"Conceivably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to consist either of soul without body, or body without soul. Unmattered condition, therefore, is as inconceivable by us as unconditioned matter; and we must hold that all body with which we can be conceivably concerned is more or less ensouled, and all soul, in like manner, more or less embodied. Strike either body or soul— that is to say, effect either a physical or a mental change, and the harmonics of the other sound. So long as body is minded in a certain way—so long, that ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... has just presented us with a wholly plausible if highly terrifying view of a reasonably near future. Such things could, conceivably, come to pass. And prophecy, from the time of Jules Verne to the present, has long been one of the several spinal columns of science fiction. Yet is it possible for anyone to predict an unvisited future? We are inclined to think not. Gadgetry to come, as repeatedly demonstrated ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... omnipotent Creator"—viz., that susceptibility to pleasure involves susceptibility to pain—seems to us to fit and cover the facts precisely; for a capacity for pain and a capacity for pleasure are not two different things which could conceivably exist apart from each other, but are only different manifestations of one and the same capacity, viz., for experiencing sensations of any kind whatsoever. We could no more be capable of feeling pleasure, while incapable of feeling pain, than we could be sensitive to musical harmonies, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... afternoon when the bills are announcing a play, he puts two and two together. "Are you with that show?" he asks; and being answered in the affirmative (one naturally would not admit that one is merely there in the frugal capacity of co-author, and hopes that he will imagine that such a face might conceivably belong to the low comedian) he proceeds to expound the favourite doctrine that this is a wise burg. "Yes," he says, "folks here are pretty cagy. If your show can get by here you needn't worry about New York. Believe me, if you get a hand here you can go ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... for a Titan's smoke, grew a trifle larger and somewhat irregular. Carving had conceivably injured Mr. Poynter's hearing, for he ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... selection solved the riddle as to how what was purposive could conceivably be brought about without the intervention of a directing power, the riddle which animate nature presents to our intelligence at every turn, and in face of which the mind of a Kant could find no way out, for he regarded a solution of it as not to be hoped for. For, even ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... assure you, to attach to it any importance, or to push Europe for its sake into a war, from Moscow to the Pyrenees, from the North Sea to Palermo, when no one can foresee its end. After the war we would conceivably not even know for what we had ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Conceivably they might have developed inquiring minds. But this would have run against their strongest instincts. The ant is knowing and wise; but he doesn't know enough to take a vacation. The worshipper of energy is too physically energetic to see that he cannot explore certain ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... noise jerkily—of wrecks and wreckages. Had we had the chance, we might then conceivably have wrecked a ship. For there, on the narrow strip of shingle between the wash of the waves and the unstable cliff, we were primitive men, ready without ruth to wreck for ourselves the contrivances ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... to nationalisation and centralisation of capital and power: it would convert workers into owners in each separate department of labour,—colliers to own the coal, railwaymen the lines and rolling-stock, agricultural labourers the land, and so on. Collectivism might conceivably be put in practice, given a sufficiently high standard of social virtue, a quality which Socialists are not in the way to get. As for Syndicalism in practice, I leave that to the reader to imagine. Syndicalism stigmatises ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... room should not be missed, particularly the little Genius of Love, the Bacchus and Ampelos, and the spoilt little comely boy supposed to represent—and quite conceivably—the infant Nero. ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... line seemed to grow out toward them. There was a small, bulb-like object at its end. It reached out farther than was at all plausible. Nothing so slender should conceivably reach so far without bending of its own weight. But of course it had no weight here. It was a plastic flexible hose with air pressure in it. It groped for ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... guarantee me at once a certain salary, though I might still take any work I liked outside. But this was not all. The letter went on to say that the first of the partners who died or retired would offer me a half-share of the paper. It was pointed out that, of course, that might conceivably mean a fairly long apprenticeship, but that it was far more likely to mean a short one. It proved to be neither the one nor the other, but what might be called a compromise period of some ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... such liberty there was only one endurable limit, and that was the condition that no man should so use his own liberty as to lessen his brother's—and the liberty thus conceived we regarded as the supreme boon of human life, for which no other could conceivably be taken in exchange. And now came the new Teacher of Liberalism with a doctrine which, while it made us angry, also set us thinking. "Our familiar praise of the British Constitution under which we live, is that it is a system of checks—a system which stops and ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... profit certain but a little remote, and promising a climatic advantage diffused over the whole area of the country, is eminently a matter for public enterprise. Are we to be denied the hope that fir, and spruce, and Austrian pine may conceivably be lifted out of the plane of Party politics? Further, to take instances at haphazard, the State, whatever else its economic functions may be, will be one of the largest purchasers of commodities in the country. It is thinkable that the Irish State may give its civil servants Irish-made ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... headless, vague aspiration, however universal, is likely to prove quite ineffective. Of course, it is possible to suggest that the Hague Tribunal is conceivably the germ of such an overriding direction and supreme court as the peace of the world demands, but in reality the Hague Tribunal is a mere legal automatic machine. It does nothing unless you set it in motion. It has no initiative. It does not even protest against the most obvious outrages ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... which you were concealing to save him from a police prosecution for coining, the tradesman may even be so wayward as to institute a police prosecution himself. Now this is not in any way an exaggeration of the way in which you have knocked the bottom out of any case you may ever conceivably have had in such matters as the sinking of the Lusitania. With my own eyes I have seen the following explanations, apparently proceeding from your pen, (i) that the ship was a troop-ship carrying soldiers from Canada; (ii) that if it wasn't, it was a merchant-ship unlawfully ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... abridgments of epic than as separate epic scenes. But neither in the one case nor in the other is there to be found the kind of poetry that is required by the hypothesis of composite epic. There are short epics that might conceivably have served as the framework, or the ground-plan, of a more elaborate work, containing, like the Lay of Helgi or the Lay of Brynhild, incidents enough and hints of character enough for a history fully worked out, as large as the Homeric ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... the offspring; the amoeba we merely perceive, was one and is now two. It is curious to note, therefore, that the amoeba is, in a sense, immortal— that the living nucleus of one of these minute creatures that we examine to-day under a microscope may have conceivably drawn, out an unbroken thread of life since the remotest epochs of the world's history. Although no sexual intercourse can be observed, there is reason to believe that a process of supposed "cannabalism," in which a larger amoeba may occasionally engulph a smaller one, is really a ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... necessary. Some golfers think that an iron or a cleek is just the right length for them when there are still a few inches of stick projecting inwards, towards their bodies, when they have made their grip. Why that spare stick? It cannot possibly be of any use, and may conceivably be harmful. It is surely better to have it cut off and then to grip the club at the end of the handle. A larger sense of power and control is obtained in this manner. My own clubs seem to most golfers who examine them to be on the short side, and ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... world the elements of which are thus mixed with pity and terror, goodness and beauty, he held himself, like the majority of men, as neither optimist nor pessimist. "The world is neither so good, nor so bad, as it conceivably might be; and as most of us have reason, now and again, to discover that ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... the really good and right one, for breaking out; than which nothing could more resemble of course the inveterate argument of the helpless. ANY occasion is good enough for the helpful; since there's never any that hasn't weak sides for their own strength to make up. However, if there COULD be conceivably a good one, I'll be hanged if I don't seem to see it gather now, and if I sha'n't write myself here "poor" Charles Edward in all truth by failing to take advantage of it, (They have in fact, I should note, one superiority of courage to my own: this habit of their so constantly casting ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... price of ultimate danger. And if they had been as weak as the King of Greece, as subservient as the King of Bulgaria, they would have had to reckon with a very different people from the Bulgars and the Greeks—a nation that might quite conceivably have turned Italy into a republic and ranged her beside her Latin sister on the north in the world struggle. The path of peace was in no way the path of prudence for ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... comparative unity of racial stock has created a closer relationship between these two societies than between either one of them and any other. The poetry and philosophy and social life and political institutions of Ancient Greece and the Modern West may conceivably constitute a single species when contrasted with the institutions of other civilizations. A modern West European or American may have a greater innate appreciation for Homer than for the Old Testament or for Sokrates than for Buddha or Confucius. The parallel which historians so often ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... the loss. Little more, that is to say, than a twelvemonth after the composition of the second part of Christabel the impulse which gave birth to it had passed away for ever. Opium-taking had doubtless begun by this time—may conceivably indeed have begun nearly a year before—and the mere mood of the poem, the temporary phase of feeling which directed his mind inwards into deeper reflections on its permanent state, is no doubt strongly suggestive, in its excessive depression, of the terrible ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... things calmly," said Carlton; "all things, as I have said, have their difficulties. If you wait till everything is as it should be or might be conceivably, you will do nothing, and will lose life. The moral and social world is not an open country; it is already marked and mapped out; it has its roads. You can't go across country; if you attempt a steeple-chase, you will break your neck ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Raeburn's opinion to the contrary, no man in such a position and with such a temperament ever gets something without claiming more—and more than he can conceivably or possibly get. Startled and pleased at first by the salutation which Lord Maxwell and his companion had bestowed upon him, Richard Boyce had passed his afternoon in resenting and brooding over the cold civility of it. So these were the terms he was to be on with them—the deuce ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... do not speak to me. I implore you to withhold your opinion. I am not strong enough to bear it. I could never have believed it. Is this a play? Is this in any sense of the word, Art? Is it agreeable? Can it conceivably do good to any human being? Is it delicate? Do such people really exist? Excuse me, gentlemen: I speak from a wounded heart. There are private reasons for my discomposure. This play implies obscure, unjust, unkind reproaches and menaces to all of ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... see the case in the same light as Edmund. He allowed the possibility of the scrap of paper and the ring having been sent to Rose by mistake, but he was not inclined to indulge in what seemed to him to be guesswork as to what conceivably had been intended to be sent to her in ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... But I will not believe you when you tell me what I know to be untrue. I will not believe you when you say that you did not all set forth under my authority and out of my house. The other three may conceivably have told the truth; but this last man has certainly lied. Therefore I will kill him." And with that the old and gentle king ran at the man with uplifted sword; but he was arrested by the roar of happy laughter, which told the world that there is, after all, ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... much out of the category of eminent authors, as he is out of the crowd. He is inconceivably wise; the others, conceivably. A good reader can, in a sort, nestle into Plato's brain and think from thence; but not into Shakspeare's. We are still out of doors. For executive faculty, for creation, Shakspeare is unique. No man can imagine it better. He was the farthest reach of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... say, because conscience makes for our best welfare? The answer would, in general, be true; but we should then be putting as our test and ultimate authority the attainment of our welfare, which would be to abandon the point of view we are discussing. Conscience claims authority. But that might conceivably be mere impudence and tyranny. Moreover, there are those who feel no call to follow conscience; how could we prove to them that they ought? Is it not the height of irrationality to bow down before an unexplained and mysterious impulse and allow it to sway ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... inhabit caves; therefore gophers were brought into the cavern probably by birds of prey, the remains of which were common in the deposits (Miller, 1943:152-156), or conceivably by carnivorous mammals. Since most of the raptorial predators that would prey on pocket gophers do not have a wide hunting territory, it is likely that the gophers were taken within a short distance of the cave. The presence of the genus Heterogeomys in the deposits strongly suggests a tropical ...
— Pleistocene Pocket Gophers From San Josecito Cave, Nuevo Leon, Mexico • Robert J. Russell
... Miss Mapp's walk home, and painful as was the light which it had conceivably thrown on the problem that had baffled her for so long, she might have been even more acutely disgusted had she lingered on with the rest of the bridge-party in Mrs. Poppit's garden, so revolting was the sycophantic loyalty ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... work or not Birnier of course could not know. Already had he discovered that nobody could control the complicated machinery of the native tabu any more than any one statesman could manage always any vast political machine; indeed he, as many others, might more than conceivably be ground up by the gargantuan engine with whose starting lever he had played. All he could do had been done; nothing remained but to adopt Marufa's ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... manner" was modeled upon that which an eighteenth century portrait would conceivably possess, should witchcraft ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... rat which levitates crumbs of cheese and a she-dog who displays other psi abilities. I assume that you have found the experimental conditions which let psi powers operate without hindrance. I shall hope some day to see and conceivably to understand. ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... her husband had known all the time. That revelation blotted out all other thoughts for the time being. It even blotted out all considerations of her own conduct towards Michael, which it might conceivably have rendered acute. It made her mind incapable of receiving the impression that the duke had perhaps hoped his deliberate last words might make on it; that surely she would not, after his death, still ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... poor flute ought to be set adrift just because swelled cheeks weren't becoming to Pallas! The long and short of it is that he wants me to interfere, and convince Propertius of his public duty. That public duty may conceivably take the form of writing poetry is beyond ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... not a rapier was drawn. The Queen might be as safely as she was deeply insulted through her faith. She was not at this time devoutly ardent in her creed, though she often professed her resolution to abide in it. Gentleness might conceivably have led her even to adopt the Anglican faith, or so it was deemed by some observers, but insolence and outrage had ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... banquets and the plaudits that marked the despatch of the expedition, those of its members who expected a demonstration may well have been chilled by the small amount of notice they received. But the public as well as the official mood was conceivably due rather to intense concentration upon national affairs, during a period of amazing transition, than to the prejudice which Freycinet's ruffled pride suggested. "It would be difficult to explain," he wrote, "how, during the voyage, there could have been formed concerning the expedition ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... by me," said Average Jones quietly. "Has it perhaps struck you, as his friend, that—er—a close daily association with the psychic remnant of a Roman citizen might conceivably be ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the original story was true enough. Even the major's improved version of it may conceivably have been true. The ordinary private, and indeed the ordinary officer, when he first lands in France, has the very vaguest idea of the geography of the country or the exact position of the place in which he finds himself. For all he knows he may be within ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... chronicles and forgotten charters—what is it that they do but to multiply and revive useless knowledge, and to make it increasingly difficult for a man to arrive at a broad and philosophical view, or ever attack his subject at the point where it may conceivably affect humanity or even character? The problem of the modern world is the multiplication of books and records, and every new detail dragged to light simply encumbers the path of the student. I have no doubt that this is a shallow and feeble-minded ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stars would necessarily be too violent in its effect to let the reduction of brilliancy occur so rapidly as to cause the disappearance of the nova in a few weeks or months. The close approach of two stars might conceivably produce the observed facts, but even this process seems too violent in its probable results. The chances for the collision of a rapidly traveling star with an enormously extended nebulous cloud are vastly greater, and the apparent mildness of the phenomenon observed ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... he do but follow? Her foot was well on his neck; and it occurred to him as he rummaged miserably among canisters that if the creature should take it into her head to marry him he might conceivably have to let her do it. As it was it was he and not Annalise who took the kettle out to the pump to fill it, and her face while he was doing it would have rejoiced her parents or other persons to whom she was presumably dear, it was wide with so enormous a satisfaction. ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... whether in anger towards her discarded lover, or the black dress, she would have found it difficult to declare. Again uncertainty held her, suspicion of circumstance, and, in a degree, of herself. The lady's-maid, imperturbable, just conceivably impertinent, in manner, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... better judgment. I hung about irresolute, wondering how long an embassy of that sort would take, and whether Fyne on coming out would consent to be communicative. I feared he would be shocked at finding me there, would consider my conduct incorrect, conceivably treat me with contempt. I walked off a few paces. Perhaps it would be possible to read something on Fyne's face as he came out; and, if necessary, I could always eclipse myself discreetly through the door of one of the bars. The ground floor of the Eastern Hotel ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... an obvious effort, "I must be honest. I—I know I have given you reason to think meanly of me—vilely! But, don't you see, Mark, I—I have done with all that. I was never so anxious to make the best of myself. Not that it can conceivably matter." ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... stay long enough to observe Carr lay two of his letters on the table after a brief glance, and sit looking fixedly at the third, which by the length of envelope and thickness of enclosure might conceivably have contained some document of a ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... as an accident, the creation of one man, promoted, for that matter ungrudgingly, to the rank of the "greatest European statesman," but whose work, being that of an individual, and therefore accidental, might quite conceivably be eventually undone. Sybel's theory, being official and Bismarckian, puts forth in truth the French conception, and is, as a matter of fact, the very opposite of the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... blood, and with the knowledge came back his fear for Katherine, conquering his first relief. A sick revulsion swept him. He remembered the evidence found in Katherine's room, and her refusal to answer questions. Could Paredes and the officers have been right? Was it conceivably her hand struggling ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... mechanic, nobody thinks of treating him as afflicted with a delusion. He is punished for false pretences, because his assertion is credible and therefore misleading. Just so, the claim to divinity made by Jesus was to the High Priest, who looked forward to the coming of a Messiah, one that might conceivably have been true, and might therefore have misled the people in a very dangerous way. That was why he treated Jesus as an imposter and a blasphemer where we should have treated him ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... persons who really act according to the biblical revelation without technically uniting with a church. It may be that such persons do not accept the intellectual puttings of biblical doctrine, but that they nevertheless live in the spirit of that doctrine. It might be conceivably possible that a church organization would stand for an interpretation of truth which would be rejected by the general good sense of a larger community. In such a case the larger community would be the interpreter. Another ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... the hunters came. They moved in herds, they practised shock-tactics, they were violent, and very cunning. There are but few of them now. A nation of men who mistake violence for strength, and cunning for wisdom, may conceivably suffer the fate of the buffaloes and perish without ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... farther side of the sewing machine upon which the lamp burned. There was no bitterness, he thought, in her words; merely a sense of resignation to and acceptance of a state of things not of her own contriving, and not, conceivably, to be of her ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... talk of "the Latin race" is in strictness absurd. We know that the so-called race is simply made up of those nations which adopted the Latin language. The Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic races may conceivably have been formed by a like artificial process. But the presumption is the other way; and if such a process ever took place, it took place long before history began. The Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic races come before us as groups of mankind marked out by the test of language. Within those ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... and had Mike the Angel behaved the way he did, he might conceivably have died that night. As it was, the kids ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... good impression. What is the result? The result merely is that his friends, in the privacy of their minds, set him down as a man who tries to make a good impression. If much depends on the result of a single interview, or a couple of interviews, a man may conceivably force another to accept an impression of himself which he would like to convey. But if the receiver of the impression is to have time at his disposal, then the giver of the impression may just as well sit down and put his hands in ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett
... could conceivably marry would be my cook; in that case there would be no romance to spoil, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... addressed looked up from his prawn, and replied wearily: "Ask my agent. He may conceivably possess the ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... is equally incapable of being proved by an appeal to experience. Experience might conceivably confirm the inductive principle as regards the cases that have been already examined; but as regards unexamined cases, it is the inductive principle alone that can justify any inference from what has been examined to what has not been examined. All arguments which, on the basis ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... had thrashed over again and again all that the success of his rash venture would mean to him. Of all those who might conceivably stand between him and the woman he loved—the woman who had just acknowledged that she loved him—these two men were the ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... our sins.' Now, if the Apostle had only said 'He died for us,' that might conceivably have meant that, in a multitude of different ways of example, appeal to our pity and compassion and the like, His death was of use to mankind. But when he says 'He died for our sins,' I take leave to think that that expression ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... assailed with sticks and stones, and why at Babylon the criminal who played the god scourged before he was crucified. The purpose of the scourging was not to intensify the agony of the divine sufferer, but on the contrary to dispel any malignant influences by which at the supreme moment he might conceivably be beset. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... quiet again. You see, we are So very pitiable, she and I, Who had conceivably been otherwise. Forget distemperature and idle heat; Apart from truth's sake, what's to move so much? Pompilia will be presently with God; I am, on earth, as good as out of it, A relegated priest; when exile ends, I ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the bird. Intelligence is hardly to any extent a necessity of the vital union of the Will with the energetic system. It is not at all developed in the vegetal kingdom, hardly at all in some branches of the animal, and there may conceivably be an infinite number of other "kingdoms" in which it may be either undeveloped, or very differently developed, or superseded by some other manifestation by us unimaginable. Its development indeed seems to be concurrent with the ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... pepper-plaster to the gum the light fell on his face, and I recognised Mr. Emanuel Pyecroft, late second-class petty officer of H.M.S. Archimandrite, an unforgettable man, met a year before under Tom Wessel's roof in Plymouth. It occurred to me that when a petty officer takes to spurs he may conceivably meditate desertion. For that reason I, though a taxpayer, made no sign. Indeed, it was Mr. Pyecroft, following me out of the shop, who said hollowly: "What might you be ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... lovers all the world over are at their happiest when they sit on the floor. There is something soothing and familiar about it. A man loves to sprawl and a woman is always at her best curled up among cushions. It is impossible to be disagreeable when you are sitting on the floor. You couldn't conceivably have a row in that position. Perhaps a little sulking might be done but very little and only of the kind that provokes pleasant makings-up. Altogether it is a jolly fine institution and the world would be a better place if there was more ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... hard enough for any mother to receive the news that her son is in love with any woman and wants to marry her. Mrs. Dyckman must learn that her adored child had transferred his loyalty to a foreigner, a girl she had never seen, could not conceivably have selected, and could never approve. Even the Prodigal Son, when he went home, did not bring a wife with him. Ten to one if he had brought one she would have got no veal—or if she got it she would ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... retreats, which are known, perhaps, in Scotland, as "shebeens." Why "shebeens"? Is the word Gaelic misspelled? Cases of "shebeening" are tried before the Edinburgh magistrates, and as "my circle was being continually changed by the action of the police magistrates" (he says) conceivably his was a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... unhappily for a moment. Finally he wrote, "Actually my writing may not be as serious as the title implies. Misunderstandings conceivably arise over titles. Instead of The Rise and Fall of the Western Plainsman, how about changing it to Those ...
— Droozle • Frank Banta
... her pains. Mrs. Stanton's attitude, while it fell short of "the less said the better," was one, at least, of suspended judgment. She couldn't, conceivably, ever have left Henry Stanton. She couldn't, evidently, understand why Rose mightn't have done her wifely duty and been content with that. She felt it incumbent on women to demonstrate to men that the new liberties they sought would not, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... little logic I had picked up at Oxford I tried to explain to him the process known as sorites; and suggested that Captain Pomery, while tolerant of "I attempt from Love's sickness to fly" up to the hundredth repetition, might conceivably show signs of tiring at the hundred-and-first. Yet in my heart I mistrusted my own argument, and my wonder at the skipper's conduct increased when, the next dawn finding us still becalmed, but with the added annoyance of a fog that almost hid the bowsprit's end, his demeanour swung back ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... been sent to Mobile. His various endeavours ended in May, 1864, with the serious defeat of an expedition up the Red River. This defeat gave great annoyance to the North and made an end of Banks' reputation. It might conceivably have had a calamitous sequel in the capture by the South of Admiral Porter's river flotilla, which accompanied Banks, and the consequent undoing of the conquest of the Mississippi. As it was ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... fact that many of the writers have recorded sensitively. The writer who wrote "ret" for right is probably as accurate as the one who spelled it "raght." But in a single publication, not devoted to a study of local speech, the reader may conceivably be puzzled by different spellings of the same word. The words "whafolks," "whufolks," "whi'foiks," etc., can all be heard in the South. But "whitefolks" is easier for the reader, and the word itself is suggestive of the setting and ...
— Slave Narratives, Administrative Files (A Folk History of - Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves) • Works Projects Administration
... thought, the kids had fixed the place up pretty nicely. The unused warehouse had practically been made over into an apartment. There were chairs, beds, tables and everything else in the line of furnishings for which the kids could conceivably have any use. There were even some floor lamps scattered around, but they weren't plugged in. Malone guessed that a job would have to be done on the warehouse wiring to get the floor lamps in operation, and the kids just hadn't got around to ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... only write what the abbot or preceptor set him. When his portion had been given out he could not change it for another.[1] If he were set to copy Virgil or Ovid or some lives of the saints the task would conceivably be pleasant. But such was seldom the scribe's fortune. The continual transcription of Psalters and Missals and other service books must have been infinitely wearisome, at any rate, to the less devout members of the community. In some large and enterprising ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... Charles S. Wilkinson, Esquire. It is a matter of most vital necessity, I assure you—nothing less. And now having acquainted you with the salience of the situation, I will allow you a period for reflection undisturbed by pleasantries or philosophic observations from myself which might conceivably divert the currents of your minds. Meanwhile I shall devote this period to an intelligent appreciation of Isabel's compendious and ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... run, may help it toward that greater honesty. His notions, propagated by cuttings from cuttings from cuttings, may conceivably prepare the way for a sounder, more healthful theory of society and of the state, and so free human progress from the stupidities which now hamper it, and men of true vision from the despairs which now sicken them. I say it is conceivable, but I doubt that it is probable. The soul ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... not be more baroque; they swagger in their niches or over their tombs in an excess of decadent taste for which the most bigoted agnostic, however Protestant he may be, must generously grieve. It is not conceivably the taste of the church or the faith; it is the taste of the wicked world, now withered and wasted to powerlessness, which overruled both for evil in art from its evil life. The saints and the popes are, aesthetically, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... the four terrestrial elements they have no inherent tendency to move in any direction, hence they offer no opposition to the force exerted upon them by the mover. A finite power might therefore quite conceivably cause eternal motion. Similarly an unmoved mover cannot be body, to be sure, but it may be a physical power like a soul, which in moving the body is not itself moved by that motion. Aristotle's proofs therefore are not sufficient to produce the conviction that the movers of the spheres and God ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... upon to replace it if it disappeared. There are, therefore, 18 Letters of Life and 18 Mirrors, which constituted two distinct Unities.'] Considering that Mirza Yaḥya was regarded as a 'return' of Ḳuddus, some preferment may conceivably have found its way to him. It was no contemptible distinction to be a member of the Second Unity, i.e. to be one of those who reflected the excellences of the older 'Letters of the Living.' As a member of the Second Unity and the accepted reflexion of Ḳuddus, Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel may have ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... of poesy and dream a practicable compromise may conceivably result, taking the shape of a monotonic delivery of speeches, with dreamy conventional gestures, something in the manner traditionally maintained by the old Christmas mummers, the curiously hypnotizing impressiveness of whose automatic style—that of persons who spoke by no will of their own—may ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... whatever kind, is of no value to the student of Fairy Tales, as that phrase is here used, save as a witness to Tradition. Tradition itself, however, is variable in value, if regard be had alone to purity and originality. For a tribe may conceivably be so isolated that it is improbable that any outside influence can have affected its traditions for a long series of generations; or on the other hand it may be in the highway of nations. It may be physically ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... too eagerly, to his requests. And she had asked her brother no tiresome, indiscreet questions as to his relations with the young Englishwoman,—whether, for instance, he was really fond of Sylvia, whether it was conceivably possible that he was thinking ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... blueskins down below may decide that I come from Weald. And in that case it would be reasonable to blast me before I could land and unload some fighting men. On the other hand, no ship from Weald would conceivably land without impassioned assurance that it was safe. It would drop bombs." He turned to the girl. "How many Darians ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... language will add zest to their work; while the peculiar field of it will provide a wholesome utilitarian test, which must be of good service to us by checking the affectations and pedantries into which it may be feared that such a society as the S.P.E. would conceivably lapse. Their co-operation is altogether desirable, and we believe attainable if it be not from the ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... the most widely diffused, yet there is no ready way of accounting for its extraordinary popularity. Any true 'nature-myth,' any myth which accounts for the processes of nature or the aspects of natural phenomena, may conceivably have been invented separately, wherever men in an early state of thought observed the same facts, and attempted to explain them by telling a story. Thus we have seen that the earlier part of the Myth of Cronus is a nature-myth, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... Peirce wrote an article for the Popular Science Monthly in which he proposed as a maxim for the attainment of clearness of apprehension the following: "Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... really thrills us is the thought that, incredibly high though it is, yet that heaven is part of earth, and may conceivably be attained by man. It is nearly double the height of Mont Blanc and more than six times the height of Ben Nevis, but still it is rooted in earth and part of our own home. This is what causes the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... difficult. Not much experience is needed to prove this. Yet every woman who aspires to journalism must needs employ her clumsy pen upon essays. "From my Window" is a favourite title with the rank beginner. Charles Lamb might conceivably have written an essay called "From my Window" which would have been a masterpiece—and there is a remote chance that some editor might have accepted it. But then Charles Lamb is dead, and his secret died ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... despised, and it was understood that if the revolutionary bands of the three Christian nations (Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria) were to continue indefinitely to cut each others' throats in Macedonia the tables might conceivably be ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... relieve Colonel Elliot from his painful convictions about Sir Walter's unsportsmanlike behaviour must begin with proof that the ballad, as it stands, cannot conceivably be other than "a pack o' lees." Here Colonel Elliot, to a great extent and on an essential point, agrees with me. In sketching rapidly the story of the ballad,— the raid from England into Ettrick, the return of the raiders, ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... was beginning to draw people back to London now. They found that the German shells had had one excellent result, they had demolished nearly all the London statues. And what might have conceivably seemed a draw-back, the fact that they had blown great holes in the wood-paving, passed unnoticed amidst the more extensive operations of the London ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... bleated. "Harris, this might conceivably be read by a real pilot. Heaven forbid, of course! And he'd simply hate this scout 'bus with the engine ahead to change into a 'pusher' ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... play by the same author), and two other types which escape me. In the course of about a quarter of an hour she had to give a succinct precis of the different moods which her versatile personality might in actual life conceivably have assumed if she had had a month to do it in. Miss IRENE VANBRUGH, with her swift humour and her skill as a quick-change artist, naturally revelled in this tour de force, and, thanks to her, the author came very near to being ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... her spirituality is not tarnished, these houses shall be as splendid as art can make them. For she is not a Puritan nor a Manichee; she does not say that any single thing which God has made can conceivably be of itself evil, however grievously it may have been abused; on the contrary, she has His own authority for saying ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... displays of economy in a matter where a few thousand dollars saved means, in case our army should have anything to do, not only the utterly needless and useless loss of thousands of lives, but an enormous decrease of military efficiency, and might, conceivably, make all the difference between victory ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... that thousand cannot readjust their nerves to the prospect of a violent end by powder and ball from unseen sources. Under other circumstances any one of the five might face a peril greater than that which now confronts him. Conceivably he might flop into a swollen river to save a drowning puppy; might dive into a burning building after some stranger's pet tabby cat. But this prospect which lies before him of ambling across a field with death singing about his ears, ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Quite conceivably Mrs. Lomax was in the habit of putting this question also, but had learned the wisdom of confining it to sleepy and leisure moments, and not obtruding it upon ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... men, and one seeing and hearing her would have thought they must abandon everything, and spring to do her bidding. But they didn't. Pausing only long enough to give her a phlegmatic stare, as if in doubt whether conceivably she could have the impertinence to be addressing them, and vouchsafing not a word, each went calmly on with his employment;—very, very calmly, piano, piano, gently, languidly, filling small baskets with fallen olives, and emptying them upon outspread canvas sheets. ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... topic, reverted to it as though by a curious fascination, when he had taken his leave. To tell the truth, her conscience had some slight cause to make her uneasy on this very subject of the violent Loveday. The thing was ridiculous, of course ... she, Miss Le Pettit, could not conceivably have been even remotely to blame for such a fantastical happening, and ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... affected by his surroundings. And it is he, in consequence, who of all people most faithfully and compactly exhibits the impress of his times and his times' tendencies, not merely in his writings—where it conceivably might be just predetermined affectation—but ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... don't, you inflict upon him the stigma which is deserved by the drunkard and the thief. So difficult is it to arrange for this proposed valuation of a man's moral qualities that it has been proposed to get rid of all stigma by making it the right and duty of every one to take a pension. That might conceivably alter the praise, but it would surely not alter the praiseworthiness. It must be wrong in me to take money from my neighbours when I don't want it; and, if wrong, it surely ought to be disgraceful. And this seems to indicate the real point. We may aim at altering the ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Bentham lays down the rule that punishment should rise with the strength of the temptation, a theory which leads to some curious casuistical problems. He does not fully discuss, and I cannot here consider, them. I will only note that it may conceivably be necessary to increase the severity of punishment, instead of removing the temptation or strengthening the preventive action. If so, the law becomes immoral in the sense of punishing more severely as the crime has more moral excuse. This was often true of the old criminal law, ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... lost itself in his admiration for Pangbourn's resourceful dexterity. The delighted thought that now he would be needing a man like this for himself crossed his mind. Conceivably he might even get this identical Pangbourn—treasure though he were. Money could command everything on this broad globe—and why not Pangbourn? He tentatively felt of the coins in his pocket, as it became apparent that the man's task was nearing completion—and ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... columns for the one which might conceivably be in supreme command; but even as he sought the Moon-cubes moved to the attack. The globes on the tops of the columns dimmed their lights, and the squares, rectangles and globes got instantly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... cruelly hard to Rosalind that it might not be. What had she to gain by the revival of a forgotten past—a past her own share of which she had for twenty years striven to forget? Utterly guiltless as, conceivably, she may have known herself to be, she had striven against that past as the guilty strive with the memory of a concealed crime. And here was she, at the end of this twenty years, with all she most longed for at the beginning in her possession, mysteriously attained with a thoroughness ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... is the outstanding fact is the necessity for struggle. Struggle may conceivably enter into every other world. There is something in us which requires it, which craves for it. A static heaven in which all is won and there is nothing forevermore but to enjoy has never made much appeal to us. If eternal life means eternal growth we shall always have something with ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... spoke not at all of the things he desired to know. Was it not grossly unjust to him? Until he clearly understood Constance's future position, how could he decide upon his course with regard to her? Conceivably, the proposed marriage might carry advantages which it behooved him to examine with all care; conceivably also, it might at a given moment be his sole rescue from embarrassment or worse. Meanwhile, ignorance of the essential factors of the ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... then, or, if we choose so to put it, the United Kingdom taxpayers, are safe from loss, and make a good investment. There has never been the faintest symptom of a strike against annuities, and the only cause which could conceivably ever suggest such a strike would be the irritation provoked by a persistent refusal to grant Home Rule. Even that possibility I regard as out of the question, because there is a sanctity attaching to annuities which it would be hard to impair. Still, to speak broadly, it is true that Home Rule will ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... like this can hardly be looked forward to as conceivably of any long continuance. Religion would come back, or conscience would go. Nor do I think that the future which Dr. Newman seems to anticipate can be regarded as probable either. He seems to anticipate a continuance side by side of faith ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... tanner; Hobs and his surroundings, Grudgen and Goodfellow, are presented with a comic and cordial fidelity which the painter of Falstaff's "villeggiatura," the creator of Shallow, Silence, and Davy, might justly and conceivably have approved. It is rather in the more serious or ambitious parts that we find now and then a pre-Shakespearean immaturity of manner. The recurrent burden of a jingling couplet in the cajoleries of the procuress Mrs. Blague is a survival from the most primitive and conventional ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... as a blessing; but the truth, deducible from these principles of human nature and verified by experience, is that natural religion, instead of soothing apprehensions, adds fresh grounds of apprehension. A revelation, as 'Philip Beauchamp' admits, might conceivably dispel our fears; but he would obviously say that the religion which is taken to be revealed gives a far more vivid picture of hell than of heaven.[612] In the next place, it is 'obvious at first sight' that natural religion can ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... satisfactory proof of the rumour having existed" on May 10, but the rumour cannot be traced to its source. Mr. Yorstoun authorises the mention of his name. The Times of June 2 says that "the report is without foundation". If Williams talked everywhere of his dream, on May 3, some garbled shape of it may conceivably have floated to Bude Kirk by May 10, and originated the rumour. Whoever started it would keep quiet when the real news arrived for fear of being implicated in a conspiracy as accessory before the fact. No trace of Mr. Williams's dream occurs ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... any mention of it which tends to advertise and increase the evil. We would strenuously oppose the running of supervised houses of prostitution by our own military authorities, as was done by some of them on the Mexican border. Conceivably a system of inspected government houses and of prophylactic measures might be devised which would eliminate disease altogether, and yet demoralize the young manhood of our nation by a cynical scientific materialism ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... Conceivably that ostensible discomfiture whose symptoms Lanyard had remarked had been a transitory humour. Mr. Blensop was now in what seemed the most equable and blithe of tempers. His very posture at the telephone eloquently betokened as much: he had thrown ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... everywhere, the irresistible evidence of it is to be found not in the laws of nature but in the collocations, i.e., in the part of nature in which it is impossible to trace any law. A few properties of dead matter might, he thinks, conceivably account for the regular and invariable succession of effects and causes; but that the different kinds of matter have been so placed as to promote beneficent ends, is what he regards as the proof of a Divine Providence. Mr. Baden Powell, in his Essay ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... around in space. He could not keep a tree's shadow static on a moving earth. Nevertheless, multitudes of people in their endeavour to build up an infallibly settled creed have tried just such a hopeless task. They forget that while a revelation from God might conceivably be final and complete, religion deals with a revelation of God. God, the infinite and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting, the source and crown and destiny of all the universe—shall a man whose days are as grass rise up to say that he has made a statement about ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... organ, fairly cried over the poor girl's letter with sympathetic shame, and remorse, and vexation. Miss Smith-Waters could hardly be expected to understand that if Herminia had thought her conduct in the faintest degree wrong, or indeed anything but the highest and best for humanity, she could never conceivably have allowed even that loving heart of hers to hurry her into it. For Herminia's devotion to principle was not less but far greater than Miss Smith-Waters's own; only, as it happened, the ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... early legendary heroes. We cannot explain these by the analysis of the name of Alexander! Even if the heroic or divine name can be shown to be the original one (which is practically impossible), the meaning of the name helps us little. That Zeus means 'sky' cannot conceivably explain scores of details in the very composite legend of Zeus—say, the story of Zeus, Demeter, and the Ram. Moreover, we decline to admit that, if a divine name means 'swift,' its bearer must be the wind or the sunlight. Nor, if the name means 'white,' is it necessarily a synonym ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... end of a decade of labour, Blood that we might have—conceivably—shed, Daily incitements to boycott your neighbour, Daily allusions to ounces ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... because the old lady had lately quarrelled with her own relatives, and never now asked any of her stuffy provincial cousins to share the dulness of Castle Gaverick and of the house in Brook Street. If she did not leave her money to Chris Gaverick, there was not, conceivably, anyone else to whom ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... and Turks; the principal Greek colonies are in Stanimaka, Kavakly and Philippopolis. The origin of the peculiar Shop tribe which inhabits the mountain tracts of Sofia, Breznik and Radomir is a mystery. The Shops are conceivably a remnant of the aboriginal race which remained undisturbed in its mountain home during the Slavonic and Bulgarian incursions: they cling with much tenacity to their distinctive customs, apparel and dialect. The considerable Vlach ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... I. The thing we do know beyond doubt is that we are each of us a something that suffers and is happy. How is that something the same as the body—the body that gets old and dies—how can it be? You can't change thought into matter—not conceivably—everybody acknowledges that. Why should the thinking part die then, because the material part dies? When the organ is broken is the organist dead? The body is the hull, the covering, and when it has grown useless it will fall away and the live seed in ...
— The Lifted Bandage • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... re-question vaguely, before he was sure of the meaning and folly of what he heard. And his awakening had not been natural! Was that an old man's senile superstition, too, or had it any truth in it? Feeling in the dark corners of his memory, he presently came on something that might conceivably be an impression of some such stimulating effect. It dawned upon him that he had happened upon a lucky encounter, that at last he might learn something of the new age. The old man wheezed awhile and spat, and then the piping, ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... most tentative way, by observation and experiment. And opinions based upon such a process, though they may be strongly held, cannot be held with the simplicity and force of a religious or ethical intuition. We might, conceivably, on this basis adopt the position either of the collectivist or of the anarchist; but we should do so not as enthusiasts, but as critics, with a full consciousness that we are resting not upon an absolute principle, but upon a ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... and the strongest leaders are the financiers. What the financiers and industrial managers most want is efficient, docile labor. The German system of education, in spite of the fact that we are different, might conceivably have that effect on the youth of this country. Under the pressure of industrial rivalry after the war, under the pressure of an imperial industrial policy, it may be that the people of the country will yield to the introduction of a scheme of education which it has been proved elsewhere ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... known, casting about for some possible explanation of Shakespeare's extraordinary knowledge of law, have made the suggestion that Shakespeare might, conceivably, have been a clerk in an attorney's office before he came to London. Mr. Collier wrote to Lord Campbell to ask his opinion as to the probability of this being true. His answer was as follows: "You require us to believe implicitly a fact, of which, if true, positive and irrefragable ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... this that there was only one labarum. Many different kinds are, however, represented upon the coins of Constantine; as also almost every variety of ordinary cross, except, perhaps, such as might conceivably have been a representation of an instrument of execution, like that which has since come ...
— The Non-Christian Cross - An Enquiry Into the Origin and History of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion • John Denham Parsons
... many as 35 hylids occur sympatrically. Many groups of Hyla in this area (for example, the Hyla boans and Hyla marmorata groups) are equally as arboreal in their habits as are the species of Agalychnis in Central America. Conceivably, competition within this array of tree frogs resulted in selection for modification of the extremities, thereby bringing about a different mode of climbing in Phyllomedusa. The walking gait already present in phyllomedusines provided a source for further modification, which ...
— The Genera of Phyllomedusine Frogs (Anura Hylidae) • William E. Duellman
... wounded and cheer them up. I sit in the deserted mess-room, and look at the lunch that Tom and Dr. Bird and Mr. Grierson should have eaten and were obliged to leave behind. I would give anything to be able to go round the wards and cheer the wounded up. I wonder whether there is anything I could conceivably do for the wounded that would not bore them inexpressibly if I were to do it. I frame sentence after sentence in strange and abominable French, and each, apart from its own inherent absurdity, seems a mockery ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... Royal proclamations under the authority of the Council. Injunctions were issued for the destruction of "abused" images which term was liberally interpreted so as to cover stained glass, paintings, and carvings which might conceivably be regarded as objects of idolatry—that is to say, become in themselves objects of worship instead of being recognised as mere symbols: a process which unless conducted with the most studied moderation and ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... the hook and crook of taint and flesh that tainted beings like ourselves can apprehend it, only in and through flesh can it be made manifest to us at all. The flesh and the shop will return no matter with how many pitchforks we expel them, for we cannot conceivably expel them thoroughly; therefore it is better not to be too hard upon them. And yet this same flesh cloaks genius at the very time that it reveals it. It seems as though the flesh must have been on and must have gone clean off before genius can be ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... that even if the quotation were not recognised, everybody would at least know that it was a quotation, and that it could not conceivably have been an impromptu, but one man turned on another and said: "By Jove! that's eloquence," and a gentleman at the rear of the brake asked me out of the darkness why I didn't make a try for Parliament, and assured me that I had ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... to Martin Sprague's theory, I was divided. I wanted him to be right. I wanted him to be wrong. No picture I could visualize of little old Miss Emily conceivably fitted the type he had drawn. On the other hand, nothing about her could possibly confirm the confession as ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... major reasons urged for governmental intervention is furnished by the need for gearing the different parts of the industrial process with one another for a planned result. In wartime this need is freely conceded by all; but its need in economic crisis is conceivably even greater, the results sought being more complex. So in the interest both of unity of design and of flexibility of detail, presidential power today takes increasing toll from both ends of the legislative process—both from the formulation of ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... hand, let us suppose for a moment (impossible supposition!) that mankind could conceivably divest itself of 'these foolish ideas about love and the tastes of young people,' and could hand over the choice of partners for life to a committee of anthropologists, presided over by Sir George Campbell. Would the committee ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... touch you on the raw, you know, or you wouldn't have felt sick. It wouldn't make you feel sick if I accused you of murder or burglary—I believe it's simply because we might, all of us, very conceivably break the seventh commandment; in fact, I don't believe anybody goes through life, however sheltered and inhibited they may be, without wanting to break it at least once! And that's why we're so mad when anyone says ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... Fahr. Light easterly breeze, blue sky, and stratus clouds. During forenoon notice a distinct terra-cotta or biscuit colour in the stratus clouds to the north. This travelled from east to west and could conceivably have come from some of the Graham Land volcanoes, now about 300 miles distant to the north-west. The upper current of air probably would come from that direction. Heavy rime. Pack unbroken and unchanged ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... suggested cheerfulness, robustness, and magnanimity. She was masterful in temperament, not always ready to listen with urbanity to opinions she did not share, or to admit that her conclusions could even conceivably have their foundations in doubtful premises. But these very human characteristics in no way diminished the personal affection she inspired in those among whom she moved. She lived a fine courageous life, and when she died, by an appropriate and beautiful coincidence, ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... nations. Were it enforced, it would prevent the granting of monopolies to any one nation: there is nothing in it to render impossible a conjoint exploitation of China by foreign powers, an organized monopoly in which each nation has its due share with respect to others. Such an organization might conceivably reduce friction among the great powers, and thereby reduce the danger of future wars—as long as China herself is impotent to go to war. The agreement might conceivably for a considerable time be of benefit to China herself. But it is clear that for the United States to become a partner ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... "But you've never conceivably—you've never—" She pulled herself together. "Tibby, hurry up through; I can't hold this gate indefinitely. Aunt Juley! I say, Aunt Juley, make the tea, will you, and Frieda; we've got to talk houses, and I'll come on afterwards." And then, turning her face ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... the step which we have gained, it stands to reason, that the individual consciousness or mind, habitually energizing in and through a given living brain, may, for any thing we know to the contrary, and very conceivably, be drawn, under circumstances favourable to the event, into direct communication with consciousness, individualised or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... them by night, and I knew the place of all the chief constellations in relation to the St Anton valley. I believed that I was in a room on the lake side of the Pink Chalet: I must be, if Ivery had spoken the truth. But if so, I could not conceivably see Orion from its window ... There was no other possible conclusion, I must be in a room on the east side of the house, and Ivery had been lying. He had already lied in his boasting of how he had outwitted me in England and at the Front. He might be lying about Mary ... No, I dismissed ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... follow this splendid lead. Without taking advantage of the license that he himself offers the poet, he severely condemns[35], the scene in which Periplecomenus shouts out to Philocomasium so loudly that the soldier's household could not conceivably help hearing, whereas he is supposed to be conveying secret information.[36] If carried out in a broadly farcical spirit, ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... speech of Jesus in this matter of country life. When we recall the practice of ancient historians of composing speeches for insertion in their narratives, and weigh the suggestion that the sermons in the Acts may conceivably owe much to the free rehandling of Luke or may even be his own compositions, there is a fresh significance in his marked abstention from any such treatment of the words of Jesus. It means that we may be secure ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... subsequent will duly executed is a revocation of a prior will, and it makes no difference whether an heir ever actually takes under it or not; the only question is whether one might conceivably have done so. Accordingly, whether the person instituted declines to be heir, or dies in the lifetime of the testator, or after his death but before accepting the inheritance, or is excluded by failure of the condition under which ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... taken for Dryfoos, so different from any attitude the peremptory old man would have conceivably taken for himself, made March smile. "Oh no. I fancy the boot is on the other leg. I suspect I've said some things your father can't overlook, Conrad." He called the young man by his Christian name partly to distinguish him from his father, partly from the infection ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... over and share mine. Knowing my horror of him, he rightly thought that I would be willing to buy him off. I received a letter from him saying that he was coming. It was at a crisis in my own affairs, and his arrival might conceivably bring trouble, and even disgrace, upon some whom I was especially bound to shield from anything of the kind. I took steps to insure that any evil which might come should fall on me only, and that"—here he turned and looked at the prisoner—"was ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Conceivably even a journeyman strangler may know the thrill of professional pride in a good job well done: Dupont was grinning at his work, and so intent upon it that his first intimation of any interference came when Lanyard took him from behind, broke his hold upon the woman (and lamentably ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... what men have been heard to say—that the people who write to papers are people who have not written in them. It is quite certain that, for many years past, the less frivolous kind of newspaper-correspondence has been of admitted interest and importance; indeed a paper might conceivably maintain its position after its repute has sunk in other ways, simply because more letters of importance appear in it than in others. As a source of illustrations of how to write and how not to write letters this modern development ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... this present lecture, whatever its intellectual worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital processes during its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be distinctly smaller at the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... inevitable as natural laws. Such great issues, supposing them to be possible, as the return of Western Europe to the Roman communion, the overthrow of the British Empire by Germany, or the inundation of Europe by the "Yellow Peril," might conceivably affect such details, let us say, as door-handles and ventilators or mileage of line, but would probably leave the essential features of the evolution of locomotion untouched. The evolution of locomotion has a purely historical relation to the Western ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells |
