"Plausibly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very plausibly that the Catholic Church is something greater than Christianity, however much the Christians may have contributed to its making. From the historical point of view it is a religious and social method that developed ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... out lines of inquiry, analogy is of unspeakable value in every branch of science; in sacred apologetics its specific use is to destroy the force of objections which may be plausibly urged against facts or doctrines otherwise established; but it is as an instrument for explaining, illustrating, fixing, and impressing moral and spiritual truth that we are mainly concerned ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... with theirs. They so overwhelm you with their familiarity with detail that you cannot discover wherein their scheme lies. They suggest the change of an innocent fraction in a particular schedule and explain it to you so plausibly that you cannot see that it means millions of dollars additional from the consumers of this country. They propose, for example, to put the carbon for electric lights in two-foot pieces instead of one-foot pieces,—and you ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... anthropos]: against [Greek: ek ges]—[Greek: ex ouranou]: against [Greek: choikos]—[Greek: ho Kyrios]. Remove [Greek: ho Kyrios], and some substitute for it must be invented as a counterpoise to [Greek: choikos]. Taking a hint from what is found in ver. 48, some one (plausibly enough,) suggested [Greek: epouranios]: and this gloss so effectually recommended itself to Western Christendom, that having been adopted by Ambrose[555], by Jerome[556] (and later by Augustine[557],) it established itself in the Vulgate[558], ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... dexterity and politeness, provided that a pleasant way of putting it does not destroy the power of the rebuke, for impudence and coarseness and insolence, if added to freedom of speech, entirely mar and ruin the effect. And so the harper plausibly and elegantly silenced Philip, who ventured to dispute with him about proper playing on the harp, by answering him, "God forbid that you should be so unfortunate, O king, as to understand harping better than me." But that was not a right answer of Epicharmus, when Hiero a few days ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... W.S.P.U. had plenty of funds and it did not cost much getting visiting cards engraved with such names and supplied with the home address of the great personage whom it was intended to annoy. One such card as an evidence of good faith would be attached to the plausibly-worded letter. The Times was seldom taken in, but great success often attended these audacious deceptions, especially in the important organs of the provincial press. Editors and sub-editors seldom took the trouble and the time to hunt through Who's ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... considerations, Sarama in Sanskrit is the same word as Helena in Greek." Op. cit. p. 490. The names correspond phonetically letter for letter, as, Surya corresponds to Helios, Sarameyas to Hermeias, and Aharyu to Achilleus. Muller has plausibly suggested that Paris similarly answers ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... power, proceeded under threats of exposure to levy blackmail upon them. Mister Alec, however, was a dangerous man to play games of that sort with. It was a stroke of positive genius on his part to see in the burglary scare, which was convulsing the country side, an opportunity of plausibly getting rid of the man whom he feared. William was decoyed up and shot; and, had they only got the whole of the note, and paid a little more attention to detail in their accessories, it is very possible that suspicion might never ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... life. He vouchsafed to explain things to me to avoid a row, but he was desperately angry. She has never been out of the convent since she was three years old, and she is very nervous and shy. That was his story, and he told it plausibly enough. I could not get anything out of her, except an admission that what he said was ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... half angrily; "but what about the children?" she was going to add. But somehow the arguments she had used so plausibly did not utter themselves easily to Mother, whose children would carry into their own middle age a wholesome dread of her anger. Margaret ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... actually find something answering to our idea of causal connexion.' And here, I would invite you not to think so much of our consciousness of actually {39} moving our limbs. Here it is possible to argue plausibly that the experience of exercising causality is a delusion. I imagine that, if I will to do so, I can move my arm; but I will to stretch out my arm, and lo! it remains glued to my side, for I have suddenly been paralysed. Or I may be told that the consciousness of exerting power is a mere experience ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... battled for the Union it is needless to eulogize here. But how of the soldiers on the other side? And when of a free community we name the soldiers, we thereby name the people. It was in subserviency to the slave-interest that Secession was plotted; but it was under the plea, plausibly urged, that certain inestimable rights guaranteed by the Constitution were directly menaced, that the people of the South were cajoled into revolution. Through the arts of the conspirators and the perversity of fortune, ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... dost not see?" returned the lady. "Troth do I," rejoined he, "and somewhat else have I seen that I would I had not." And so he questioned her of what had passed, and she, being mightily afraid, did after long parley confess that which she might not plausibly deny, to wit, her intimacy with Spinelloccio, and fell a beseeching him with tears to pardon her. "Lo, now, wife," quoth Zeppa, "thou hast done wrong, and, so thou wouldst have me pardon thee, have a care to do exactly as I shall bid thee; to wit, on this wise: thou must ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... in the United States was powerful. Massachusetts {53} had guaranteed bonds of local roads to the extent of eight millions, without ever having to pay a cent of the interest; and though New York's experience had been more chequered, the successes were stressed and the failures were plausibly explained away. ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... and form, or for the values which they express. In some cases the actual object may be beautiful; sometimes the beauty may lie almost wholly in the image, emotion, or idea evoked. "Home, Sweet Home," for example, may be plausibly held to win admiration rather for the sentimental associations which it evokes in the singer or hearer than for its verbal or melodic beauty. The enjoyment which people without any musical gifts, out on a camping or canoeing ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... high imperial office. A Calvinist Viceroy of India and a Particular Baptist Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs would wreck the empire. The Stuarts wrecked even the tight little island which was the nucleus of the empire by their Scottish logic and theological dogma; and it may be sustained very plausibly that the alleged aptitude of the English for self-government, which is contradicted by every chapter of their history, is really only an incurable inaptitude for theology, and indeed for co-ordinated thought in any direction, which makes them equally impatient ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... futile a climax to content a dramatist clever enough to have invented Jurgen. No, it is just as I said to the brown man: I cannot believe in the annihilation of Jurgen by any really thrifty overlords; so I shall see to it that Jurgen does nothing which he cannot more or less plausibly excuse, in case of supernal inquiries. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... might see that the dark hair, speciously waved, was as accurately parted in the middle as though the line had been run by an engineer. The voice of Inspector Val, low and lazy, fell on the ear as plausibly soft as the ripple of a brook. His eyes wore a sleepy, intolerant expression, as if tired with much seeing and inclined to resent the infliction of further spectacles. The nose was thin and high, and jaw and cheek bones were thin and ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... one might support as plausibly—and as falsely—the theory of a Woman-made World as the popular one of a Man-made World. There has been many a teacher and philosopher who has sustained some form of this former thesis, disclaiming ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... for the men who controlled it to evade personal, moral, and often legal, responsibility for their acts. Governed as the corporation was by a body of directors, those acts became collective and not individual; if one of the directors were assailed he could plausibly take refuge in the claim that he was merely one of a number of controllers; that he could not be held specifically responsible. Thus the culpability was shifted, until it rested on the corporation, which was a bloodless ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... whole mess-room was simply a-flutter with torn-out leaves from his A.B. 153, representing his abortive attempts to put down his application succinctly and plausibly, we all began to take an interest in his case. We crowded round and offered him most valuable hints. Together we got through two very pleasant evenings and three or four A.B.'s 153, and still the application remained ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... here living on your lordship's property, who has a daughter endowed with a large portion of that vain gift called beauty. Her father and family are people of bad principle, without conscience or honesty, and, withal, utterly destitute of religion—not but that they carry themselves very plausibly to the world. Among such people, my Lord, it is not possible that this engaging damsel, who is now so youthful and innocent, could resist the evil influence of the principles that prevail in her family. Indeed, her abiding among them ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... reports as to the atrocious accusations; but they had so far operated as to excite doubts and suspicions. In some of the circumstances, there was sufficient truth to colour the falsehood. For example, with regard both to Peggy Sheridan, and Dora, the truth had been plausibly mixed with falsehood. The story of Peggy Sheridan, Lady Annaly had some suspicion might be true. Her ladyship, who had seen Moriarty's generous conduct to Ormond, was indignant at his ingratitude. She was a woman prompt to feel strong indignation against all that was base; and, when her ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... which Mr. Rowe made unresisting, and the rest followed him. Sir Thomas Hammer seems to have supposed unresisting the word in the copies, from which he plausibly enough extracted unresting, but be grounded his emendation on the very syllable that wants authority. What can be made of unsisting I know not; the best that ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... sighed, his eyes raised to the groined roof, and shook his head sadly. If Saint Denis did not whisper inspiration he at least spun out the time for thought. Commines' request was reasonable, and he was at a loss how plausibly to evade it. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... belonging to the saloon-keeper testified that the satchel was much heavier on the first night than on the second. It has been conjectured, very plausibly, that the valise contained Pearl Bryan's head, on the ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... stool that flew with wings out of window, would be about as workable a thing as an immortal chattel. But though here as everywhere the spirit explains the processes, and the processes cannot even plausibly explain the spirit, these processes involve two very practical points, without which we cannot understand how this great popular civilization was created—or how it ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... a bad hole, a fugitive from justice with the penitentiary waiting for him. He confesses the whole thing to Radnor—extenuating circumstances plausibly to the fore. He has been dishonest, but unintentionally so. He wishes to straighten up and lead a respectable life. If he had, say fifteen hundred dollars, he could quash the indictment against him. He is Radnor's brother and the Colonel's son, but Rad ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... Plato had his Dialogues to compose among us, he would give his whole strength to working up our own resources, and not trouble himself with Greek. The popular dictum—multum non multa, doing one thing well—may be plausibly adduced in behalf of parsimony in ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Charlotte a second time—compared with which the first was insignificant. And this time it was curious: he could not subdue her physique, as he did before; she was ready for him each day, and she was animated, much more voluble, she was ready to jest. The reason being, that she fought now on plausibly good grounds: on behalf of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a level with that other discovery which she had made the evening before and with regard to which his especial errand to-day had been to congratulate her afresh. It brought him, however, less satisfaction than it appeared to bring to his clever companion; for, as he observed plausibly enough, Gordon was quite out of his head, and, this being the case, of what importance was the secret ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... this, because it may be thought pertinent {205} to the present inquiry; but as this use of the word has been plausibly supposed to be derived from the Welsh Bach, a hook, it seems to have nothing to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... infidelity—something which, if allowed to meet their gaze, would be sure to attract and convince them—than which nothing is farther from the truth—not only so, however, but many of the statements and most of the arguments which sound plausibly enough on the glib tongue of a popular speaker read very differently indeed, when put down in cold-blooded letter-press, and published in the pages of a book. I protest strongly against making a mystery ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... not seem that any sect can plausibly claim Sankara as founder or adherent. His real religion was Vedantism and this, though not incompatible with sectarian worship, is predisposed to be impartial. The legend says that when summoned to his mother's deathbed, he spoke to her first of the Vedanta philosophy. But she ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Jesus commanded him to do. He said to this very man: "Stretch forth thy hand." Does not that look like an unreasonable command? The man might have plausibly said: "I cannot do this. I have not been able to reach my hand to my mouth in the past year. I can not do as you tell me." But instead of urging objections he instantly obeyed, for the words, "Stretch forth thy hand," were not more than ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... the establishment of homosexuality has in some cases corresponded to the course described by Freud. It may also be admitted that, as psychoanalysts claim, the pronounced horror feminae occasionally found in male inverts may plausibly be regarded as the reversal of an early and disappointed feminine attraction. But it is impossible to regard this mechanism as invariable or even frequent. It is quite true, and I have found ample evidence of the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... been waiting in the dark at the top of the stairs, listening, was infinitely rejoiced that her project had been explained so plausibly, and yet in such perfect good faith, and she flew off to dress in high spirits. Had she mentioned it to her father, he would have doubted, taken it as her scheme, and perhaps put a stop to it: but hearing of it from Frederick, whose pleasures ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... other respects, which is best regulated and most easily governed? which has most of the fear of God in it, the deepest reverence for his word, that where the Bible is read or from which it is excluded? It is easy for ingenious men to reason plausibly, and tell us that such and such injurious effects must follow from making sacred things too familiar to the youthful mind; but who ever heard of such effects following from the use of the Bible as a school-book? It will be time enough to listen to this objection when a solitary example can ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... talk it over with you, eh?" Bill sneered. "Told you it was all on the square, did he? Explained it all very plausibly, I suppose. Probably suggested that you try smoothing me down, too. It ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... territorial acquisition is not considerable in itself, but it embraces the line of communication with Persia, by which we have a vast traffic, and which Russia will be able at any time to interrupt. This new transaction, so quietly and plausibly effected, has thrown our Government into a great rage, and especially his Majesty King William, who insisted upon a dozen ships being sent off forthwith to the Mediterranean. Nothing vigorous, however, has been done, and Palmerston has contented himself with writing ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... to the interior of the country. From the appearance of these impediments, and the quantity of rotten trees which had been either felled by the winds, or brought low from age, it is conjectured, and plausibly enough, that the forests in the southern parts of New Zealand had escaped the hand of human industry since the origin of their existence. But nature, we may often see, is prodigal of life, and in the very act of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... writer's pay, and aids the deception by leading the reader off on false scents. Be that as it may, the professional sleuth is in nine cases out of ten a dummy by malice prepense; and it might be plausibly argued that, in the interests of pure art, that is what he ought to be. But genius always finds a way that is better than the rules, and I think it will be found that the very best riddle stories contrive ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Yet does this parricide presume to speak for himself, and hopes to obscure the truth by his cunning tricks. Thou, O Varus, must guard thyself against him; for I know the wild beast, and I foresee how plausibly he will talk, and his counterfeit lamentation. This was he who exhorted me to have a care of Alexander when he was alive, and not to intrust my body with all men! This was he who came to my very bed, and looked about lest any one should lay snares for me! This was he who took care of ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... much: I feel I could urge it plausibly. She must be very wretched. With such a form, such high imaginings, such thoughts of power and pomp as I could breathe in her,—I think she'd melt. And to one of her own faith, too! To build up a great Catholic house again; of the ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... fishes; as the ocean, it presents the most fitting type of the infinite. It cleanses, it purifies; it produces, it preserves. "Bodies, unless dissolved, cannot act," is a maxim of the earliest chemistry. Very plausibly, therefore, was it assumed as the source of ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... necessities of the case, he brought into his perilous profession some brilliant qualities— intrepidity, address, promptitude of decision; and, if to these he added courtesy, and a spirit (native or adopted) of forbearing generosity, he seemed almost a man that merited public encouragement; since very plausibly it might be argued that his profession was sure to exist; that, if he were removed, a successor would inevitably arise, and that successor might or might not carry the same liberal and humanizing ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... word "smart'", in the original there was a lefthand or opening single quote mark just after the letter "t" and the whole word including the single quote mark was enclosed in double quote marks. The opening single quote mark is more plausibly a comma which printer has placed upside down. Changed to comma. (we are told he is "smart," ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... and he turned his eyes wistfully to the upland slopes of his farm. Mr. Weeks had talked plausibly, and if all had been as he represented, the plan would not have been a bad one. But the widower did not yearn for the widow. He did not know much about her, but had very unfavorable impressions. ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... members of the league, and also that many honorable and patriotic men do not feel as I do on this subject, I am personally unwilling to take part in an agitation which may have some tendency to cause a public enemy to persist in armed resistance, or may be, at least, plausibly represented as having this tendency. There can be no doubt that, as a matter of fact, the country is at war with Aguinaldo and his followers. I profoundly regret this fact;... but it is a ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... so now d'Estaing, in Narragansett Bay, was unwilling to keep his place, in face of Howe's greatly inferior squadron.[31] The influence exerted upon these two admirals by the mere approach of a hostile fleet, when decisive advantages depended upon their holding their ground, may be cited plausibly in support of the most extreme view of the effect of a "fleet in being;" but the instances also, when the conditions are analysed, will suggest the question: Is such effect always legitimate, inherent in the existence of the fleet itself, or does it not depend often upon the characteristics of ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... of it," replied Buller with equal directness. "I'm pleased with what I hear of you, and I like a gentleman, but Bradley explains his puzzling conduct very plausibly: it is no use being factious and hindering business in the House, as he says. And it can't be denied that there's Tory members in the House as factious as any of them pestilent Radical chaps that get up strikes out ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... took their confiscated horses into Leavenworth, while others rode them to their homes. This action may look to the reader like horse-stealing, and some people might not hesitate to call it by that name; but Chandler plausibly maintained that we were only getting back our own, or the equivalent, from the Missourians, and as the government was waging war against the South, it was perfectly square and honest, and we had a good right to do it. So we didn't let ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... it to the steamer, always receiving a thankful acknowledgment on the whistle. He secured the figures by his dead-reckoning; but the carefully kept log-book also showed longitude by chronometer sights, taken when the sun shone, with his old quadrant and older watch, and corrected to bring a result plausibly near to that of the reckoning by log and compass. But the log-book contained no reference to the loss of the chronometer. That was to ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... that the higher animals living today have the original adult stages telescoped into their embryos, and the statement that the resemblance between certain characters in the embryos of higher animals and corresponding stages in the embryos of lower animals is most plausibly explained by the assumption that they have descended from the same ancestors, and that their common structures are ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
... here also we have a correction to apply. Whatever the virtues of the Tahitian, neither friend nor enemy dares call him chaste; and yet he seems to have outlived the time of danger. One last example: syphilis has been plausibly credited with much of the sterility. But the Samoans are, by all accounts, as fruitful as at first; by some accounts more so; and it is not seriously to be argued that the Samoans ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for trade abroad, and at the outlet of large rivers, which would foster internal traffic. But when Richelieu had put an end to civil war, Frenchmen did not take to the sea with the eagerness and success of the English and Dutch. A principal reason for this has been plausibly found in the physical conditions which have made France a pleasant land, with a delightful climate, producing within itself more than its people needed. England, on the other hand, received from Nature but little, and, until her manufactures were developed, had little ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... wit is counterfeited. He lays trains for a quibble; he contrives blunders for his footman; he adapts old stories to present characters; he mistakes the question, that he may return a smart answer; he anticipates the argument, that he may plausibly object; when he has nothing to reply, he repeats the last words of his antagonist, then says, "your humble servant," and concludes with a laugh ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... even Shakespeare escapes altogether from the ill effects of this Italianisation of all the externalities of the drama. It might plausibly be urged that by pushing unreality to its extreme you get idealisation. A still more forcible objection is that the only English play of Shakespeare's, apart from his histories, is the one that leaves the least vivid impression on us, The Merry Wives ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... detailed history of his doubts. He has told us how he found that he could, plausibly enough, doubt of everything except his own existence. He pushed his scepticism to the verge of self-annihilation. There he stopped: there in self, there in his consciousness, he found at last an irresistible fact, an irreversible ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... here add, that although the Abban in this speech seemed to show so much consideration for my property, by several recent tricks of his I entertained much suspicion of his honesty; and this little address, though uttered plausibly, was too common and transparent a trick in the East to beguile me. All Orientals have a proverbial habit of saving their master's property to leave greater pickings for themselves, and such I considered ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... course upon the credit of these divinations wherein we are so often deceived. If the ordinary rule of descent were to be violated, and the destinies corrected in the choice they have made of our heirs, one might more plausibly do it upon the account of some remarkable and enormous personal deformity, a permanent and incorrigible defect, and in the opinion of us French, who are great admirers ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... little after one o'clock when he drove up to the Waldorf, and, after settling with the cabman, went into the office. He registered from Washington; said his mother and father had been abroad, and that he had come down to await the arrival of their steamer. He told his story plausibly and had no trouble, since he offered to pay for them in advance, in engaging his rooms; a ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... the hand of the young lady trembling in nervous apprehension upon his arm, from which, in her embarrassment, she forgot to remove it. But the artist did not fail her, and in answer to Mr. Burleigh's eager questions as to the cause of the accident, explained all so plausibly, and in such a matter-of-fact manner as left little more even to be surmised. His brief and prosaic history of the affair concluded with the following implied tribute to his companion, which still further relieved her ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... flat when she knew it was round all the time! And again how she stuck to it that the sun went round us when it was we who were going round the sun! This double falsehood has irretrievably ruined my confidence in her. There is no lie which she will not tell and stick to like a Gladstonian. How plausibly she told her tale, and how many ages was it before she was so much as suspected! And then when things did begin to look bad for her, how she brazened it out, and what a desperate business it was to bring her shifts ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... talked so plausibly, and, above all, so candidly and coolly on Irish and English politics, that the custom-house officer conversed with him for a quarter of an hour without guessing of what country he was, till in an unlucky moment Phelim's heart got ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... have as ill resented the project, as we did it in the Germans, who would long agoe have challenged this honour to themselves. I had in the end no other course to take, but to throw myselfe upon the Latine, in which I luckily met with all the necessary conditions that did easily, and plausibly conduce ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... were back in Halle before the end of September, and George Muller went home to spend the rest of his vacation. To account plausibly to his father for the use of his allowance a new chain of lies was readily devised. So soon and so sadly were all his good resolves ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... herself was an enthusiastic delver into scientific hypothesis and the teachings of Darwin, Spencer, Haeckel had satisfied her intellect if they had failed to content her soul. The theory of evolution as applied to life on her own little planet appealed strongly to her because it accounted plausibly for the presence of man on earth. The process through which we had passed could be understood by every intelligence. The blazing satellite, violently detached from the parent sun starting on its circumscribed ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... Prominent among these is a complete set of golf clubs belonging to the Bronze period. In regard to length the clubs are very much the same as the average implements used at the present day, but the large size of the heads is remarkable, the niblick weighing nearly half a hundredweight. It is plausibly inferred that clubs of this pattern may also have been used as weapons, as the dwellers in this district in the Bronze period are known to have been of a warlike and tumultuous disposition. The game is believed to have been introduced by some Maccabaean ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... as being at the southeast corner. Some of the earlier charts of Cooperstown were drawn with the lake front at the bottom of the map, for convenience of reference, thus reversing the north and south of the usual cartography. It may plausibly be conjectured that Cooper had one of these maps before him as he wrote, and unthinkingly recorded, in this instance, its transposed points of the compass. This labored exposition of a small matter would be an inexcusable pedantry, except that ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... the pity of an Olympian god, a pity that cares little for what we call justice, a pity that refuses to take seriously the objects of his commiseration. His clear-sighted intelligence is often pleased to toy very plausibly with a certain species of revolutionary socialism. But, I suppose few socialists derive much satisfaction from that devastating piece of irony, the Isle of the Penguins; where everything moves in circles and ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the ease of slighting what they cannot refute, and are determined, as I hear, to hold it not worth the answering. In which number I must be forced to reckon that Doctor who, in a late equivocating Treatise plausibly set afloat against the Dippers, diving the while himself with a more deep prelatical malignance against the present State and Church Government, mentions with ignominy the 'Tractate of Divorce;' yet answers nothing, but instead thereof (for which I do not commend his marshalling), ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... etymology and original signification have become indistinct;—the third, when the plural stands for the abstract. Not one of these cases, however, is applicable here. Those interpreters have most plausibly removed the difficulty who understand [Hebrew: mvcativ] to be really a repeated act of going forth, and refer it to the Old Testament doctrine of the Angel of the Lord. Thus Jerome: "Because He had always spoken to them through ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... at best, as flighty creature, and at worst, as one pushing bad taste to the verge of indecency. Such weaknesses are resigned to women approaching senility, and to the more ignoble variety of women labourers. A shop girl, perhaps, may plausibly fall in love with a moving-picture actor, and a half-idiotic old widow may succumb to a youth with shoulders like the Parthenon, but no woman of poise and self-respect, even supposing her to be transiently flustered ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... motives and objects of their authors, that light, unquestionable and convincing, which is the peculiar and happy characteristic of this kind of evidence. It is all very well for an acrid Walpole, or in our own day a scandal-mongering Greville, to draw, with plausibly life-like touches, his version of this or that historical transaction—to tell us, with the authority of one seemingly in the secret, that in such and such a matter Lord A. was scheming for this, and that we are to find the key to Mr. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... hawked denunciations of the American ships because of the danger that their atom bombs might explode. Well outside the harbor, a Navy crew of experts worked to make quite impossible the detonation of atomic bombs in a stubby tramp-steamer which had—plausibly, at least—been sent to make those same newspapers' prophecies of disaster ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... passing through her mind, and plausibly overcoming any faint doubts and difficulties which she might still have left, she was startled by a sudden knocking at the street door; and, looking out of the window immediately, saw a man in livery standing in the street, anxiously peering up at the house to ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... prosperity hung; and the most important point in the wars was not the triumph of Edward IV over the Lancastrians in 1461, but his triumph over Warwick, the kingmaker, ten years later. The New Monarchy has been plausibly dated from 1471; but Edward IV had not the political genius to work out in detailed administration the results of the victory which he owed to his military skill, and Richard III, who possessed the ability, made himself impossible as a king by ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... visit at Newstead, being one evening with a party who were diverting themselves in front of the abbey, Lord Byron by accident pushed her into the basin which receives the cascades; and out of this little incident, as my informant very plausibly conjectures, the tale of his attempting to drown Lady Byron may have ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... library. A good friend redeemed the pledge, and despatched the books—all, of course, manuscripts—to Oxford. For some reason or another Oriel took them in, and, having become their bailee, refused to part with them, possibly and plausibly alleging that the University was not in a position to give a valid receipt. At Oriel they remained for ten years, when all of a sudden the scholars of the University, animated by their notorious affection for sound learning and a good ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... point of this remark lies in its implied reference to Japan, as at one time it might have applied to Russia. Fear of Japan's aims in China is not confined to China; the fear is widespread. An international economic arrangement may therefore be plausibly presented as the easiest and most direct method of relieving China of the Japanese menace. For Japan to stay out would be to give herself away; if she came in, it would subject Japanese activities to constant ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... my uncle occupied my attention. He was shivering a good deal, and it was all I could do to resist my desire to get him into a comfortable bed at once. But I wanted to appear plausibly in this part of the world. I felt it would not do to turn up anywhere at dawn and rest, it would be altogether too conspicuous; we must rest until the day was well advanced, and then appear as road-stained pedestrians seeking a meal. I gave ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... changes which it exhibits, can only follow certain laws; and the development of the Church of Rome has steadily followed a direction opposite to that which the Modernists demand that it shall take. Newman might plausibly claim that the doctrines of purgatory and of the papal supremacy are logically involved in the early claims of the Roman Church. The claim is true at least in this sense, that, given a political Church organised as an autocracy, these useful doctrines were sure, in ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... chemist, and dentist, to consult him on my case; and thither we forthwith proceeded. I found him a large, unwieldy figure, of a dull, heavy look, but by no means deficient in science or natural shrewdness. He confirmed my previous impression that I ought to lose blood, and plausibly enough accounted for my present sensation of fulness, from the inferior pressure of the lunar atmosphere to that which I had been accustomed. He proposed, however, to return to my veins a portion of thinner blood in place of what he should take away, and offered me the choice of several animals, ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... estate,[16] and gave it up to one—or both—of his younger brothers Cristobal and Miguel, each of whom had been veinticuatro of Granada at some date previous to April 15, 1572.[17] On January 29, 1544, Luis de Leon was formally professed in the Augustinian order.[18] In his monastery we may plausibly conjecture that he led a solitary and bookish existence, poring over his texts and attending lectures assiduously. As early as 1546-1547 his name appears on the list of students of theology at Salamanca; the registers of theological students covering the ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... ghost can suffer no inconvenience from hornets I take to be indisputable: but as a defence of Jaggard the above hardly seems convincing. One might as plausibly justify a forger on the ground that, had he foreseen the indignation of the prosecuting counsel, he would doubtless have saved his reputation by forbearing to forge. But before constructing a better defence, let us hear the whole tale of the alleged misdeeds. Of the second edition of ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wild grape, the fruit half ripened. Within the amphitheatre, at various levels, rose grimly a few stumps and shreds of cedars long dead and long indifferent to the future ravages of the enemy. The whole scene was, to-day, plausibly gentle and inert. It was indeed a bridal of earth and sky, with the self-contained approval of the blue deep and no counter-assertion from ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... is the "imaginavit," better known at Lincoln's Inn as the "affidavit." In the article of exaggeration, the mildest and tamest are perhaps History and the Novel, the boldest and most sparkling is the Advertisement, but the grandest, ablest, most gorgeous and plausibly exaggerating is surely the grave commercial prospectus, drawn up and signed by potent, grave and reverend seniors, who fear God, worship Mammon, revere big wigs right or wrong, and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... hand, the world of perfected sensation, intelligence, emotion, is so close to us, and so attractive, that the most visionary of spirits must needs represent the world unseen in colours, and under a form really borrowed from it. Let me be sure then—might he not plausibly say?—that I miss no detail of this life of realised consciousness in the present! Here at least is a vision, a theory, [149] theoria, which reposes on no basis of unverified hypothesis, which makes no call upon a future ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... than keeping possession of the narrow causeways, by aid of superior implements of war, until famine and thirst had done their work, yet the Spanish histories of the Conquest make it to surpass in interest, and in the magnitude of forces engaged, almost any siege on record. And so plausibly is the narrative written, that the reader drinks it in with breathless anxiety, without once stopping to ask himself how so many hundreds of thousands of Indians could be fed in a salt valley, inclosed ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... our self-assumed judicial office into that of advocacy; and sliding into what may be plausibly urged, rather than standing fast on what we can surely affirm. Yet there are cases when it is fitting for the judge to become the advocate of an undefended prisoner; and advocacy is only plausible when a few words ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... that Dekker hit upon in his reply, "Satiromastix," and he amplified him, turning his abusive vocabulary back upon Jonson and adding "An immodesty to his dialogue that did not enter into Jonson's conception." It has been held, altogether plausibly, that when Dekker was engaged professionally, so to speak, to write a dramatic reply to Jonson, he was at work on a species of chronicle history, dealing with the story of Walter Terill in the reign of William Rufus. This he hurriedly adapted to include the satirical ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... Shakespeare, the Baconians say, Was the Belasco of his day— Others more plausibly maintain He was the double of ...
— Confessions of a Caricaturist • Oliver Herford
... which he goes on to say: "At this point plausibly comes in a suggestion that the internal part of the circuit be made very small and the external part very large. Why not (say) make the internal part 1 and the external 9, thus saving nine-tenths and losing only one-tenth? Unfortunately, the suggestion is not practical; ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... that, while the centres thus respond with diminished energy to peripheral stimuli, external and internal, they undergo a direct, or "automatic," mode of excitation, being roused into activity independently of an incoming nervous impulse. This automatic stimulation has been plausibly referred to the action of the products of decomposition accumulating in the cerebral blood-vessels.[77] It is possible that there is something in the nature of this stimulation to account for the force and vividness of ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... naivete thus becoming only theoretically possible. Constable, with all his independence, dared not throw over all received canons of art. And Gericault, while daring to paint a modern theme, daring still more to embody it in forms plausibly like average humanity, and refusing to place on a raft in mid-ocean a carefully chosen assortment of antique statues, still did not think, apparently, that the heavily marked shadows prevalent throughout his picture were never seen under the far-reaching arch of the sky, but fell from ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... succession, in order to give efficacy to the sacrament, may be clearly deduced from any recorded words of our Lord, that there are no words[5] of his from which it can be deduced, either probably or plausibly; none with which it has any, the faintest, connexion; none from which it could be even conjectured that such a tenet had ever been in existence. I am not speaking, it will be observed, of apostolical succession simply; but of the necessity of apostolical succession, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... religion has to defend the soul not only against the corruptions of the heart, but also against those doctrinal errors that are daily springing up in every direction, and which are plausibly preached by false teachers, who bring to their support the most specious arguments, couched in the most attractive language. To refute these errors often requires the most consummate skill and a profound knowledge of history ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... said with many other things which I will not here write down. She spoke pleasantly and plausibly, too, until for a moment I forgot who she was, and thought her to be truly a lovable and motherly ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... best of everyone, her display of grief, and professions of regret, and general resolutions of prudence, were sufficient to soften his heart and make him really confide in her sincerity; but, as for myself, I am still unconvinced, and plausibly as her ladyship has now written, I cannot make up my mind till I better understand her real meaning in coming to us. You may guess, therefore, my dear madam, with what feelings I look forward to her arrival. She will have occasion for all those ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... again the Churches are not responsible. It is great on the intellectual side, in its science and philosophy, its art and general culture; and that greatness, too, has been won independently of, or in defiance of, the clergy. On the moral side only it may plausibly be connected with its established religion, and here precisely it fails and approaches barbarism. I do not wonder that the Churches are troubled, and do not wonder greatly that they ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... and believed all except this matter of the sixty-thousand-dollar check. When it came to that he explained it all plausibly enough. When he had gone to see Stener those several last days, he had not fancied that he was really going to fail. He had asked Stener for some money, it is true—not so very much, all things considered—one hundred and fifty thousand dollars; but, as Stener should have testified, he (Cowperwood) ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... the true Pope and refrained from naming him, it being clearly dangerous to go into particulars in this matter. Here was an opportunity to trick an unadvised girl into bringing herself into peril, and the unfair judge lost no time in taking advantage of it. He asked, in a plausibly indolent and absent way: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... without mercy any soldier who lagged behind or loitered." As the Secretary of State seems to take this charge seriously, I thought it well, before I sent my answer, just to make sure that no subordinate had said, or done, or written anything which could plausibly be twisted into this lie. The Generals have denied indignantly; are furious, in fact, at the double insult to their men ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... him drive them with his own down the long mountain road to Springtown, and it was understood than he did not inquire too curiously in the matter of commissions. The stores and fodder which Enoch delivered over to him in exchange, together with a plausibly varying amount of hard cash, seemed to Simon an ample return for the scrawny cattle he sent to market. And Enoch, for his part, was always willing to testify that Amberley was a pleasant ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. But these rules are not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... even on board the George Washington, in the very first conference, he made clear his dependence upon them. "You are in truth, my advisers," he said, "for when I ask you for information I will have no way of checking it up, and must act upon it unquestioningly. We will be deluged with claims plausibly and convincingly presented. It will be your task to establish the truth or falsity of these claims out of your specialized knowledges, so that my positions may be ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... story of the horse had been a myth later invented by the sheepman to scatter the pursuit by making it appear that the robber had come from a distance. As the street had been quite deserted at the time this detail could be plausibly introduced with no ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... another public garden expresses itself in a confusion of red, ripe fruit and white blossoms on the same stem. They are a pleasure to the nose and eye rather than the palate, as happens with so many growths of the tropics, if indeed the Summer Islands are tropical, which some plausibly deny; though why should not strawberries, fresh picked from the plant in mid-March, enjoy the right to be ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... him with the means of returning to Rome; he had observed that I had two mules, and if I would let him have one of them and would despatch with him a confidential servant to take charge of the relics, he would at once send them to me. This plausibly expressed proposition pleased me, and I made up my mind to test the value of the somewhat ambiguous promise at once;[40] so giving him the mule and money for his journey I ordered my notary Ratleig (who already desired to go ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... present age, he wonders at finding in those recognized teachers so much contrary teaching. They both, unlike as they are, hold with Xenophon so unlike both, that man is "the hardest of all animals to govern." Of Plato it might indeed be plausibly said that the adherents of an intuitive philosophy, being "the Tories of speculation," have commonly been prone to conservatism in government; but Aristotle, the founder of the experience philosophy, ought according to that doctrine to have been a Liberal if any one ever was a Liberal. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... he never claimed, as he states in the preface to Twice-Told Tales and in a letter to Fields in which he beseeches him not to revive them. The identification of such work, however, is beset with much temptation to find a tale genuine, if it can be plausibly so represented, and in few cases can the proof be conclusive. Mr. F. B. Sanborn presents the fullest list, all from The Token, which he accepts as genuine, as follows: The Adventures of a Raindrop, 1828, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... went anywhere without his gun, and he flattered himself he was as quick on the draw as the average. Besides, he knew better now than to trust himself alone with Lynch or any of the others on some outlying part of the range where a fatal accident could plausibly be laid to marauding greasers, or to ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... may, in fact, be termed its complement. For it involves the idea that the sun's materials, once enormously diffused, gradually condensed to their present volume with development of heat and light, and, it may plausibly be added, with the separation of dependent globes. The data furnished by spectrum analysis, too, favour the supposition of a common origin for sun and planets by showing their community of substance; while gaseous nebulae present examples of vast masses of tenuous vapour, such as our ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... It may plausibly be argued that a military dictatorship was an inevitable sequence of the French Revolution. This may not be true, but let us assume it. Let us further assume that, given Napoleon, it was inevitable that he should be the dictator. But Napoleon's existence was due to an independent causal ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... man was bound to be the idol of his sailors and one of them quite plausibly related that "so great was the confidence he inspired that if he but looked at a sail through his glass and told the helmsman to steer for her, the observation went round,'If she is ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... some more; three times did I fill the bowl for him, and three times did he drain it without thought or heed; then, when I saw that the wine had got into his head, I said to him as plausibly as I could: 'Cyclops, you ask my name and I will tell it you; give me, therefore, the present you promised me; my name is Noman; this is what my father and mother and my ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... Shortly after the beginning of the War of the Rebellion it was made to appear to the country that a transcontinental road was a national necessity; that without it we could not hope to retain long the Pacific Coast. It was also very plausibly argued that the political benefits to be derived by the country from the construction of such a road, as well as its great length and extraordinary cost, made it the duty of the nation to aid liberally its enterprising and patriotic promoters in the prosecution ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... still remained firm, they took other grounds, and plausibly argued that the troops and other officials needed aid as well as the poor; and, as by the words of his vow, he had bound himself to distribute the contents of the treasury to those who had claim to relief, the public servants certainly came ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... that there were never fewer than four Miss Purcells out, and that no individual Miss Purcell had more than three days' hunting in the season. Whatever may have been the truth of this, the companion legend that each Miss Purcell slept with two hound puppies in her bed was plausibly upheld by the devotion with which the latter clung to ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... pleasure; that we cannot be really or directly unselfish. The analysis, indeed, is so defective that it can hardly be applied intelligibly. Hume observes that no man would rest his foot indifferently upon a stool or a gouty toe. The action itself of giving pain would be painful, and cannot be plausibly resolved into an anticipation of an 'end.' This, again, is conspicuously true of all the truly social emotions. Not only the conscience, but the sense of shame or honour, or pride and vanity act powerfully and instantaneously as present motives without necessary reference ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... But wait a moment still. Suppose that my career has not been very, well, resplendent; that my army record is only so-so; that I've devoted myself to him with remarkable assiduity, as in fact I have; that I might be called, quite plausibly, an adventurer. Well, propounding that will, how should I stand before the world and, if necessary (he shrugged his shoulders), ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... be observed that the chief seat of Lycanthropy was Arcadia, and it has been very plausibly suggested that the cause might he traced to the following circumstance:—The natives were a pastoral people, and would consequently suffer very severely from the attacks and depredations of wolves. They would naturally institute a sacrifice to obtain deliverance ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... adjust them tentatively, with various hypotheses as to the precise manner in which they thus went together. Meantime they have figured plausibly as representative of Attic sculpture at the end of its first period, still immature indeed, but with a just claim to take breath, so to speak, having now accomplished some stades of the journey. Those young heroes of Athenian democracy, then, indicate already ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... (also, more plausibly, spelled 'wannabe') [from a term recently used to describe Madonna fans who dress, talk, and act like their idol; prob. originally from biker slang] A would-be {hacker}. The connotations of this term differ sharply depending ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Shift promises a would-be pupil in the art of taking tobacco that if he pleases to be a practitioner, he shall learn in a fortnight to "take it plausibly in any ordinary, theatre, or the Tiltyard, if need be, in the most popular assembly that is." The Tiltyard adjoined Whitehall Palace and was the frequent scene of sports in which Queen Elizabeth took the greatest delight. Here took place, ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... between Holland and England, "to try the patience of the English party to the last bit of strain it would bear by keeping my anchorage in Dutch waters on plea of distress, and at the same time I wished to be ready for instant departure the moment I saw that the plea of distress could no longer be plausibly held." ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... the Signification of his Majesty's pleasure"; from whence he concludes that "he will give no directions but what he knows to be agreable thereto", and therefore "every order coming from a Minister of State, must be suppos'd to come immediately from the Crown"—This is reasoning plausibly enough; but before I can give my full Assent to the Conclusion, I must have good Grounds to believe this same Secretary to be a Man of Wisdom and Integrity; a Character, which however requisite, does not always belong to a Minister of State. If he is deficient in both ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... its joint authors say: "We propose the question—Have Home's phenomena ever been plausibly explained as conjuring tricks, or in accordance with known laws of nature? And we answer—No; they have not been so explained, nor can we so explain them."[25] In commenting on the Joint Report, by Professor Barrett and himself, ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... exception of such physical and moral facts as no one can now throw doubt upon, all else is matter of opinion and argument; and we know well that there is hardly an argument to be found anywhere, against which another argument cannot plausibly be adduced. Hence, though it is plain that the various opinions of men differ greatly in probability and in the weight which should be attached to them, it seems to me that we are wrong when we blame those ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... the subject of the Art of the Greeks we come to what, more plausibly than any other, may be regarded as the central point of their scheme of life. We have already noticed, in dealing with other topics, how constantly the aesthetic point of view emerges and predominates in matters with which, in the modern way ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... him the night before, they could have been working that day. He represented Rundell as being in an explosive mood, and that he was furious at the men taking the idle day, and that he had threatened that if they were not at work next day, he would lock them out. So plausibly did he speak, and so sincere did his concern appear, that Jamie, who was withal a simple man, and aware that the circumstances of his comrades would not admit of a very long fight, began to think it might be ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... so well? Everyone liked him, despite his borrowing propensities. He was so infernally pleasant, and always on the spot. He had a lovely varnish of culture; it was more than varnish; it was a veneer, a patina, an enamel: weather-proof stuff. He could talk most plausibly—art, music, society gossip—everything you please; everything except scandal. No bitter word was known to pass his lips. He sympathized with all our little weaknesses; he was too blissfully contented to think ill of others; he took it for granted that everybody, like himself, found the world a ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... difficulty arose due to the fact that, subsequent to his election to the senatorship and in addition thereto, Lane had accepted a colonelcy tendered by Oliver P. Morton[87] of Indiana, his own native state.[88] Lane's friends very plausibly contended that a military commission from one state could not invalidate the title to represent another state in the Federal senate. The actual fight over the contested seat came in the next session and, quite regardless of consequences likely to prejudice his case, Lane went ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... Academy is always ready to take both sides; she makes a point of contradicting herself plausibly. 'Let her speak first on my behalf,' says Drink, 'and ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... and go by registered post to Hagan's correspondent. You shall have till to-morrow morning to invent all those things which we want Fritz to believe about the Navy. Make us out to be as rotten as you plausibly can. Give him some heavy losses to gloat over and to tempt him out of harbour. Don't overdo it, but mix up your fiction with enough facts to keep it sweet and make it sound convincing. If you do your work well—and the Naval authorities ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... Kuru's race, in winning wealth with hypocrisy, one sets one's heart to such acquisition wholly. It is then that one begins to do acts that are sinful, notwithstanding the admonitions of well-wishers and the wise, unto all which he makes answers plausibly consistent with reason and conformable to the injunctions of the scriptures. Born of attachment and error, his sins, of three kinds, rapidly increase, for he thinks sinfully, speaks sinfully, and acts sinfully. When he fairly starts on the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... impracticable, and there was no more talk for a long time of schemes which had been in favour two years before. The ground was changed, and a point was now brought forward on the Liberal side, for which a good deal might be plausibly said. This was the requirement of subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles from young men at matriculation; and a strong pamphlet advocating its abolition, with the express purpose of admitting Dissenters, was ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... upon that day. Let work be planned for seven days of the week. Let the hum of the mills and the roar of commerce go on. Take no note of the Sabbath day, either in business or recreation or worship, and conditions will soon be upon us, such that we may urge as plausibly, that the Sabbath is effete, possible to our slow going fathers but inconsistent with the necessary rush ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... that they shall not prohibit it where they have exclusive jurisdiction, if it is recognized in such places; but if it be not recognized in such places, where they have exclusive jurisdiction, I say the inference will be drawn, plausibly, if not justly, that they shall have power to prohibit; and I say if this be so, then it is a power (so far as Mexican territories are concerned, if there should be any acquisition there) by which the South will be ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... be more than brief, for Milly is certainly doomed. But when she dies, and Densher is free for Kate again, who will be the worse for the fraud? Milly will have had what she wants, her two friends will have helped themselves in helping her. So Kate argues plausibly; but it all depends on keeping poor exquisite Milly safely in the dark. If she should discover that Kate and Densher are in league to profit by her, it would be a sharper stroke than the discovery of her malady. And by this autumn evening, when Susan Stringham appears before Densher, ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... civilised stellar myths, and see what points they have in common. If they all agree in character, though the Greek tales are full of grace, while those of the Australians or Brazilians are rude enough, we may plausibly account for the similarity of myths, as we accounted for the similarity of flint arrow-heads. The myths, like the arrow-heads, resemble each other because they were originally framed to meet the same needs ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... she did not comprehend his reference to beginning the New Year. Then his meaning revealed itself. That story to her mother about having been attacked by ruffians at the bottom of King Street had been an invention, a ruse to account plausibly for his presence on her mother's doorstep! And she had never suspected that the story was not true. In spite of her experience of his lying, she had never suspected that that particular statement was a lie. What a simpleton ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... this that the reader may see quite clearly what is involved in this kind of falsehood and how much it is repugnant to nature: namely, that something is alleged the contrary of which might as plausibly be affirmed. For Grotius might have ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... treaty was made soon after the battle, it might have been at Alfred's Hall near Cirencester, especially if Hampton (Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire), which is only six miles from Oakley Wood, be the real site of the great and important battle, as was, a few years since, very plausibly argued by Mr. John Marks Moffatt, in a paper inserted, with the signature "J. M. M.," in Brayley's Graphic and Historical Illustrator, p. 106. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... present my compliments. You have discoursed with me very plausibly. I honor your cunning, signor, but if you are indeed a gentleman, as I have always heard, you will now withdraw and permit me to regard the matter from a standpoint other than my own. For the others are weak, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... and would seize property and collect levies in the aptest way to fill their own pockets; money being the object, the man having money, whether loyal or disloyal, would be a victim. This practice doubtless existed to some extent, and it was a real additional evil that it could be, and was, plausibly charged to exist in ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... entitled Elpine. Puttenham and Meres in dealing with pastoral writers also mention one Challener, no doubt the Thomas Chaloner who contributed to the Mirror for Magistrates, and Nashe in his preface to Menaphon adds Thomas Atchelow, who may be plausibly identified with the Thomas Achelly who contributed verses to Watson's Hecatompathia and various sententious fragments to England's Parnassus, among them a not very happy rendering of those lines of Catullus which might ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... imagination, but takes captive the heart. He stands out as the incarnation of magnanimity and patriotism and self-sacrificing heroism, no less than of incomparable military genius. Napoleon, the only general who could plausibly challenge the Carthaginian's supremacy, had throughout the greater part of his career an immense superiority to his adversaries in the quality of the forces which he wielded. He had the enthusiasm of the Revolution behind him, and he was unhampered by authorities ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various |
