"Plausibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... allays of the sentimental comedy which followed theirs. It is impossible that it should be now acted, though it continues, at long intervals, to be announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer played it at least, was Joseph Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice—to express it in a word—the downright acted villany of the part, so different from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness,—the hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy,—which made Jack so deservedly a favourite ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... belonging to a seaman, from an apprentice boy in the coal trade, to a post-captain in the royal navy, he has had no opportunity of cultivating letters. After this account of myself, the public must not expect from me the elegance of a fine writer, or the plausibility of a professed book-maker; but will, I hope, consider me as a plain man, zealously exerting himself in the service of his country, and determined to give the best account he ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... known in legal circles—not as a profound lawyer, which he will never be to the end of his career, but as a brilliant advocate, with a plausibility that is effective with the average juryman, and an acquaintance with legal principles which is not too close to prevent a British unconsciousness that a cause can ever ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... and became known in the latter country by the name of shatranj. Some have understood that word to mean "the play of the king"; but undoubtedly Sir William Jones's derivation carries with it the most plausibility. How and when the game was introduced into Persia we have no means of knowing. The Persian poet Firdusi, in his historical poem, the Shahnama, gives an account of the introduction of shatranj into ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... to his full height and uttered these strange words with a sad majesty that was very imposing. But General Rolleston, steeled by experience of convicts, their plausibility and their histrionic powers, was staggered only for a moment. He deigned no reply; but told Helen that Captain Moreland was waiting for her, and she had better go on ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Swiftian plausibility to give an air of truth to his remarks. Certain parts of America were at that time reputed to be ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... 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 meaning, to be sure, was still vague enough; and whenever some commonplace truth or plausibility protruded from the general washiness, it was seized upon and beaten and stretched to the last degree of tenuity. Phrases upon phrases of gorgeous dreaminess. A soothing delight,—yet such delight as only the bodily senses demanded. A joyful deliverance from the bondage ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... time there was in that market-town one of those adventurous, speculative men, who are the more dangerous impostors because imposed upon by their own sanguine chimeras, who have a plausibility in their calculations, an earnestness in their arguments, which account for the dupes they daily make in our most sober and wary of civilized communities. Unscrupulous in their means, yet really honest in the belief that their objects can be attained, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... now see that the time selected for its promulgation was as skilfully chosen as its aim was laudable. Had it come out a year earlier, in 1861, the friends of the Rebels could have said, with much plausibility, that its appearance had rendered a restoration of the Union impossible, and that the slaveholders had no longer any hope of having their property-rights respected under the Federal Constitution. But by allowing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Queed found the parlor occupied, and the lady's attention engaged, by two young men before him. One of them was Beverley Byrd, who saluted him somewhat moodily. The other was a Mr. Miller—no relation to Miss Miller of Mrs. Paynter's, though a faint something in his ensemble lent plausibility to that conjecture—a newcomer to the city who, having been introduced to Miss Weyland somewhere, had taken the liberty of calling without invitation or permission. It was impossible for Sharlee to be rude to anybody under her own roof, but it is equally impossible to describe ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... been used at the father's death, by a strange fatality, would come in play again at the murder of the son. The imprisonment of the son at the Castle Del Uovo, where the father had died, gave something of plausibility to this story. But what most excited public curiosity was the strange incident which had taken place at Torre-del-Greco. All were impatient for its explanation. The double and impossible presence of the Count at the house of Stenio Salvatori, and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... of Mayer's ignorance. Finding him at the hotel had done half, his arguments and manner the rest. And during the drive back his explanation of Chrystie's disappearance had retained a consoling plausibility. She held to it fiercely, conned it over, tried to force herself to see the girl impishly bent ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... be but to imbitter his reflections needlessly. Such were the specious reasons with which I fed my self-love, and satisfied my conscience; but now, as I read his name in that terrible catalogue, their plausibility served me no longer, and at last I forgot myself to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... question whether the United States were still bound to fulfill the stipulations of the treaties. They inclined to the opinion that treaties themselves were annulled by the revolution of the government in France—an opinion to which the example of the revolutionary government had given plausibility by declaring some of the treaties made by the abolished monarchy no longer binding upon the nation. Mr. Hamilton thought, also, that France had no just claim to the fulfillment of the stipulation of guarantee, because that stipulation, and the whole ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... had only negative doctrines, and held in disdain those inquiries which sought to penetrate the mysteries of existence. They did not believe that absolute truth was attainable by man; and they attacked the prevailing systems with great plausibility. They pointed out the uncertainty of things, and the folly of striving ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Work was taught in 11 schools, in 1910 in 691. If this is not progression—and progression under the Legislative Union—to what can the predicate be more truthfully applied? Statistics are apt to be barren and uninforming and can be adapted, with almost equal plausibility, to support the arguments of either side; but these figures are eloquent and speak for themselves. They embody a large and vital portion of the history of Irish Primary Education, and are a proof of the interest which is being taken in it and of the activity of the architects ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... that, 'where he, there thou also'; but 'where thou, there he also'?" I confess to Thee, O Lord, that to the best of my remembrance (and I have oft spoken of this), that Thy answer, through my waking mother, -that she was not perplexed by the plausibility of my false interpretation, and so quickly saw what was to be seen, and which I certainly had not perceived before she spake, -even then moved me more than the dream itself, by which a joy to the holy woman, to be fulfilled ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... her aunt, and the utter hopelessness of all appeal to anything but her selfish cupidity, and saw in this fatuous essay of Corbin only an aggravation of her worst instincts. Even the dead body of her son would not only whet her appetite for pecuniary vengeance, but give it plausibility in the eyes of their emotional but ignorant neighbors. She had still less to hope from Julia Jeffcourt's more honest and human indignation but equally bigoted and prejudiced intelligence. It is true they were only women, and she ought to have no fear of that ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... came to write of the "bells" of a primrose. Mr. W.J. Linton proposed "With harebell slim": although if we must read "harebell" or "harebells," "dim" would be a pretty and proper word for the color of that flower. The conjecture takes some little plausibility from Shakespeare's elsewhere ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... conversation, for neglecting everything not essential to her present plausibility. "A woman like Lady Fanny can have no 'grounds' for anything—for any indignation, I mean, or for any revenge worth twopence. In this particular case at all events they've been sacrificed with such extravagance that, as an injured wife, she ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... if they had any suspicion with respect to him, he was perfectly willing to leave the note in their possession till he should return, which he intended to do in about a fortnight. There was so much plausibility in the speech of the Quaker, and his appearance and behaviour were so perfectly respectable, that my friend felt almost ashamed of the suspicion which at first he had entertained of him, though, at the same time, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... turns aside from hypotheses not to be tested by any known logical canon familiar to science, whether the hypothesis claims support from intuition, aspiration or general plausibility. And, again, this method turns aside from ideal standards which avow themselves to be lawless, which profess to transcend the field of law. We say, life and conduct shall stand for us wholly on a basis of law, and must rest entirely in that region of science (not physical, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... have been a collection of farcical scenes written at various periods of his career[90]. We know that he was dead on April 16, 1540. He did not follow the Court to Lisbon in August 1537 and his death may be assigned with some plausibility to the end of 1536 at Evora[91]. The children of his second marriage were almost certainly with him, Paula and Luis, who edited his works in 1562 and were now still in their teens, and the even younger Valeria. Paula seems to have inherited her father's versatility ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... be reminded that love stories, in which the lovers are required to surmount all sorts of obstacles, are common enough; one of the chief difficulties in supplying the demand is to create obstacles of the sort that will stand the test of plausibility and yet add a reasonable means by which the hero and heroine may overcome them, for the distracted couple must live up to what is expected of them, and their romance must be molded by the practical maxim that nothing succeeds like ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... was. Her hull, her rigging filled my eye with a great content. That feeling of life-emptiness which had made me so restless for the last few months lost its bitter plausibility, its evil influence, dissolved in a ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... only to escape his difficulties by inactivity, and he trusted to provide himself with a refuge against all contingencies by waiting upon time. Even when at length he was compelled to act, and to act in a distinct direction, his plausibility long enabled him to explain away his conduct; and, honest in the excess of his dishonesty, he wore his falsehood with so easy a grace that it assumed the character of truth. He was false, deceitful, treacherous; yet ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... the order of the world, whether well-founded or not (to Mina they seemed to possess much plausibility), did not advance matters. A silence fell between the two, and Cecily walked again to the window. The sun was setting on Blent, and it glowed in ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... of separating this class from others is not an easy one; for there is plausibility in saying that anything in the world is the instrument of doing something. But there is another class of possessions in a city, of which I have ...
— Statesman • Plato
... influence he could once have set in motion, and as it were to gather his strength for a mighty tussle with the king of terrors, when his pale fingers should tap at his cell door. I have seen two of his letters, written with consummate plausibility and adroitness, and which have given me altogether a very high idea of his powers. But they were all received with a terrifying coldness or with absolute silence. There was no reasoning against an intuition. Every human being felt that the verdict was true, and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... hastily sought after, not from any devotion to scientific truth, or any genuine love of it, but for some purpose of controversy, we may receive it as a sure and certain fact that they will not be found. Some mere plausibility will be produced instead, bearing on its front an obviousness favorable mayhap to its reception for the time by the vulgar, but in reality fatal to its claims in the estimate of all deep thinkers; while truth will meanwhile lie concealed far below, in the bottom of her well, until ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... had brought in a verdict of "Murder by a certain person unknown," and now the police were occupied in following such clues as I could give them. All the daily papers assigned robbery as the motive, and the disappearance of Tom's watch-chain gave plausibility to the theory. But I knew too well why that chain had disappeared, and even in my grief found consolation in the thought of Colliver's impotent rage when he should come to examine his prize. I had described the face ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with you? Is there a trace in their lives of kindred and affinity? Does oil mix with water? If they grow their beards and call themselves philosophers and look solemn, do these things make them like you? I could have contained myself if there had been any touch of plausibility in their acting; but the vulture is more like the nightingale than they like philosophers. And now I have pleaded my cause to the best of my ability. Truth, I rely upon ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... general good, and what is included by it? The positive school contend that it is general happiness; and there, they say, is the answer to the great question—What is the test of conduct, and the true end of life? But though, as we shall see in another moment, there is some plausibility in this, there is really nothing in it of the special answer we want. Our question is, What is the true happiness? And what is the answer thus far?—That the true happiness is general happiness; that it is the happiness of men in societies; that it is happiness equally ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... of terror he judged it safe to strike a match, he ripped open the bundle, over which so many men and one woman had fought—and in it discovered only tightly packed newspapers and a few small pieces of broken brick—added to give it the plausibility of weight. ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... depended upon for furnishing the necessary accommodation. A drag-hunt is quite a different thing. The drag can be made to any strength; enabling hounds to run as if they were tied to it, and can be trailed so as to bring in all the dangerous places in the country with a certain air of plausibility, enabling a man to look round and exclaim, as he crams at a bullfinch or brook, 'he's leading us over a most desperate country—never saw such fencing in all my life!' Drag-hunting, however, as we said before, is not popular with sportsmen, certainly not with ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... only danger was in being caught by high water before we could reach this ravine, and even then we might save ourselves by climbing up on the rocks, and abandoning our horses to their fate. It would be no worse for them than starving and freezing to death in the mountains. Divested of its verbal plausibility, his plan was nothing more nor less than a grand thirty-mile race with a high tide along a narrow beach, from which all escape was cut off by precipitous cliffs one and two hundred feet in height. If we reached the ravine in time, all would ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... of any statement, the actuality of any alleged instance, came to be determined, not by any application of rationalistic principle, not by inherent plausibility, not by actual inquiry into the facts of the case, but by its agreement with religious feelings or beliefs, its effect in furthering the influence of the Church or the reputation of a saint—in general, by its relationship to matters of faith. Thus it happens ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... his arguments with the weaker creatures around him the Frankish king was always right. It was always they, not he, who had befouled the stream. In this, shall I say, shameless plausibility of wrong, the founder of the Frankish monarchy was a worthy prototype of Louis XIV. and ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... sense, we ought to listen to this music while looking at a stage-setting more colossal than any ever contemplated by dramatist before. We should see a wide stretch of the plain of Shinar; in the foreground a tower so tall as to give color of plausibility to a speech which prates of an early piercing of heaven and so large as to provide room for a sleeping multitude on its scaffoldings. Brick kilns, derricks, and all the apparatus and machinery of building should be on all hands, and from the summit of a mound should ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... submergences icebergs deposited the bowlders now scattered here and there over the land. Nothing could be simpler or more clearly uniformitarian. And even the catastrophists, though they met Lyell amicably on almost no other theoretical ground, were inclined to admit the plausibility of his theory of erratics. Indeed, of all Lyell's nonconformist doctrines, this seemed the one most likely ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... truth) seem such incoherent shreds, that it is impossible to tie them together; and therefore, what I purpose is, to answer such objections to the Test, as are advanced either by this author, or any other which have any appearance of reason, or plausibility. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... the cud of disappointment, and scornfully rejecting comfort. He quarrelled with his wife and with most of his friends, even with the gentle Lamb, till Lamb regained his affections by the brief quarrel with Southey. Certainly, he might call himself, with some plausibility, 'the king of good haters.' But, after all, Hazlitt's cynicism is the souring of a generous nature; and when we turn from the politician to the critic and the essayist, our admiration for his powers is less frequently jarred by annoyance at their wayward misuse. His egotism—for he is still an egotist—here ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... and religion; but they obstinately adhered to the ceremonies of their ancestors, and were desirous of imposing them on the Gentiles, who continually augmented the number of believers. These Judaizing Christians seem to have argued with some degree of plausibility from the divine origin of the Mosaic law, and from the immutable perfections of its great Author. They affirmed, that if the Being, who is the same through all eternity, had designed to abolish those sacred rites which had served to distinguish his chosen people, the repeal ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... feeble lamentation, but he was evidently a person whose objections nobody was accustomed to heed. Captain Magnus, who might with plausibility have urged claims superior to those of all the rest, assented to the arrangement with a willingness which filled me with boding. I had caught his restless furtive eye fixed gloatingly upon me more than once. I saw ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... would make 'Hesiod' mean the 'guide' in virtues and technical arts), and to refer to the pitiful attempts in the "Etymologicum Magnum" (s.v. {H}ESIODUS), to show how prejudiced and lacking even in plausibility such efforts are. It seems certain that 'Hesiod' stands as a proper name in the fullest sense. Secondly, Hesiod claims that his father—if not he himself—came from Aeolis and settled in Boeotia. There is fairly definite evidence to warrant our acceptance ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... former lecture I went over some of the fechnerian reasons for their plausibility, or reasons that at least replied to our more obvious grounds of doubt concerning them. The numerous facts of divided or split human personality which the genius of certain medical men, as Janet, Freud, Prince, Sidis, and others, have unearthed were unknown in Fechner's ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature, so their grand maxim is, to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it. Neither is reason among them a point problematical, as with us, where men can argue with plausibility on both sides of the question, but strikes you with immediate conviction; as it must needs do, where it is not mingled, obscured, or discoloured, by passion and interest. I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... 'Looking Backward,' though ostensibly a romance, is universally recognized as a great economic treatise in a framework of fiction. Without this guise it could not have obtained the foothold that it did; there is just enough of the skillful novelist's touch in its composition to give plausibility to the book and exert a powerful influence upon the popular imagination. The ingenious device by which a man of the nineteenth century is transferred to the end of the twentieth, and the vivid dramatic quality of the dream at the end of the book, are instances of the art of the trained ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... the deficiency of personal pronouns being a proof of Japanese "impersonality," i.e., of lack of consciousness of self, this very deficiency may, with even more plausibility, be used to establish the opposite view. Child psychology has established the fact that an early phenomenon of child mental development is the emphasis laid on "meum" and "tuum," mine and yours. The child is a thoroughgoing individualist in feelings, conceptions, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... with what seemed absolute frankness about her future life in the cottages, answering little questionings of Lady Shuttleworth's with a discretion and plausibility that would have warmed Fritzing's anxious heart, dwelling most, for here the ground was safest, on her uncle, his work, his gifts and character, and Lady Shuttleworth, completely fascinated, had offered her help of every sort, help in the arranging of her little home, in the planting of its garden, ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... "If Boswell had not been a great fool he never would have been a great writer." This is one of those paradoxical statements to which Macaulay likes to give a glittering plausibility. It is true that Boswell wrote a great book, and it is also true that in some regards he was what we are accustomed to designate as a fool; but to connect the two as cause and effect is like saying that a man was a great ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... beings into stones, trees, plants, beasts, birds, and the like, is cast into a continuous narrative. The adroitness with which this is done makes the poem rank as a masterpiece of construction. The atmosphere of romantic fable in which it is enveloped even gives it a certain plausibility of effect almost amounting to epic unity. In the fabulous superhuman element that appears in all the stories, and in their natural surroundings of wood, or mountain, or sea—always realised with fresh ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... mystery plot in which the supernatural furnishes the interest. In dealing with the supernatural Mrs. Wharton does not allow it to become horrible or grotesque. She secures plausibility by having for its leading characters practical business men—not a woman, hysterical or otherwise, really appears—and by placing them in a perfectly conventional setting. The apparition is not accompanied by blood stains, shroud, or uncanny ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... been cut off in his prime, before the composition of "Oedipus"; had Handel never merged the fame of his forgotten operas in the immortal music of his oratorios; had Milton been known only by the poems of his youth, we might with equal plausibility have laid that flattering unction to our heart. And yet how shallow would have been our optimism, how fallacious our attempt at consolation. There is no denying the fact that when a young Marcellus is shown by fate for one brief moment, and withdrawn before his springtime has bought forth the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... constitutes in itself a recognized problem (see also page 27) of great difficulty; for it is a human failing to avoid the mental effort involved in thinking through such a problem, and to rely on rules whose plausibility and seeming simplicity are frequently a measure of ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... not wishing to overhear the conversation, had entered the house, and father and daughter were left to continue their parley in private. There was really, as Elsie thought, some plausibility in the old man's prognostications, and the situation began to assume a very puzzling aspect to her mind. She admitted that scientists, viewed as a genus, were objectionable; but insisted that Fern, to whose personal charms she was keenly alive, was an exception to the ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Rebok, and that he was a creature of the Duke of Saxony, who coveted the Brandenburgian possessions, and who, being a relative of the family, had thoroughly instructed him as to the private life of Voldemar. His plausibility, and the accuracy of his answers, however, led many persons of influence to believe that he was no counterfeit. The Emperor Charles IV. (of Bohemia), the Primate of Germany, the Princes of Anhalt, and the Dukes of Brunswick, Pomerania, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... view seems from the right point. Yet beware of over great pleasure in being popular, or even beloved. As far as an amiable disposition and powers of entertainment make you so, it is a happiness; but if there is one grain of plausibility, it ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... think you would say if, in some of these moments of unnecessary intermingling with questionable things and doubtful people, you were brought suddenly to this, that you had to formulate into some kind of plausibility your reason for being there? I am afraid it would be a very lame and ragged set of reasons that many of us would have to give. Well! better that we should now have to answer the question 'What doest thou here?' than that we should ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... lighting a cigarette it came to a stop, while the chauffeur, dropping to the ground, rummaged fiercely with the interior. Green leaned back in the shadow, his eyes fixed on the steps leading to Grell's house. There was a sufficient air of plausibility about the whole accident to impress any one but the ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... would be pale too if you had nothing to eat." He could hardly speak the words and felt his strength falling. But there was some plausibility in his reply; and the old ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... artifice will no' deceive the enemy, who, by means that would be unintelligible, did not our suspicions rest on an unhappy young man with too much plausibility, are familiar with all our doings and plans, and well know that the sun will not set before the worthy Sergeant and his companions will be in their power. Aweel! Submission to Providence is truly a ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... and in order to consummate his avaricious designs, and screen his name from opprobrium, he told the world that I was hopelessly insane; and that the discovery of this fact, one hour after his marriage, had induced him to send me abroad under the care of a faithful and judicious nurse. To give plausibility to this statement, a paragraph was inserted in the New York papers announcing that I was a raving maniac and an inmate of an English asylum for lunatics. Mr. Clayton, my lawyer, was the sole surviving witness ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... function is a result of difference of structure; or, in other words, of difference in the combination of the primary molecular forces of living substance; and, starting from this undeniable axiom, objectors occasionally, and with much seeming plausibility, argue that the vast intellectual chasm between the Ape and Man implies a corresponding structural chasm in the organs of the intellectual functions; so that, it is said, the non-discovery of such vast differences proves, not that they are absent, but that Science is incompetent ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... conservative, but supremely conscious of its latent resources, has been waking up. The Chinese, as a matter of fact, have very little veneration, respect, or esteem, for their Japanese neighbours. The former plume themselves on being the aristocrats of the East, and they reason, with some show of plausibility, that if the upstart Japanese have been able to so thoroughly rout the Russian forces the potential possibilities of China on the warpath are enormous. Every thoughtful student of the East has looked forward to what I may term the Japanisation of ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... the Christians—this attempt to suppress religion thought to be hostile to the imperial authority, and not without some plausibility, since many Christians refused to be enrolled in the armies, and suffered death sooner than enlist—was the last great act of Diocletian. Whether wearied with the cares of State, or disgusted with his duties, or ill, or craving rest and repose, he took ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... endowed with an uncommon portion of good sense; but her mind was accessible, on this quarter, to wonder and panic. That her voice should be thus inexplicably and unwarrantably assumed, was a source of no small disquietude. She admitted the plausibility of the arguments by which Pleyel endeavoured to prove, that this was no more than an auricular deception; but this conviction was sure to be shaken, when she turned her eyes upon her husband, and perceived ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... Markland, and there were eighteen men on board." As Mr. Reeves well observes: "The nature of the information indicates that the knowledge of the discovery had not altogether faded from the memories of the Icelanders settled in Greenland. It seems further to lend a measure of plausibility to a theory that people from the Greenland colony may from time to time have visited the coast to the southwest of their home for supplies of wood, or for some kindred purpose. The visitors in this case had evidently intended to return directly from Markland to Greenland, and had they not been driven ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... come out of a man," continued Mr. Heard, "which was never in him? How shall he generate a harmonious atmosphere if he be disharmonious himself? It is all a question of plausibility, of verisimi—simili—" ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... when they could come back to the spot, provided with everything necessary to enable them to carry the pursuit to a successful issue. But von Schalckenberg protested so vehemently against this course, urging with so much plausibility the likelihood that the creature would drop exhausted before it had run a mile, and that, if the search for it were left until the morning, all that they would find of it would probably be its mangled remains, so torn and mauled by other animals ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... he fared forth with his badges and stars, bent on duty, but not accomplishment. All the town soon knew that he was following a clew, but all the town was at sea concerning its character, origin, and plausibility. A dozen persons saw him stop young Mrs. Perkins in front of Lamson's store, and the same spectators saw his feathers droop as she let loose her wrath upon his head and went away with her nose in the air and her cheeks far more scarlet than when Boreas kissed them, and all in response ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... and indeed a little more than plausibility in favour of this plan. Degrees in literature and in dramatic art are conferred, given by 'collation,' by incompetent people, that is by the public. We can say to the public: "You know nothing of literary and dramatic art." It will ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... however, was prudent enough not to take arms now, but to submit himself unconditionally to the decision of the Romans respecting the disputed territory on the Bagradas; and thus the Romans could assert with some plausibility that the Carthaginian preparations must have been directed against them, and could insist on the immediate dismissal of the army and destruction of the naval stores. The Carthaginian senate was disposed to consent, but the multitude prevented the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... whether to count on Lockwood as an ally or not. My estimation of him had been rising and falling like the barometer in a summer shower. I had been convinced that he was against us. But his manner and plausibility now equally convinced me that I had been mistaken. I felt that it would take some supreme action on his part to settle the question. That ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... to contradict the historian, yet, if he find two opinions upon points of history, he may certainly take that which is most susceptible of poetical ornament; particularly if it have sufficient plausibility, and the sanction of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... Evangelien, p. 255 sq.; Ebrard, The Gospel History (Engl. trans.), p. 247; Bleek, Synoptische Erklarung der drei ersten Evangelien, i. p. 367. The theory rests upon an acute observation, and has much plausibility. ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... Messenger," a monthly magazine, published by Mr. Thomas W. White, in the city of Richmond. He strongly advised me, among others, to prepare at once a full account of what I had seen and undergone, and trust to the shrewdness and common-sense of the public-insisting, with great plausibility, that however roughly, as regards mere authorship, my book should be got up, its very uncouthness, if there were any, would give it all the better chance of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and I need not advert to what passed in my breast as I overheard them, Patterson the Bishop of Edinburgh came in; and with many interjections, mingled with wishes for a calm procedure, he told the Lords of our escape. He was indeed, to do him justice, a man of some repute for plausibility, and take him all in all for a prelate, he was, in truth, not void of the charities of human nature, compared ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... has never seen; which exists not upon the least shadow of evidence—which has not even the lowest dictates of sense and plausibility in its favour—on this Ignis fatuus, eluding the grasp, and for ever mocking the folly of its pursuers, thou canst build thine hopes, because it flatters ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Protector of the present greatness and joint interest of his Highness and this Nation, by E. W., Esq. The author was Edmund Waller, still under a cloud for his old transgression, but recovering himself gradually by his wealth, his plausibility and fine manners, and his powers of versifying. Here are ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... rate in some sense a power, and to some degree measurable. Recent discoveries of the dependence of capacity for mental exertion upon physical vitality and measurements of chemical energy received into the system as food, and somehow exhausted by the activities of thought, have lent plausibility to the hypothesis of a universal energy of which physical and "psychical" processes are alike manifestations. And the conception of energy seems capable not only of unifying nature, but also of satisfying the metaphysical demand for an efficient ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... the true heir of Orleans; and the vulgarity of form in his body of limbs, power of endurance, greed of gain, and hard, cunning intellect, so unlike all traits of the weak, but more "genteel" Bourbon race, might well lend plausibility to such ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... characterized the Baron as the most intolerable formal pedant he had ever had the misfortune to meet with, and the Chief of Glennaquoich as a Frenchified Scotchman, possessing all the cunning and plausibility of the nation where he was educated, with the proud, vindictive, and turbulent humour of that of his birth. 'If the devil,' he said, 'had sought out an agent expressly for the purpose of embroiling this miserable country, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... South. The valleys within this space, which our readers, by referring to a map, will find to be correctly delineated, abound with nutritive fruits and vegetables, and with all animals capable of being tamed. There is evidently, therefore, some plausibility in the notion that mankind sprung originally from the East, and that from that quarter civilization is derived; but what portion of knowledge was allotted to the primitive people, or how far their descendants have surpassed or fallen ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... was a man of parts, conscientiousness, and plausibility, besides being educated and a wreck to his appetites. He told me all about it. Colleges had turned him out, and distilleries had taken him in. Did I tell you his name? It was Clifford Wainwright. I didn't exactly catch the cause of ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... He must be under the power of the poorest and most despicable prejudices, who would reduce all human characters to a level, who would deny the reality of all those virtues that the world has idolized through revolving ages. Nothing can be disputed with less plausibility, than that there are in the world certain noble and elevated spirits, that rise above the vulgar notions and the narrow conduct of the bulk of mankind, that soar to the sublimest heights of rectitude, and from time to time realize those virtues, of which the ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... But the veto lent plausibility to suspicions. There was intensified distrust. The Nato countries asked to share in technical information obtained from outer space. There wasn't any. They asked to study the devices salvaged by the children. This could have been done, but recent political developments inside Nato made ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... as he told it, gained from his more important presence, his more eloquent and yet more impartial manner, a plausibility which Henry's had lacked. His very air, of one making a painful and tentative revelation, was better than Henry's rather shrill eagerness. Every now and then he paused and waved his hand at Henry sitting behind him, and said, "My friend Mr. Beechtree here ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... of plausibility—he could convince people, against their instincts, even against their wills, that he was telling the truth. And Mary, after a swift ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... was she to part with the mummy that we could hardly get her to accept a merely nominal price. To give plausibility to the purchase, we said we wanted the rags for a paper-mill. Joyously did Leonora and I call a passing chariot, and, with the mummy between us, we drove to our abode. I was surprised on the way by receiving a pettish push from ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... and even educated men in Germany may have believed this in 1751, taking into account the universal ignorance then prevalent as to natural history and physics; but in our times it would be unpardonable to admit even the plausibility of ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... years B.C. and lasted for 477 after Christ). But why? Simply by default of any conventional rule, and the consequent necessity that men should fall back upon the title of the strongest. For that ridiculous plausibility of Kant's superscribed with Detur meliori, it should never be forgotten, is so far from having any pacific tendencies, that originally, according to the eldest of Greek fables, it was [Greek: Eris], Eris, the goddess of dissension, no peace-making ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... grandparents and of ever so many ancestors, in order to show how these determined the outward and inward character of the man whose life has to be written. Who would deny that there is some truth, or at least some plausibility, in atavism, though no one has as yet succeeded in giving an intelligible account of it? It is supposed to affect the moral as well as the physical peculiarities of the offspring, and that here, too, physical and moral qualities often go together cannot be denied. ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... writing. Few men are Johnsons; yet how many men at this day are assailed by incessant demands on their mental powers, which only a productiveness like his could suitably supply! There is a demand for a reckless originality of thought, and a sparkling plausibility of argument, which he would have despised, even if he could have displayed; a demand for crude theory and unsound philosophy, rather than none at all. It is a sort of repetition of the "Quid novi?" of the Areopagus, and it must have an answer. Men must be found who can treat, where ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... there been extirpated, as in Italy and Spain; nor had it been forced into channels which led nowhither, as in France and southern Germany; nor were men who might otherwise have pursued it dazzled and drawn away from it by the multitude of splendid prizes for plausibility, for sophistry, or for silence displayed before the ecclesiastical vision in England. In the frugal homes of North German and Dutch professors and pastors high thinking on these great subjects went steadily on, and the "liberty of teaching," which is the glory of the northern ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... might have saved her, had she been of one of those "good families" whom fashionables the world over recognize, regardless of their wealth or poverty, because recognition of them gives an elegant plausibility to the pretense that Mammon is not the supreme god in the Olympus of aristocracy. But—who were the Rangers? They might be "all right" in Saint X, but where was Saint X? Certainly, not on any map in the ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... 'furiously to think' (1)—yet for the most part without great success in the way of finding a solution. The supposition that (1) the creed, rite or legend in question has sprung up, so to speak, accidentally, in one place, and then has travelled (owing to some inherent plausibility) over the rest of the world, is of course one that commends itself readily at first; but on closer examination the practical difficulties it presents are certainly very great. These include the migrations of customs and myths in quite early ages of the earth across trackless ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... followed by innumerable cases. In spite of all the remonstrances which Jones could set forth, and the influence of several friends of high standing, he was compelled to relinquish all hope of his daughter's being allowed to return to the family. The reasoning set forth had every plausibility; but such is our respect for the law, that we were compelled to forego our hospitality, and maintain it, even though the case was painful to our feelings. Thus, you see, we maintain the point and spirit of the law ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... did not have to rely for its perpetuation either on its intellectual plausibility or its traditional authority. During the Middle Ages there developed a vast and powerful religious State, the mediaeval Church, the real successor, as Hobbes pointed out, to the Roman Empire; and the Church with all its resources, ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... It was at this time that he fell under the influence of Madame Novikoff, who, whether accredited or unaccredited, was generally regarded as the unofficial representative of Russia in this country. She was, and is, a lady of great talent and plausibility, and she undoubtedly exercised at one time an extraordinary amount of influence over many distinguished British politicians. I am not prepared to say that Stead took his inspiration upon Russian politics solely ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... is no less certain that the few finest passages which attest the power and the purity of his genius as a poet are above comparison with any such examples of tragic poetry as can be attributed with certainty or with plausibility to the hand which has left us no acknowledged works in that line except "Sejanus his Fall" and "Catiline his Conspiracy." It is superfluous to add that "Volpone" was an achievement only less far out of his reach than "Hamlet." But this is not to say or to imply that he does ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... ways than by desertion, some of his comrades going so far as to express the opinion that he was murdered at the instigation of his captain. None of these theories, however, seem to be more than conjectures with various degrees of plausibility. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... covert zeal, for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself; I hate it because it deprives our republic of an example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and, especially, because it forces so many really good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... serious accident to his head, and that when he left the hospital, found that he had entirely lost his memory; that, while in this state of oblivion, he had married again and then, when his memory returned, realised to his horror his unfortunate position. Plausibility would seem to have been one of Holmes' most useful gifts; men and women alike—particularly the latter—he seems to have deceived with ease. His appearance was commonplace, in no way suggesting the conventional criminal, his manner courteous, ingratiating and seemingly candid, and like ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... with panic. I revolved them anew, but they only acquired greater plausibility. No doubt I had been the victim of malicious artifice. Inclination, however, conjured up opposite sentiments, and my fears began to subside. What motive, I asked, could induce a human being to inflict wanton injury? I could not account for his delay; but how ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... story is laid. What first excited Mr. Wilson's suspicions was the charming simplicity and apparent truthfulness which, in common with all readers of Bernal Diaz, he has found to be the distinguishing characteristics of the narrative. "A striking feature," he tells us, "in Spanish literature, is the plausibility with which it has carried a fictitious narrative through its most minute details, completely captivating the uninitiated. If its supporters were not permitted to write truth, they succeeded in getting up a most excellent imitation. In Bernal Diaz the alleged individual affairs of private soldiers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... of the Bible, if they contravene their favorite theories or doctrines, are to them unmeaning twaddle; though they are always ready to press the good book into their service, so far as they are able by forced constructions of detached passages, to give plausibility to their ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... the example of savages referred to, as an argument in favor of attempting to strengthen the constitution by exposure.[6] There is plausibility in this; but might not the example of the negroes in the lower parts of South Carolina and Georgia, be also quoted as evidencing the propriety of living on corn meal and sweet potatoes, and working every day in the water of a rice ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... over an hour, and, admitting it did start before you, you had plenty of time to water the saddle stock and overtake it before it could possibly reach the herd. I can tell a lie myself, but a good one always has some plausibility. You rascals were up to some ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... either under plea of immemorial occupancy or of possession by right of conquest, the land was often claimed, and the claims urged with more or less plausibility by several tribes, sometimes of the same linguistic family, ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... heathen nations and become corrupted. It is certain that the Phoenicians worshipped sacred stones under the name of Baetylia, which word is evidently derived from the Hebrew Bethel; and this undoubtedly gives some appearance of plausibility to the theory. ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... estate to settle; my two daughters had now no one to look after them; Junior must be started right at learning the business of which he would soon be the head, as his uncle had shown himself far too easy-going for large executive responsibility. So, I stayed on, doing just enough to keep a face of plausibility upon my pretexts for not returning to Washington. The fact was that Carlotta's death had deepened my mood of distaste into disgust. It had set me to brooding over the futility and pettiness of my activities ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... had gone through I certainly did not propose to tell her. Other reasons apart I did not desire to seem madder than I admittedly am,—and I lacked sufficient plausibility to enable me to concoct, on the spur of the moment, a plain tale of the doings of my midnight visitor which would have suggested that the narrator was perfectly sane. So I fenced,—or ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... Edward, though she was not sure it was desirable for Eliza to take refuge with him. However, he does not seem to have responded warmly, for Mary's suggestion was never acted upon. Theirs was a situation in which friends are not apt to interfere, and besides, Bishop's plausibility had won over not a few to his side. Furthermore, the chance was that if he worked successfully upon Mr. Skeys' sympathies, the Bloods would be influenced. There was absolutely no one to help them, but Mary knew that it was useless to wait, and that the morrow would not make easier what seemed to ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... thronging on me, and I cast my eyes up, day after day, at the little window, hoping some change of appearance might give plausibility to some ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Like Other Books in that it is cast in the mold of the literature of a certain people. We find here all the forms of literature, history, philosophy, poetry, letters, etc. There is much plausibility in the plea for the study of the Bible as literature for it is the best ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... which was embroidered, formed a collar round the neck, whilst the rest hung behind like a hood. By analogy with the scarf of our Protestant clergy, which is clearly the stole of the Roman Church retained under a different name, this suggestion is not without some degree of plausibility. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... no need, however, to accept these principles as incontrovertible. Even if we take the great blockade of 1803-5, which has most firmly dominated thought on the subject ever since, it may be argued with some plausibility that the situation could have been solved more quickly and effectually by letting Ganteaume get out from Brest into the open, at least as far as Admiral Togo was forced to permit the Russians to emerge from Port Arthur, though his reasons for keeping ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... island, and as Hervey's, Mangea and Wattea Islands to the S.E. of Why-to-tackee were inhabited, I did not think it probable that Christian, in the weak state the ship was in, would attempt to settle upon either of them, and as there was some plausibility in the information given me by Hillbrant the prisoner, and as the Duke of York's Island seemed to answer the description of such an island as Christian had been heard by others to declare he would search for to settle on, it being by Mr. Byron's account uninhabited, and with a harbour; ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... must have become apparent that success in a prosecution of Ralegh depended solely on the plausibility and consistency of Cobham's accusations. They were peculiarly deficient in those qualities. Ralegh has recorded that Cobham's remorse for the evil wrought by his charges of July 20 commenced within the ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... was it justifiable to mind his own business? And if he did not mind it, what possible chance had he against a power so ruthless and so cunning? An accident to a man driving a loaded wagon down the Spirit Canyon grade had a diabolic plausibility that no man in the country could question. Brit, he reasoned, could not have known before he started that his rough-lock had been tampered with, else he would have fixed it. Neither was Brit the man to forget the brake on his load. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... from time to time, were baleful; but, with his usual tact and plausibility, he restrained his temper before the sheriff, lest that gentleman might imagine that he had acted from any other principle than ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the Teuton thinks good to offer them, it may have interest for the psychologist. For the rest it is a very prosy piece of literature, only saved occasionally in its dulness by the unconscious crudity of the hatreds lurking beneath its mask of plausibility. One of these hatreds is clearly directed against Ambassador GERARD, to whose well-known book this volume is in some sort a counter- blast. Neither a historian seeking truth nor a plain reader seeking recreation will have any difficulty in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... this apparent contradiction in the author's attitude is to be found in what has been said of its manner of composition. Goethe began it in his romantic youth, and availed himself recklessly of the supernatural elements in the legend, with the disregard of reason and plausibility characteristic of the romantic mood. When he returned to it in the beginning of the new century his artistic standards had changed, and the supernaturalism could now be tolerated only by being made symbolic. Thus he makes the career of ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... recognise as the supreme merit of the stories, namely, their dramatic faculty, or (in the actual words of the "Preface"), their art of "keeping alive hope and fear and curiosity, by some degree of intricacy."[24] The plausibility of invention, the amount of ingenious contrivance and of clever expedient in these professedly nursery stories, is indeed extraordinary; and nothing can exceed the dexterity with which—to use Dr. Johnson's words concerning She Stoops to Conquer—"the ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... 5. 43), id., p. 322. "Dr. Warburton corrects orphan to ouphen; and not without plausibility, as the word ouphes occurs both before and afterward. But I fancy, in acquiescence to the vulgar doctrine, the address in this line is to a part of the Troop, as Mortals by birth, but adopted by ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... heavy-headed clock in the passage. He did not appear at all to know that he had come down in the world through being sold by auction for two pounds ten. He said with great plausibility, "My worth is not to be measured by the amount of money I can command; I am the same personage as before." And I thought it a very true observation, but the philosophy thereof was a little discounted by his haughty demeanour, which had certainly ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... in the discovery of sufficient evidence to convict Awtry of being a spy. When brought before the court martial convened to try him, he displayed considerable arrogance, and obstinately persisted in declaring himself a British subject. With such plausibility did he defend himself, that the court was at first very much puzzled to decide whether or not he was a spy, for every evidence brought against the prisoner was explained and made insignificant by his consummate skill in argument, and it was only by the opportune arrival of a detective ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... plausibility of what he had said actually cover the truth? Did she owe that first golden hour with Rodney, his passionate thrilling avowal of his life's philosophy, to nothing deeper in herself than her unconscious power of rousing in him an equally unconscious, primitive ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... thought natural and useful (135). How absurd are the Stoic Paradoxes! (136) Albinus joking said to Carneades "You do not think me a praetor because I am not a sapiens." "That," said Carneades, "is Diogenes' view, not mine" (137). Chrysippus thinks only three ethical systems can with plausibility be defended (138). I gravitate then towards one of them, that of pleasure. Virtue calls me back, nor will she even allow me to join pleasure to herself (139). When I hear the several pleadings of pleasure and virtue, I cannot avoid being moved by both, and so I find it impossible ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... may be maintained with some plausibility that the rural schools of the West are superior to those farther east. The East is conservative and slow to change. The West has fewer traditions to break. Many strong personalities of initiative and push have come out of the East and taken up their abode in the West. Young men continue to follow ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... samples will suffice. So far is his law of evolution of the sciences from being tenable, that, by following his example, and arbitrarily ignoring one class of facts, it would be possible to present, with great plausibility, just the opposite generalisation to that which he enunciates. While he asserts that the rational order of the sciences, like the order of their historic development, "is determined by the degree of simplicity, or, what comes to the same thing, of generality of their ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... indeed in the black, star-speckled sky. Pop waded through moondust, raising a trail of slowly settling powder. He knew only that the ship didn't come from Lunar City, but from Earth. He couldn't imagine why. He did not even wildly connect it with what—say—Sattell might have written with desperate plausibility about greasy-seeming white crystals out of the mine, knocking about Pop Young's shack in cannisters containing a hundred ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Finances are out of order; a season of spurious commercial activity has come to an end; new resources are to be sought for somehow; and man must change to be other than he is when he wholly ceases to believe in financial miracle-working. There is an air of plausibility about most of the new projects; and, indeed, like the scheme told of in Ben Jonson for the recovery of drowned lands, the enterprise is usually something within human power to accomplish, if only human skill could make it pay. The exchequer of France had been brought into a condition of something ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... is a floating and rather indefinite one. It has some plausibility but there is nothing which to my mind can be dignified by the name of proof. The facts of the Turner case will be found in a Report by Mr. (afterwards Chief) Justice Powell to Sir Peregrine Maitland's Secretary Edward McMahon, November 1, 1819, Canadian ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... no reply. Priscilla's theory was new to him. It seemed to have a certain plausibility. He wanted to think it over before committing himself to ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... decrepitude. His countenance announced pretensions to ability; his easy and affable address, and the facility with which he expressed himself, gained him credit at first for much more understanding than he really possessed. There was a plausibility in all he said; but, if it were examined, there was nothing in it but nonsense. Some of his expressions appeared brilliant; some of his sentiments just; but there was a want of consistency, a want of a pervading mind in his conversation, which to good judges ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... not know, you must confess that you are bringing an accusation of the nature of which you are entirely ignorant. To think that you should be so ignorant not only of all literature, but even of popular tales, that you cannot even invent charges that will have some show of plausibility! For of what use for the kindling of love is an unfeeling chilly creature like a fish, or indeed anything else drawn from the sea, unless indeed you propose to bring forward in support of your lie the ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... the Sibyl of Rizpah and Vastness and Lucretius and The Voyage, to whom it must seem impertinent beyond the prophet's wont; there are—(but they scarce count)—who grub (as for truffles) for meanings in Browning. But it was not uttered to please, and in truth it has enough of plausibility to infuriate whatever poet-sects there be. Especially ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... received him—even though he met no one in whose interest it was to pose him with inconvenient questions. So apt a pupil would then have had little difficulty in assimilating the instructions of Margaret; and, after a couple of years' training with her, in at least supporting his role with plausibility. That Perkin himself told this story is not very conclusive, since the confession was produced under circumstances quite compatible with the whole thing having been dictated to him; yet difficult as it is to believe, it is less incredible than the alternative—that ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... little use of the auxiliary verbs in doing it, as they have done—So that, except Raymond Lullius, and the elder Pelegrini, the last of which arrived to such perfection in the use of 'em, with his topics, that, in a few lessons, he could teach a young gentleman to discourse with plausibility upon any subject, pro and con, and to say and write all that could be spoken or written concerning it, without blotting a word, to the admiration of all who beheld him.—I should be glad, said Yorick, interrupting my father, to be made to comprehend this matter. ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne |
