"Tenable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the other hand the rock does not differ essentially in hardness from that in the regions below, and hence the theory that all the adjacent land was once as high as the summit of the mountain, and was subsequently worn away by the action of water and weather, is hardly tenable. The gneiss of this region is not especially rich in other mineral contents. Some fine specimens of mica have however been obtained from the summit of Wachusett. The only other extraneous mineral found there to any great extent is the sulphuret of iron before mentioned. The common name of this ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... enjoyed in this regard by the Jewish race to the soberness of their lives. This position is, however, not altogether tenable, if by that we mean abstemiousness; they are extremely temperate, but not abstemious. Tissot, Cornaro, Lessius, Hufeland, Humphry, Sir Henry Thompson, as well as the older Greek and Roman authorities, all are agreed that an abstemious life is the one that is most conducive to long ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... agricultural proprietors, also many gentlemen who look after and turn to account the little estates on which they live, and "who have not left their homes a year in their lives," become the pariahs of their canton.[2233] After 1789, they begin to feel that their position is no longer tenable.[2234] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... hypothesis about Mohammed, that he was a scheming impostor, a falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be no longer tenable to any one. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... reversioner, was a daughter of M. le Comte de Chemant, and her grandmother was a Montmorency. M. le Prince de Tingry, in the presence of the Queen, used to call her cousin. The ancient household of the Kings of France had prerogatives acknowledged in the state. Many of the offices were tenable only by those of noble blood, and were sold at from 40,000 to 300,000 franca. A collection of edicts of the Kings in favour of the prerogatives and right of precedence of the persons holding office in the royal household ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... very extensive; for though the trustees for establishing the colony of Georgia, by a particular scheme of good management, painfully conducted by the gentleman engaged here in that charitable enterprise, has put that small part of the colony, which he has not yet been able to establish, in a tenable condition, against the Spaniards of Florida which lie to the southward; yet the back exposition of those colonies to the vast number of French and Indians which border on the westward, must, in case of a war, cry greatly aloud for ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... and tenable only on the assumption that such evolved conditions, insuring cross-fertilization, were of distinct advantage to the flower in the competitive struggle for existence, and that all cross-fertilized flowers were thus the final result ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... view alone can give joy. Only is it tenable? Is there a particular Providence directing all the circumstances of our life, and therefore imposing all our trials upon us for educational ends? Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual knowledge of the laws of nature? Scarcely; ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not rest its flank on a wood, a village, or other cover for an enemy, till it has been occupied by our own troops. If compelled to do so, it should send out patrols to reconnoitre and observe. Its position is no longer tenable from the moment the enemy appears within ...
— A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms: Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry • Francis J. Lippitt
... movement we do not yet know. We do not know what loss the French sustained, we do not know whether any considerable bodies were cut off. We do not know even at what hour the French General Staff decided that the position was no longer tenable, and ordered ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... conclusion is warranted by the grants of 1417 and 1419; excepting that in these the Commons make the argument intended to support the charge against Henry's veracity still less tenable, by inserting a phrase which might seem to exclude the very object for which application for the subsidy was made. The application was made especially for the supplies necessary to carry on the war abroad; the Commons vote the subsidy "for the defence of the realm of ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... importance to controversial defences of the faith. No doubt they have their office; they may confirm a waverer, they may establish a believer, they may show onlookers that the Christian position is tenable; they may, in some rare cases of transcendent power, prevent a heresy from spreading and from descending to another generation. But oftenest they are barren of result, and where they do their work, it is not ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... destroy man. We do not know whether these diseases are merely the drifts, in a fresh direction, of already-existing breeds of micro-organisms, or whether they are new, absolutely new, breeds themselves just spontaneously generated. The latter hypothesis is tenable, for we theorise that if spontaneous generation still occurs on the earth, it is far more likely to occur in the form of simple organisms than ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... two different kinds of realism, according as we make a thought consist of act and object, or of object alone. Their difficulties are different, but neither seems tenable all through. Take, for the sake of definiteness, the remembering of a past event. The remembering occurs now, and is therefore necessarily not identical with the past event. So long as we retain the act, this need ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... Tell-el-Amarna owes some of its inspiration to the influence of the fugitives who brought with them from Crete the traditions of the great art of Knossos. Such a suggestion is no longer so improbable as it seemed to be in 1901, when it was still a tenable theory that the new development of Egyptian art was due to Mesopotamian influence, and came from Mitanni with Queen Tyi, the wife of Amenhotep III. Now that it is certain that Tyi was no Mitannian, but a native Egyptian, that door is closed, and we must suppose either that Egyptian art suddenly ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... tenable," said Mr. Stone. "But it is restful. The wind is everywhere and nowhere, and nothing can be hidden from it. When I have missed that little girl, I have tried, in a sense, to become the wind; but I have ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... tenable of any special improbability applying to this particular pretension. For centuries has England enjoyed—1st, civil liberty; 2d, the Protestant faith. Now in those two advantages are laid the grounds, the very necessities, a priori, of a superior morality. But ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... places of shelter. From point to point the Circassians fell back, defending their successive stations desperately, answering every call to surrender with shouts of defiance, and holding each spot until the fall of their comrades warned them that the place was no longer tenable. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... hard against his temple, as though to still the dull, constant throbbing that brought to his mental agony the added torment of physical pain. For these three days now he had fought with mind and body and soul against the one conclusion that was tenable—the conclusion which to-night, robbing him of every hope in life, bringing a grief and anguish greater than he could bear, cold logic was finally forcing him to accept. She would have known the torment of anxiety in which he lived, and if her plans had only been ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Secondly. Is the assumption tenable that no other penalty makes so strong an impression or is so pre-eminently exemplary? Bentham thus answers the question: 'It appears to me that the contemplation of perpetual imprisonment, accompanied with hard labour and occasional solitary confinement, would produce a deeper impression on the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... superior originality and adhesion to the normal type, still does not entirely adhere to it or maintain its primary character throughout. The theory that we have in the second Gospel one of the primitive Synoptic documents is not tenable. ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... things of a surety would have gone badly with it. The assaulted one, feeling herself bled to death by that ravenous kiss, would have protested with much wriggling of body and grinding of mandibles. The position would have ceased to be tenable and the intruder would have perished. But at this hour all danger has disappeared. Enclosed in its silken tent, the larva is seized with the lethargy that precedes the metamorphosis. Its condition is ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... only by impatient gestures. At this instant cries came from the wing of the palace situated farthest to the north, announcing that the walls had fallen, and that the fire was spreading with frightful rapidity; and seeing at last that his position was no longer tenable, the Emperor admitted that it was time to leave, and repaired to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Shimei the Benjamite, whose foul tongue cursed him in rabid rage, as he fled before Absalom, has also been thought of, but the points of correspondence with the earlier date are too numerous to make that reference tenable. It seems better to suppose that Cush "the black" was one of Saul's tribe, who had been conspicuous among the calumniators of whom we have seen David complaining to the king. And if so, there is no period in the Sauline persecution into which the psalm will fit so naturally as the present. Its ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... look after the motive, and then all will be right. Small seeds grow to be great trees, and in this strange and inexplicable network of things which men call circumstances, and Christians call Providence, the only thing certain is that 'great' and 'small' all but cease to be a tenable, and certainly altogether cease to be ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... humor. But what motive prompted her to extend the mantle of protection about him, and simultaneously to betray George Collins? He pondered the question a full minute. Then the simple solution, the only tenable one, occurred to him. She was ready to betray Collins for the same reason that had made ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... Waisso, and paid his men as the preliminary to the resumption of the offensive. The attack commenced on the following morning, and promised to prove of an arduous nature; but by a skillful flank movement Major Gordon carried two stockades in person, and rendered the whole place no longer tenable. The rebels evacuated their position and retreated, closely pursued by the imperialists. The villagers, who had suffered from their exactions, rose upon them, and very few rebels escaped. The pursuit was continued for a week, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... made the phenomenon to hang upon the facts clustering about his own profession, familiar to him, and about which it was natural for him to think. He promulgated theories about it that are all now absurd, however tenable then. His was an instance of how the fatuities of men in all the fields of science, faith or morals, have often led to results as extraordinary as they have been unexpected. That he died in poverty in 1798 is a mere human fact. That in this life he never knew is merely another. It is but a part ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... whether the doctrine of divisible divorce, as developed by Justice Douglas in Estin v. Estin, 334 U.S. 541 (1948), has not become the prevailing standard for determining the enforceability of foreign divorce decrees. If such be the case, it may be tenable to assert that an ex parte divorce, founded upon acquisition of domicile by one spouse in the State which granted it, is effective to destroy the marital status of both parties in the State of domiciliary origin and probably in all other States and therefore to preclude ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Consul. It follows then, as I am willing to explain it, that I AM NOT and WAS NOT an imposter. This plea was given up when a more plausible one was thought to be found; but I cannot compliment your Excellency upon this alteration in your position, for the first, although false, is the more tenable post of the two." ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... quotations I have made from Monsieur de Tocqueville, Captain Hamilton, and others, in corroboration of my own opinions, fully evince the respect I have for their writings. In fact, the whole article is a tissue of falsehood and misrepresentation, and so weak that hardly one of its positions is tenable. Can any thing be more absurd, or more shallow, than to quote the Mississippi scheme and Mr Law as a proof that the French are, as well as the English and Americans, a speculative nation: one solitary instance of a portion of the French having, about sixty or seventy years ago, been induced ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... their respective contexts, so as to prove a general and immortal resurrection at the end of time. As I have traveled in an untrodden path, I do not know but that I may have erred in some minor points, but am satisfied that my general positions are sound and tenable. ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... I'm a plain business man. I come along. I see a good opening. Nobody seems to have tenable grants. I stake out claims, locate squatters, start to build. It seems to me your rangers have overlooked certain precautions. That's unfortunate for them. I'm prepared to hold my claim and to back all the squatters who work for me. If you don't like it you can carry the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... of these exhibitions has since then increased considerably through the accumulation of funds, which the commercial character of that great city had caused to be neglected. At that time, I believe each exhibition yielded about forty guineas a- year, and was legally tenable for seven successive years. Now, to me this would have offered a most seasonable advantage, had it been resorted to some two years earlier. My small patrimonial inheritance gave to me, as it did to each of my four brothers, exactly one hundred and fifty ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... he had brought no feelings of hostility from the older days of conflict. Moderate, tactful, restrained, patriotic, he was the only man who, when difficulties arose, was always able to approach the Chancellor, sure of finding some tenable compromise. Different was it with Lasker, the ablest of Parliamentary orators, whose subordination to the decisions of the party was often doubtful, and whose criticism, friendly as it often was, ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... village where he had outlived most of his flock, till one day he rose in the midst of the surviving dyspeptics and consumptives and, following the example of Mr. Emerson, renounced his calling for ever. By that time even the pale Unitarianism thinning out into paler doubt was no longer tenable with him. He confessed that while he felt the Divine goodness more and more, he believed that it was a mistake to preach any specific creed or doctrine, and he begged them to release him from their service. A young man came to fill his place in their pulpit, but he kept his place in their ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... in the event of the success of the American cause. To others came the bitterness of separation from parents, when they were sent across the sea to unknown relatives; while again some faint manuscript record tells of a motherless child brought from a comfortable home, no longer tenable, to whatever quarters could be found within the British lines. Fortunately, children usually adapt themselves easily to changed conditions, and in the novelty and excitement of the life around them, it is probable they soon ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... Reports:—with the assistance and co-operation of the Company great good might be effected;—with the hostility of a Corporation all but omnipotent within its own domain, and among the Indians, the post might not be tenable. ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... is tenable, for there is a long tract of bare hill-slope between the extremity of the Cingle and the conical fortified hill of Pain de Munition, and even if Marcellus were concealed whilst ascending this little lateral ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... R.A.), which provides four scholarships of L. 40 each, two in painting and two in sculpture, tenable for two years, open to students at the end of the first two years of studentship, and given for the best work done ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... would so remain to the end of time. The Alchemists were sneered at as fanciful dreamers or madmen, but since Professor J. J. Thomson's discovery of the electron, the atomic theory of matter, is no longer tenable. The principle of radio-activity has later vindicated the Alchemists. Science and the Bible agree in teaching, that all that is, has been ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... his eyes to his book, in seeming admission that he had no tenable ground on which to meet her in a conflict of wills. "Very well, my dear," he sighed. "If you're going to Polly Wilson's you'd better be off. You'll be home by ten, won't you? I must go then to show the new fireman his way about ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... of a respectable body of facts that I do not know how to explain except on the theory that I am dealing with some invisible intelligence. I hold that as the only tenable theory I ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... Polycarpe, Chrysotom, and Eusebius, to have in a manner suspected rather than believed, the immortality of the soul; yet we have no evidence of their ever having, by the finest process of ratiocination, so thoroughly convinced themselves as to introduce it generally as a tenable thesis on the portico. A beautiful thread of implicit belief and fervent hope, of after life, assimilating to the hunting-ground of our own American Indians, and though sensuous still, a step far in advance of the black void of ancient philosophy, has always ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... problem. What the student has to do is to admit the difficulty, and to state, if necessary, that the fact preserved by tradition is not in all cases possible to discover with our present knowledge. This is a perfectly tenable position. Human imagination cannot invent anything that is outside of fact. It may, and of course too frequently does, misinterpret facts. In attempting to explain and account for such facts with insufficient ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... so fully developed the conception of Contract becomes of importance at a much earlier period than this. Feudalism, I have repeatedly asserted, was a compound of archaic barbarian usage with Roman law; no other explanation of it is tenable, or even intelligible. The earliest social forms of the feudal period differ in little from the ordinary associations in which the men of primitive civilisations are everywhere seen united. A Fief was an organically complete brotherhood of associates whose proprietary ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... unconsciously offended her by what he had written. He had no copy of the letter and could not recall a single phrase which could have displeased her, but he feared lest something might have crept into it which she might misinterpret. But this idea was too absurd to be tenable for long, and the conviction grew upon him that she must be ill or in some great trouble. He was ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... li. 7; Prov. xx. 9. That is not a soil on which ideas of substitution could thrive.—The doctrine of a substitution by men is indeed nowhere else found in the Old Testament; and Gesenius, who (l. c., S. 189) endeavoured to prove that "it is very general" has not adduced any arguments which are tenable or even plausible. The guilt of the fathers is visited upon the children, only when the latter walk in the steps of their fathers, and the latter are first punished; comp. Genuineness and Authenticity of the Pentateuch, Vol. ii. p. 446 ff. The same holds true in reference ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... first of his ancestors, who came to this country, was Rudra Sen, the son of Chandra Sen, Raja of Chitaur, descended of Ratna Sen, first Chauhan chief of that city; but I think that this account is not tenable, and Samar Bahadur, the brother of Rana Bahadur, gives one totally different, and, in my opinion, more probable. He says, that Ratna Sen, instead of being the first Raja of Chitaur, was the last of these princes; and that Naya Sen, his eldest son, settled at Prayag ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... snow against them with his snow-shoes, then they entered. The cabin was not so badly burned as Stane had expected to find it. The bunk had burned out, but the inner wall of the cabin had scarcely caught and the place was still tenable. Benard blocked the window, and they sat down to eat. For a time the meal progressed in silence, Stane deliberately refraining from speech out of consideration for the feelings of his companion, though from time to time glancing at him he caught an expression of perplexity ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... with two armies, fell upon the Bohemian territories, which they treated as a hostile country. But the imperial generals found the march to Prague more difficult than they had expected. Every pass, every position that was the least tenable, must be opened by the sword, and resistance increased at each fresh step they took, for the outrages of their troops, chiefly consisting of Hungarians and Walloons, drove their friends to revolt and their enemies to despair. But even ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the fixed stars were meant, the objection would be no longer tenable. It rests on certain estimates as to the supposed distances of the fixed stars and star clusters, which were formed by the late Sir W. Herschel from what he designated the "space- penetrating power" of his telescopes. Starting with the assumption ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... both in friend and enemy alike, there has been a reluctance to see Spinoza as he really was. The Herder and Schleiermacher school have claimed him as a Christian—a position which no little disguise was necessary to make tenable; the orthodox Protestants and Catholics have called him an Atheist —which is still more extravagant; and even a man like Novalis, who, it might have been expected, would have had something reasonable to say, could find no better name for him than a Colt ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... triumph over the forces was but momentary; her ground was not tenable. The person promised can release the person who promises—volenti non fit injuria. Lucy found herself attacked with female weapons, that you and I, sir, should laugh at; but they made her miserable. Cold looks; short answers; solemnity; distance; hints at ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... out to the water-bucket and gourd. From there we could see the missing two, lingering at the dooryard gate, in the bright moonlight. As we finished drinking, "Gentlemen," murmured Harry, "I fear our position is too exposed to be tenable." ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... being presented at his levee, he recapitulated all the transactions of that period, with the strongest encomium upon Mr. Pitt, and with much apparent acrimony hinted at Lord Shelburne, whom he stated to have abandoned a situation which was tenable, and particularly so after the popular resentment had been roused. This was naturally attended with strong expressions of resentment and disgust of his Ministers, and of personal abhorrence of Lord North, whom he charged with treachery and ingratitude of the blackest nature. He ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... examine her mental processes. She would not exasperate me so deeply if I could be certain of her springs of action. Is she old, is she rheumatic, is she lazy, is she hungry? Sometimes I think she means well, and is only ignorant and dull; but this hypothesis grows less and less tenable as I know her better. Sometimes I conclude that she does not understand me; that the difference in nationality may trouble her. If an Englishman cannot understand an American woman all at once, why should an English donkey? Perhaps it takes an American donkey to comprehend ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... theory—everything made out of nothing by a personal God—is no longer regarded as tenable by intelligent individuals, though miracle and special providence are often included in accounting for the vicissitudes of life, just as the so-called scientist superficially and flippantly uses the word "coincidence," as though it really ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill has been a much discussed subject among historians in recent years. The older view that Douglas was simply playing into the hands of the "slavepower" by sacrificing Kansas, is no longer tenable. This point has been elaborated by Allen Johnson in his study of Douglas ("Stephen A. Douglas: a Study in American Politics"). In his "Repeal of the Missouri Compromise", P.O. Ray contends that the legislation of 1854 originated in a factional ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... no very tenable objection to all this, and yet the presence of Thucydides in our kitchen unaccountably oppressed our imaginations. We beheld him all over the house, a monstrous eidolon, balanced upon every window-sill; and he certainly ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... a post as long as it is tenable is not heroic. It is simple duty. To defend it after it has become untenable, and even to die in so doing, is not heroic, but a noble madness, unless an advantage is to be gained thereby for one's own side. Then, indeed, it rises towards, if not ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... however, as he was returning from the left, whither he had ridden to see how affairs were looking, he was surprised, raising his eyes to the Calvary, to see it was unoccupied; there was not a zouave to be seen there, they had abandoned the plateau that was no longer tenable by reason of the terrific fire from the batteries at Fleigneux. With a despairing presentiment of impending disaster he was spurring as fast as he could to the right, when he encountered Dumont's division, flying in disorder, broken ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... swept him from his old security. Yet he had been so detached from the merging influences about him, his organization had been so complete in its isolation, his egotism so developed, that a last trace of his entity lingered sentient, viewing as if from a careened but still tenable deck the general submergence. His thoughts returned to the automatic operation of the consummation obliterating his person, the inexorable blind movement of the thing in which he had been caught, dragged ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... pregnable points between them. Here, our method will be the same that the Japanese followed and that they learned from European armies. We shall concentrate in masses and throw in wave after wave of attack until we have gained the positions we desire. Once we have a tenable foothold on the crest of the range the Brown army must fall back and the rest will be a ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... though they were first associated in the month of May, The Committee instituted in June, 1787, for effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Thus, at the very outset, they took a ground which was for ever tenable. Thus they were enabled also to answer the objection, which was afterwards so constantly and so industriously circulated against them, that they were going to emancipate the slaves. And I have no doubt that this wise decision contributed greatly ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... is just in association with these deposits that deep-seated temperatures are most in evidence at the surface; but still the result that the maximum temperature beneath the crust in general attains a value no higher than 270 deg. C. is hardly tenable. We conclude, then, that some other source of heat exists beneath. This may be radioactive in origin and may be easily accounted for if the radioactive materials are more sparsely distributed at the base of the upper crust. Or, again, ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... much of a sense of decency regarding the ancient traditions as to exempt the liberty of scientific teaching from the indignity of that preventive censure which in those days rendered repressive legislation superfluous. In their search for some tenable and tangible criterion of the scientific character of any publication, the men of that time, it is true, hit upon a somewhat absurd one in making the test a test of bulk—books of more than twenty forms were exempt from censure. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... is the true and the only tenable base of Philosophic Realism, the writer next proceeds to explain the growth of the Soul, from its rudimental strivings in its fallen condition to the development of its spiritual capabilities and to trace its ascent ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... all, to form a course of instruction which could bear the name of a religious one, and yet meet the views of all, and clash with the consciences and prejudices of none, was manifestly impossible. The religious public in the United States has felt that there was no tenable ground between thorough religious instruction and the broadest toleration. Driven by the circumstances of their country to accept the latter course, they have exerted themselves to meet this omission in the public schools by a most comprehensive Sabbath-school ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Union at the expense of the slave interest upon which its success depended, shattered and crippled by the civil war and its results, has at last yielded to the inexorable logic of events, abandoned a position no longer tenable, and taken its "new departure" with an abolitionist as its candidate. As a friend of the long-oppressed colored man, and for the sake of the peace and prosperity of the country, I rejoice at this action ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... rows, sixteen feet apart; the interspace being filled with sand. At the time of the engagement, the south and west fronts were finished; the other fronts were only seven feet high, but surmounted by thick planks, to be tenable against escalade. Thirty-one guns were in place, 18 and 9-pounders, of which twenty-one were on the south face, commanding the channel. Within was a traverse running east and west, protecting the gunners from shots from the rear; but there was no such cover against enfilading ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... numerical superiority of nearly three to one, while its left flank and lines of communication with Havre were seriously menaced by a huge body of Uhlan cavalry. In a word, the positions taken up by the whole of the Allied centre and left were no longer tenable. To hang on would have been to court disaster. There was nothing for it but to cut ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... seen, grew up out of a fraud, like flowers upon a dunghill. That theory will not hold water; and even those who will not accept the testimony have long since confessed that it will not. But the Apostle, in my context, seems to think that that is the only tenable alternative to the other theory that the witnesses were veracious, and I am disposed to believe that he is right. He says, 'If Christ be not risen, then, are we' the utterly impossible thing of 'false witnesses to God,' devout perjurers, as the phrase might be paraphrased: men who ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... criminal folly in abandoning it so as to help mend the shattered bodies of fools and knaves who, by joining the forces of militarism, had betrayed the Sacred Cause of the International Solidarity of Labour. His first ground for complaint was scarcely tenable; with his dwindling business the post of clerk had dwindled into a sinecure. To sit all day at the receipt of imaginary custom is not a part fitted for a sane and healthy young human being. Still, from Gedge's point of view her defection was a grievance; ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... deserve. Mistress Alice has put the question to me. I can only answer, that no one can be more devotedly attached to the King than I myself,—that I am very partial to his merits and blind to his defects;—and that, in short, I would be the last man in the world to give up his cause where it was tenable. Nevertheless, I must confess, that if all his grandfather of Navarre's morals have not descended to him, this poor King has somehow inherited a share of the specks that were thought to dim the lustre of that great Prince—that Charles is a ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... propriety of going a second time to meet Mr. O'Brien, and urging upon him the necessity of some decisive course. The startling events of the two preceding days too clearly proved that his position was not tenable, and that whatever might be resolved on, it was indispensable to remove from Ballingarry. It was then night, and we were all sorely taxed by long riding and want of rest. Not one of us was able to mount, so we placed hay in a car on which ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... still a Church for him; that this extant Church, which he long took for an extinct shadow, is not such, but a substance; upon which he can anchor himself amid the storms of fate;—and he does so, even taking orders in it, I think. Such could by no means seem to me the true or tenable solution. Here clearly, struggling amid the tumults, was a lovable young fellow-soul; who had by no means yet got to land; but of whom much might be hoped, if he ever did. Some of the delineations are highly pictorial, flooded with ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... concerned in the struggle to such a degree as to warrant the waste of English money and the pouring out of English blood. But he did not take his stand on such a broad and clear position; indeed at that time it would not have been a firm or a tenable position. Walpole did not venture to say that the question whether this man or that was to sit on the throne of Poland was not worth the life of one British grenadier. The time had not come when even a great minister might venture {25} to look at an international quarrel from ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... fossiliferous rocks that formed the primeval sea-beds could only be deposited by the abrasion from the anterior and higher rocks. It has always appeared to us that this conjecture is worthy of consideration, and, if found tenable, ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... is impossible to bring into any tenable compass for our present purpose, even hints of the human influence of the two remaining orders of Amaryllids and Irids; only note this generally, that while these in northern countries share with the Primulas the fields of spring, it seems that in Greece, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... different estimation of principles and morals in the two nations. The solidity and purity of our ethics and religious creeds may have given a superior tone to our moral feeling; but has that man a tenable ground to value himself on either, whose respect to sacred things grows out of a respect to himself: on the other hand, is not humility the very foundation of the real Christian? For our part, ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... clearly, either in action or in prospect, universal. There must be a new world, if there is to be any world at all! That human things in our Europe can ever return to the old sorry routine, and proceed with any steadiness or continuance there; this small hope is not now a tenable one. These days of universal death must be days of universal new-birth, if the ruin is not to be total and final! It is a Time to make the dullest man consider; and ask himself, Whence he came? Whither he is bound?—A veritable "New Era," to the foolish as well as ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... rely on the precedent of 1788, to which Grenville, for one, had been a party, and, after considerable opposition, the prince was made regent under several temporary restrictions. With certain exceptions, he was precluded from granting any peerage or office tenable for life; the royal property was vested in trustees for the king's benefit, and the personal care of the king was entrusted to the queen, with the advice of a council. In this form, the regency bill was passed on February 4, 1811, after a protest from the other sons of George III. and violent attacks ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... of the decisive war of the younger gods with the Titans. The rest of his poem is a picturesque drama, in which every artifice of invention is visibly and consciously employed; not a single fact being for an instant conceived as tenable by any living faith" ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... understood in addition that the very matrix of the rock in which fossils are imbedded is in many cases one gigantic fossil, composed of the remains of microscopic forms of life, common-sense, which, after all, is the final tribunal, came to the aid of belabored science. It was conceded that the only tenable interpretation of the record in the rocks is that numerous populations of creatures, distinct from one another and from present forms, have risen and passed away; and that the geologic ages in which these ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Gentlemen [of the Catholic persuasion], accept, with all frankness of colleague-love and amity, me and the Evangelical brother Raths now introduced by Royal grace and power; and make the new position generously tenable and available to us;—and thereby bind with us the more firmly the band of peace and colleague-unity, for helping up this dear, and for some years greatly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... less anxious than the District Attorney to convict me of larceny, and send me to the penitentiary. But, having a vast deal more sense than the District Attorney, he saw that the idea that I had carried off these negroes to sell them again for my own profit was not tenable. It was plain enough that my intention was to help them to escape. The judge therefore, who did not lack ingenuity, went to work to twist the law so as, if possible, to bring my case within it. Even he did not venture to say that merely to assist slaves to escape was stealing. Stealing, ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... of the period of the Kings we have the prophetic literature and finally Ezra and Nehemiah. De Wette had disputed this order, but Wellhausen in his Prolegomena zur Geshichte Israels, 1883, may be said to have proved that this view was no longer tenable. Men ask, could the law, or even any greater part of it, have been given to nomads in the wilderness? Do not all parts of it assume a settled state of society and an agricultural life? Do the historical books from Judges to the II. Kings know anything about the law? Are the practices of worship ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... Russian barbarous he presumably means imperfectly civilised. There is a certain path along which Western nations have proceeded in recent times; and it is tenable that Russia has not proceeded so far as the others: that she has less of the special modern system in science, commerce, machinery, travel or political constitution. The Russ ploughs with an old plough; he wears a wild beard; ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... seemed to think that he did not want a desirable animal. In most cases, the pony-horse pronounced sentence upon himself by some gross and ridiculous blemish; but sometimes my friend failed to hit upon any tenable excuse for refusing him. In such an event, he would say, with an air of easy and candid comradery, "Well, now, what's the matter with him?" And then the dealer, passing his hand down one of the pony-horse's fore-legs, would respond, with an upward glance of searching inquiry ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... certain number of gems.[1194] The origin of the name is uncertain. Gesenius would connect it at once with the Egyptian Neith (Nit), and with the Syrian Anaitis or Tanaitis;[1195] but the double identification is scarcely tenable, since Anaitis was, in Egypt, not Neith, but Anta.[1196] The subject is very obscure, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... of Congreve was not tenable: whatever glosses he might use for the defence or palliation of single passages, the general tenour and tendency of his plays must always be condemned. It is acknowledged, with universal conviction, that the perusal of his works will make ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... its whole national policy, in its relation to education, and more or less in every great department of life. In his view, therefore, the ordinary cry for disestablishment was not the recognition of a tenable and consistent principle, but an attempt to arrange a temporary compromise which could only work under special conditions, and must break up whenever men's minds were really stirred. However reluctant they may be, they will have to answer the question, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... welfare of the community, and ought to be put an end to by legislation." Another debate—in this very quarrelsome spring of 1887—was a written one in the National Reformer between the Rev. G.F. Handel Rowe and myself on the proposition, "Is Atheism logically tenable, and is there a satisfactory Atheistic System for the guidance of Human Conduct." And so the months went on, and the menace of misery grew louder and louder, till in September I find myself writing: "This one thing is clear—Society must deal with the unemployed, or the unemployed will deal ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... the past three years (1884-'86) it has at times been very faint, so as barely to be visible. The persistence of this object for so many years leads me to infer that the formerly accepted theory, that the phenomena seen on the surface of the planet are atmospheric, is no longer tenable. The statement so often made in text-books, that in the course of a few days or months the whole aspect of the planet may be changed, is obviously erroneous. The oval white spots on the southern hemisphere of the planet, nine degrees south of the equator, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... arrival on 27th October, at once gave a verdict consonant with his pessimistic character. Hood wrote on the morrow to Dundas: "General O'Hara has just been with me and alarmed me much. He says our posts are not tenable and that we are in a dangerous situation for lack of troops that can be relied upon. And, what is very unpleasant, is the conduct of the Spaniards, who are striving for power here." On 11th November O'Hara reported that, in the absence of engineer officers, the forts had been ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... take the reader back a little way. Simultaneous with Grant's advance on the Rapidan an army of thirty thousand under the Union General B.F. Butler was making its way up the James River and threatening Petersburg. It was well known that Richmond would be no longer tenable should the latter place fall. Beauregard was commanding all of North Carolina and Virginia on the south side of the James River, but his forces were so small and so widely scattered that they promised little protection. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... it assume my noble Fathers person,[3] Ile speake to it, though Hell it selfe should gape And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, If you haue hitherto conceald this sight; Let it bee treble[5] in your silence still: [Sidenote: be tenable in[4]] And whatsoeuer els shall hap to night, [Sidenote: what someuer els] Giue it an vnderstanding but no tongue; I will requite your loues; so, fare ye well: [Sidenote: farre you] Vpon the Platforme twixt eleuen and twelue, [Sidenote: a leauen and ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... produced this resounding effect on opinion, unless they contained something which the social or spiritual condition of the men whom they inflamed made true for the time, and true in an urgent sense. Is it not tenable that the state of certain savage tribes is more normal, offers a better balance between desire and opportunity, between faculty and performance, than the permanent state of large classes in western countries, the broken wreck of civilisation?[194] To admit this is not to conclude, as ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... reason—because if the note of schism on the one hand lies against England, an antagonist disgrace lies upon Rome, the note of idolatry. Let us not be mistaken here: we are neither accusing Rome of being idolatrous nor ourselves of being schismatical,—we think neither charge tenable; but still the Roman Church practises what looks so very like idolatry, and the English glories in what looks so very like schism, that, without deciding what is the duty of a Roman Catholic toward the ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... him: it is he to die, or else you. Reconciliation is problematic; may be possible, or, far more likely, is impossible. It is now pretty generally admitted that the Parliament, having vanquished Charles First, had no way of making any tenable arrangement with him. The large Presbyterian party, apprehensive now of the Independents, were most anxious to do so; anxious indeed as for their own existence; but it could not be. The unhappy Charles, in those final Hampton-Court negotiations, shows himself as a man fatally incapable of being ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... members of this class the second explanation is the only tenable one,—namely, that there are certain extraordinary powers resident in the nervous organism which are capable of acting in opposition to the ordinary energies of nature; that an intangible material exists outside the body ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... to be circulated in the Boyne Club that Ham was showing a tendency to straighten up, surprise and incredulity were genuine. He was drinking less,—much less; and it was said that he had severed certain ties that need not again be definitely mentioned. The theory of religious regeneration not being tenable, it was naturally supposed that he had fallen in love; the identity of the unknown lady becoming a fruitful subject of speculation among the feminine portion of society. The announcement of the marriage of Hambleton Durrett would be news of the first ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... such a jugglery of logic or metaphysics. He is neither schoolman nor theologian, but our Father in heaven. He knows that that in him would be the same unforgivingness for which he refuses to forgive man. The only tenable ground for supporting such a doctrine is, that God cannot do more; that Satan has overcome; and that Jesus, amongst his own brothers and sisters in the image of God, has been less strong than the ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... assault, I shall he compelled to do what I did at Jaffa, where the garrison was put to the sword. It is the sad law of war. I desire that the necessity for such a frightful act should he spared to me, as well as to the brave Austrian nation. The place is not tenable." ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... his readers. I insist upon this point, because one of the first of living critics has declared of Paradise Lost that it is a poem in which every artifice of invention, is consciously employed, not a single fact being, for an instant, conceived as tenable by any living faith. (Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, p. 138). On the contrary, we shall not rightly apprehend either the poetry or the character of the poet until we feel that throughout Paradise Lost, as in Paradise Regained and Samson, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... want the Paternoster ruby? It was impossible even to surmise a tenable theory. His parsimony was notorious; he was a bachelor without known kith or kin, and had never before been known to evince the slightest interest in ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... as was made evident by the census of hallucinations, by far the larger number of apparitions reported are those of persons still alive and well. In these cases, nobody being dead, it is absurd[L] to raise the cry of spirits, and the only tenable hypothesis is that, through one of the several causes which seem to quicken telepathic action, a spontaneous telepathic hallucination has been produced. Now, the experiments conducted by the society ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... went off to some other place, concealed three gems out of the thirty-nine, with such skill that nobody can find them, and then returned with the other thirty-six into the room in which he exposed himself to the greatest danger of being discovered. I ask you now, is such a theory tenable?" ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District may be based upon another equally tenable. We argue it from the fact, that slavery exists there now by an act of Congress. In the act of 16th July, 1790, Congress accepted portions of territory offered by the states of Maryland and Virginia, and enacted that the laws, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... great skill and courage. In Switzerland and England the reformers considered themselves as fulfilling this message of the Apocalyptic angel. Elliot says, "They seized on this very prophecy for application; and, for the first time, upon grounds of evidence sound and tenable, concluded on the fact of progress having been made up to it, in the evolution of the great mundane drama, and on their own chronological place being already far advanced under the sixth trumpet, and in near expectancy of the seventh trumpet, of ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... understanding of the degree in which she might expect to cultivate such discernment in the general mind of polite travelers; nor have I less admired her aptitude in collation of essentially illustrative facts, so as to bring the history of a very widely contemplative range of art into tenable compass and very graceful and serviceable form. Her reading, indeed, has been, with respect to many very interesting periods of religious workmanship, much more extensive than my own; and when I consented to edit the volume of collected papers, it was ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... in the number of holes bored through them. It is thought that the number of holes indicated the rank of the owner. Although many theories are given regarding the use of batons, the one which seems most tenable to the author is that which views them as marks of distinction and instruments used in magical ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... been intimated by the friends of the corn laws, that by growing our own consumption we shall keep the price of corn within moderate bounds and to a certain degree steady. But this also is an argument which is obviously not tenable; as in our actual situation, it is only by keeping the price of corn up, very considerably above the average of the rest of Europe, that we can possibly be made to ...
— Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and General Wealth of the Country • Thomas Malthus
... the theory of verbal inspiration, nor the theory of plenary inspiration, can be made to fit the facts, which a careful study of the writings themselves brings before us. These writings are not inspired in the sense which we have commonly given that word. The verbal theory of inspiration was only tenable while they were supposed to be the work of a single author. To such a composite literature no such theory will apply. "To make this claim," says Professor Ladd, "and yet accept the best ascertained results of criticism, would ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... before effecting their purpose. A number of additional cannon now arrived from Augusta, and so heavy and incessant a fire was opened upon the stockade from three batteries that on the 17th it was no longer tenable, and the garrison evacuated it in ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... forms of Round Barrow were in use at one and the same time, but that the Bowl Barrow was the earliest, followed by the Bell, and that the Disc is the latest form of all. From construction, if for no other reason, this hypothesis seems perfectly tenable. ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... been tenable, though highly improbable, if you had been an innocent young maid, but he knew perfectly well that ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... if murder it is, of course nobody knows anything with certainty. But in my judgment there is only one tenable theory of Will Whittaker's disappearance, and that is, that he was murdered and his body hidden. Mead is the only enemy he was known to have, and Mead had threatened to kill him. The evidence, while, of course, not conclusive, ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... which cannot be successfully defended, and may be made a vantage ground for the enemy, so the defenders of Christianity set themselves to the task of finding out how much of the current theology was credible and tenable, and how much might wisely be abandoned, to insure the safety of the remainder. The discoveries of Geology, Astronomy and of Biology could not be denied, yet their testimony was contrary to Christian doctrine. ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... distinctions of nation and nation were explained by original diversity of race. They ARE dissimilar, it was said, because they were created dissimilar. But in most cases this easy supposition will not do its work. You cannot (consistently with plain facts) imagine enough original races to make it tenable. Some half-dozen or more great families of men may or may not have been descended from separate first stocks, but sub-varieties have certainly not so descended. You may argue, rightly or wrongly, that all Aryan nations are of a single or peculiar origin, just as ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... the tie of vassalage should be imposed on every important official; and natural also to regard his office as a benefice, tenable for life or during good behaviour. At an early date we find cases of conquered princes—a Duke of Aquitaine, a Duke of Bavaria, a King of Denmark—who take the vassal's oath and agree to hold their former dominions ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... few years by the strong hand of Charles George Gordon, already famous through his achievements in China, and invested with unlimited power by Ismail; but, that potentate being overthrown, the great Englishman left his thankless post, no longer tenable by him. Then it seemed that chaos had come again; and a bold and keen, though probably hypocritical, dervish, self-styled the Mahdi, or Mohammedan Messiah, was able to kindle new flames of revolt, which burned with the quenchless fury of Oriental fanaticism. His Arab and ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... of those who believe that, at present, there is no evidence whatever for saying, that mankind sprang originally from any more than a single pair; I must say, that I cannot see any good ground whatever, or even any tenable sort of evidence, for believing that there is more than one species of Man. Nevertheless, as you know, just as there are numbers of varieties in animals, so there are remarkable varieties of men. I speak not merely ...
— The Conditions Of Existence As Affecting The Perpetuation Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... the vanity that obsesses young authors. It did not even present itself to me as a tenable theory that the book might have been left behind on purpose, as being of no further use to the owner. It only occurred to me that, if I did not act swiftly, the poor girl would suffer a loss beside which the loss of a purse or ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... they going? How do they make a living if the flag never comes down? Are they always on their way to lunch, even late at night? Are they always out of petrol? I can understand and admire the independence that follows upon overwork; but when was their overwork done? The only tenable theory that I have evolved is that Lord NORTHCLIFFE (whose concurrent rise to absolutism is another phenomenon of my absence) has engaged them all to patrol ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... possesses two points of moral truth and power, and, if not tenable as strict science, is yet instructive as symbolic poetry. First, it embodies, in concrete shapes the most vivid and unmistakable, the fact that beastly and demoniac qualities of character lead men down towards the brutes and fiends. Rage ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... fleeting beauty of Nature, and yet we would not keep it. The thought of those trees whose leaves are never shed, and of that eternal spring to which we never bid adieu, is pleasant to toy with, but after all we would not have it so. It is no more seriously tenable than the thought that little Johnny there should remain for ever at the age of ten. You may feel that you would like him to remain at the age of ten. Indeed you are a strange parent if you do not look back a little wistfully to the childhood of your children, and wish ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... The sound and tenable position seems to be this:—Human beings, in their best and soberest moods, looking before and after, weighing all the consequences of actions, are generally disposed to regard Happiness, to some beings or others, as the proper end of all endeavours. The mother is ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... upon the utterances of an old charwoman who had been nearly knocked down by a man in a hurry. Not a very substantial authority indeed, unless on the ground of sudden inspiration, which was hardly tenable. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Dukla and Lupkow and north of Uzsok fighting was resumed with intense vigor. Painfully digging through the snowdrifts the Austrians retired from the Smolnik-Kalnica line, now no longer tenable. Storm hampered the pursuing enemy, who captured the Cisna railway station on April 4, 1915, with all its rolling stock and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... slight change in the explanation will make it tenable. Quite possibly the white deposits may be due to something like hoar-frost condensed from slightly moist air, without the actual production of snow. This would produce the effect that we see. Even this explanation implies that Mars has air and water, rare though the former may be. It is quite ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... conflict by the considerations of Section 6, which are now no longer tenable. In that section we concluded that the man in the carriage, who traverses the distance w per second relative to the carriage, traverses the same distance also with respect to the embankment in each second of time. But, according to the foregoing considerations, ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein |
