"Inconclusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... led if we are to form any intelligent conception of divine action. True, it might be feasible to admit divine agency and yet to deny the possibility of any human power of the same kind,—though that would be a nebulous and at least inconclusive procedure; but if once we are constrained to admit the existence and reality of human guidance and control, superposed upon the physical scheme, we cannot deny the possibility of such power and action to any higher being, nor ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... at least, by the ordinary means. The Emperor's infatuation with the plausible scheme of destroying England's commerce by paper blockades and by embargoes on British goods had not been diminished either by his inconclusive struggle in Spain or by his victory over Austria. It was in vain that he had changed his naval policy from one of fleet-fighting to one of commerce-destroying; that he had seized and was continuing to seize neutral vessels laden with British wares; ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... scatter peas, which the birds eat up. Perrault has the same beginning in his "Petit Poucet," which has been Englished as "Hop o' my Thumb," who shares some of the adventures of Tom Thumb, as well as of the valiant Tailor. Lang has an interesting but, as usual, inconclusive discussion of the incidents of our tale in his Perrault civ.-cxi., and finds many of the incidents among the Kaffirs, Zulus, and other savage tribes, but scarcely the whole set of incidents from ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... Ceterach, assured that the scales of its under face are reducible to the same type. In a matter of such interest and importance as this, many will, and with reason, dislike so important an assumption on such inconclusive evidence. But with our present means, it appears to me probable that no evidence to demonstration can be looked for, and for this reason, that the contents of these peculiar cells are so subtile as to escape definition even while in their cells, (or under the most favourable ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... has already told of the swift rush upon New York of the first German air-fleet and of the wild, inevitable orgy of inconclusive destruction that ensued. Behind it a second air-fleet was already swelling at its gasometers when England and France and Spain and Italy showed their hands. None of these countries had prepared for aeronautic ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... confronted each other. "Well!" said Professor Marshall hotly, "of all the weak, inconclusive, modern parents—is this ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... matter of the Conspiracy, I perceive with regret that the evidence which has been convincing to so many minds of the first order, and which continues daily to spread conviction of the truth of the charge I have made, is still viewed by the editors of the 'Courier' as inconclusive. My situation in regard to those who dissent from me is somewhat singular. I have brought against the absolute Governments of Europe a charge of conspiracy against the liberties of the United States. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... given is it becoming to stamp it as official? it is lamentable inconsiderateness to expect fishermen to be able to dodge the weather by such guidance; and it is time to stop this easily concocted nostrum for notoriety; for it is vague and inconclusive in every precept, and has scarcely an assertion which is ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... images perplexed his vision. Formless thoughts pursued one another, as with the hurry of rumoured calamity, through his mind. A desolating apprehension of things insufficiently developed, of the inconclusive, the immature, the unattained, of things mutilated, things unfinished, born out of due time and incomplete, oppressed his fancy. Even the events of the last few hours, in which he had played so considerable a part, took on a shadowy semblance, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... one possible mode of escape from such testimony. This whole train of argument is inconclusive, it may be asserted, because what is maintained is not that intellectual culture is unhealthful, where it is woven into the web of active life, but only where the pursuit of knowledge is one's business. It may be readily allowed, that, where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... was the tendency to fight at short artillery range, without closing to hand-to-hand distance, and when the sailors and sea-fighters of the seventeenth century adopted line ahead as the normal formation for making the most of broadside fire, battles had a marked tendency to degenerate into inconclusive artillery duels. ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... cellar. The young man was called Dredinger, which seemed to Maggie an unnatural kind of name. He had an irritating habit of never finishing his sentences, and the people he knew answered him in the same inconclusive fashion. The pool in the cellar naturally annoyed him, but he did nothing very practical about it, allowed it to remain there, and discussed it with a Professor of Chemistry. Beyond this Maggie could not penetrate. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... On evidence so inconclusive no certainty can be attained. All we can say is that Gorges's Appendix points to a possibility that Ralegh's remarkable twenty-ninth article may have been as old as the middle of Elizabeth's reign, and that the reason why it has not survived in the writings ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... good and watching Providence, but the events of the last few months had choked that belief. If there was a God who guarded us, why should He have allowed the existence of my wife to be sacrificed to the carelessness, and all my hopes to the villainy, of Sir John Bell? The reasoning was inconclusive, perhaps—for who can know the ends of the Divinity?—but it satisfied my mind at the time, and for the rest I have never really troubled to ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... the Senate are hasty, feeble, inconclusive and unsatisfactory; presumptuous on the part of the ill-tempered South; feeble and frivolous on the part of the North."—Ibid., ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... appeared to the Samoans so great a thing to offer, to the practical mind of Dr. Stuebel seemed a trifle to receive; and the pressure was continued and increased. Laupepa and Tamasese were both heavy, well-meaning, inconclusive men. Laupepa, educated for the ministry, still bears some marks of it in character and appearance; Tamasese was in private of an amorous and sentimental turn, but no one would have guessed it from his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... communications. She had already received, but probably not yet read, a letter from the Prince of Orange upon the subject, in which a moderate and plain statement of the actual facts was laid down, which was now reiterated by the same personage by word of mouth. An agitated and inconclusive debate followed, in which, however, it sufficiently appeared, as the Duchess informed her brother, that one of two things must be done without further delay. The time had arrived for the government to take up arms, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his "Republic of Letters." Enmity succeeded to friendship; Jurieu is then continually quoted in his "Critical Dictionary," whenever an occasion offers to give instances of gross blunders, palpable contradictions, and inconclusive arguments. These inconsistent opinions may be sanctioned by the similar conduct of a Saint! St. Jerome praised Rufinus as the most learned man of his age, while his friend; but when the same Rufinus joined his adversary Origen, he called him ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... still impossible, and without pursuit the conflict could not be brought to a close. The unkindness of the conditions almost exonerates the generals who blundered during the struggle, and to an unprejudiced observer the record of incompetence is slight. The fact that the inconclusive proceedings of Metellus and Marius were deemed successes, almost justifies the exploits of a Bestia, and even the crowning disaster of the war—the surprise of the army of Aulus Albinus—might have been the lot of a better commander ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... any scheme subversive of public liberty, invest parish and petty officers of the peace with exorbitant powers, and cost the nation about fifty thousand pounds a-year to carry the scheme into execution. These arguments, which, we apprehend, are extremely frivolous and inconclusive, had great weight with a considerable number who joined in the opposition, while the ministry stood neutral. Nevertheless, after having undergone some amendments, it was conveyed to the lords, by whom it ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... like him, and it was quite her way to say what she thought; yet she did not say it. She had an undefined, shadowy impression that the hearing would not be grateful to her companion. Her reply was a very inconclusive remark, that she had not seen much of Mr. Masters; and an inquiry where Mr. Knowlton meant to ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... appears to be very inconclusive grounds, that the fountain was at Palazzo, six miles from Venusia. But the poem is obviously inspired by a fountain whose babble had often soothed the ear of Horace, long after he had ceased to visit Venusia. On his farm, therefore, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... important for the life of France than her incessant and inconclusive squabbling with Spain was the transformation passing over her spirit. It is sometimes said that if the French kings brought nothing else back from their campaigns in Italy they brought back the Renaissance. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... that in the attacks which have been levelled against our sceptical historian, we can discover but slender traces of profound and exquisite erudition, of solid criticism and accurate investigation; but we are too frequently disgusted by vague and inconclusive reasoning; by unseasonable banter and senseless witticisms; by imbittered bigotry and enthusiastic jargon; by futile cavils and illiberal invectives. Proud and elated by the weakness of his antagonists, he condescends not to handle the sword ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... necessary for happiness no less than for honesty that we should realise that poetry, music, and pictures are personal things; that what they are worth to us is their sole measure of value. And here it must be mentioned that Mr. Balfour puts forth two hints which are inconclusive enough, but which do dimly suggest a truer way of escape than that to which his argument leads. He notes, first of all, that art is disinterested; that it is not a means, but an end in itself. And, secondly, we feel towards beautiful things ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... the inconclusive character of the philosophical arguments in favor of eternity and the positive arguments for creation (all or most of which we have already met in our previous studies, and need not therefore reproduce Aaron ben Elijah's version of them), the philosophers themselves without ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... became law in this session was the so-called "Horne Tooke act," occasioned by the return of Horne Tooke, who was in holy orders, for Old Sarum. Such a return was contrary to custom, but the precedents collected by a committee of the house of commons were inconclusive. It was accordingly enacted that in future clergymen of the established churches should be ineligible for seats in parliament, while Horne Tooke was deemed to have been validly elected, and retained his seat. The house ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... a priori, and can never convince the reluctant. The path of wisdom is not to weigh the merits of various inconclusive arguments, but to distinguish between ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... exceptional and precarious infiltrations which belong not merely to the present that is still unknown, veiled or disguised, but really to the future, apart from the two which we have just examined, which are inconclusive, I for my part know of but four or five that appear to be rigorously verified; and these I have discussed in the essay already mentioned. For that matter, they have no bearing upon the present war. They are, when all is ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... was the governor to abrogate the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and manifold decisions of the Supreme Court? In embittered fury Henry Miller resigned from the Investigating Committee, now defunct anyway, its voluminous and inconclusive report buried in the state archives. Injunctions issued from local courts like ashes from a stirring volcano, but the militia were impervious and hustled the freeholders from their homes with callous disregard for the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Clarendon's letter referring to the new Draft of a Treaty with Austria proposed by the French Government, and has since attentively perused the Treaty itself.[57] Vague and inconclusive as it is as to co-operation (which is the main object of our desire), it is a step in advance, and has the advantage of assuring Austria of our alliance should the war between her and Russia break out. The Queen regrets ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Luderitz's factory "the same measure of protection which they give to their subjects in remote parts of the world, but without having the least design to establish any footing in South Africa.'' An inconclusive reply was sent, and on the 9th of April Luderitz's agent landed at Angra Pequena, and after a short delay concluded a treaty with the local chief, by which some 215 square miles around Angra Pequena were ceded to Luderitz. In England and at the Cape irritation at ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... with the modern in condemning the straining of his metaphors, and the exaggeration of his images; yet they appear to me a necessary part of his genius, and of the effect it produces. But nothing can be more unsatisfactory and inconclusive than the theory of Schlegel, that such metaphors and images, such rugged boldness and irregular fire, are the characteristics of a literature in its infancy. On the contrary, as we have already seen, Phrynichus, the predecessor of Aeschylus, was as much characterized by sweetness and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "It is remarkably inconclusive to me," Lord Chelsford remarked grimly. "Whom else save one of your friends who are all upon the Board could you possibly ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... inconvertible wealth—cotton chiefly—was practically useless to sustain the financial system and credit of the people. So, in 1812 and the two years following, the United States flooded the seas with privateers, producing an effect upon British commerce which, though inconclusive singly, doubtless co-operated powerfully with other motives to dispose the enemy to liberal terms of peace. It was the reply, and the only possible reply, to the commercial blockade, the grinding efficacy of which it will be ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... else did in the spring and summer of 1919 was of the slightest importance. It ought to have been a time for great enterprises and beginnings; but it emphatically wasn't. It was a queer, inconclusive, lazy, muddled, reckless, unsatisfactory, rather ludicrous time. It seemed as if the world was suffering from vertigo. I have seen men who have been badly hit spinning round and round madly, like dancing dervishes. That was, I think, what we were all doing ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... a booklet in verse for young readers. It was published shortly after "Prince Dorus," and is believed—though the evidence as to authorship is inconclusive—to have been written by Charles or Mary Lamb. It is a simple rendering in Hudibrastic verse of a familiar nursery story. Perhaps a very slight piece of evidence in favour of the Lamb authorship may be found in the fact that it shares with ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... is inconclusive, being a happy recollection that he had omitted any reference to stoofjes, the footstools filled with burning peat which are used to keep the feet warm in church. Such a custom was of course not less reprehensible than the building of ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... his work in this or in that field are almost always men who have themselves worked in some other field and have an imperfect acquaintance with the particular field that they happen to be praising. The metaphysician finds the reasonings of the "First Principles" rather loose and inconclusive; the biologist pays little heed to the "Principles of Biology"; the sociologist finds Spencer not particularly accurate or careful in the field of his predilection. He has tried to be a professor of all the sciences, and it is too late in the world's history for him or for any man ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... dynamitrine bombs in that first passage over the ship. As we sped by, I dimmed the Benson's radiance. I peered. We had not hit the ship. Or if we had, the damage was inconclusive. But on the rocks I could see a pile of ore-carts scattered—broken wreckage, in which the litter of two or three projectors seemed strewn. And the gruesome deflated forms of several helmeted figures. Others seemed, to be running, scattering—hiding in the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... possible. Now this is no more true of matter, than of spirit; of an extended compounded substance, than of a simple and unextended. In both cases the metaphysical arguments for the immortality of the soul are equally inconclusive: and in both cases the moral arguments and those derived from the analogy of nature are equally strong and convincing. If my philosophy, therefore, makes no addition to the arguments for religion, I have at least ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... of wars, it seems likely, will continue for twenty or thirty years, and perhaps longer. That the first clash was inconclusive was shown brilliantly by the preposterous nature of the peace finally reached—a peace so artificial and dishonest that the signing of it was almost equivalent to anew declaration of war. At least three new contests in the grand manner are plainly insight—one between Germany and ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... spelt Armatho and renegatho in the Folio. Of course they were, (just as the Italian Petruccio and Boraccio are spelt Petruchio and Borachio,) because, being Spanish words, they were so pronounced. His argument from the frequent substitution of had for hath is equally inconclusive, because we may either suppose it a misprint, or, as is possible, a mistake of the printer for the Anglo-Saxon sign for th, which, as many contractions certainly did, may have survived in writing long after it was banished from print, and which would be easily ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... chose to say that he saw her at the 'sabbath,' that was 'spectral evidence'. This kind of testimony made it vain for a witch to take Mr. Weller's advice, and plead 'a halibi,' but even Cotton Mather admits that 'spectral evidence' is inconclusive. ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... he, "for an immediate and categorical answer, not delivered in an oracular style, ambiguous and inconclusive, respecting the armaments in Bohemia, and I demand a positive assurance that the queen will not attack me either during this ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... silence, when he said, in a hesitating voice, "I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn fresh-water sailor for a bit," that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow's inconclusive experiences. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Glove," the author recurs to the woman question; in the one case, his theme is the attitude of society toward the woman of blemished reputation; in the other, its attitude toward the man who in his relation with women has violated the moral law. "Leonarda" is a somewhat inconclusive work, because the issue is not clearly defined, but in "A Glove" (at least in the acting version of the play, which differs from the book in its ending) there is no lack of definiteness. This play inexorably demands the enforcement of the ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... assimilated by other minds, they belong, at least, to the free movement of experimental and inductive thought, which, in religion as in science, is ever the victorious movement, however fragmentary and inconclusive it may seem at any given moment to be. Other men—Doctor Figgis, for instance—build up shapely and plausible systems, on given material, which, just because they are plausible and shapely, can have very little to do with truth. It is the seekers, the men of difficult, half-inspired speech, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... find, now that my prize was within my grasp, how inconclusive its attainment seemed. As a matter of fact I was worked out; the intense stress of nearly four years' continuous work left me incapable of any strength of feeling. I was apathetic, and I tried in vain to recover the enthusiasm of my first ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... of Newtonia was inconclusive. Subsequent to it, the Federals were greatly reenforced and, in the first days of October, Schofield and Blunt, who had both arrived recently upon the scene, coming to the aid of Salomon, who had been the vanquished one at Newtonia, ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... of Earth had done it, nothing of Earth—then something of Venus! Inconclusive conjecture, perhaps, but no other explanation offered itself. Something had sealed the contents of the meteor from the sight of man, something with a purpose. From Venus? The thought was logical, to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... in illustration; and all that I could urge against the probability or possibility of such Visitation appeared to them very inconclusive and unsatisfactory. They mentioned the case of the family of village proprietors in the Sagar district, who had for several generations, at every new settlement, insisted upon having the name of the spirit of the old proprietor inserted in the lease instead ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... argument, in support of the laws in general, appeared highly becoming of a consul; and that on the latter, against luxury, was quite conformable to the rigid strictness of his morals. There is, therefore, a danger lest, unless I shall show what, on each subject, was inconclusive, you may probably be led away by error. For while I acknowledge, that of those laws which are instituted, not for any particular time, but for eternity, on account of their perpetual utility, not one ought to ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... As to the Pisan edition of the works, it is the completest, I believe, in point of contents ever published, comprises all the controversial criticism, and is, of course, very useful; but it contains no life except Manso's (now known to be very inconclusive), has got a heap of feeble variorum comments on the Jerusalem, no notes worth speaking of to the rest of the works, and, notwithstanding the claim in the title-page to the merit of a "better order," has left the correspondence in a deplorable state of irregularity, as well as totally ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... from the outside shell so that it would have been nearly as accurate to base the strength upon the material within the bands, that is, upon a section of 38 sq. in., instead of upon the total area of 81 sq. in. This set of tests, A, B and C, is therefore inconclusive except as showing the practical difficulty in the use of bands in small columns, and the necessity for disregarding all concrete outside of the bands when ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... of mortal men! How vain and inconclusive arguments Are those, which make thee beat thy wings below For statues one, and one for aphorisms Was hunting; this the priesthood follow'd, that By force or sophistry aspir'd to rule; To rob another, and another sought By civil business wealth; one ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... could not fight Gouache for the present and Corona was so ill that he could not see her. Had he wished to visit her, the old-fashioned physician would probably have forbidden him to do so, but in reality he was glad to be spared the emotions of a meeting which must necessarily be inconclusive. His first impulse had been to take her away from Rome and force her to live alone with him in the mountains. He felt that no other course was open to him, for he knew that in spite of all that had happened he could not bear to live without her, and yet he felt that he could ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... Evangelists are not mentioned before a date that may be from 120-166 (or 155) A.D. and the third and fourth not before 170-175 A.D., this alone is enough, without introducing other elements of doubt, to show that the evidence must needs be inconclusive. If the author of 'Supernatural Religion' undertook to show this, he undertook a superfluous task. So much at least, Mr. Arnold was right in saying, 'might be stated in a sentence and proved in a page.' There is a presumption in favour of the tradition, and perhaps, considering the ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... the introspective face, he was afterwards unaware. But he heard all the quiet roar of the London evening, and was able to distinguish even the note of each instrument that helped to make up that untiring, inconclusive orchestra. Far away to the northwards sounded a great thoroughfare, the rolling of wheels, a myriad hoofs, the pulse of motor vehicles, and the cries of street boys; upon all these his attention ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... Marsden, M.A. My humble share in the matter has been to recognize the importance of Mr. Marsden's discovery; and to direct the particular search in the Record Office, in London, that has resulted in their present reproduction. I regret that they are inconclusive. We still are ignorant of what punishment was inflicted upon the mutineers of the "Discovery"; or even if ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... because it is inconceivable that they should, we have seen at some length that this is no conclusive consideration as applied to a subject of a confessedly transcendental nature, and that in the present case it is particularly inconclusive, because, as it is speculatively certain that the substance of mind must be unknowable, it seems a priori probable that, whatever is the cause of the unknowable reality, this cause should be more difficult to render into thought in that relation ...
— Thoughts on Religion • George John Romanes
... to be inconclusive, but as they sought the answer, a clear sign appeared as it were by the way, and unsought. Julian was watching haggardly. He snarled a question at Jim. His cook-boy's big round eyes showed very big and very round just now. He ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... regretted what I supposed to be my 'chance', shows how far apart we had already swung. My Father, I am convinced, thought that he gave words to my inward instincts when he repudiated the very mild and inconclusive benevolence of his brother-in-law. But he certainly did not do so. I was conscious of a sharp and instinctive disappointment at having had, as I fancied, wealth so near my grasp, and at seeing it all cast violently into the sea of ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... of the Committee of the Dialectical Society, or rather the documents which accompany it, supplies some good evidence. Home had four sittings with one of the Sub-Committees, but the phenomena were of a trifling and inconclusive character. This was attributed to the state of Home's bodily health. He was on the eve of a severe illness. Several persons subsequently sent to the Committee statements of what they had seen and heard in Home's presence. ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... sea-ways of the salmon. And zoologists are altogether at a loss to account for its sudden appearance on our coast. Possibly it was the stress of a hunger migration that drove it hither out of the deep. But it will be, perhaps, better to avoid necessarily inconclusive discussion, and to proceed at ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... world. Stated thus baldly, this may seem no more than a trite truism. But to remember it consistently in matters arousing our passionate partisanship is by no means easy, especially where the available evidence is uncertain and inconclusive. A few illustrations will ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... Pinault gave an account of the results. Most of the organs were in a normal condition, and such slight alterations as could be seen in others would not account for death. It was concluded that death had been occasioned by poison. The autopsy on the exhumed body of Perrotte Mace was inconclusive, owing to ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... suspect Sir JAMES BARRIE of plagiarising (save from himself), yet it will explain something of the atmosphere of Mary Rose if I say that it is a story with such a theme as that admirable ghostmonger, the Provost of Eton, would whole-heartedly approve—thrilling, sinister, inconclusive—with (shall I say?) just a dash of Sir ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE in his other-worldly mood to bring it well into the movement. Naturally the variations are sheer BARRIE and of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... laden and to it was attached a carriage reserved for the military, who were accompanying the departing Britishers to the frontier. Curiously enough, not one of us knew definitely what had happened. Rumour was busy, but it was inconclusive. The general feeling was that Britain had taken some drastic action which must have serious results, otherwise we should not have been bundled home ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... forward from the political point of view. But our Government's attitude was that, in view of engagements entered into by Greece, the Serbs must not act aggressively against the still neutral Bulgars. Nor do I think that, seeing how contradictory and inconclusive the information was upon which they were relying, they were to blame for maintaining an attitude which in the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... where did they lead? The trouble was that no conceivable theory covered the facts of the case, so far as they were known. So far as they were known! That was the difficulty. Any line of thought stopped short of the real solution, because the facts themselves were inconclusive. There was much that was still concealed—Mr. Brimsdown felt ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Little Tobrah. The assessors in the red court-house sat upon him all through the long hot afternoon, and whenever they asked him a question he salaamed and whined. Their verdict was that the evidence was inconclusive, and the Judge concurred. It was true that the dead body of Little Tobrah's sister had been found at the bottom of the well, and Little Tobrah was the only human being within a half mile radius at the time; but the child might have fallen in ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... search whether any idea of God was attainable, I came to the conclusion that evidence of the existence of a conscious Power was lacking, and that the ordinary proofs offered were inconclusive; that we could grasp phenomena and no more. "There appears, also, to be a possibility of a mind in nature, though we have seen that intelligence is, strictly speaking, impossible. There cannot be perception, memory, comparison, or judgment, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... the one territory of the three great Allies not invaded [he says] any insanity of fear be permitted, or any still baser motive of saving private fortune by an inconclusive peace, then the political effect at which the enemy is aiming will indeed have been achieved. These things are contagious. We must root out and destroy the seed of that before it grows more formidable. If we do not, we are deliberately risking disaster. But be ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... to arouse enthusiasm at the best of times, and the day was singularly dispiriting: a sky of lead and a drizzling rain, which emphasized the squalor of the back yards in view. It was all very depressing. Jeffrey's talk, though inconclusive, had stirred in John's mind an uneasiness which was near to apprehension. He turned and walked about the familiar room, recognizing the well-known furniture, his mother's picture over the mantel, the bookshelves filled with his boyhood's accumulations, the well-remembered pattern ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... that particular part of the enemy's strength against which it is theoretically directed,—upon his commerce and general wealth; upon the sinews of war. The evidence seems to show that even for its own special ends such a mode of war is inconclusive, worrying but not deadly; it might almost be said that it causes needless suffering. What, however, is the effect of this policy upon the general ends of the war, to which it is one of the means, and ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... Fornovo, as modern battles go, was a paltry affair; and even at the time it seemed sufficiently without result. Yet the trumpets which rang on July 6, 1495, for the onset, sounded the reveil of the modern world; and in the inconclusive termination of the struggle of that day, the Italians were already judged and sentenced as a nation. The armies who met that morning represented Italy and France,—Italy, the Sibyl of Renaissance; France, the Sibyl of Revolution. At the fall of evening Europe was already ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... to to-day. It has been very inconclusive and unsatisfactory. We have marched about twelve miles, I think, with some long halts, in one of which we unhooked and rode to a pool some distance off to water horses. I have been fearfully sleepy all day. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... descent of the glaciers, increasing indirectly in proportion to the humidity of the climate, and the snow-fall, he conjectured that the proximity of the ocean would prodigiously increase such a deposition of snow.—To me, this argument appears inconclusive; for the first effect of such a vast body of water would be to raise the temperature of winter; and as it is the rain, rather than the sun of summer, which removes the Sikkim snow, so would an increase of this rain elevate, rather than depress, the level of perpetual snow.] or by a depression ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... admittedly casual and unprecise. Not the life of a single bird or insect has been sacrificed to prove "facts" for personal edification or entertainment. Cases in which points were inconclusive have been allowed to remain undecided. The face of the administrator of the law here is rigidly set against the enforcement of the death penalty, simply because the subject is beautiful, or rare, or "not understood." With the aid of a good telescope and a compact pair of field-glasses, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... particularly interesting to ask how it is made. The doubt, the obvious perplexity, is a challenge to the exploring eye. It may well be that effective composition on such a scale is impossible, but it is not so easy to say exactly where Tolstoy fails. If the total effect of his book is inconclusive, it is all lucidity and shapeliness in its parts. There is no faltering in his hold upon character; he never loses his way among the scores of men and women in the book; and in all the endless series of scenes and events there is not one which betrays ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... evidence is, as usual, inconclusive. The word barbaroi is absent from both poems, an absence which must be intentional on the part of the later reciters, but may well come from the original sources. The compound barbarophonoi occurs in B 867, but who knows the date of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... Oldbuck, who dined there at the beginning of "The Antiquary." But you need not tell me—that is not all; there is some story, unrecorded or not yet complete, which must express the meaning of that inn more fully. So it is with names and faces; so it is with incidents that are idle and inconclusive in themselves, and yet seem like the beginning of some quaint romance, which the all-careless author leaves untold. How many of these romances have we not seen determined at their birth; how many people have met us ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had seen, and to be the better able to plan an expedition into the interior for the coming spring. The account of this journey is the last of Cartier's exploits of which we have any detailed account, and even here the closing pages of his narrative are unsatisfactory and inconclusive. What is most strange is that, although he expressly says that he intended to 'go as far as Hochelaga, of purpose to view and understand the fashion of the saults [falls] of water,' he makes no mention of the settlement of Hochelaga itself, and does not seem ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... might protest against the accusation that "they never think about the facts upon which scientific theories are based," for they lay a great emphasis on facts. Facts are the cash which the credit of theories hangs upon. Yet this protest, though sincere, would be inconclusive, and in the end it would illustrate Mr. Russell's observation, rather than refute it. For we should presently learn that these facts can be made by thinking, that our faith in them may contribute to their reality, and may modify their ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... every force, it may be fairer perhaps to recite at full length what in this answer is allowed to be true, what is denied as false, what meant to be exposed as absurd, and what rejected as assertions without proof, inadmissible or inconclusive. The conclusion will contain some observations upon ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... negative,—every formality and regularity observed, and nobody but your Austrian Deputy protesting upon it, when requested to go home. But, the high Maria had a notion that the Reich belonged to her august Family and her; and that all Elections to the contrary were an inconclusive thing, fundamentally void every one ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... I think, lies in not keeping clearly in view—what both certainly perfectly understand—the difference between the guerre-de-course, which is inconclusive, and commerce-destroying (or commerce prevention) through strategic control of the sea by powerful navies. Some nations more than others, but all maritime nations more or less, depend for their prosperity upon maritime commerce, and probably upon it more than upon any other single ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... has revolutionized literary study in this century, and revitalized it as well. For Herder was a man of prophetic instinct; he sometimes felt more clearly than he saw; he divined where he could not reach results by analysis. He was often vague, fragmentary, and inconclusive, like all men of his type; but he had a genius for getting at the heart of things. His statements often need qualification, but he is almost always on the tight track. When he says that the great traditions, in which both the memory and the imagination of a race were engaged, ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... as he turned away, but his own evidence on that point would be inconclusive, since the first object his wondering eyes dwelt on was the graceful figure of Cynthia Vanrenen. There was no possibility of error. An arc lamp blazed overhead, and, to make assurance doubly sure, his recognition of Cynthia was obviously ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... follow that Inspiration, because it guided a sacred writer so long as he wrote of Christian Doctrine, so as to make what he wrote unerringly true, should have protected him against slips of memory; preserved him from inaccuracies of statement; from inconclusive reasonings; from incorrect quotations; from mistaken inferences; from scientific errors.—This is what is said: and because this is a view of the question which is observed to recommend itself occasionally to ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... Royalists under his grandfather, Prince of Conde, and took part in the Rhine campaign against the Republicans; was suspected of being concerned in a Bourbon plot to assassinate the Emperor Napoleon; was seized in the neutral territory of Baden, brought to Vincennes, and, after an inconclusive and illegal trial, shot by Napoleon's orders, a proceeding which gave rise to Fouche's remark, "It is worse than a crime—it ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... picturesque lines, is weak and inconclusive. Its moral is conventional, while the incident is too far-fetched for sympathy. The series of little poems called "James Lee" is full of beauties, but it is too vague to make a firm impression. We suppose it tells the story of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... to trial on the accusation of criminal intercourse with the queen. They were all convicted; but from the few particulars which have come down to us, it seems to be justly inferred, that the evidence produced against some at least of these unhappy gentlemen, was slight and inconclusive. Lord Rochford is universally believed to have fallen a victim to the atrocious perjuries of his wife, who was very improperly admitted as a witness against him, and whose infamous conduct was afterwards fully brought to light. No absolute criminality appears to have been proved ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... increase more or less the real wealth of the society. In order, therefore, to make out something like an argument, it was necessary that they should express themselves as they have done; and this argument, even supposing things actually were as it seems to presume them to be, turns out to be a very inconclusive one. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... performed it properly all competent evidence shows, a foolish, inconclusive, and I fear it must be said emphatically snobbish story of Walpole's notwithstanding. In particular, he broke up a gang of cut-throat thieves, which had been the terror of London. But his tenure of the post was short enough, and scarcely extended to five years. His health had long ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... more and more inconclusive and exhausting. Ann Veronica found herself incompetent, undignified, and detestable, holding on desperately to a hardening antagonism to her father, quarrelling with him, wrangling with him, thinking of repartees—almost as if he was a brother. It was horrible, but what could ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... in its moral perceptions by a course of personal depravity. This is a consideration of the utmost practical importance; and it will probably appear that many well-intended arguments, respecting the first principles of moral truth, have been inconclusive, in the same manner as were attempts to establish first truths by processes of reasoning,—because the line of argument adopted in regard to them was one of which they are not susceptible. The force of this analogy is in no degree ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... is thrown on this question by the study of the old Hawaiian musical instruments is singularly inconclusive. If it were possible, for instance, to bring together a complete set of kaekeeke bamboos which were positively known to have been used together at one performance, the argument from the fact of their forming a ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... for without that assumption. I myself think the assumption highly improbable. So much I may say, but I cannot say more. Possibly some day we may be able to check conjecture by facts. Until then, argument must be inconclusive. ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... many of the amateur performances were from involuntary muscular action—but what then? These are only imitations of actual phenomena. Faraday's letter does not meet the common fact of tables being moved and lifted without the touch of a finger. It is a most arrogant letter and singularly inconclusive. Tell me any facts you may hear. Mr. Kinney, the American Minister at the Court of Turin, had arrived at Florence a few days before we quitted it, and he and his wife helped us to spend our last evening at Casa Guidi. He ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... safeguarded. The amendment was barely relevant to the issue, and notwithstanding influential support it was defeated by 58 to 27. Thereupon the "previous question" was moved and carried by 59 to 50. This inconclusive result revealed a great diversity of opinion in the Society, and the Executive Committee, for the first and, so far, the only time, availed itself of the rule which authorised it to submit any question to a postal referendum of all ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... so I trust," said Holmes, gravely. "There is some deep intrigue going on round that little woman, and it is our duty to see that no one molests her upon that last journey. I think, Watson, that we must spare time to run down together on Saturday morning, and make sure that this curious and inconclusive investigation has ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... We have omitted a long, inconclusive, and uninteresting discussion about the climate and productions of the proposed discovery, the Terra Australis, which still remains incognito, or rather has been clearly shewn to have ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... vigorous and profound of human intellects have directed their energies, it would be vain to expect any novelty of argument. On either side, it may be presumed, the question has been exhausted, or, that the human mind has done all that its powers can accomplish, however unsatisfactory or inconclusive, in some respects, ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... bard, or hoary sage, Charm or instruct the future age, They bind the wild poetric rage In energy, Or point the inconclusive page Full on ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... away, always away from home, from the past, to that great, raw America. He seemed scarcely like a person with individual choice, more like a creature under the influence of fate which was disintegrating the old life and precipitating him, a fragment inconclusive, into the ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... belief that that boy never did answer. I represented that he was a mythic character, a delusion, and a snare. I recounted how, the last time I found him, I found him at a dinner party behind a wall of white cravat, with an inconclusive opinion on every possible subject, and a power of silent boredom absolutely Titanic. I related how, on the strength of our having been together at "Old Doylance's," he had asked himself to breakfast with me (a social offence of the largest magnitude); how, fanning my weak ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... the result of the examination is negative or inconclusive, kill a second guinea-pig at the end of the third week ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... the still air with a deep, reverberating note. It was a reassuring and yet solemn sound, as if it alone were responsible for humanity, for all the souls crowded together in the tiny valley, striving for their separate, shaken, inconclusive lives. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... shelter in the miraculous, nor do we run from a dilemma to the refuges of religion. Apart from our theological belief in the potency of the Creator and Controller of all worlds, we simply regard it as illogical and inconclusive to argue that because organization, life, and intelligence obtain within one sphere under one order of circumstances, therefore the same order obtains in every other sphere throughout the system to which that one belongs. ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... all the conversation he had dreamt of; it was halting, it was inconclusive, it was full of ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... of your fathers were living now, and had any mistrust on that subject, his mind would not be changed by the change of circumstances involved in the change of your years? Untenable, unreasonable, inconclusive, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... telegraphed to London a complete description of Mark in the brown flannel suit which he had last been seen wearing; he had made inquiries at Stanton as to whether anybody answering to this description had been seen leaving by the 4.20; and though the evidence which had been volunteered to him had been inconclusive, it made it possible that Mark had indeed caught that train, and had arrived in London before the police at the other end had been ready to receive him. But the fact that it was market-day at Stanton, ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... accordingly, and the two long lines passed each other on opposite tacks three times, cannonading furiously at close range. This meant that the force was distributed evenly along the enemy's line and as against an evenly matched force these tactics could result, as a rule, only in mere inconclusive artillery duels which each side would claim as victories. In the battle of Lowestoft, however, several of the captains in the Dutch center flinched at the third passing and bore up to leeward, leaving a wide gap in de Ruyter's line. The English broke through at this point ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... culture was, and illustrates it by the story that during the Egyptian expedition, when his scientific men were busy arguing that there could be no God, Bonaparte, looking up to the stars, confuted them decisively by saying: 'Very ingenious, Messieurs; but who made all that?' Surely the most inconclusive answer since coxcombs vanquished Berkeley with a grin. It is, however, a type of Mr. Carlyle's faith in the instinct of nature, as superseding the necessity for patient logical method; a faith, in other words, in crude and ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... him to the Whigs. As the party out of power, and in Illinois quite out of favour, they had doubtless some advantage in character. As we have seen, the greatest minds among American statesmen of that day, Webster and Clay, were Whigs. Lincoln's simple and quite reasonable, if inconclusive, argument for Protection, can be found among his speeches of some years later. And schemes of internal development certainly fired ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... be able to put a stop to the futile blockades and inconclusive reprisals which had been carried on for nearly thirty years with such unsatisfactory results, and I looked forward to turning the wild tribesmen from enemies into friends, a strength instead of a weakness, to our Government, and to bringing them by degrees within ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... to prove it to him. When she had proved it, that, whatever he was, she was not afraid of him; when she had proved THAT, she could leave him forever. But meanwhile the fight between them, terrible as she knew it to be, was inconclusive. And she wanted to be confident in herself. However many terrors she might have, she would be unafraid, uncowed by him. He could never cow her, nor dominate her, nor have any right over her; this she would maintain until she had proved it. Once it was proved, she ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... prove unwise. Such trivial options abound in the scientific life. A chemist finds an hypothesis live enough to spend a year in its verification: he believes in it to that extent. But if his experiments prove inconclusive either way, he is quit for his loss of time, no vital ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... on the impolicy, iniquity, and disgracefulness of this wicked traffic. He thought the reasons urged by gentlemen in defence of it were inconclusive, and ill founded. It was one cause of the complaints against British tyranny, that this trade was permitted. The Revolution had put a period to it; but now it was to be revived. He thought nothing could justify it. This temporary restriction ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... should, as far as possible, be master of his subject; and to this end he should bestow upon his discourse careful and even laborious preparation. Without these requisites the orator is apt to prove uninteresting, inconclusive, and unsuccessful. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... I rose from this long and inconclusive interview, "you are taking a very great responsibility and putting yourself in a very false position by not making an absolutely clean breast of all that you know. If I have to call in the aid of the police you will ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... to terms of imprisonment which certainly did not err upon the side of severity. Cecil Rhodes was left unpunished, he retained his place in the Privy Council, and his Chartered Company continued to have a corporate existence. This was illogical and inconclusive. As Kruger said, 'It is not the dog which should be beaten, but the man who set him on to me.' Public opinion—in spite of, or on account of, a crowd of witnesses—was ill informed upon the exact bearings of the question, and it was obvious that as Dutch ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to compromise. He had made his farm with his own hands, and he did not propose to see it destroyed. Much money he expended through the courts; indeed the profits of his business were eaten by a never-ending, inconclusive suit. The Hydraulic Company, securely entrenched behind the barriers of especial privilege, could laugh at his frontal attacks. It was useless to think of force. The feud degenerated into a bitter legal battle and much petty guerrilla warfare on ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... they precisely agree in all their grand features; nor has there yet been presented a single determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction. It is by endless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, that some departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate. The right whale will be elsewhere treated of at some length, with reference to ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... peculiar, aimless, unsatisfactory, and yet effective method of warfare practised by the Insurrecto armies; they told her of the endless marches and counter-marches, the occasional skirmishes, the feints, the inconclusive engagements which were all a part of the general strategy—operations which served to keep the enemy constantly on guard, like a blind swordsman, and would, it was hoped, eventually wear down his patience and endurance. In her turn, Norine related something of what she was doing and how ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... 13, 1907), when the question arose as to the use of night-lines being angling; but the decision against night-lines went on the ground of the absence of the personal element rather than on the absence of a rod. The various dictionaries are blind guides on this point, and the authorities cited are inconclusive; but, broadly speaking, angling now implies three necessary factors—a personal angler, the sporting element, and the use of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... he has ample precedent. If you are convinced by the word of our Lord d'Hymbercourt and myself that he is of birth and station worthy to engage with you in knightly and mortal combat, you can ask no more. Few courts of chivalry, I take it, would hold the evidence inconclusive. Take up or leave the gage, Sir Count, and do one or the ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... the delicate and often-times suggestible nature of the trance; and how inconclusive, to say the least, are such experiments as those of Drs. Tanner ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... inclination,—though the theory of the lever was as well understood in his own time as it is now. In making an experiment {84} of his own to ascertain the cause of the motion of a windmill, he overlooks an obvious circumstance which makes the experiment inconclusive, and an equally obvious variation of the same experiment which would have shown him that his theory was false. He speaks of the poles of the earth as fixed, in a manner which seems to imply that he was not acquainted with the precession of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... with the evidence for the marriage. Mr. Leslie Stephen is of opinion that it is inconclusive, and Forster could find no evidence that is at all reasonably sufficient; while Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole, Mr. Churton Collins, and others are strongly of opinion that no such marriage ever took place. A full discussion of the evidence ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... Irish had stated in the proper constitutional way what they wanted, and that, in the first flush of a victorious democracy, when counting heads irrespective of contents was the popular method of arriving at political truth, was assumed to be precisely what they ought to have. A long but inconclusive contest ensued. At times it looked as if the Liberal-Irish alliance might snatch a victory for their policy. But when Gladstone was forced to break with the Irish Leader, and Parnellism without Parnell became obviously impossible, the English realised that ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... land, and is eager to reach it; he prays "to be delivered from the body of this death;" but we write of those humbler, perhaps more human souls, with whom increasing age each day treads down an illusion. All feverish wishes, raw and inconclusive desires, have died down, and a calm beauty and peace survive; passions are dead, temptations weakened or conquered; experience has been won; selfish interests are widened into universal ones; vain, idle hopes, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... feelings, Marshall, like most Army staff officers, always emphasized efficiency and performance to the exclusion of social concerns. While he believed that the limited scope of the experiment with integrated platoons toward the end of the war in Europe made the results inconclusive, Marshall still wanted the platoons' performance considered in the general ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... benigne acceptus hinc usque in curta permansit et in praefacto proelio strenue pugnavit,' giving not a hint of his having settled in the Highlands, or of his having become the progenitor of any Scottish family whatever while as to the supposed charter of Alexander III., it is equally inconclusive, as it merely grants the lands of Kintail to Colin Hiberno, the word 'Hiberno' having at the time come into general use as denoting the Highlanders, in the same manner as the word 'Erse' is now frequently used to express their language; ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... and the place of the newspaper and the power of the journalist is increasing rapidly, but the stale atmosphere of censordom hangs about the press even to-day. Freedom is too new to have bred many powerful pens or personalities, and the inconclusive results of political arguments, written for a people who are comparatively apathetic, lessen the enthusiasm of the political journalist. There are not three editors in Germany who receive as much as six thousand dollars a year, and the majority are paid from twelve hundred ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... dramatic sketches of Parisian society. It seems to come of a condition of things, rather than from an individual faculty. Still, it is remarkable, and even admirable, though in Mr. Purnell's case it is not inconsistent with dealing somewhat prolixly with rather dry subjects, and being immensely inconclusive upon all important matters, and very painfully conclusive on trivial ones. Our essayist says little that is new of Montaigne, and does not add to our knowledge of Steele, Swift, and Sterne, though he speaks freshly and interestingly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... lunched in Marlborough and went on in the afternoon to Silbury Hill, that British pyramid, the largest artificial mound in Europe. They left the car by the roadside and clambered to the top and were very learned and inconclusive about the exact purpose of this vast heap of chalk and earth, this heap that men had made before the temples at Karnak were built or Babylon had ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... a State court, Chief Justice Gibson of Pennsylvania, as late as 1825, in a dissenting opinion, combated at length the reasoning of Marshall as weak and inconclusive. If, he said, the judiciary had the power claimed, it would be a political power. Our judicial system was patterned after that of England. Our judges had, as such, no power not given by the common law. It was conceded that English ...
— The American Judiciary • Simeon E. Baldwin, LLD
... independent of reason, anterior to reason; gratuitous, hazarded; unconnected. unreasonable, illogical, false, unsound, invalid; unwarranted, not following; inconsequent, inconsequential; inconsistent; absonous^, absonant^; unscientific; untenable, inconclusive, incorrect; fallacious, fallible; groundless, unproved; non sequitur [Lat.], it does not follow. deceptive, sophistical, jesuitical; illusive, illusory; specious, hollow, plausible, ad captandum [Lat.], evasive; irrelevant &c 10. weak, feeble, poor, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to demonstrate this teaching from Sacred Scripture. The texts John VI, 44 and Phil. II, 13, which are usually adduced in this connection, are inconclusive. ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... of Panthea and Abradates, to which Professor Ebers refers so triumphantly, is equally inconclusive as to the existence of altruistic affection. Abradates, having been urged by his wife Panthea to show himself worthy of the friendship of Cyrus by doing valorous deeds, falls in a battle, whereat Panthea is so grieved at the result ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... excited, storming for the production of Soosie, and being met with inconclusive statements and evasions. Being one who knew no fear, who deemed his questions justifiable, who felt himself more than a match for the whole camp, and was convinced that the blacks were in possession of essential information, he urged the policy of chastising the sullenness out of a couple of incommunicative ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the supreme crisis was passed when, earlier in the day, he had pawned the last of his keepsakes for the money to buy the revolver. But he had yet to learn that there is no supreme crisis in the human span, save that which ends it; that all the wayfaring duels with fate are inconclusive; conflicts critical enough at the moment, but lacking finality, and likely to be renewed indefinitely if one ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... found in many places; but as it is not always certain that they were not Gallic, the proofs of a very early coinage in Britain is inconclusive. Indeed, the notion that the tin trade—to which may be added that in fur and salt—was carried on by barter is the more probable. But the coins of Cynobelin are numerous. They have been well illustrated;[4] ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... had been detected at long range, but the detections were inconclusive. The things had not changed course, or indicated in any other way that they had seen or detected the Oman vessels on patrol. If their detectors were no better than the Omans', they certainly hadn't. That idea, however, could not be assumed to be a fact, and ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... Jelfs, "entirely inconclusive. But," he persisted, "you must not hold back material evidence. You haven't told us yet what ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... complying with his request, and certainly I could not have devised any arrangement which would give me such an opportunity of satisfying my curiosity. What was in that wide stone chimney, and why had he clambered up there upon the sight of me? My adventure would be inconclusive indeed if I did not settle that point before I went on ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... them under the existing law, though an evil in one way, is beneficial in another. Every apparent consent to marry, if irregularly declared out of the presence of the church, is at present liable to inquiry and explanation. The most formal written engagement or verbal declaration is of itself inconclusive; it being always competent to inquire, whether it was not interchanged in jest or in error, or for some other purpose than that of constituting marriage; and several cases have occurred where, upon evidence that there was no genuine and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... supplies for so large an armament, was next to impossible; and to this much more than to the "niggardliness" of the Queen, [Footnote: Laughton, i., pp. lvii ff. Froude's latitude of paraphrase makes his handling of the evidence peculiarly inconclusive.] must be attributed the vehement complaints of deficiencies. Sanitary conditions also were not at all generally understood, and it was dangerous to keep crews constantly on board. On the whole, the denunciations of the authorities were not different from those ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... us in Boston, though, after what happened, she could n't, poor thing! I wonder if she 's ever regretted her breaking with him in the way she did. It's a very painful thing to think of,—such an inconclusive conclusion; it always seemed as if they ought ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... proof be difficult to be obtained, shall we therefore fasten irremovably upon equivocal proof? Can we change the nature of what is contestable, and make it incontestable? Can we make that conclusive which God and nature have made inconclusive? Solon made no law against, parricide, supposing it impossible any one could be guilty of it; and the Persians, from the same opinion, adjudged all who killed their reputed parents to be bastards: and although parental, be yet stronger ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... planet, found it was suitable to their purpose, and decided that Koree Buron and Sira Nal could use it as a playing board. Seems they had a bet on, and their last game was inconclusive. Both of the involved ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... Solferino, and Louis Napoleon had effected the celebrated treaty with Austria at Villa-Franca, arranging for a confederation of all the Italian States under the Papal Protectorate, and the cession of Lombardy to Sardinia. This inconclusive result greatly disgusted all the Italian patriots. Cavour resigned at once, but soon after was induced to resume his post at the head of affairs. Venice and Verona were still in Austrian hands. As the Prussians ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... reward their search. The ground was too soft and marshy to retain any traces of footsteps, and the mare and saddle furnished the only evidence that the object of their quest had been in the neighborhood of the swamp—and of course this evidence was of the most vague and inconclusive character. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... objectors, if they will maintain their objection, must deny the position that the dramatic art holds up the mirror to Nature, and that if they deny it, the burden—a burden never yet successfully taken up by any one—of framing a new definition rests upon them. But this is only a partial and somewhat inconclusive argument, and the person who genuinely dislikes these peculiarities of Shakespere is like a man who genuinely dislikes wine or pictures or human faces, that seem delightful and beautiful to others. I am not aware of any method whereby I can prove that the most perfect claret is better than zoedone ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... disappoints. The only remarkable occurrence which takes place is, that the lady does not find the corpse, nor does any evidence transpire which can lead her to suppose that the suicide had ever been committed; and with this senseless and inconclusive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... instructed to inform Mr. Fox that if a negotiation be entertained at all upon the inconclusive and unsatisfactory basis afforded by the British counter proposition or substitute, which possesses hardly a feature in common with the American proposition, the President will not venture to invite it unless the authorities of the State ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... of the Soul, Section V. of Part IV., Book I., of the Treatise, in which Hume concludes (I. p. 319) that, whether it be material or immaterial, "in both cases the metaphysical arguments for the immortality of the soul are equally inconclusive; and in both cases the moral arguments and those derived from the analogy of nature are ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... second was her maid. Of Mrs. Smollett, who was a Miss Lascelles and a West Indian heiress in a small way, we know very little—the habit of identifying her with the "Narcissa" of Roderick Random is natural, inconclusive, but not ridiculous. Sterne's matrimonial relations are the most famous of all: and though posterity has, with its usual charity, constructed a legend for the pair which is probably much worse than ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury |
