"Impossibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of most of the community to a fractional part of its productive power, thereby in turn correspondingly crippling the latter, you have the open secret of the poverty of the world before the Revolution, and of the impossibility of any important or lasting improvement from any source whatever in the economic circumstances of mankind, until and unless private capitalism, of which the profit system with rent and interest were necessary and inseparable parts, should be put an ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... Lery, the King's engineer, charged with the fortification of the Colony, a man of Vauban's genius in the art of defence. Had the schemes which he projected, and vainly urged upon the heedless Court of Versailles, been carried into effect, the conquest of New France would have been an impossibility. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... give up those feverish nights of excitement? the hazard and the stimulus of the long tables and the little heaps of gold dust? and her free life, her incomings and outgoings, with no one to question her? No, it was an impossibility. ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... say that this is an impossibility—here is one point about which we are at issue:—very good. And do you mean to say also that if he meets with retribution and punishment he ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... encouragement to the boy who, for any one of a thousand reasons, cannot take four years or four months from his life of continuous toil in order to go to college?" asked a young man full of the vitality of purpose, but to whom even the education of our high schools was an absolute impossibility. ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... two years' journey through wonderful countries, and reached the sea, from which many valuable articles would be sent to him in exchange for ivory, could I only discover the great lake. As a proof of this, I had brought him a few curiosities that I trusted he would accept, and I regretted that the impossibility of procuring porters had necessitated the abandonment of others that ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... solid wall of impossibility," he replied. "You see, some of our other chaps may try the dodge. I gave them the tip and I don't want to spoil their chances. By-the-bye, do you know the man two places down on your left?" he added dropping his voice a little. "Looks almost like a waxwork ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bestowed in proportion to the industry and good conduct of those who receive them. If the offences of freshmen outside the walls be unvisited by the university from wariness in the offenders, or the impossibility of controlling them, they are certain to meet with a just estimation of their demerit here; and, as before noticed, this is perhaps the best mode of repressing them. The assistance derived by the industrious student from the university itself is invaluable. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... again with my real daughter, in which I perforce must believe, is of itself enough to fever the very coldest feelings into madness; and need one marvel then at your talking of having encountered another impossibility, at your story about finding the dead Pietro come to life among the mountains, and not knowing him again, and about those almost farcical tricks of jugglery that were played you, all which you have related to us with the very same assurance? No, my good Antonio, pain ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... came in slow comment from the watchful lawyer, "not to be too certain of your conclusions till doubt becomes an absolute impossibility. Instinct is a good thing but it must never be regarded as infallible. It may be proved that it is your wife who has fled, after all. In which case it would be a great mistake to put any faith in this gipsy ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... century, by which time they suppose that the growth of means in favor of Greece would have concurred with a more than corresponding decay in her enemy. But, to say nothing of the extreme uncertainty which attends such remote speculation, and the utter impossibility of training men with no personal hopes to labor for the benefit of distant generations, there was one political argument against that course, which Mr. Gordon justly considers unanswerable. It is this: Turkey in Europe has been long tottering on its ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... unabsconded northwards, have actually not yet left our own shores. The war should naturally have run its course in one campaign. Assuredly it will, if confined within the limits of Yeh's command, even supposing that command to comprehend the two Quangs. Practically, then, it is a fantastic impossibility that any reversionary service to our British expedition, which is held out in prophetic vision as consecrating our French and American friends from all taint of mercenary selfishness, ever can be realised. I am not going to pursue this subject. But a brief application of it to a question ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the poetry, might conceivably belong to an Elizabethan drama. The situation of Cleopatra and Antony is unconsciously reproduced without being bettered, or even equalled in point of majesty and musical expression. The loss of all simplicity and dignity, the impossibility of any credible scenic presentation of the incidents, and the extreme staginess of the conventions by which these impossibilities are got over, are no doubt covered from the popular eye by the overwhelming prestige ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... already proposed the objection formed upon the impossibility of these vampires coming out of their graves, and returning to them again, without its appearing that they have disturbed the earth, either in coming out or going in again. No one has ever replied to this difficulty, and ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... ruggedness of the mountains lower down the river, he would have been disposed to attempt them, but the depth of the snow with which they were covered deterred him; having already experienced the impossibility of forcing his way ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... assured of the impossibility of procuring help nearer than Cairo he wasted no further time in discussion, but mounted his horse with a businesslike air and proceeded to take leave of Anstice with a heartiness which but thinly disguised his ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... once decided that we would never again permit the legislature to remand us to the rabble in a vain appeal for justice. We had demonstrated the impossibility of receiving a fair, impartial vote at the hands of the ignorant, lawless and unthinking multitude whose ballots outweigh all reason and overpower all sense. In pursuance of this purpose I went to the legislature of 1885 and found no difficulty in securing the aid ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... exceeding jealous, as appears from many passages in the Pentateuch. Lastly, he believed and taught that this Being was so different from all other beings, that He could not be expressed by the image of any visible thing; also, that He could not be looked upon, and that not so much from inherent impossibility as from human infirmity; further, that by reason of His power He was without equal and unique. Moses admitted, indeed, that there were beings (doubtless by the plan and command of the Lord) who acted as God's vicegerents—that is, beings to whom God had given the right, ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... squareness of outline, and impossibility of perspective, they are not unlike the woodcuts in old books; but they were oil-paintings, and the artist, like the painter of the Primrose family, had not been sparing of his colours. In one, a lady was having a toe amputated—an operation which a ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... heavier moccasins, and went quietly from the house. Three inches of fresh snow had fallen, and the air was thick with the white deluge. He hurried into the edge of the forest. A few minutes futile searching convinced him of the impossibility of following the trail made by Jean and the man he had pursued. Through the thickening darkness he ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... protection, and carried him off to the palace. He was speedily conducted to the young prince's couch, whither a vast crowd attended him. The hour of noon not having yet arrived, Ananda discreetly protracted the time by a seasonable discourse on the impossibility of miracles, those only excepted which should be wrought by the professors of the faith of Buddha. He then descended from his pulpit, and precisely as the sun attained the zenith laid his hand upon the ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... for no one wishes to dispute with him. Only speaking words of comfort; more especially addressing them to Cypriano, who is, as ever, the impatient one. But he, as the gaucho himself, sees the impossibility of proceeding further, till they and their animals have had a spell ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... I know, but I believe their absence is but temporary. We must have them back, and we will. As for the Border States leaving us in the present condition of affairs, with the present feeling of friendship for them, that I regard as an impossibility. Why should the Border States go out of the Union when three-fourths of the present Congress are ready to give them all the guarantees ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... moral impossibility. Mind in matter is pantheism. Soul is the only real consciousness which cognizes being. The body does not see, hear, smell, or taste. Human belief says that it does; but destroy this belief of seeing with the eye, and we could not see materially; ...
— Rudimental Divine Science • Mary Baker Eddy
... began to repent of having suffered herself to be prevailed on to consent so far to what she still pretended to believe was but a joke. On our hero quitting the coom, she represented to his friend the utter impossibility of proceeding further, and entreated that he would take means to have her re-conducted to town. The friend, however, who was too much interested in the success of a plot so well commenced, endeavoured to dissuade her, by every argument of which he was master, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... sure, but only a little ahead of the times, perhaps, in that respect; Some of our cherished forms of speech have already been rendered obsolete by the Liberal Club. It used to be such a clincher to say, when one wanted to enforce a point by indicating an impossibility, "I will eat my boots unless"—etc., etc. That clincher has gone to the place whither good clinchers go, forever. At a late meeting of the Liberal Club, Professor VAN DER WEYDE contributed to the evening collation a pudding ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... This unworldliness—this impossibility, if you please—is characteristic of intellectual progression. Judge Methuen's second son is named Grolier; and the fact that he doesn't know enough to come in out of the rain has inspired both the Judge ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... of the generals included in the capitulation of Ulm, had returned home to acquaint his sovereign with the disastrous event. He did not conceal, either from the Emperor Francis or the Cabinet of Vienna, the destruction of the Austrian army, and the impossibility of arresting the rapid advance of the French. M. de Giulay was sent with a flag of truce to the headquarters of Napoleon, to assure him of the pacific intentions of the Emperor of Austria, and to solicit an armistice. The snare was too clumsy not to be immediately discovered by so crafty ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... announced that he was a Papist. The King talked with delight of this triumph of divine grace. Courtiers and envoys kept their countenances as well as they could while the renegade protested that he had been long convinced of the impossibility of finding salvation out of the communion of Rome, and that his conscience would not let him rest till he had renounced the heresies in which he had been brought up. The news spread fast. At all the coffeehouses it was told how the prime minister of England, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... revolve three times in that length of time. If we choose to have the watch run for 30 hours on a winding, and this leaves but a small safety factor, then we see that this will require 90 turns of the main spring, a manifest impossibility in view ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison
... longer believed in the existence of such a being as God—fate had taken pity upon him and, through no act of his own, he was going to be relieved of his intolerable burden. For he knew that, with that fighting mob of raging maniacs struggling madly round the boats, escape was a sheer impossibility, and that in a few minutes—or hours, at the outside—for he was a strong swimmer—he would go down inanimate into the dark depths, and his load of disgrace and humiliation would fall ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... only half through a fervent asseveration to the effect that such a catastrophe was a complete impossibility, when ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... parents elect to take their children abroad during the school term, they must notify their intention, undertaking that a teacher shall accompany them and lessons continue while away. Shirking lessons is quite an impossibility for little Danes, as everybody thinks that education comes before all else, so parents do not encourage idleness or extra holidays during the ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... was broken and be sorry. He closed loftily by saying: "You advise me, my dear Arethusa—allow me to call you thus for the last time—to find a heart worthier and better. It was unkind in you to urge upon me an impossibility. None but Napoleon ever ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... the Alps this day," I thought, "there must be crouching and lying between half and a million of men, trying to inflict irreparable damage upon one another. The thing is idiotic to the pitch of impossibility. It is a dream. Presently I shall wake ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... hungers. It is crying for food!" Allan thought. He saw at once the impossibility of letting the boy come near its mother. Some other ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... utter impossibility of procuring corn, I was forced to take the horses out grazing a mile beyond the town for four hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. As one mustn't lose sight of them for a moment, this occupied me all day, ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... occupy the office that I now occupy the more I regret any lines of separation; the more I deplore any feeling that one set of men has one set of interests and another set of men another set of interests; the more I feel the solidarity of the Nation—the impossibility of separating one interest from another without misconceiving it; the necessity that we should all understand one another, in order that we may ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... I am disposed to agree with him, although my impression at the time has been always that the diffracted colors rose out of the white, as a rainbow does out of the gray. But whatever the facts may be, in this respect the statement in the text of the impossibility of representing diffracted color in painting is equally true. It may be that the resolved hues are darker than the white, as colored panes in a window are darker than the colorless glass, but all are alike in a key which no artifice of painting ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... the regiment moved down the steep hill, waded the stream, and moved up the rocky front of the rebel Gibraltar. How they got up there is a mystery,—for the ascent of that rocky declivity would now seem an impossibility to an unburdened traveller, even though there were no deadly enemy at the top. But up they went, clinging to rocks and bushes. The main rebel breastwork, which they were so confident of holding, was about ...
— The County Regiment • Dudley Landon Vaill
... reproduce in fiction the circumstances of a compact community in a way that illustrates the various oppressions which such communities put upon individual vagaries, whether viewed as sin, or ignorance, or folly, or merely as social impossibility. ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert
... meaning also a peculiar form of circumcision, for which see Pilgrimage iii. 80-81. The Jew's condition was of course a trick, presenting an impossibility and intended as a mere pretext for murdering an enemy to his faith. Throughout the Eastern world this idea prevails, and both Sir Moses Montefiore and M. Cremieux were utterly at fault and certainly knew it when they declared ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... it, and the more interesting in view of the problem that awaited solution on the morrow; but yet not so engrossing but that I was able to find time to write a long, rather intimate and minutely explanatory letter to Miss Gibson, in which I even mentioned the hour of our return as showing the impossibility of my keeping my engagement. Not that I had the smallest fear of her taking offence, for it is an evidence of my respect and regard for her that I cancelled the appointment without a momentary doubt that she would approve of my action; but it was pleasant to write to ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... the trees surrounding us, the children sat down with me. They were not a talkative group, and I was overcome by a sense of the impossibility of meeting them on any common ground of conversation. But they seemed to expect something—they were like a flock of little hungry birds waiting to be fed—and what do you think I gave them? Guess. But I ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... Nouvelle Yorck. As a cosmopolite, I claim this privilege, at least, though I can see defects in all. If you will recollect, Miss Effingham, that New York is a social bivouac, a place in which families encamp instead of troops, you will see the impossibility of its possessing a graceful, well-ordered, and cultivated society. Then the town is commercial; and no place of mere commerce can well have a reputation for its society. Such an anomaly, I believe, never existed. Whatever ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... tried to comprehend what had happened. That something had struck him was evident. What it was at first he was too bewildered to understand. Thinking the best thing he could do in this dazed condition would be to go back under the shelter of his little tent, he turned to do so, but found it an impossibility. The thunderbolt that had stunned him had struck the large birch tree, and so shattered it to pieces that, as it fell, it had crushed down the little wigwam into a ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... which took place were those of the siege of a fortress; as when at length St. Elmo fell the Turks turned their attention to the fortress of Il Borgo. The time-honoured method of the attack on a fortress, of approaching it by sap and mine, was here almost an impossibility, as the island of Malta is composed of solid rock through which it was practically impossible to drive trenches. It is true that the rock is of an exceptionally soft nature, easily cut through with proper tools; but you cannot cut through rock, no matter how soft it may be, when your ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... and use very sparingly. They assure me that they catch and kill game of all kinds, by watching at the water holes or setting snares around them. That would be the time for me to make my collections; but the want of water would be a terrible annoyance, and the impossibility of getting away before another whole year had passed made ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... will of God may be said to be perfect when our will is lost and resolved up into His: when we rest in His will as our end, as being itself most just and right and good. And where is the impossibility of such an affection to what is just, and right, and good, such a loyalty of heart to the Governor of the universe as shall prevail over all sinister indirect desires of our own? Neither is this at bottom anything more than faith and honesty and fairness of mind—in ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... Colonel Kenton, "I have talked to you as I would not have talked to anyone else, but even so, I would not have talked to you as I have, were not your escape an impossibility. You are unharmed, but to leave this camp you ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... resumed Coeur de Lion, "thou hast shown that the Ethiopian may change his skin and the Leopard his spots, though clerks quote Scripture for the impossibility. Yet I have more to say to you when I have conducted you to the presence of the ladies, the best judges, and best rewarders, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... settled, the widow found herself with a little less than $3,000, all she possessed in the world. To attempt to live on the interest alone of such a slender capital was obviously an impossibility, so it was decided that they would move uptown, where they would not be known, and open a little millinery shop. This was a bright idea that had occurred to Fanny. She had always been clever at trimming hats. Why not put her skill to commercial profit? She and her mother could very well attend ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... Phil. is getting angry by this time) to which I object. He describes the doctrines held by all the separate Protestant churches as doctrines of Protestantism. I would not delay either Phil. or myself for the sake of a trifle; but an impossibility is not a trifle. If from orthodox Turkey you pass to heretic Persia, if from the rigor of the Sonnees to the laxity of the Sheeahs, you could not, in explaining those schisms, go on to say, 'And these are the doctrines of Islamism;' for they destroy each other. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... of leniency was not entirely successful, for the Cornishmen imagined it merely meant that the King recognised the impossibility of dealing sternly with every one who thought as they did. Warbeck, now in Ireland, where he was not finding the sympathy for which he had hoped, received messages to the effect that if he came to Cornwall ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... beat—or, if that be a physiological impossibility, she thought it did. So he was here, after all. She had concluded he was not coming—not that it mattered in the least. Would he see her? Would he take any notice of her? Of course, he wouldn't ask her to dance—that couldn't be hoped for. He thought her just a mere child. He had ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... released from their handcuffs. The young man stared in astonishment at the individual who a minute before had been his companion in bonds, and was about to thank him, but the other grasped him firmly by the wrist, as though to warn him of the impossibility of flight, and led him out of the police station. In the street they met the sergeant with a gendarme bringing in the unfortunate man with the guitar, who was just breathing, and in whom the officials had recognised a detective-inspector. Without letting go of the youth, the ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... man too. Brahmanism loves God, but not man; it has piety, but not humanity. Buddhism loves man, but not God; it has humanity, but not piety; or if it has piety, it is by a beautiful want of logic, its heart being wiser than its head. That which seems an impossibility in these Eastern systems is a fact of daily life to the Christian child, to the ignorant and simple Christian man or woman, who, amid daily duty and trial, find joy in both heavenly ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... notoriety, all were rushing into print. The booksellers' shops were crowded from morning until night. The price of printing was doubled. One collector is said to have got together twenty-five hundred different political pamphlets in the last months of 1788, and to have stopped in despair at the impossibility of completing his collection.[Footnote: Droz, ii. 93. "Thirteen came out to-day, sixteen yesterday, and ninety-two last week." A. Young, i. 118 (June 9, 1789). Cherest, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... the supposed influence of sexual abstinence in the causation of insanity. There is a certain underlying basis of reason in such beliefs, though in an unqualified form they cannot be accepted, for they take no account of the complexity of the factors involved, of the difficulty and often impossibility of effecting any complete transformation, either in a desirable or undesirable direction, and of the serious conflict which the process often involves. The psycho-analysts have helped us here. Whether or not we accept their elaborate and often shifting conceptions, ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... calculated to carry a heavy cargo rather than to make fast time. He must have been in politics at some time or other, for he made orations to all the "Secesh," in which he explained to them that the United States considered and treated them like children, and enforced upon them the ridiculous impossibility of the Rebels attempting to do anything against such a power as ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... toward supper-time, hungry and happy; but now a difficulty arose—hostile Indians could not break the bread of hospitality together without first making peace, and this was a simple impossibility without smoking a pipe of peace. There was no other process that ever they had heard of. Two of the savages almost wished they had remained pirates. However, there was no other way; so with such show of cheerfulness as they could muster they called for the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... satisfactorily, and with more than moral certainty, that an exception occurs to the general law of not speaking untruly, viz. when it is impossible to observe a certain other precept, more important, without telling a lie. Some persons indeed say, that in the cases of impossibility which are above drawn out, what is said is not a lie. But a man who thus speaks confuses ideas and denies the essential characters of things. What is a lie? It is 'locutio contra mentem;' this is its common definition. But in the cases of impossibility, a man speaks contra mentem; that is clear ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... on her duties at the ambulance hospital,—purposely absent, for she shrank from the bitter task of making clear to the friends of her betrothed the impossibility of continuing the aid to their support which their son had neglected to contribute; and still more from the comment which she knew they would make on his conduct, in absenting himself so wholly of late, and in the time of such trial and pressure, both from them and from herself. Truly, she ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... detestation and scorn. It is in this marvelous power in men to do wrong (it is an old story, but none the less true for that),—it is in this power to do wrong—wrong or right, as it lies somehow with ourselves to choose—that the impossibility stands of forming scientific calculations of what men will do before the fact, or scientific explanations of what they have done after the fact. If men were consistently selfish, you might analyze their motives; if they were ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... their ideas of marriage. According to Orthodox doctrine, marriage is a sacrament which can only be performed by a consecrated priest, and consequently for the Priestless People the celebration of marriage was an impossibility. In the first ages of sectarianism a state of celibacy was quite in accordance with their surroundings. Living in constant fear of their persecutors, and wandering from one place of refuge to another, the sufferers for the Faith had ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... week or so he had thought it would be an easy thing to find employment; a few rebuffs where he had looked for a helping hand, a curt refusal or two, seemed to show him it was an impossibility. He had no knowledge of book-keeping, he could not take a clerkship; business men, with a mere glance at his handsome, delicate features, at the shrinking, deprecating glance of his eyes, at his white, nervous ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... air of reflection, "we won't admit that it's an impossibility. If you can take that for granted, it simplifies ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... impossibility of explaining ultimate principles should be esteemed a defect in the science of man, I will venture to affirm, that it is a defect common to it with all the sciences, and all the arts, in which we can employ ourselves, ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... would she, ever marry again? She knelt on at the priedieu with her fair head bowed, and then there came over her a strong sense of the impossibility of it. The shock she had had was too great, too lasting in its effects. She did not know it was that, she did not tell herself that once humiliated, once misled, she could not trust again. She did not say that the past married life which ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... on the embryology of the lower animals are held to afford direct proof of this theory of heredity, but they are too technical to be made clear to ordinary readers. A logical result of the theory is the impossibility of the transmission of acquired characters, since the molecular structure of the germ-plasm is already determined within the embryo; and Weismann holds that there are no facts which really prove that acquired ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... and a short distance in the woods seems so far, that one is by no means master of the situation after reaching the summit. And then there are so many spurs and offshoots and changes of direction, added to the impossibility of making any generalization by the aid of the eye, that before one is aware of it he is very wide ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... upon each, suited to circumstances; while the very wide inferences and applications which can be extracted from many of them, render the adapting of a brief and satisfactory note, in many cases, an impossibility. As it is, however, little merit is claimed for them; and if they are found to be of no aid in facilitating an interpretation, they will, at least, tend to relieve the monotonous or catalogue effect, ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... fundamental truth that conflicts between men, and therefore principles of right and justice, can be rightly settled only through the mediation of mind, and that every effort to settle them by force is not only illogical, a psychological impossibility, but is the way of the brute, not the way of man, whose nature touches the divine. All the more important must this work with the undergraduate be considered when we reflect that it is the young men in our colleges and universities to-day who will mold ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... happens between two friends of the same sex, who are much associated in their daily life: and it would be a common, if not the commonest, case in marriage, did not the totally different bringing-up of the two sexes make it next to an impossibility to form a really well-assorted union. Were this remedied, whatever differences there might still be in individual tastes, there would at least be, as a general rule, complete unity and unanimity as to the great objects of ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... labour, and apart from division of labour certain great work can never be done. To do away with such division, supposing an impossibility to be possible, would simply mean reversion to the state of the primitive savage. But we have no call to attempt the abolition of even the minutest division of labour. What is necessary is to understand and guard ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... of a similar nature might be mentioned! Enough to say that, after so many ages, in which, thanks to barbarous persecutions, all ecclesiastical and monastic traditions were lost to Ireland, through the sheer impossibility of following them up, the Irish still show a marked predilection for the holy austerity of penance, though the rest of the Christian world seems to have almost totally ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... is true a fortiori of salvation. If it is impossible to construct a satisfactory scheme of education on the basis of distrust of human nature, it is even more impossible (if there are degrees in impossibility) to construct on the same basis a satisfactory scheme of salvation. I have already contended that if education is to be reformed, the doctrine of original sin must go; and I now contend that if our ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... pledge that nothing shall ever break it, and that death is powerless. The fact of religion—true, heartfelt religion, with its communion, its prayer, its consciousness of possessing and of being possessed, makes the idea that death ends a man's conscious existence an absurdity and an impossibility. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Helen returned from her walk, Mr. Collingwood, in the gentlest and kindest manner he was able, informed her of the confusion in her uncle's affairs, the debts, the impossibility of paying the creditors, the total loss of all ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... but the time was spent in vain. They were close to the rocks which rose above the ground in the vicinity of the quarry, but it seemed an utter impossibility for anyone ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... banished the heroism into which his subject had wrought him: he feared he had done me an injury, and consequently incurred my displeasure. I re-assured him on this head, but gave him much pain by representing the impossibility of my remaining in Radack, as my duty called me elsewhere. After some minutes of silent consideration, he led his son to me, and begged I would take him with me to Russia. I was then obliged to explain to him that I should never ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... I am quite with you there," the son said to the father, who had desired him to explain to the young man the impossibility of such a marriage. "I think it would be a misfortune to them both, which should be avoided,—if they can get over their ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... speaker. In April, 1725, when Lechmere had finally exhausted his legal remedies, he addressed a petition to the legislature, where he had this strong support, and which was not to meet till May, stating the impossibility of obtaining relief by ordinary means, and asking to have one of the judgments set aside and a new trial ordered, in such form as to enable him to maintain his writ of partition, notwithstanding the solemn decision against him ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... has informed the German Commander that the French Government has declared to the Belgian Government the impossibility of giving them any offensive assistance whatever, as they themselves are forced to ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... other men went also, and understood the ropes far better. He fought on, but a sickening feeling began to creep over him of impending failure. It was soon not merely how Leonore treated him; it was the impossibility of getting her to treat him at all. Even though he was in the same house, it seemed as if there was always some one else calling or mealing, or taking tea, or playing tennis or playing billiards, or merely dropping in. And then Leonore took fewer and fewer meals at home, and spent ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... could be issued, the question as to whether the authorship of the translation should be publicly owned, arose. Babu Pratapa Chandra Roy was against anonymity. I was for it. The reasons I adduced were chiefly founded upon the impossibility of one person translating the whole of the gigantic work. Notwithstanding my resolve to discharge to the fullest extent the duty that I took up, I might not live to carry it out. It would take many years before the end could be reached. Other circumstances than death might ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the little silver box holding those papers; I rushed from the house meaning to go to my lawyer. And I was a half dozen blocks away when I came out of the state I was in, realized the hour and the impossibility of the whole situation, and ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... or that England should be separated from the Catholic Church. To the Pope and to Henry he had addressed his remonstrances and petitions in turn, but events had reached such a climax that mediation was almost an impossibility. The interview arranged between the Pope and Francis I. took place at Marseilles in October 1533. Regardless of all the rules of diplomatic courtesy and of good manners, Henry's representative forced his way into the presence ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... she and I were sitting with our sketchbooks in the shade on the beech at Ilfracombe, while the rest had gone, some to bathe, the others to make purchases in the town. We had been condoling with one another over the impossibility of finding anything among our water-colours that would express the wondrous tints ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... abound in useful information on this topic. Writing to French correspondents, he complains weekly of the impossibility even in Venice of obtaining books. See, for instance, Lettere, vol. i. pp. 286, 287, 360, vol. ii. p. 13. In one passage he says that the importation of books into Italy is impeded at Innsbruck, Trento, and throughout ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Until the river traffic began the purchase of food was almost an impossibility. She saw Jim's face tighten, as it had tightened every time she had broached the subject. A week before he had insisted that the remaining food be equally divided, since they now both engaged in the search for gold—that eternally elusive ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... came. It would not be the same thing if they were to be referred to a dusty office in a distant town. Some wise people say that all registers should be sent to London, to the Record Office or the British Museum. That would be an impossibility. The officials of those institutions would tremble at the thought, and the glut of valuable books would make reference a toil that few could undertake. The real solution of the difficulty is that county ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... the Catholic Church was founded and was beginning to grow, the Roman Army was still theoretically an army of true Roman citizens. [Footnote: A soldier was still technically a citizen up to the very end. The conception of a soldier as a citizen, the impossibility, for instance, of his being a slave, was in the very bones of Roman thought. Even when the soldiers were almost entirely recruited from barbarians, that is, from slave stock, the soldiers ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... the overthrow of the domestic habitation. Amidst so many aspects of death, and the apprehension even of approaching judgment, the suspicion that friends were yet alive under the ruins was the most excruciating affliction, since the impossibility of assisting them rendered their death—(miserable and terrible consolation)—a matter of preference and of hope. Fathers and husbands were seen wandering amidst the ruins that covered the objects of their affections, and, wanting the power to move the superincumbent masses, ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... looks sadly in need of sea air. I suppose Theodore Loos, who played the part, was coached by the dramatist, so I dare not criticise the validity of his interpretation. I only know that he did not make the character sympathetic; perhaps that were an impossibility. In a word, with his mixture of vapid idealism and old-fashioned fatalism, he proved monotonous to me. The sculptor is a formidable bore, the antique raisonneur of French drama, preaching at every pore every chance he has. The actor who played him, Hans Marr, made up ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... beautiful compositions are very brief. Poe claims that there is no such thing in existence as a "long poem." Since a poem only deserves the name in proportion to its power to excite and elevate the soul, and a sustained condition of soul excitement and elevation is a psychic impossibility, the oft-used phrase is a contradiction in terms. Applying this idea to the familiar piano compositions of MacDowell, they have every right to be called "tone poems." Poetry is the color-work of the mind, as distinguished from its sculpture and architecture, which represent ...
— Edward MacDowell • Elizabeth Fry Page
... natural order of things. I do not flatter myself with the immortality of our governments; but I shall think little also of their longevity, unless this germ of destruction be taken out. When the society themselves shall weigh the possibility of evil, against the impossibility of any good to proceed from this institution, I cannot help hoping they will eradicate it. I know they wish the permanence of our governments, as much ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... he came staggering down the wharf, rolled himself into the stern seats of the boat, and ordered us to shove off and pull towards the sloop. We represented to him that the night was dark and cloudy, and it would be next to an impossibility to find the sloop in the broad bay at that hour; that the attempt would be attended with risk, and consequently it would be wiser to wait until morning ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... (1785).... The union of the States was crumbling into ruins, under the old Confederation. Agriculture, manufactures, and commerce were at their lowest ebb. There was infinite danger to all the States from local interests and jealousies, and from the apparent impossibility of a much longer adherence to that shadow of a government, the Continental Congress. And even four years afterwards, when every evil had been greatly aggravated, and civil war was added to other calamities, the Constitution of the United States was ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... spectre he was, he noiselessly vanished from the veranda. Heyst stumbled into the room and looked around. All the objects in there—the books, portrait on the wall—seemed shadowy, unsubstantial, the dumb accomplices of an amazing dream-plot ending in an illusory effect of awakening and the impossibility of ever closing his eyes again. With dread he forced himself to look at the girl. Still in the chair, she was leaning forward far over her knees, and had hidden her face in her hands. Heyst remembered Wang suddenly. How clear all this was—and how extremely ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... confidence and love? Trust and love are based upon the perception of the true and the good. If I find a man who is destitute of these qualities of character, to love him with approval is, as I am constituted, an impossibility. But to ordain the "acts of the wicked," as Hodge says that God did, in order to spread Christianity, was neither just nor good. It was doing evil that good might come. Instead of being wise it was, if it were so, an exhibition ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... manufactures carried on in the house; and so effectual are the means adopted, that during more than five years since the establishment was instituted, no one fraud of the least consequence has been discovered; the evident impossibility of escaping detection in those ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... The charge borne by an insulated body, independent of surrounding objects. Theoretically it is an impossibility. A charge always has its compliment somewhere in surrounding objects. As a matter of convenience and convention, where the complimentary charge is so distributed that its influence is not perceptible the charge is called a free charge. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... us to the conclusion that the two-horned beast is the prophetic symbol of the United States, is hedged in on either side by walls of adamant that reach to heaven. To make any other application is an utter impossibility. The thought would be folly, ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... is one good thing in sight, and that is that it will not be the old-fashioned seedling that they will push this time. I think that you people of the East have got to make another determined effort to drive home the impossibility of seedlings ever being satisfactory. Outside the association a nut tree is a nut tree regardless of seedling and grafted trees, and one is expected to bear just as many fine large nuts as the other and just as soon. After losing twenty to thirty thousand dollars ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... your Knowledge; but only mention these Things, that from the Nature of the Dissentions, and the mischiefs that ensued upon them, we might see the Impossibility, that either Party should have acted from a Principle of Christianity. I shall now endeavor to demonstrate to you Two Things; the First is, that Clergymen, by a small Deviation from the Gospel, may so ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... varied from five inches to five feet deep in mud; in one a Dorset man was literally almost drowned and drawn forth with great difficulty. Many cases occurred of semi-submersion, and as for moving up the communication trenches during the winter, it was generally an impossibility, for they were either knee-deep in water or in mud, and simply refused to be drained. So men preferred the risk of a stray bullet to the certainty of liquid mud to the knees and consequent icy discomfort for ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... of special school has its own particular difficulties. One great drawback is the impossibility of adequate classification. In a small three-class centre, there will be children from five years old up to sixteen years. That, of course, in physically defective schools means that the work usually divided among all the ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... Platon's nose, and Platon—wretched man—was done for. Now if Peter had only been able to step in at this moment with a red bouquet, his little hopes might have made gigantic strides. A woman's gratitude under such circumstances would have been boundless—but it was practically an impossibility. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... share (if any) which the pupil had in completing the work of his master. The credit of invention must indubitably rest with Giorgione, but the damage which the picture has sustained through neglect and repainting in years gone by, renders certainty of discrimination between the two hands a matter of impossibility. ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook |
