"Inconclusive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the most energetic spokesmen of the Church of England, addressed this Free Church Council, and imparted an element of originality. He used the inconclusive and dangerous argument of tu quoque. If, he said, you claim that this war exhibits the failure of Christianity, you must admit that it shows equally the failure of science and civilisation. Nay, he says, growing bolder, if your contention ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... define. Formless images perplexed his vision. Formless thoughts pursued one another, as with the hurry of rumoured calamity, through his mind. A desolating apprehension of things insufficiently developed, of the inconclusive, the immature, the unattained, of things mutilated, things unfinished, born out of due time and incomplete, oppressed his fancy. Even the events of the last few hours, in which he had played so considerable ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Beast" is a booklet in verse for young readers. It was published shortly after "Prince Dorus," and is believed—though the evidence as to authorship is inconclusive—to have been written by Charles or Mary Lamb. It is a simple rendering in Hudibrastic verse of a familiar nursery story. Perhaps a very slight piece of evidence in favour of the Lamb authorship may be found in the fact ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... All the marvellous "correlates of motion," therefore, producing such wonderful effects upon matter, in both its molar and molecular states or conditions, are nothing more nor less than vague and inconclusive inductions, derived from premises having, at best, nothing but a relative existence in a universe of moving matter. It would be decidedly better to agree with Haeckel, that matter is the only actual existence, than to predicate of matter a co-existent ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... fairer perhaps to recite at full length what in this answer is allowed to be true, what is denied as false, what meant to be exposed as absurd, and what rejected as assertions without proof, inadmissible or inconclusive. The conclusion will contain some observations ...
— Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever • Matthew Turner
... questioned us severely and seemed to doubt the integrity of our intentions profoundly. He advised us to attend the next open meeting in Clifford's Inn and gave us the necessary data. We both contrived to get to the affair, and heard a discursive gritty paper on Trusts and one of the most inconclusive discussions you can imagine. Three-quarters of the speakers seemed under some jocular obsession which took the form of pretending to be conceited. It was a sort of family joke, and as strangers to the family we did not like it.... As we came out through the narrow passage from Clifford's Inn ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... culture he should, as far as possible, be master of his subject; and to this end he should bestow upon his discourse careful and even laborious preparation. Without these requisites the orator is apt to prove uninteresting, inconclusive, ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... what appears to be very inconclusive grounds, that the fountain was at Palazzo, six miles from Venusia. But the poem is obviously inspired by a fountain whose babble had often soothed the ear of Horace, long after he had ceased to visit Venusia. On his farm, therefore, let us believe it to exist, whichever ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... said, in a hesitating voice, "I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn fresh-water sailor for a bit," that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow's inconclusive experiences. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... that we are not here entitled to suppose Shakspere a reader of the Senecan tragedies; and even were it otherwise, the passage in question is a figure of speech rather than a reflection on life or a stimulus to such reflection. And the same holds good of the other interesting but inconclusive parallels drawn by Dr. ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... that matter and motion cannot produce consciousness because it is inconceivable that they should, we have seen at some length that this is no conclusive consideration as applied to a subject of a confessedly transcendental nature, and that in the present case it is particularly inconclusive, because, as it is speculatively certain that the substance of mind must be unknowable, it seems a priori probable that, whatever is the cause of the unknowable reality, this cause should be more difficult to render into thought ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... bad?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, you do not know it to be good or bad till the Judge determines it. I have said that you are to state facts fairly; so that your thinking, or what you call knowing, a cause to be bad, must be from reasoning, must be from your supposing your arguments to be weak and inconclusive. But, Sir, that is not enough. An argument which does not convince yourself, may convince the Judge to whom you urge it: and if it does convince him, why, then, Sir, you are wrong, and he is right. It is his business to judge; and you are not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... from the fulcrum has any effect upon the inclination,—though the theory of the lever was as well understood in his own time as it is now. In making an experiment {84} of his own to ascertain the cause of the motion of a windmill, he overlooks an obvious circumstance which makes the experiment inconclusive, and an equally obvious variation of the same experiment which would have shown him that his theory was false. He speaks of the poles of the earth as fixed, in a manner which seems to imply that he was not acquainted ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... intelligent conception of divine action. True, it might be feasible to admit divine agency and yet to deny the possibility of any human power of the same kind,—though that would be a nebulous and at least inconclusive procedure; but if once we are constrained to admit the existence and reality of human guidance and control, superposed upon the physical scheme, we cannot deny the possibility of such power and action to any higher being, ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... As a fact, my experience in those things concerning which you allege its insufficiency has never been presented to you for judgment, and its discussion is therefore entirely irrelevant. If my statements are false, they are false; if my arguments are inconclusive, they are inconclusive: disprove the one and refute the other. But whether this state of things be owing to a want of experience, or inability to use experience aright, or any personal circumstance whatever, is a matter in regard to which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... communication was significant but inconclusive. One Patrick Sheehan, a St. Louis cab driver, dying, had made confession to his priest. For a bribe of two hundred dollars he had aided and abetted the escape of a criminal on a day and date corresponding ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... that belief. If there was a God who guarded us, why should He have allowed the existence of my wife to be sacrificed to the carelessness, and all my hopes to the villainy, of Sir John Bell? The reasoning was inconclusive, perhaps—for who can know the ends of the Divinity?—but it satisfied my mind at the time, and for the rest I have never really troubled ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... I rose from this long and inconclusive interview, "you are taking a very great responsibility and putting yourself in a very false position by not making an absolutely clean breast of all that you know. If I have to call in the aid of the police you will find ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... humiliation, which it appeared to the Samoans so great a thing to offer, to the practical mind of Dr. Stuebel seemed a trifle to receive; and the pressure was continued and increased. Laupepa and Tamasese were both heavy, well-meaning, inconclusive men. Laupepa, educated for the ministry, still bears some marks of it in character and appearance; Tamasese was in private of an amorous and sentimental turn, but no one would have guessed it from his solemn ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... account of the Tartars, or Mongols receiving that name, which is extremely short and inconclusive, is recorded by Matthew Paris, in a letter from Yvo de Narbonne to the archbishop of Bourdeaux, and is here given ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... lines, is weak and inconclusive. Its moral is conventional, while the incident is too far-fetched for sympathy. The series of little poems called "James Lee" is full of beauties, but it is too vague to make a firm impression. We suppose it tells the story of love ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... gravely. "There is some deep intrigue going on round that little woman, and it is our duty to see that no one molests her upon that last journey. I think, Watson, that we must spare time to run down together on Saturday morning, and make sure that this curious and inconclusive ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Testament gives exact information as to the contents of the division in question. Indeed, several books, Canticles, Esther, Ecclesiastes, are unnoticed in the latter. The argument drawn from Matthew xxiii. 35, that the Chronicles were then the last book of the canon, is inconclusive; as the Zechariah there named was probably different from the Zechariah in 2 Chronicles xxiv. None of these witnesses proves that the third canon was ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... brown book from his pocket and said: "Your first thought will be to relate this business to hysteria, and one of Randall's first entries is a reflection along these lines: 'There is much inconclusive literature on the shelves of medical libraries on the subject of hysteria, and many diverse ailments are thrown into that box of explanations.'" Britt looked up. "He's right there, but he goes on to slate the medical profession thus: 'The mind of a child, like any ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... warfare, not based upon powerful squadrons, only upon that particular part of the enemy's strength against which it is theoretically directed,—upon his commerce and general wealth; upon the sinews of war. The evidence seems to show that even for its own special ends such a mode of war is inconclusive, worrying but not deadly; it might almost be said that it causes needless suffering. What, however, is the effect of this policy upon the general ends of the war, to which it is one of the means, and to which it is subsidiary? How, again, does it react upon ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... customs of each town were so highly differentiated that it is quite impossible to say with certitude what the figures may mean. It is usual to take the taxable value of the place to the Crown and to establish a comparison on that basis, but it is perhaps wiser, though almost as inconclusive, to consider each case, and all the elements of it separately, and to attempt, by a co-ordination of the different factors given to arrive ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... condition of things, rather than from an individual faculty. Still, it is remarkable, and even admirable, though in Mr. Purnell's case it is not inconsistent with dealing somewhat prolixly with rather dry subjects, and being immensely inconclusive upon all important matters, and very painfully conclusive on trivial ones. Our essayist says little that is new of Montaigne, and does not add to our knowledge of Steele, Swift, and Sterne, though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... quite as free from doubt on the point as Galton did. The judicial mind, if that be the main qualification for a judge, might be inherited, or it might be the result of training. Such a case, standing alone, is inconclusive. ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... consent to marry, if irregularly declared out of the presence of the church, is at present liable to inquiry and explanation. The most formal written engagement or verbal declaration is of itself inconclusive; it being always competent to inquire, whether it was not interchanged in jest or in error, or for some other purpose than that of constituting marriage; and several cases have occurred where, upon evidence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... degraded in its moral perceptions by a course of personal depravity. This is a consideration of the utmost practical importance; and it will probably appear that many well-intended arguments, respecting the first principles of moral truth, have been inconclusive, in the same manner as were attempts to establish first truths by processes of reasoning,—because the line of argument adopted in regard to them was one of which they are not susceptible. The force of this analogy is in no degree weakened by the fact, that there is, ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... safeguarded. The amendment was barely relevant to the issue, and notwithstanding influential support it was defeated by 58 to 27. Thereupon the "previous question" was moved and carried by 59 to 50. This inconclusive result revealed a great diversity of opinion in the Society, and the Executive Committee, for the first and, so far, the only time, availed itself of the rule which authorised it to submit any question to a postal referendum of all ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... the one territory of the three great Allies not invaded [he says] any insanity of fear be permitted, or any still baser motive of saving private fortune by an inconclusive peace, then the political effect at which the enemy is aiming will indeed have been achieved. These things are contagious. We must root out and destroy the seed of that before it grows more formidable. If we do not, we are deliberately ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... obtain; for if, as usually happens, the end of the container through which the carbide is inserted is exposed to the air, the hand may be placed upon it, and it will be found to be only slightly warm to the touch. Such a test, however, is inconclusive, and frequently misleading, because if more than a pound or two of carbide is present as an undivided mass, and if water is allowed to attack one portion of it, that particular portion may attain a high temperature ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... mind that she could not help herself, but was only the instrument in the hands of a superior power whose will she was fulfilling through the workings of her passion, and to whom her individual fate was a matter of little moment. It was inconclusive reasoning and perilous doctrine, but it must be allowed that the circumstances gave it a colour of truth. And, after all, the border-line between fatalism and free-will has never been quite authoritatively settled, ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... explanation. Why, then, has not supernaturalism died out? Even the religious idea cannot persist without evidence of some kind being offered in its behalf. This evidence may be to a better instructed mind inconclusive or irrelevant, but evidence of some sort there must have been all along, and must still be. Granted that the religious idea began with primitive mankind, granted also that it was based on a mistaken interpretation of natural phenomena, these reasons ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... "for an immediate and categorical answer, not delivered in an oracular style, ambiguous and inconclusive, respecting the armaments in Bohemia, and I demand a positive assurance that the queen will not attack me either during this ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... weakening the tribes from whose adhesion that Vannic Kingdom might derive strength. Both kings marched more than once up to the neighbourhood of the Urmia Lake, and Shalmaneser struck at the heart of Urartu itself three or four times; but with inconclusive success. The Vannic state continued to flourish and its kings—whose names are more European in sound than Asiatic—Lutipris, Sarduris, Menuas, Argistis, Rusas—built themselves strong fortresses which stand to this day about Lake Van, and borrowed a script from their southern foes to engrave ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... and he says that nothing, either by knife or by graver, is of higher quality than these woodcuts. Yet the woodcutter's very name was for a long time doubtful, and even now the particulars which we possess with regard to him are scanty and inconclusive. That he was dead when the Trechsels published the book in 1538, must be inferred from the "Epistre" of Jean de Vauzelles, since that "Epistre" expressly refers to "la mort de celluy, qui nous en a icy imagine ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... the still air with a deep, reverberating note. It was a reassuring and yet solemn sound, as if it alone were responsible for humanity, for all the souls crowded together in the tiny valley, striving for their separate, shaken, inconclusive lives. ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... this evidence of faith, inconclusive as it was in point of law. He was sorry, therefore, to see the Frenchman, after replying shortly, impatiently, to several senseless cross-questions, force his way out of the crowd and disappear, shaking his head and ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... beauty, which can hardly fall to the ground unfruitful. Whether as Father Tyrrell's own, or as assimilated by other minds, they belong, at least, to the free movement of experimental and inductive thought, which, in religion as in science, is ever the victorious movement, however fragmentary and inconclusive it may seem at any given moment to be. Other men—Doctor Figgis, for instance—build up shapely and plausible systems, on given material, which, just because they are plausible and shapely, can have very little to do with truth. It is the seekers, ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... we retained it so for several seconds before he withdrew his leg. These facts, which would probably be explained by mesmerists on the ground of the whole power of sensation being concentrated upon one object, rendered, however, the experiments upon mesmeric attraction inconclusive. Passing over several experiments, such as the mesmerisation of water, showing community of taste, in which, after some hesitation, the patient selected from three or four glasses of water one which had been tasted by the mesmeriser, we come to the most important point, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... abandonment meant little less than a complete revolution in the world of learning. As yet the vast body of those who were specially versed in the subject treated the new theory with derision, while the arguments put forward by Galileo in its defence were so weak and inconclusive that most of them have been long since abandoned. The hostile attitude, too, of the Lutheran divines could hardly fail to exercise some influence on the Roman consultors. In 1615 Galileo appeared before the Inquisition to defend his views, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... of the Soul, Section V. of Part IV., Book I., of the Treatise, in which Hume concludes (I. p. 319) that, whether it be material or immaterial, "in both cases the metaphysical arguments for the immortality of the soul are equally inconclusive; and in both cases the moral arguments and those derived from the analogy of nature are equally strong ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... enthusiasm at the best of times, and the day was singularly dispiriting: a sky of lead and a drizzling rain, which emphasized the squalor of the back yards in view. It was all very depressing. Jeffrey's talk, though inconclusive, had stirred in John's mind an uneasiness which was near to apprehension. He turned and walked about the familiar room, recognizing the well-known furniture, his mother's picture over the mantel, the bookshelves filled with his boyhood's ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... displeased with Becket's action. He promised to send legates to Henry to settle the whole question with him. The occupation of Britanny by which it was brought under Henry's direct control and a short and inconclusive war with the king of France took up the interval until the legates reached Normandy in October, 1167. Their mission proved a failure. Becket, who came in person to the inquiry which they held, refused to accept any compromise or to modify ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... creed; [Pauli, iii. 546.]—which continues ever since the Brandenburg Court-creed, that of the People being mostly Lutheran. Men said, it was to please the Dutch, to please the Julichers, most of whom are Calvinist. Apologetic Pauli is elaborate, but inconclusive. It was very ill taken at Berlin, where even popular riot arose on the matter. In Prussia too it had its drawbacks. [Ib. iii. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... most Army staff officers, always emphasized efficiency and performance to the exclusion of social concerns. While he believed that the limited scope of the experiment with integrated platoons toward the end of the war in Europe made the results inconclusive, Marshall still wanted the platoons' performance considered ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... accordingly, and the two long lines passed each other on opposite tacks three times, cannonading furiously at close range. This meant that the force was distributed evenly along the enemy's line and as against an evenly matched force these tactics could result, as a rule, only in mere inconclusive artillery duels which each side would claim as victories. In the battle of Lowestoft, however, several of the captains in the Dutch center flinched at the third passing and bore up to leeward, leaving ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Hawthorne better than his books,—the latter were too weird, uncanny, and inconclusive. In 1838 he noted in his journal, "Elizabeth Peabody brought me yesterday Hawthorne's 'Footprints on the Seashore' to read. I complained there was no inside to it. Alcott and he ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... seen and studied peasant property in many stages. I would again remark that any comparison between the condition of the English agricultural labourer and the French peasant proprietor is irrelevant and inconclusive. In the cottage of a small owner at Osse, for instance, we may discover features to shock us, often a total absence of the neatness and veneer of the Sussex ploughman's home. Our disgust is trifling compared with that of the humblest, most hard-working ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Grellmann's Theory is thought slightly of, the similarity of language being deemed but inconclusive evidence; yet in this instance, and even in opposition to such authority, I will venture to consider it, as forming a basis of the most substantial kind. It is not the accidental coincidence of a few words, but the whole vocabulary he produces, differs not so much ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... even spiral. He could almost fancy he saw them slowly revolving as in some cyclic dance, but this, again, was but a last delusion of dreamland, for a few seconds later he was again asleep. In dreams he toiled through a tangle of inconclusive tales, each filled with the same stress and noise of sea and sea wind; and above and outside all other voices the wailing of the Trees ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... This is a most inconclusive mode of expression, perhaps meaning Dutch florins, and if ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Tom's turn to start now, for his uncle had immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was his doing, and his words in answer sounded lame and inconclusive. ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... debates in the Senate are hasty, feeble, inconclusive and unsatisfactory; presumptuous on the part of the ill-tempered South; feeble and frivolous on the part of the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... I think, lies in not keeping clearly in view—what both certainly perfectly understand—the difference between the guerre-de-course, which is inconclusive, and commerce-destroying (or commerce prevention) through strategic control of the sea by powerful navies. Some nations more than others, but all maritime nations more or less, depend for their prosperity ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... his scientific men were busy arguing that there could be no God, Bonaparte, looking up to the stars, confuted them decisively by saying: 'Very ingenious, Messieurs; but who made all that?' Surely the most inconclusive answer since coxcombs vanquished Berkeley with a grin. It is, however, a type of Mr. Carlyle's faith in the instinct of nature, as superseding the necessity for patient logical method; a faith, in other words, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... men were disheartened and apprehensive of the future, while the Americans were exultant and confident of victory. In such circumstances, on September 19, 1777, was fought the first battle of Bemis Heights, a bloody and inconclusive struggle, supported wholly by the division of Benedict Arnold, who behaved so gallantly that Gates, who had not even ridden on the field of battle, was consumed with jealousy, took Arnold's division away from him, and did not mention him in the dispatches describing ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... scheme subversive of public liberty, invest parish and petty officers of the peace with exorbitant powers, and cost the nation about fifty thousand pounds a-year to carry the scheme into execution. These arguments, which, we apprehend, are extremely frivolous and inconclusive, had great weight with a considerable number who joined in the opposition, while the ministry stood neutral. Nevertheless, after having undergone some amendments, it was conveyed to the lords, by whom it was, at the second reading, thrown out as a scheme of very dangerous ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... when, earlier in the day, he had pawned the last of his keepsakes for the money to buy the revolver. But he had yet to learn that there is no supreme crisis in the human span, save that which ends it; that all the wayfaring duels with fate are inconclusive; conflicts critical enough at the moment, but lacking finality, and likely to be renewed indefinitely if one ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Leary at the end of a third inconclusive hand-to-hand struggle with only a few battered heads ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... evidence is, as usual, inconclusive. The word barbaroi is absent from both poems, an absence which must be intentional on the part of the later reciters, but may well come from the original sources. The compound barbarophonoi occurs in B 867, but who knows the date ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... a duel may be effective if the wrong man does (p. 184) not happen to get shot; but as evidence for intelligent men a bloodier ending than this would have been inconclusive. It so happened, however, that Jackson, altogether contrary to his own purpose, brought conclusive aid to President Adams and Secretary Clay. Whether the General ever had any real faith in the charge can only be surmised. Not improbably he did, for ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... mode of escape from such testimony. This whole train of argument is inconclusive, it may be asserted, because what is maintained is not that intellectual culture is unhealthful, where it is woven into the web of active life, but only where the pursuit of knowledge is one's business. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... a puft and reckless libertine] [W: Whilest he] The emendation is not amiss, but the reason for it is very inconclusive; we use the same mode of speaking on many occasions. When I say of one, he squanders like a spendthrift, of another, he robbed me like a thief, the phrase produces no ambiguity; it is understood that the one is a spendthrift, and the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... how glad they were to see her again. At length, when we were all assembled, Jane rose and said that it was time to begin. She began by saying that we had now asked questions for over five years, and that though the results were bound to be inconclusive—here Castalia nudged me and whispered that she was not so sure about that. Then she got up, and, interrupting Jane in the middle of a ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... mentioning his refusal to listen to the urgent reasons why he should hold Lookout Mountain to protect his supply line. "Rosecrans," he said, "who is sometimes as obstinate and inaccessible to reason as at others he is irresolute, vacillating, and inconclusive, rejected all their arguments, and the mountain was given up." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxx. pt. i. p. 215.] Picturing the starvation of the horses and mules and the danger of it for the soldiers, he added: "In the midst of this the commanding general devotes that ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... away, always away from home, from the past, to that great, raw America. He seemed scarcely like a person with individual choice, more like a creature under the influence of fate which was disintegrating the old life and precipitating him, a fragment inconclusive, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... penned it themselves for the signature of the faculty advisor. It discussed the pros and cons of away-from-home schooling and went on at great length to discuss the attitude of children and their upbringing amid strange surroundings. It invited a long and inconclusive correspondence—just what James wanted. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... during the meal, when the servants happened to be out of the room, we continued, snippet-wise, the inconclusive conversation. Like a good sister Agatha had come to cheer a lonely and much abused man; like a daughter of Eve she had also come to find out as ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the delicate and often-times suggestible nature of the trance; and how inconclusive, to say the least, are such experiments as those of Drs. ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... been shot without effect, and the year 1607 found both sides, through sheer lack of funds, unable to enter upon a fresh campaign on land with any hope of definite success. But though the military campaigns had been so inconclusive, it had been far different with the fortunes of maritime warfare in these opening years of the seventeenth century. The sea-power of the Dutch republic was already a formidable factor which had to be reckoned with and which was destined to ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... gave his fatal evidence, and the support given to his conclusions by distinguished testimony told strongly in favour of the absolute trustworthiness of his statements. The evidence called to prove that the murdered man had been seen alive late on Friday afternoon was highly inconclusive. ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... Government. A welcome exception was Mr. HOPKINSON, who boldly blamed the short-sighted selfishness of some of his own class. Employes would not work their hardest to "make the boss a millionaire." As a fitting finale to an inconclusive debate the PRIME MINISTER announced that in order to force a settlement of the coal-strike the railwaymen—Mr. THOMAS, apparently, dissenting—had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... told of the swift rush upon New York of the first German air-fleet and of the wild, inevitable orgy of inconclusive destruction that ensued. Behind it a second air-fleet was already swelling at its gasometers when England and France and Spain and Italy showed their hands. None of these countries had prepared for aeronautic warfare on the magnificent scale of the Germans, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... amateur performances were from involuntary muscular action—but what then? These are only imitations of actual phenomena. Faraday's letter does not meet the common fact of tables being moved and lifted without the touch of a finger. It is a most arrogant letter and singularly inconclusive. Tell me any facts you may hear. Mr. Kinney, the American Minister at the Court of Turin, had arrived at Florence a few days before we quitted it, and he and his wife helped us to spend our last ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... in point of literary style almost at his worst; and in some cases incoherent (e.g. p. 185, middle). The chapters on the Anatomy and Physiology, on the Source, on the Order and Dates of Appearance and Disappearance, and on the Value and Use of Original Tendencies seem to the reviewer inconclusive and uninspired. There are shrewd and interesting remarks here and there, particularly those of a destructive intent, which the older reader will appreciate; while on the whole he will wonder whether the ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... in the miraculous, nor do we run from a dilemma to the refuges of religion. Apart from our theological belief in the potency of the Creator and Controller of all worlds, we simply regard it as illogical and inconclusive to argue that because organization, life, and intelligence obtain within one sphere under one order of circumstances, therefore the same order obtains in every other sphere throughout the system to which that one belongs. The unity of nature is as clear to us as the unity of God; but unity ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... renegado are spelt Armatho and renegatho in the Folio. Of course they were, (just as the Italian Petruccio and Boraccio are spelt Petruchio and Borachio,) because, being Spanish words, they were so pronounced. His argument from the frequent substitution of had for hath is equally inconclusive, because we may either suppose it a misprint, or, as is possible, a mistake of the printer for the Anglo-Saxon sign for th, which, as many contractions certainly did, may have survived in writing long after it was banished from print, and which would be easily ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... their objection, must deny the position that the dramatic art holds up the mirror to Nature, and that if they deny it, the burden—a burden never yet successfully taken up by any one—of framing a new definition rests upon them. But this is only a partial and somewhat inconclusive argument, and the person who genuinely dislikes these peculiarities of Shakespere is like a man who genuinely dislikes wine or pictures or human faces, that seem delightful and beautiful to others. I am not aware of any method whereby I can prove that the most perfect claret ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... of the herring or the sea-ways of the salmon. And zoologists are altogether at a loss to account for its sudden appearance on our coast. Possibly it was the stress of a hunger migration that drove it hither out of the deep. But it will be, perhaps, better to avoid necessarily inconclusive discussion, and to proceed at once ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... their silk hats cruelly against the deck beams. I attended them personally, and I can vouch for it that the interest they took in things was intelligent enough, though, obviously, they had never seen anything of the sort before. Their faces as they went ashore wore a cheerfully inconclusive expression. Notwithstanding that this inspecting ceremony was supposed to be a preliminary to immediate sailing, it was then, as they filed down our gangway, that I received the inward monition that no sailing within the meaning of our charter ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... should realise that poetry, music, and pictures are personal things; that what they are worth to us is their sole measure of value. And here it must be mentioned that Mr. Balfour puts forth two hints which are inconclusive enough, but which do dimly suggest a truer way of escape than that to which his argument leads. He notes, first of all, that art is disinterested; that it is not a means, but an end in itself. And, secondly, we feel towards ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... society. In order, therefore, to make out something like an argument, it was necessary that they should express themselves as they have done; and this argument, even supposing things actually were as it seems to presume them to be, turns out to be a very inconclusive one. ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... spent so much time in writing fiction. Books like the Life of Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle's Letters take the wind out of one's imaginative faculties altogether, because one is confronted with the real stuff of life in them. Life, that hard, stubborn, inconclusive, inconsistent, terrible thing! It is, of course, that very hardness and inconclusiveness that makes one turn to fiction. In fiction, one can round off the corners, repair mistakes, comfort, idealise, smooth things down, make error ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... The inconclusive conclusion is unpopular. There is a strong craving in the public to have plays nicely rounded off, and this is a serious obstacle to writers who seek to represent real life, which seems to have a sort of prejudice against rounding-off human affairs neatly. In a vast number of cases the great ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... been thrown upon this subject recently by the dissertation of Weissman, De servi currentis persona apud comicos Romanes (Giessen, 1911), though his explanation of the modus operandi is inconclusive. Langen has commented on it at some length,[125] but offers no solution. Weise frankly admits:[126] "Wie sie gelaufen sind, ist ein Raetsel fur uns." LeGrand[127] follows Weise's conclusion that it ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... precedent. If you are convinced by the word of our Lord d'Hymbercourt and myself that he is of birth and station worthy to engage with you in knightly and mortal combat, you can ask no more. Few courts of chivalry, I take it, would hold the evidence inconclusive. Take up or leave the gage, Sir Count, and do one ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... his work in this or in that field are almost always men who have themselves worked in some other field and have an imperfect acquaintance with the particular field that they happen to be praising. The metaphysician finds the reasonings of the "First Principles" rather loose and inconclusive; the biologist pays little heed to the "Principles of Biology"; the sociologist finds Spencer not particularly accurate or careful in the field of his predilection. He has tried to be a professor of all the sciences, and it is too late in the world's history for him or for any man to cope ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... the strike began, a committee from the union met with a committee of townsmen and representatives of the smelter interests. The argument was long and inconclusive. Aside from this, a special committee of townsmen, headed by the mayor, interviewed the ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... C: To show how very weak and inconclusive the arguments of Chatterton's new Editor are on this head, Ishall cite but one passage, from which the reader may form a judgment of all the other illustrations with which he has ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... thought the original charter unwisely granted, and the bank, in point of policy and expediency, objectionable or mischievous, and in that view only had suggested the reasons now urged by him, his argument, however inconclusive, would have been intelligible, and not, in its whole frame and scope, inconsistent with all well-established first principles. His rejection of the bill, in that case, would have been, no doubt, an extraordinary ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... him, what punishment do you think will God the Father inflict on those who refuse His Son Jesus the titles due to Him?" The persons I just now mentioned declare that the holy bishop took a very wrong step, that his argument was inconclusive, and that the emperor should have answered him thus: "Know that there are two ways by which men may be wanting in respect to me—first, in not doing honour sufficient to my son; and, secondly, in paying him the same ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... history of the ghost whose address to Curtius Rufus is recorded by Tacitus, to the wonderful story told by Renatus Luderitz in 1837. Such efforts are worse than vain. Their data are so explicable in many cases, and so inconclusive in all, that they quite naturally provoke deeper disbelief and produce telling retorts. While here and there a credulous person is convinced of a future life by the asserted appearance of a spirit, the well informed psychologist refers ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... because nobody cared by so much as a hempen rope for the life or death of Little Tobrah. The assessors in the red court-house sat upon him all through the long hot afternoon, and whenever they asked him a question he salaamed and whined. Their verdict was that the evidence was inconclusive, and the Judge concurred. It was true that the dead body of Little Tobrah's sister had been found at the bottom of the well, and Little Tobrah was the only human being within a half mile radius at the time; but the child might have fallen in by ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... Crawshay explained, with studied laboriousness,—"my friends and I acted, that is to say—upon inconclusive information. America at that time, you see, was a neutral Power, and the facilities granted us by the New York police were limited in their character. My department was thoroughly convinced that the—er—restaurant of which your father was the proprietor ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... woman question; in the one case, his theme is the attitude of society toward the woman of blemished reputation; in the other, its attitude toward the man who in his relation with women has violated the moral law. "Leonarda" is a somewhat inconclusive work, because the issue is not clearly defined, but in "A Glove" (at least in the acting version of the play, which differs from the book in its ending) there is no lack of definiteness. This play inexorably ...
— Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson • William Morton Payne
... best things that happen to us are those we get out of what has already happened. If men were honest with themselves, they would agree that actual social engagements, even with those they love, often seem strangely brief, breathless, thwarted or inconclusive. Mere society is a way of turning friends into acquaintances. The real profit is not in meeting our friends, but in having met them. Now when people merely plunge from crush to crush, and from crowd to crowd, they never discover the positive joy of life. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... declared Wolsey to be the son of a butcher. He is said to have tried various trades, among others those of man-at-arms in the mercenary troop of an Italian nobleman, wool-merchant and usurer at Antwerp, usurer and petty attorney in England. On all these points the evidence is scanty and inconclusive. About 1520, he found his way into Wolsey's entourage, and was a member of the 1523 parliament. Wolsey found him an apt man of business, and entrusted him with a good deal of the financial management of his educational schemes; in the course of ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Marlborough and went on in the afternoon to Silbury Hill, that British pyramid, the largest artificial mound in Europe. They left the car by the roadside and clambered to the top and were very learned and inconclusive about the exact purpose of this vast heap of chalk and earth, this heap that men had made before the temples at Karnak were built or Babylon had ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... in the battle with Fate was inconclusive. Oscar Wilde had managed to get known and talked about and had kept his head above water for a couple of years while learning something about life and more about himself. On the other hand he had spent almost all his patrimony, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... simplest of meals—and during a stroll afterwards, is thrilling indeed to us newcomers. "The coming summer's campaign must decide the issue of the war—though it may not see the end of it." "The issue of the war"—and the fate of Europe! "An inconclusive peace would be a victory for Germany." There is no doubt here as to the final issue; but there is a resolute refusal to fix dates, or prophesy details. "Man for man we are now the better army. Our strength is increasing month by month, while that of Germany is failing. ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
