"Conceivable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... depreciation of paper money. Then profits doubled so rapidly that—spite of their enhanced risk from more effective blockade—private ventures, and even great companies formed for the purpose, made "blockade-breaking" the royal road to riches. Almost every conceivable article of merchandise came to southern ports; often in quantities apparently sufficient to glut the market—almost always of inferior quality and manufactured specially for the great, but cheap, trade now ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... this—she had deliberately concocted a story to fit those of Elizabeth Francis and Agnes Brown, and that her daughter, hearing her mother's narrative in court—a very possible thing in that day—had fitted hers into it. It is conceivable too that Mother Waterhouse had yielded merely to the wish to amaze her listeners. It is a more probable supposition that the questions asked of her by the judge were based upon the accusations already made by Agnes Brown and that they suggested to ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... ever was framed by religious or philosophical fanaticism, can the government of Nature be made to resemble the work of a being at once good and omnipotent."[55] Now there can be no question that physical nature gives the lie to that shallow optimism, which prates of the best of all conceivable worlds, and hardly consents to recognize evil, save as "a lower form of good;" unquestionably recent researches of physicists have brought out with quite startling clearness what St. Paul calls the subjection of the creature to vanity. Ruin, waste, decay are written ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... and literal specimen, which carried back my thoughts for a generation to the day when bags were really made of carpet and the most fastidious social Bourbon did not disdain to carry them. They flourished in the age of shawls, and came in not long after the epoch of "gum" shoes. They were of every conceivable pattern, from the sober symphony in brown to a gorgeous wealth of color that might vie with the most audacious wall-paper of an aesthetic age. This "belated traveller" of a carpet-bag had all the appearance of a faded and bedraggled gentility,—was, in fact, a veritable tramp among ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... room that had been hers, she had been seized with a chill so violent that her teeth had chattered in her head. To prevent anyone who might follow her from hearing them,—and it was probable that her brother might come for a final remonstrance; it was even conceivable that Gertie, herself, might be sorry for what she had done; but no, it was she who had said she was shameless!—she got up and locked her door and then threw herself full length on the little bed and crammed the corner of the ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... day, until exhausted, faint, and friendless, in the midst of an excited and armed populace, should do, than it was in the circumstances to do what will stand the test of a high, calm, and safe patriotism. Let none condemn until he can lay his hand upon his heart and say, "No conceivable ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... squatty, ugly arm-chairs, upholstered in the ugliest and coarsest conceivable scarlet plush; two hideous sofas of the same —uncounted armless chairs ditto. Five ornamental chairs, seats covered with a coarse rag, embroidered in flat expanse with a confusion of leaves such as no tree ever bore, six or seven a dirty white and the rest a faded red. How those hideous ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... person to the window. Glennard measured his course with a contemptuous eye. It was so like Hollingsworth to get up and look out of the window just as it was growing too dark to see anything! There was a man rich enough to do what he pleased—had he been capable of being pleased—yet barred from all conceivable achievement by his own impervious dulness; while, a few feet off, Glennard, who wanted only enough to keep a decent coat on his back and a roof over the head of the woman he loved, Glennard, who had sweated, toiled, denied himself ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... declared that he wished to leave the remainder to his cousin, George Bartram. Such an arrangement, however, Mrs. Lecount foresaw, might be fraught with those very dangers which she wished to avoid. George Bartram was young and susceptible. It was conceivable that Magdalen, robbed of the stake for which she had so boldly played, might, on her husband's death, attempt to secure the prize by luring George Bartram into a marriage. At the instigation of his housekeeper, Noel Vanstone therefore bequeathed the residue of his estate absolutely to Admiral ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... into the details of her married life, drawing on the experiences of the first months for instances that scarcely applied to her present liberated state. She could thus, without great exaggeration, picture herself as entrapped into a bondage hardly conceivable to Moffatt, and she saw him redden with excitement as he listened. "I call it darned low—darned low—" he broke ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... proportion as by the knowledge and love of God it participates more in God. In proportion it makes itself divine; and approaching perfection, by the same progress it also approaches immortality. It is conceivable that by error and sin it kills itself, and by virtue renders itself imperishable. This immortality is not or does not seem to be personal, it is literally a definite re-entry into the bosom of God; Spinozian immortality would therefore be a prolongation of the same effort ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... Liverpool—does any one suppose, that if no artificial obstacles be thrown in the way of emigration, or if no efforts be made to provide an outlet in some other quarter for the pauper population of Ireland, we shall escape being overrun by it? It is not conceivable that, with the existing means of intercourse, wages should continue to be, at an average, 20d. per day in England, and only 4d. or 5d. in Ireland. So long as the Irish paupers find that they can improve their condition by coming to England, thither they will come. At this moment, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various
... feet of the cabin. A sudden disturbing thought flashed upon Alan as he heard his name called. He had seen no other figures, no other shadows beyond Rossland, and the burning cabin now clearly illumined the windows of Sokwenna's place. Was it conceivable that Rossland was merely a lure, and the instant he exposed himself in a parley a score of hidden rifles would reveal their treachery? He shuddered and held himself below the opening of the window. Graham and his men were more than ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... are dissatisfied with me. To such I would say: You desire peace, and you blame me that we do not have it. But how can we attain it? There are but three conceivable ways: First, to suppress the rebellion by force of arms. This I am trying to do. Are you for it? If you are, so far we are agreed. If you are not for it, a second way is to give up the Union. I am ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... returned to an Office where there were no Kings and no incidents except the daily manufacture of a newspaper. A newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person, to the prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission ladies arrive, and beg that the Editor will instantly abandon all his duties to describe a Christian prize-giving in a back-slum of a perfectly inaccessible village; ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... slow in replying. He was doubting his own ears. It was not conceivable that an ordinary—or even an extraordinary—lady's maid could have possessed the exquisite voice and manner of his chance acquaintance of the day before, or the temerity to order that sour- faced chauffeur ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... spared not their allies will spare us? Will those who seized for funds the property of their own adherents refrain from our wealth? Will they show humanity as victors who before victory have committed every conceivable outrage? Not to spend time in speaking of the concerns of other people, I will enumerate the audacity that they have displayed toward us who stand here. Who was ignorant that I was chosen a partner and colleague of Caesar and received charge of the management ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... conceivable alternatives he proceeds to show that as the existent had no beginning so it can have no ending in time. From this, by a curious transition which Aristotle quotes as an example of loose reasoning, he concludes ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... see Dr. Herrick had prepared everything. And much of what we are about to do is merely symbolical, of course. Most people undervalue symbols. They do not seem to understand that there could never have been any conceivable need of inventing a periphrasis for what did ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... "counterfeit" concoctions; gone were the days when the almanacs and other advertising circulars poured out of Morristown in the millions of copies; long since vanished were the sweeping claims of marvelous cures for every conceivable ailment. In these final days the Indian Root Pills, now packaged in a flat metal box with a sliding lid, were described modestly as the Handy Vegetable Laxative. And the ingredients were now printed on the box; nothing more was heard of Dr. ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... of development, it is difficult, in conjecturing the first attempts of man or his hypothetical ancestor at the expression either of percepts or concepts, to connect vocal sounds with any large number of objects, but it is readily conceivable that the characteristics of their forms and movements should have been suggested to the eye—fully exercised before the tongue—so soon as the arms and fingers became free for the requisite simulation or portrayal. There is little distinction between pantomime and a developed ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... of what is now the vestry. There is, it is true, some difficulty in the fact that it is not the vestry but the Chapter-house which is mentioned, and in the allusion to a dilapidated roof (tectura); but it is conceivable that there was as yet no dividing wall, that the vaulting of what is now the vestry was still standing, that it had been injured by the settlement above-mentioned—in fact that its removal and the erection of the dividing ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... Jew, or the Christian, has his angels, the Catholic has his saints; the Platonist has his demons; Superstition has its ghosts. The question is whether all these spiritual beings are only ghosts raised to higher powers: or (in the case of deity), to the highest conceivable power, while, even when this last process has been accomplished, we ask whether other ghosts, on lower grades, continue to be recognised. Meanwhile the whole anthropological hypothesis, whether valid or invalid, lies behind history, behind the experience of even the most backward races at ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... eye. Why was he being so brutal to her? What conceivable purpose was served by this harshness? He perceived that his nerves were overstrung. And in a swift rush of insight he saw the whole situation from her point of view. She was exhausted by gestation; she lived in a world distorted. Could ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... to the edge of this the cultivated land of the village extended, and people were stationed in watch-houses erected up among the branches of the trees, shrieking and yelling, and beating drums, and making every conceivable noise to drive back into the jungle the elephants who were accustomed to take their morning repast off their fields of coracan, and maize or millet. It was well known that the rogue elephant was near, and so audacious had ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... London by train, from the Euston Square station, on the day before that on which Lizzie and her party had reached Carlisle. If it were so, if Mr. Smiler and Billy Cann had both been at work at the hotel, then,—so argued they who opposed the Bunfit theory,—it was hardly conceivable that the robbery should have been arranged by Lord George. According to the Bunfit theory, the only thing needed by the conspirators had been that the diamonds should be handed over by Lady Eustace to Lord George in such a way as ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... this would go a kind of esoteric wisdom which was part of the stock in trade of the healer. There were charms, incantations and magic of every conceivable sort. The medicine man of uncivilized or even half-civilized peoples really makes medicine for the mind rather than the body. There were, however, gleams of scientific light through all this murky region. The Egyptians knew something of anatomy though they made a most capricious use ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... thought of the Manes living in stars, moon, sun, and air; and, if they were not good Manes but dead sinners, in the outer edge of the universe or under ground. In short, they are located in every conceivable place[17]. ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... does not belong to Substance. Hence neither Father, nor Son, nor Holy Spirit, nor Trinity can be substantially predicated of God, but only relatively, as we have said. But God, Truth, Justice, Goodness, Omnipotence, Substance, Immutability, Virtue, Wisdom and all other conceivable predicates of the kind are ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... last hundred yards. For above the rush of waters I heard now a confused sound within the building—the thud and clanking of heavy machinery, and at intervals a human groan; and looking up I saw that the long friezes in bas-relief represented men and women tortured and torturing with all conceivable variety of method and circumstance—flayed, racked, burned, torn asunder, loaded with weights, pinched with hot irons, and so on without end. And it added to the horror of these sculptures that while the limbs and even the dress of each figure ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... idea of a human government is this—I do not say it is realised—to have certain fixed principles that are to abide, and then in the application of those principles to find an elasticity which shall meet every conceivable alteration of circumstances about us. That is the idea of a perfect human government; but human governments do not attain to it. The government of God, however, is perfect. The great principle is love—"God is love;" its great end, the welfare of man; the purpose of ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... the measure of his defeat being given by his assurance that in his camp he was in perfect security. Those are ominous words, for they have not the air of the man who does not know that he is beaten, and who means to try again at once. It is, however, conceivable that, as the defeat seems to have been caused by an inexplicable blunder, the marching of a brigade in the dark in dense formation close up to the muzzles of the enemy's rifles, the effort may be made to attack again with better dispositions. A second attack would, of course, be attended ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson
... Irish writings give the date as August 8. There are also some slight differences in the particulars of his life; but as no less than 130 saints of this name are mentioned in Irish ecclesiastical records, it is conceivable that their histories have ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... their own territories? As to the right of men to act anywhere according to their pleasure, without any moral tie, no such right exists. Men are never in a state of total independence of each other. It is not the condition of our nature: nor is it conceivable how any man can pursue a considerable course of action without its having some effect upon others, or, of course, without producing some degree of responsibility for his conduct. The situations in which men relatively stand produce the rules and principles ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... presence of alcohol in the blood, through its toxic action upon the liver cells, impairs the hepatic oxidation capacity and thus permits toxic substances to pass unoxidized. (3.) A combination of these conditions may represent the real situation. It is hardly conceivable that the relation of alcohol to the liver activity is not covered in ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... blended together as to make up a harmonious and natural whole. Till now, Mirabeau was to us, and, we believe, to most readers of history, not a man, but a string of antitheses. Henceforth he will be a real human being, a remarkable and eccentric being indeed, but perfectly conceivable. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are too idle; your abilities lie unutilized. But here is a task at hand. I do not say that you are to use this extension to your motherhood for children alone, or merely in connection with this proposed Bureau. I urge you, indeed, to employ it in all conceivable ways. Be the mothers of men and women as well as of little children—the mothers of communities—the mothers of the state. And as a focus to these energies and disinterested activities, let us pray Washington to give us the Bureau ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... nearly bursting himself with blowing the conch in every conceivable way, he was obliged to give up the secret as a bad job. However, being determined to succeed he went back to the farmer, and said, coolly, "Look here; I've got your conch, but I can't use it; you haven't got it, so it's clear you can't use it ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs
... had singularly and utterly changed the relations that previously subsisted between him and the former object of his concealed tenderness. Millbank now stood with respect to Coningsby in the position of one who owes to another the greatest conceivable obligation; a favour which time could permit him neither to forget nor to repay. Pride was a sentiment that could no longer subsist before the preserver of his life. Devotion to that being, open, almost ostentatious, ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... conceivable pretty things to Cherubini,—that there is nothing I so ardently desire as that we should soon get another opera from him, and that of all our contemporaries I have ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... from what has been said, that closed spaces without limits are conceivable. From amongst these, the spherical space (and the elliptical) excels in its simplicity, since all points on it are equivalent. As a result of this discussion, a most interesting question arises for astronomers and physicists, and that is whether ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... not necessarily follow, even if the information was supplied by Mary, that it is therefore to be accepted as true. Human witnesses are not infallible or invariably honest, and it is conceivable that Mary may have been a dreamer or a deceiver. This article of the Creed, contradicting as it does the ordinary course of nature, stands in need of more than a historic statement. Jesus admitted that if His claims had been supported by no other evidence than His own word, the ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... operations are performed quickly and without the least sensation, until the poor brave awakes with the painful consciousness of the loss of limbs, which no artificer can fully replace. Thus the skill displayed and the care taken greatly mitigate the horrors of battle. Men here are wounded in every conceivable manner, from the crowns of their heads to the soles of their feet, while some are most fearfully torn by shells. It had been thought that men shot through the lungs or entrails were past cure, yet several of the former have been saved, ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... to be satisfied with that, and I tried hard to get something more definite out of him, but without success. Is it conceivable that he could be jealous at my having superseded him? Or is he one of those men of science who feel personally injured when facts run counter to their preconceived opinions? He cannot seriously suppose that because he has ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a coincidence that at the very moment that Louise Rutherford had asked Marguerite if she did not wish to be one of the tourists that a thought flashed through Mrs. Vernes' head with the rapidity of lightning, and in less time than is conceivable was formed into ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... arrangement are very perplexing to your servant, if you have one, as in my case. First you put out every conceivable article on the bed or floor, and then with an air of self-denial you say, "There, that will be enough;" and when you find an additional portmanteau lugged out, you ask with an air of astonishment (which may well astonish the servant), "What on earth are you going to do with that?" "To ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... adjectives is marked in the Whilomville tales. In one of them Crane refers to the "solemn odor of burning turnips." It is the most nearly perfect characterization of burning turnips conceivable: can anyone improve upon ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... therefore, to hear him asking Holmes in an eager voice whether he had made any advance in his reconstruction of this mysterious episode. "The county police are utterly at fault," said he, "but perhaps your wider experience has suggested some conceivable explanation. My only claim to being taken into your confidence is that during my many residences here I have come to know this family of Tregennis very well—indeed, upon my Cornish mother's side I could call them cousins—and their ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... do, and he lived in the steerage with the carpenter and sailmaker. He was certainly a character; could read and write well; spoke good Spanish; had been over the greater part of Spanish America, and lived in every possible situation, and served in every conceivable capacity, though generally in that of confidential servant to some man of figure. I cultivated this man's acquaintance, and during the five weeks that he was with us,— for he remained on board until we arrived at San Diego,— I gained a greater knowledge of ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... originally belonged to a knight, who, with his wife, was killed out hunting. He had only one child, a boy of about ten, who became a ward in chancery. The man appointed by the Crown as guardian to this child proved an inhuman monster, and after ill-treating the lad in every conceivable manner, eventually murdered him and tried to substitute a bastard boy of his own in his place. For a time the fraud succeeded, but on its being eventually found out, the murderer and his offspring were both brought ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... his advisers, is a thing so sacred that no abuse of it, or want of judgment shown in its exercise, can warrant a complaint, is inconsistent with every principle of constitutional government, and with every conceivable idea of the privileges of Parliament. In fact, Parliament has claimed a right to interfere in matters apparently touching more nearly the royal prerogative, and it is only in the reign preceding the present reign that hostile comments have been made in Parliament on the ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... this morning to find the Grass unaffected. Even wondered for a moment if it were conceivable that F would never find the right compound—that nothing could hurt the Grass. Had I been illadvised in not going more seriously into Burlet's ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... as you walk along, churches—in every street, a church—of all denominations: you will find posted on the walls notices of public meetings for discussion or for lectures and addresses on every conceivable topic: you will see boys crying newspapers in which all subjects are treated with the utmost freedom. You suppose, perhaps, that freedom of thought, of speech, of discussion, of writing comes to a community like the rain and the wind? Not so. Slavery comes to a community if you ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... And they may be said to have fought only for plunder. Those who suffered from the war were those who did not fight, burghers, priests, and peasants. The peasants endured terrible hardships, and it is quite conceivable that a peasant girl should have displayed a firmness in war, a persistence and an ardour unknown throughout the ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... of evidence we can have upon this matter, it will resolve itself into two kinds. We may have historical evidence and we may have experimental evidence. It is, for example, conceivable, that inasmuch as the hardened mud which forms a considerable portion of the thickness of the earth's crust contains faithful records of the past forms of life, and inasmuch as these differ more and more as we go further down,—it is possible and conceivable that we might come ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... United States, or any other great nation, the amount of exporting and importing, of buying and selling almost every conceivable article under the sun, is carried on in the millions and millions of dollars; and so perfect has the organization for doing this business become in every great country, that the products of the most distant countries can be bought in almost every village; and any important event in any country produces ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... He'll learn of it shortly, in any event. Do you realize what his capture means? I—hardly do myself. For one thing, there's no further need of concealment. I—I want people to know who you are. It seems hardly conceivable that Belisario Cardi has gone to meet his punishment, but it is true. Lucrezia has her revenge at last. It has been a terrible task for all of us, but it brought you and me together. I don't intend ever to let you go again, Margherita. I loved you there in Sicily. I've loved ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... Then he flung himself back in his chair, and went on with his meditation. Was there anything in the suspicion? There could be nothing, surely. Nothing is done by a clever man without a motive, and what conceivable motive could Manston have for such abnormal conduct? Corinthian that he might be, who had preyed on virginity like St. George's dragon, he would never have been absurd enough to venture on such a course for the possession alone of the woman—there was no reason for it—she ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Greeks in some of the arts and excelled them absolutely in the new art of painting. In Greece, painting, though it had a beauty of its own, was hardly more than exquisitely-coloured sculpture in the lowest conceivable relief. In painting the Italians were guided by a wholly different series of visual conceptions. Their understanding and use of atmosphere and mass was something of which the Greeks had formed no conception. Apart, however, from painting, the Greeks were the first to light ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... conceivable method of disposing of this land has been followed. The Government has, however, never assumed the position of landlord and rented the land, except in one case of some mineral land, and this experiment resulted disastrously. Before the land could be disposed of, ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... was to place the European nations in a position where they, as well as the United States, would be forced to regard Southern privateers as pirates, and treat them as such. This was a conceivable result of the negotiation before European recognition of Southern belligerency, but even after that recognition and after Dayton had pointed out the impossibility of such a result, Seward pressed for the treaty and instructed Dayton not to raise the question with ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... sell some royalties to the boys out there, if you can, for I want to be financially strong when we go to New York. You know the machine, and you appreciate its future enormous career better than any man I know. At the lowest conceivable estimate (2,000 machines a year,) we shall sell 34,000 in the life ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in this universal dotage and deliration, the sound portion of mankind to bestir themselves and rally. When the widest and wildest violations of that divine right of Property, the only divine right now extant or conceivable, are sanctioned and recommended by a vicious Press, and the world has lived to hear it asserted that we have no Property in our very Bodies, but only an accidental Possession and Life-rent, what is the issue to be looked for? Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... hut, to see that a vigilant watch is kept. You must, of course, take watch and watch, night and day. You must remember that not only is it most important that a native should be captured, but you must be on your guard against an attack on yourselves. It is quite conceivable that a party may come down to see if there are any of us in ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... from his original positions, Eck carried the matter to Rome. A theory so uncertain in its method, so imperfectly tested by the regulated comparison of authorities, might crumble to pieces if all its consequences were made manifest. It was conceivable that a man who had raised such a storm without looking up his books, without weighing the language of Councils or thinking out his thoughts, upon whom the very obvious objections of Cajetan and Eck came as a surprise, who at every step abandoned ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... She waited to hear from her friend, and the days went by; she could only sorrow for her poor Tony, divining her state. However little of wrong in the circumstances, they imposed a silence on her decent mind, and no conceivable shape of writing would transmit condolences. She waited, with a dull heartache: by no means grieving at Dacier's engagement to the heiress; until Redworth animated her, as the bearer of rather startling intelligence, indirectly relating to the soul she loved. An accident in the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Churchmen enough, to be sure: men learned in the Fathers, and the Canons, and the Acts of the General Councils; men ready to argue on the intermediate state, or on the three witnesses, or on the heretical nature of the Old Catholic schism; men prepared with minute dogmatic opinions upon every conceivable or inconceivable point of abstract theology. There were people who could trace the Apostolic succession of the old Cornish bishops, and people who could pronounce authoritatively upon the exact distinction between justification and remission of sins. But ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... radiated away into space, and so far as we know at present lost to the system. The question then arises, "How is this enormous expenditure supplied?" Various sources of heat have been suggested, but none of them seem satisfactory. One conceivable source there is, but that lies out of the domain of science. Then again, metals, which only our most powerful furnaces will even melt, exist in the sun's atmosphere in the state of vapour. What must be the intensity of the heat which underlies that metallic ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... Malta ended with a disagreeable incident, hardly conceivable in these days, when naval discipline may be held up as a model to every one. On the evening of the day before that on which we were to weigh anchor, our whole crew deserted in a body. In spite of the efforts of the officer ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... sepulchral monuments and sarcophagi on the Appian Way, which were of great extent, judging from the quantity of sculpture, finished and unfinished, found on the spot. All the sculpture was manifestly copied from Greek originals, for it is hardly conceivable that such groupings and expressions as we see in these bad copies could have been first executed by such inferior artists. In this neighbourhood were the villa and farm of the poet Persius, and portions of the wall are still standing. At the ninth milestone are the tomb and the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... many people to and fro to Aston House: Men who were a power in the world; men who would be so, and men who had been, as well as many of no note at all. They came to consult Charles Aston on every conceivable thing under the sun, from questions of high politics to the management of a refractory son. They did not always take his advice, nor did he always offer it, but they invariably came away with a more definite sense of their own meaning and aims, and somehow ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... man of intellect has doubts about his mistress is conceivable, but about his wife!—that would be ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... female baby of the smallest conceivable dimensions, and the wildest possible spirit—became an immense favourite with him. Her name was Lippy, or some sound which that combination of ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... speaking, he hated and despised in equal measure whatever seemed to suggest that he personally was not the most perfect human being conceivable. He hated all education after fifteen because he had had no education after fifteen, he hated all people who did not have high tea until he himself under duress gave up high tea, he hated every game ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the most unwise course of action conceivable; but Mrs. Hermon, with her quiet and philosophical husband, and her only son, had led a sheltered, smoothly flowing married life, after a yet more sheltered girlhood, far removed from the passionate upheavals of society, and she had neither practical worldly ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... "It's not conceivable," she said, "that Eileen should be enriching herself at my expense. I can't imagine her being dishonest in money affairs, and yet I can recall scarcely a circumstance in life in which Eileen has ever hesitated to be dishonest when a lie served her purpose better than the truth. ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... imprudent steps which James took, and in particular the prosecution of the Bishops, which really brought on the decisive crisis. But, even if this fact were not established, there would still remain one argument sufficient to decide the controversy. What conceivable motive had Sunderland to wish for a revolution? Under the existing system he was at the height of dignity and prosperity. As President of the Council he took precedence of the whole temporal peerage. As Principal Secretary of State he was the most active ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Dane smiling. 'In my understanding of it, husband and wife belong to one another, and are inseparable. There are conceivable circumstances in which ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... any thing lived only its moment? The world does not so exist, no parts palpable or impalpable so exist, No consummation exists without being from some long previous consummation, and that from some other, Without the farthest conceivable one coming a bit nearer the beginning ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... sister indignantly. "Trust one woman about another," he said. "Just because she doesn't chatter like a magpie you concluded she's got nothing to say. It's even conceivable that she found ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... hesitate to ask, and he was kept busy answering questions upon every conceivable subject, from the details of the funeral of the dead King to the fashion of the latest gown. Indeed it was not until the meal was almost over that he had an opportunity for a word aside to ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... had been less flagrant one would write of Hungary's decomposition with a certain sympathy. It is conceivable that in the British Empire there are anti-British elements whose aims would commonly be classed by the authorities as "mad ambitions," which is what Count Apponyi called the separatist tendencies of the Southern Slavs in Austria-Hungary. But—may the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... debate as the best method of sifting the grain from the chaff and deciding every important matter by the vote of the majority. Already in the period of 1916-1917 Parliament has more than justified its re-convocation by becoming a National Watch Committee. Interpellations on every conceivable subject have been constant and frequent; fierce verbal assaults are delivered on Cabinet Ministers; and slowly but inexorably a real sense of Ministerial responsibility is being created, the fear of having to run the gauntlet ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... small river they were following became lower as they advanced and finally disappeared altogether as the stream wound its way through a frozen swamp. In the swamp they encountered innumerable trails of snowshoes that crossed each other at every conceivable angle. ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... tree-high mosses spangled over with blooms of every conceivable shape and colour; cataracts and clusters, avalanches and nets of blossoms in pastels, in dulled metallics, in gorgeous flamboyant hues; some of them phosphorescent and shining like living jewels; some sparkling as though with dust of opals, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... M, p. 295. We must except the twelfth article, which accuses Brembre of having cut off the heads of twenty-two prisoners confined for felony or debt, without warrant or process of law; but as it is not conceivable what interest Brembre could have to treat these felons and debtors in such a manner, we may presume that the fact is either false or misrepresented. It was in these men's power to say any thing against the persons accused. No defence or apology was admitted; all ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... Rose, with a smile, "I believe it's conceivable that it is in the box, but that she has never opened the box at all! I believe a girl might shrink so much from reading that woman's papers that she might not even ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... are considerably distorted. The position of the nostrils, however, and the contour of the mandibles, together with the position of the eyes, show clearly enough that it is a likeness of no bird known to ornithology. It is enough for our present purpose to say that in no particular does it bear any conceivable resemblance to ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... one gift it assuredly would not bring with it. It would not endow the country with wealth. To Irish enthusiasm and patriotism illusions on this matter are pardonable. In the English advocate of Home Rule they are unpardonable. Ireland is, and must, under any form of government conceivable, for a length of time remain a poor country. Capital knows nothing of patriotism or sentiment. Commerce has no partiality for the masses. Credit cherishes no trust towards the people. The one prediction which we may make with confidence ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... "I know. I see." She was living for the moment which should exhale itself somewhere about midnight after the lights had gone out on her last appearance—living for it as a Carmelite might live for the climax of her veil and her vows if it were conceivable that beyond the cell and the grating she saw the movement and the colour and the passion of a wider life. All Hilda's splendid vitality went into her intention, of which she was altogether mistress, riding it and reining it in a straight course ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... heaven, beyond this frail and short life, and to this end all efforts are to be referred. And because upon it depends the full and perfect happiness of men, therefore, to attain this end which has been mentioned, is of as much interest as is conceivable to every individual man. It is necessary then that a civil society, born for the common advantage, in the guardianship of the prosperity of the commonwealth, should so advance the interests of the citizens that in holding up and acquiring that highest and inconvertible ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... battle present a scene well calculated to move the most callous. Men shot and lacerated in every conceivable manner; some are expressionless; some just as they appeared in life; while others are pinched and drawn and otherwise distorted, portraying agony in her most distressful state. Of the wounded, in their anguish, some are perfectly quiet; others are heard praying; some are calling for their mothers, ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... region, not more than twenty-five discharge icebergs into the sea. All the long high-walled fiords into which these great glaciers of the first class flow are of course crowded with icebergs of every conceivable form, which are detached with thundering noise at intervals of a few minutes from an imposing ice-wall that is thrust forward into deep water. But these Pacific Coast icebergs are small as compared with those ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... zemindary estates have from three to four rupees, and that this is a high salary, is proved by the fact that the police receive but 48 rupees ($23) per annum, out of which they feed and clothe themselves! Such are the rewards of labour in a country possessing every conceivable means of amassing wealth, and they become less from year to year. "It could not be too universally known," said Mr. Bright in the House of ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... their securities pay tribute to its treasury; all funds awaiting investment are deposited in its keeping; the most valuable of their securities are turned into cash, and then used by the controlling power for such purpose as it sees fit. All these things are conceivable, and their accomplishment would be a no greater task, seemingly, than some of the gigantic "operations in finance" of the ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... me call attention to another, and, as I think, a more convincing instance. I am content in fact to narrow the whole question to the following single issue:—Let me be shewn how it is rationally conceivable that AMMONIUS can have split up S. John xxi. 12, 13, into three distinct Sections; and S. John xxi. 15, 16, 17, into six? and yet, after so many injudicious disintegrations of the sacred Text, how ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... vision apart from bodily shape plays so great a part in recognition here, may it not be all-sufficient there? In that life where there is consciousness, character, memory, love, longing for our dear ones, and power of communication, is it conceivable that we should have intercourse with our loved and longed for, without any thrill of recognition? Surely not. ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... only vital factor in the processes of evolution. The mass of a star may be an important item, and the electrical conditions may be concerned. A very small star and a very massive star may develop differently, and it is conceivable that there may be actual differences of composition. But heat-radiation is doubtless ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... wishing to revert to this sad failing). He imbibes freely—the current fashions of the hour amongst whites. If raffling, for instance, be held in honour as a method for expediting the sale of personal effects, the Indian will adapt the practice to the disposal of every conceivable chattel that he desires ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... "Then it is conceivable that your son's clothes might have been tossed from a passing vehicle, to the spot where they ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... chorus. The stage is set. The trumpeters with their trumpets take their places, and the psaltery and the harp are brought forth. The timbrel, the stringed instruments, the organ, the cymbals, and every conceivable instrument of praise is in the hands of the heavenly host. There is a breathless silence. Then the trumpeters peal forth their paeans of praise, and all the other players and singers of the heavenly hosts join in. This entrancing music is caught up by the multitudes of earth ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... attain the most telling and universally comprehensible effect possible; Bach individualizes them in order to get the most subtle result possible. Haydn and his age were satisfied, in the main, with the four-fourths and two-fourths, three-fourths and six-eighths rhythm; he simplified all conceivable rhythmic forms in such a manner that it was possible to express them in one of these four rhythms. Bach employs at least three times as many species of time and is so hair-splitting in his selections that it is more often a question of a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... fell upon Anastasia, the daughter of a lady of illustrious rank, who was a widow. Language is exhausted, by the Russian annalists, in describing the perfections of her person, mind and heart. All conceivable social and moral excellences were in her united with the most brilliant intellectual gifts and the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... that, in my opinion, the happiest circumstance in the whole narrative was, that Bligh, who was no delicate man either, had solemnly placed it on record therein that he was sure and certain that under no conceivable circumstances whatever would that emaciated party, who had gone through all the pains of famine, have preyed on one another. I cannot describe the visible relief which this spread through the boat, and how the tears stood in every eye. From that time I was as well convinced as Bligh himself that ...
— The Wreck of the Golden Mary • Charles Dickens
... however. Kennedy was not as familiar with the picture world as I. I had heard of too many actual happenings more strange and bizarre and wildly fantastic than anything conceivable in other walks of life. People in the film game, as they call it, live highly seasoned lives in which everything is exaggerated. The mere desire to make a place for Enid might not have actuated Werner, granting he was the guilty man. Nevertheless it could easily have contributed. ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... beyond expression. The situation would have seemed inconceivable except that anything was conceivable in connection with Mrs. Middleton. The girl had almost forgotten that she was departing shortly, but realizing it, she was the more relieved. Only it would be all the harder ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... modern critics assign to Cariani, although Dr. Bode, Sir Walter Armstrong, and others, maintain it to be a real Giorgione. Consistently enough, those who believe in Cariani's authorship in the one case, assert it in the other,[33] and as consistently I hold that both are by Giorgione. It is conceivable that Cariani may have copied Giorgione's types and attitudes, but it is inconceivable to me that he can have so entirely assimilated Giorgione's temperament to which this "Judgment of Solomon" so eloquently witnesses. Moreover, let no one say that ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... empty stomachs and the prospect of a good meal. The grain is boiled in cooking pots, if the tribe possess any, or, if they are wanting, in the hollow of a bamboo, for that marvellous jungle growth is used for almost every conceivable purpose by natives of the far interior. The fat new rice is sweet to eat. It differs as much from the parched and arid stuff you know in Europe, as does the creamy butter in a cool Devonshire dairy from the liquid yellow train oil which we dignify by ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... undeniable that the dominie sent his daughter to Thrums, but remained at home himself. Possibly, therefore, the dominie sometimes went to church, because he did not want to give Little Tilly and the Established minister the satisfaction of knowing that he was not devout today, and it is even conceivable that had Little Tilly had a telescope and an intellect as well as his neighbor, he would have spied on the dominie in return. He sent the teacher a load of potatoes every year, and the recipient rated him soundly ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... Senate, that suggestions have been made to the effect that under them it might be possible to consider as matters for arbitration claims against certain States of the Union in reference to certain State debts. I write to say, what of course you personally know, that under no conceivable circumstances could any such construction of the treaty be for a moment entertained by any President. The holders of State debts take them with full knowledge of the Constitutional limitations upon their recovery through any action of the National Government, ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... all this, if she could but restrain her tongue. From morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve, this unruly member goes on prattling about every conceivable thing, especially the affairs of her neighbours. We have seen that she goes out after she has eaten her breakfast; and she returns not till her appetite begins to be oppressive. She will then kiss her dusky little offspring, who, during her absence, ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... throes of civil discord. If Vaudreuil, the Governor, had previously been jealous of Montcalm, the recent success achieved by the latter at Carillon now doubled his resentment. Casting about for any conceivable point of criticism, Vaudreuil blamed the General for not turning Abercrombie's retreat into a rout. Regarding this inspiration, Montcalm writes to Bourlamaque: "I ended by saying quietly 'that when I went to war I did the best I could; and that when ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... assuredly have to be dismissed to the small, empty attic. Once that schooner had thrilled him; the slight rake of its masts and the knotted reality of its rigging had thrilled him; and to navigate it had promised the most delicious sensations conceivable. Now, one moment it was a toy as silly as a doll, and the next moment it thrilled him once more, and he could believe again its promises of bliss—and then he knew that it was for ever a vain toy, and ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... dreams. Pushing their way through the crowd to the gangplank came men, women and dogs, carrying grips, kodaks, tin cash boxes, musical instruments, army sacks, fur robes, and rolls of blankets. Struggling under the weight of canvas tents, poles, Yukon stoves and sleds, as well as every conceivable thing, they climbed the stairway to the deck. Here, and in the main saloon, all was ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... his time in it for some 50 years in study; author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy," which he wrote to alleviate his own depression of mind, a book which is a perfect mosaic of quotations on every conceivable topic, familiar and unfamiliar, from every manner of source (1576-1640). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... in opposite directions and the prisoners were left squatting under the eyes and bayonets of a very suspicious prison guard, who made no secret of being ready for all conceivable emergencies. One enthusiast drew the cartridge out of his breech-chamber and licked it at intervals of a minute or two, to the very great interest of the Hillmen, who memorized every detail that by any stretch of imagination might be expected to improve their own shooting when they should ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... half the original length of the rope. No doubt he simply untwisted the strands, and so divided it into two ropes, each of the original length, but one-half the thickness. He would thus be able to tie the two together and make a rope nearly twice the original length, with which it is quite conceivable that he made good his ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... There are, no doubt, circumstances in the case which seem peculiar, the finding of the dead man in the area of Herbert's house, for instance, and the extraordinary opinion of the physician as to the cause of death; but, after all, it is conceivable that the facts may be explained in a straightforward manner. As to your own sensations, when you went to see the house, I would suggest that they were due to a vivid imagination; you must have been brooding, ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... been destroyed or disfigured, and regretted having wished to drive too keen a bargain, but on finding it intact, I am ashamed to say the collector's instinct got the better of the woman, and I used every conceivable argument to persuade him to come to my price. The old fellow was as ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... impressed on my mind after seventy years of a busy life, full of almost every conceivable event—I saw, emerging from a bystreet that led from Bedford Jail, and coming along through the square and near the window where I was standing, a common farm cart, drawn by a horse which was led by a labouring man. As I was above the crowd on the first floor I could see there was a layer of straw ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... labor-saving devices and skilled service that might in a measure take her place. Nor is it at all certain that the granting of individual rights to women would tend to purify sex relations, but it is quite conceivable that the old moral and religious sanctions of marriage may disappear and the State assume the task of caring for all children. It is clear that the rights and duties of women constitute a very serious part of the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... mountainside had crept into and clung to the little house. A great fireplace crowned the room. Before it now stretched a huge Maltese cat. And most surprising of all—there were books everywhere, on shelves built in every conceivable nook and corner, on the big table, on the arm of the great chair drawn close to the ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... so desperately to his waist as he hastened down the bank? It was necessary to put the Lascar aside, gently and slowly, because it was necessary to save the boats, and, further, to demonstrate the extreme ease of the problem that looked so difficult. And then—but it was of no conceivable importance—a wirerope raced through his hand, burning it, the high bank disappeared, and with it all the slowly dispersing factors of the problem. He was sitting in the rainy darkness—sitting in a boat that spun like a top, and Peroo was ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... mind it; sheep passed singly between files of infantry, or preceded them in a flock when on the march; indeed, nothing could be more delightful and innocent than to see a regiment of infantry in heavy marching order, laden with every conceivable thing they could want for a week, returning after a cheerful search for an invisible enemy in the suburbs, to bivouac peacefully among the cabbages in the market-place. Nobody was ever imposed upon for a ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... and respectability. Her preference for the respectable rose to a passion. And there were no faults in her establishment. Even the once despised showy furniture of Madame Foucault had mysteriously changed into the best conceivable furniture; and its ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... Bingham already foretasted the bliss of an invitation to the rectory to meet Lady Caroline from Thaxton Manor; she already foretasted the greater bliss of not meeting her intimate friends there, and that most exquisite conceivable bliss of telling them afterwards all ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... long views of American civilisation; not to fix our gaze upon small evils in the foreground, not to mistake an attack of moral measles for a scorbutic taint. It is quite conceivable that a philosophic observer of a century ago might almost have predicted the moral and social course of events in the United States, if he had only been informed of the coming material conditions, such as the overwhelmingly rapid growth of the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... means aims at manufacturing rulers. Dominated entirely by the spirit of equality and the desire to ameliorate the lot of the workers, it rejects the idea of fraternity, and exhibits no anxiety in respect of liberty. No government is conceivable to popular democracy except in the form of an autocracy. We see this, not only in history, which shows us that since the Revolution all despotic Governments have been vigorously acclaimed, but also in the autocratic fashion in which the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... tracts sloping gradually upward show a desolation so peculiar, so utterly unlike every common solitude of Nature, that one enters upon it with the shudder we give at that which is wholly unnatural. On all sides are gigantic serpent convolutions of black lava, their immense folds rolled into every conceivable contortion, as if, in their fiery agonies, they had struggled and wreathed and knotted together, and then grown cold and black with the imperishable signs of those terrific convulsions upon them. Not a blade of grass, not a flower, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various |
