they said "and the Dog-Ribs, though unwarlike, were treacherous." These assertions, so often repeated, ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... affair of such improbability. A determined man with a long knife in his grasp—one who will yield only to death—is a difficult thing to secure under any circumstances. Such an one will often effect his freedom, even when hemmed in by a host of enemies. With Carlos, however, the probabilities of escape ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... from each other by the action of unknown laws of development aided by the action of external conditions. Although this work had a considerable effect in influencing public opinion as to the extreme improbability of the doctrine of the independent "special creation" of each species, it had little effect upon naturalists, because it made no attempt to grapple with the problem in detail, or to show in any single case how the allied species of a genus could ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... unprofytable Stody," above mentioned, which contains proof how well he at least had profited by study, he cites certain continental seats of university learning at each of which, there is indeed no improbability in supposing he may have remained for some time, as was ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... character of her betrothed husband. In spite of herself, she detects the weak places in the case which Nugent has made out against me—the absence of sufficient motive for the conduct of which he accuses me, and the utter improbability of my plotting and intriguing (without anything to gain by it) to make her marry the man who was not the man of her choice. She feels these hesitations and difficulties. But what they really signify it is morally impossible for ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... that confession of a Witch, when she confesseth any improbability, impossibility, as flying in the ayre, riding on ...
— The Discovery of Witches • Matthew Hopkins
... as noble as is absolutely essential to his being—except, indeed, he be at the same time represented as failing utterly in the attempt, and compelled to fall back upon the imperfections of humanity, and acknowledge them as its laws. Its improbability, judged by the experience of most men I admit; its unreality in fact I deny; and its absolute unity with the true idea of humanity, I believe ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... dark man with the blood of a Spanish inquisitor asked my business. I told him I was a poor student, without taint or heresy, who sought knowledge. He stroked his chin as though it were a monstrous improbability. He looked me up and down, but this might have been merely a secular inquiry on the chance that I carried explosives. He then dipped his pen in an ancient well (it was from such a dusty fount that the warrant for Saint Bartholomew went forth), then bidding me be careful in my answers, he ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... individuals of the dramatis personae have their appropriate share in the action and in bringing about the catastrophe. Here, even more than in its various and violent changes of fortune, rests the improbability of the novel. The life of man rolls forth like a stream from the fountain, or it spreads out into tranquillity like a placid or stagnant lake. In the latter case, the individual grows old among the characters with whom he was born, and is contemporary,—shares precisely the sort of weal ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... may coincide with two or more other independent events, the probability that they will together be a sign of it, is found by multiplying together the fractions representing the improbability that each is a sign of it, and ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... sphere had long been in existence; Aristotle being the earliest source to which it could be traced. Sensible people did not countenance it then, any more than they accept to-day the conjecture that other planets than this may be inhabited. They demonstrated its improbability on historical and religious grounds, and also made the point that, supposing it were round, and that Columbus were to sail down the under side of it, he would never be able to climb back again. But the Genoese was a man who became more firmly wedded to his opinion ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Windham to be resolved into that man, from whom she had fled, seemed to her as though he were about to become her enemy. Yet this did not seem possible. Such confidence had she in Windham's love that the thought of his losing it, or changing, appeared the wildest improbability. No; that, at least, could not be. Still he was her own. Not yet could she blend his image with that of Guy. In her bewilderment she clung to this as her only comfort, and hoped that, in some way, all ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... regard which a woman of fine quality always returns for elevated and unexacting admiration I was still left with such privilege of access as is granted to the family-gossip, or to an innocuous uncle, and it is of such a passion, rashly nurtured under this protection of an improbability, that I propose ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... the retired officer, but it struck him that this might be he; and under the tyranny of his passion for concealment, he fancied that, if it were he, he might recognise him by some family likeness—not considering the improbability of his looking at him. This fancy, with the painful effect which the sight of an officer, even in plain clothes, had upon him, recalling the torture of that frightful day, so overcame him, that he found himself ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... revelation should be communicated to mankind at all: in the same degree is it probable, or not very improbable, that miracles should be wrought. Therefore, when miracles are related to have been wrought in the promulgating of a revelation manifestly wanted, and, if true, of inestimable value, the improbability which arises from the miraculous nature of the things related is not greater than the original improbability that such a revelation should be ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... comparison with the severe classic order. In attempting to avoid the old classic monotony, the Gothic school of fiction was soon noted for its lavish use of the unusual, the mysterious, and the terrible. Improbability, or the necessity for calling in the supernatural to untie some knot, did not seriously disturb this school. The standard definition of "Gothic" in fiction soon came to include an element of strangeness added ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... demonstration that there is no criterion of truth in this world. Persuaded thus of the impossibility of philosophy, Carneades was led to recommend his theory of the probable. "That which has been most perfectly analyzed and examined, and found to be devoid of improbability, is the most probable idea." The degeneration of philosophy now became truly complete, the labours of so many great men being degraded to rhetorical and artistic purposes. It was seen by all that Plato had destroyed all trust in the indications of the senses, and substituted for it the Ideal ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... for the manner in which a person like Stimson defended it. Still, he was struck with both of this man's facts. The last, he had often met in books; but the first was new to him. Of the two, this novel idea of the improbability of the apostles' inventing that which would seem to be opposed to all men's notions and prejudices, struck him more forcibly than the argument adduced from the acquiescence of the Redeemer in his own divinity. The last ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... "The improbability is tripled by the complete overthrow of that order which rules all the heavenly bodies in which the revolving motion is definitely established. The greater the sphere is in such a case, so much longer is the time required ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... of the young Rabbi. The house would be low, and the roof slight, and Jesus was probably seated in an open inner court or verandah, At any rate, the description gives a piece of local colour, and presents no improbability. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of Errors.—Mistaken identity (which the Elizabethans called "Error") is nearly always amusing, whether on the stage or in actual life. The Comedy of Errors is a play in which this situation is developed to the extreme of improbability; but we lose sight of this in the roaring fun which results. Nowadays we should call a play of this type a farce, since most of the fun comes in this way from situations which are improbable, and since the play depends on these for success rather than ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... heaviness the discourse began. The inspirational claims seemed to lie in the manifest improbability of a man of Clifton's cultivation being so dull and diffuse in a natural condition. Yet, as the message wore on, it cannot be denied that a strange influence was at work. The words followed each other with greater fluency and in richer abundance. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... raked up into couches, and thus, every man with a blanket beneath and another above him, they did not care how the wind blew. They were as snug as bears in their lairs, but despite the darkness of the night and the exceeding improbability of anyone finding them both Henry and Tom Ross lay awake and watched. The others slept peacefully, and the two sentinels could hear their easy breathing only ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... miracles, as those of Scripture, as the Resurrection, was a fact establishing the principle that the laws of nature had sometimes been suspended by their Divine Author, and since what had happened once might happen again, a certain probability, at least no kind of improbability, was attached to the idea taken in itself, of miraculous intervention in later times, and miraculous accounts were to be regarded in connexion with the verisimilitude, scope, instrument, character, testimony, and circumstances, with which they presented themselves to us; ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... make a great effort for the restoration of the House of Stuart. Fuller declared that he had seen this address, and recounted many of the names appended to it. Some members made severe remarks on the improbability of the story and on the character of the witness. He was, they said, one of the greatest rogues on the face of the earth; and he told such things as could scarcely be credited if he were an angel from heaven. Fuller audaciously pledged ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... many rocks. I took particular notice, that it was all pure transparent ice, except the upper surface, which was a little porous. It appeared to be entirely composed of frozen snow, and to have been all formed at sea. For setting aside the improbability, or rather impossibility, of such huge masses floating out of rivers, in which there is hardly water for a boat, none of the productions of the land were found incorporated, or fixed in it, which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... on, met, and passed Tom, who remarked upon the improbability of the copperskin showing up again; and then I continued my patrol slowly round the house, past the court-yard, where all was still, and at last found Tom where we had parted ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... and a half cents for one way would have an air of improbability about it, answered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... well enough to believe that he would have started directly South for "dat yer gal 'n' little Pompey," though he had to face a frowning world. But being John's counsellor, his role was to counsel moderation, and his duty to put before him the immense improbability of his ever making a second passage of the Red Sea, if he now returned. If he were caught and whipped to death, of what benefit could he be to his wife and child? Why not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... egregiously unscientific and most unphilosophically credulous, is to treat the supposition as a certainty, notwithstanding that the chances against its representing real facts are as infinity to infinitesimality; for not less is the preponderance of improbability that the laws of nature were not intentionally prescribed, and that the wondrously complex and wondrously useful harmony that has been established between organic structure and natural law was not designedly established. In considering this point, it will be convenient ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... altogether. The theory of M. Oppert, who ascribes the original invention of the cuneiform letters and a civilisation anterior to that of Babylon and Nineveh to a Turanian or Scythian race, will lose much of its apparent improbability; for no new wave of civilisation had reached these countries between the cuneiform period of their literature and history and the time of Hiouen-thsang's visit. In the kingdom of Okini, on the western frontier of China, Hiouen-thsang ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... the example of G. B. Niebuhr, Gutschmid admitted here, as Oppert did, 45 Assyrians; he based his view on Herodotus, in which it is said that the Assyrians held sway in Asia for 520 years, until its conquest by the Medes. Upon the improbability of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... accompanied this remark with a wink and a slight poke with his thumb in the smart boy's side, which, however, did not seem to have the effect of reassuring Billy, for he continued to raise various objections, such as the improbability of the sloop giving them time to get into a boat when she took it into her head to go down, and the likelihood of their reaching the land in the event of such a disaster occurring during a gale or even a stiff ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... It represents Chosroes as openly flying in the face of a treaty the moment that he had concluded it, and as departing in a single instance from the general tenor of his proceedings in all other cases. In view of the great improbability of such a course of action, it is perhaps allowable to suppose that Procopius has been for once carried away by partisanship, and that the real difference between the case of Daras and the other towns consisted in this, that Daras alone ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... be copied, because of that laboured beginning. Copying one's own words is at all times a disenchanting drudgery, and when the end was reached Godwin signed his name with hasty contempt. What answer could he expect to such an appeal? How vast an improbability that Sidwell would consent to profit by the gift of ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... the old man had told him regarding the improbability of his ever being released, he still hoped that the governor would make good his word, and that his case would in time reach the American Minister at St. Petersburg, and that his government would ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... no impossibility, no improbability even, in the statement made by the newspaper correspondent; yet as Richard thought it over in the night, he could not but regard it as singular that Mr. Keene should be the man to make public such a piece of information so very opportunely. He was far from having admitted ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... is therefore no improbability in this power having been specially acquired. In several respects light seems to act on plants in nearly the same manner as it does on animals by means of the nervous system.* With seedlings the effect, as we have just seen, is transmitted from one part to another. An ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... to his liege lord. On the other hand, it might be reasonably pleaded that this right of dictating to the vassal to a certain extent in the choice of a husband, is only competent to the superior from whom the fief is originally derived. There is therefore no violent improbability in a vassal of Burgundy flying to the protection of the King of France, to whom the Duke of Burgundy himself was vassal; not is it a great stretch of probability to affirm that Louis, unscrupulous as he was, should have formed the design of betraying the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... late lord's private papers, he discovered the letter which I typed and signed. He said very coldly that the fact that I had waited until everyone who could corroborate or deny my story was dead, united with the improbability of the narrative itself, would very likely consign me to prison if I made public ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... should discover, and guard as its secret, some diabolically horrible means of destroying human life and property by wholesale and over materially unbridged distances, can armaments even temporarily put an end to war. In such event—and it is by no means an improbability—the whole world might suddenly be made to bow in terror before the will of the all-powerful nation. Before this approaching crisis, can we do less than earnestly pray that the translation of physical progress into armament may be halted until the brotherhood ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... was indeed the "flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." There is less improbability in the suggestion made by several writers that, when the pestilence wasted Jerusalem, and David offered up the sacrifice of intercession in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, the king may have seen, in the scimitar-like tail of a comet such as Donati's, ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... suppose, several of my friends well know, that I have been anxious to trace some loose reports that I had heard, which your residence in Maryland, and the improbability of your saying such things, had induced ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... element of discovery may, in the end, take the lead, and immensely preponderate in importance over the other two factors already mentioned as participating in the solution of a question of a planetary language. The idea certainly has no intrinsic improbability, that the normal language of mankind should be matter of discovery as the normal music of the race has been already. There was an instinctual and spontaneous development of music in advance of the time when science acted reflectively upon the elements and reconstituted ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... away the improbability of the Magician forgetting his gift. "In this sore disquietude he bethought him not of the ring which, by the decree of Allah, was the means of Alaeddin's escape; and indeed not only he but oft times those ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Divina Commedia are very suggestive to speculation now. Of course, the fact that, in both these cases, regular epic did eventually occur, must warn us that in artistic development anything may happen; but it does seem as if there were a deeper improbability for the occurrence of regular epic now than in the times just before Virgil and Tasso—of regular epic, that is, inspired by some vital import, not simply, like Sigurd the Volsung, by archaeological import. Lucretius ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... many actions of the higher machines)—Or (assuming the theory of evolution but at the same time denying the consciousness of vegetable and crystalline action) the race of man has descended from things which had no consciousness at all. In this case there is no a priori improbability in the descent of conscious (and more than conscious) machines from those which now exist, except that which is suggested by the apparent absence of anything like a reproductive system in the ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... Italian Government naturally regards such action as the primary and, indeed, the most essential element in the disposal of the Tallulah incident, I advise that, in accordance with precedent, and in view of the improbability of that particular case being reached by the bill now pending, Congress make gracious provision for indemnity to the Italian sufferers in the same form and proportion ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Pig" is perhaps the most widely known of all the essays of Elia. Its delightful drollery, its very revelling in the daintiness of sucking-pig, its wonderfully rich literary presentation, its deliberate acceptance of wild improbability as historic basis, all unite to give it special place in the regard of readers. The theme is of course familiar. It is that of a small Chinese boy playing with fire who burnt down his father's flimsy hut so that a whole litter of piglings was roasted in the conflagration. The boy touched one ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... Violence, which prevents our noting any slight Inacuracy, so as to be offended by it; but in so cool a Poem as Pastoral, whose design is to sooth and soften the Mind, we have leasure to consider every Unnaturalness and every Improbability. ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... bound in justice to say, that I do not believe that Messrs. Charles and Thomas Heath were in any way privy to this transaction. On the contrary, I am convinced, that they are totally incapable of such dirty conduct; there is no improbability in their being ignorant of the matter; Squire Quaker Williams having the sole management of the Banking concern, while the two elder brothers, Charles and Thomas, managed the Brewing and Wine Trade. The secret of ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt |
