"Insuperable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... second and nobler use of them, it will be necessary to bestow on them a very different kind of study from any that we have naturally thought it worth while to spend on them, so long as we regarded them as works of pastime merely; and especially while that insuperable obstacle to any adequate examination of them, which the received history of the works themselves created, was still operating on the criticism. The truths which these Parabolic and Allusive Poems wrap up and conceal, have been safely concealed hitherto, because they are not those common-place truths ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... be remembered that in Collins' office, the lawyer's talk about his "wife" had almost decided him to throw down his cards and quit. This shadowy wife, first mentioned by the bird woman, had, in fact, been the one vaguely felt insuperable obstacle in the way of his grand determination to make good where Rochester had failed, to fight Rochester's battles, to be the Earl of Rochester permanently maybe, or, failing that, to retire and vanish back to the ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... William in November 1888 announced that he would further the work begun by his grandfather, and though the difficulties of insurance for old age were very great, yet, with God's help, they would prove not to be insuperable. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Her absently set face had a bewildered scowl as if at some dimly comprehended opposition. Carroll surveyed her with a sort of irritated wonder. No mathematical problem could present for him difficulties as insuperable as this other human being, who, in a similar stress to his own, would think of beer instead of chloroform, and of sleep instead of death—indeed, for whom a similar stress could not exist, so cushioned ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... labor, unless the means of production were at the same time secured to him. To fortify the weak against the invasion of the strong, to suppress spoliation and fraud, the necessity was felt of establishing between possessors permanent lines of division, insuperable obstacles. Every year saw the people multiply, and the cupidity of the husbandman increase: it was thought best to put a bridle on ambition by setting boundaries which ambition would in vain attempt to overstep. Thus the soil came to be appropriated ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... volume of the Law Reports contains a case which, though his name does not appear in it, attests his appreciated superiority. It involved a legal point of much difficulty, and so troublesome in its facts as to have presented insuperable obstacles to two gentlemen successively, one under the bar, the other at the bar, and both eminent for their knowledge and experience. Their pleadings were, however, successfully demurred to; and then their client was induced to lay the case before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... public schools, and many other things new to the country; and they were the sort of people who had a right to have them. The problem of defence was always a vexed one with the inadequate military forces at hand and the insuperable difficulties concerning the militia. The British still held the Western forts pending the settlement of the frontier and the execution of the treaty of peace in full. This naturally annoyed the American ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... one of the most eminent of living British statesmen gave it as his opinion that the war had lasted two years too long, and that the task of salvaging an enduring peace from the wreck had become well-nigh insuperable. It will always be one of the fascinating riddles of history to guess what the result would have been if Mr. Wilson's final proposals for mediation had been accepted. The United States would not have entered ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan
... "He lies," he broke out, "I cheated him three times." He was faithful to one principle only, self-aggrandisement by fair means or foul. His favourite scheme was a kingdom in Northern Italy; but in the way of its realisation his own overreaching ambition placed an insuperable bar. Italy had been excluded from his truce with France to leave him free to pursue that design;[118] but in July, 1512, the (p. 061) Italians already suspected his motives, and a papal legate declared that they no more wished to see Milan Spanish than French.[119] ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... flowers turn inside-out and shrink to minute proportions. Dr. Whinney attempted in vain to transplant specimens of this fragile creation to our old-world botanical gardens but found the conditions of modern plant life an insuperable barrier. The seeds of wild modesty absolutely refuse to germinate in either ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... Oldenburg. No similar escape was now possible for the younger one: but, after leaving Napoleon's request unanswered until February 4th, the reply was then despatched that the tender age of the princess, she being only twenty years old, formed an insuperable obstacle. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... and harum-scarumness. The wild life of the streets has perhaps as unforgetable a charm, to those who have once thoroughly imbibed it, as the life of the forest or the prairie. But I conceive rather that there must be insuperable difficulties, for the majority of the poor, in the way of getting admittance to the almshouse, than that a merely aesthetic preference for the street would incline the pauper-class to fare scantily and precariously, and expose their raggedness to the rain and snow, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of appearances. Thus the meaning can never be completely molded into the expression, and, notwithstanding all the aspiration and effort, the incongruity between the spiritual idea and the sensuous form remains insuperable. This is, then, the first form of art-symbolic art with its endless quest, its inner struggle, its sphinx-like ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... of heat or cold, are perhaps, in a moral view, equally unfavourable to the active genius of mankind, and by presenting alike insuperable difficulties to be overcome, or strong inducements to indolence and sloth, equally prevent the first applications of ingenuity, or limit their progress. Some intermediate degrees of inconvenience in the situation, at once excite the spirit, and, with the hopes of success, encourage ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... from these apprehensions. Others say, that, "having committed the Prince to prison in his younger days, he was afraid that, on the sceptre of justice falling into his hands, that royal culprit would take a too severe revenge thereof; and this filled him with such insuperable melancholy, that he was driven to the desperate act of self-murder." But his appointment to succeed Gascoyne as Chief Justice of the King's Bench, March 29, 1413, must have conquered that melancholy; ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... princes and towns, which henceforth was to give the name to all anti-Catholics together (19 April 1529). And not only between Catholics and Protestants in the Empire did the rupture become complete. Even before the end of that year the question of the Lord's supper proved an insuperable stumbling-block in the way of a real union of Zwinglians and Lutherans. Luther parted from Zwingli at the colloquy of Marburg with the words, 'Your spirit ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Frederick William of Brandenburg. From the very beginning of his reign Frederick III. was resolved upon a rupture at the first convenient opportunity, while the nation was, if possible, even more bellicose than the king. The apparently insuperable difficulties of Sweden in Poland was the feather that turned the scale; on the 1st of June 1657, Frederick III. signed the manifesto justifying a war which was never formally declared and brought Denmark to the very verge of ruin. The extraordinary ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... am inclined to agree with you," said Denzil, and barrister and detective departed, each convinced that the Vrain case was ended, and that in the face of the insuperable obstacles presented by it there was not the slightest chance of avenging the murder of the unfortunate man. The reading of the mystery was beyond ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... and often of obscene action, among boys; and it is in explaining these, without violating those instincts of reserve and modesty with which nature herself surrounds the whole subject, that what often seems an insuperable difficulty arises. Yet these functions are, and must be, the very shrine of a body which is a temple of the Lord and Giver of life; and on the face of things, therefore, there must be some method of conveying pure knowledge to the opening mind with regard to them. The difficulty must be with ourselves, ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... newspapers, as well as by your letter, that the difficulties still exist about your ceremonial at Ratisbon; should they, from pride and folly, prove insuperable, and obstruct your real business, there is one expedient which may perhaps remove difficulties, and which I have often known practiced; but which I believe our people know here nothing of; it is, to have the character of MINISTER only in your ostensible ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... as on the one side none of the two coalitions is likely to be in a visible time as much the victor over the other that it can dictate it its own terms, and as on the other side there is no common basis to be seen for a sensible compromise. It is not the extravagance of demands that forms an insuperable barrier for peace. Extravagant terms of peace have indeed been formulated by unauthorised persons or groups but they have nowhere received the sanctioning stamp of the responsible governments. The latter prefer rather to shine by the moderation of ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... idea of the impression this mighty wall of ice makes on the observer who is confronted with it for the first time. It is altogether a thing which can hardly be described; but one can understand very well that this wall of 100 feet in height was regarded for a generation as an insuperable obstacle to ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... Moses said, Not so, Lord: Forgive now this people their sin; or if thou wilt not, blot me also out of the book of the living. O admirable charity! O insuperable perfection! The servant speaks freely to his Lord: He beseeches him either to forgive the people, or to destroy ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... phosphorus; that genius, from Prometheus to Jesus, brought down no divine spark from heaven; that the moral law, free-will, merit, and the consequent progress of the Ego, are illusions; that events are successively our masters,—inexorable, irresponsible, and insuperable to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... feelings, but he must know whether her refusal was based solely on her view of his supposed interests. And with the true delicacy of frankness she admits that even the sense of her own unworthiness is not the insuperable obstacle. No—but is she not a confirmed invalid? She thought that she had done living when he came and sought her out. If he would be wise, all these thoughts of her must be abandoned. Such an answer brought a great calm to Browning's heart; he did not desire ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... I had not accepted the command, there would have been insuperable difficulties" (arising from provincial jealousies).—Nicholson to ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... to be a transcript into modern German of the language of Nuremberg in the fifteenth century, I have made no attempt to imitate English phraseology of the same date. The difficulty would in fact be insuperable to the writer and the annoyance to the reader almost ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of another grievance under which the Romans groan. The few articles that are landed on their coast have to encounter tedious and almost insuperable delays before they can find their way to the capital. This is owing to the wretched state of the communication, which is kept purposely wretched in order to isolate Rome and the Romans from the rest of the world. That Church likes to sit apart ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... course for these parts, which they were at first inclined to consider "one of the most pleasant, most healthful, and most fruitful parts of the world," longer acquaintance and better information abundantly satisfied them of the insuperable obstacles to agriculture ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... freshness. Now, when men say repiningly, and in a temper which impeaches alike society and providence, that a lowly lot, with its necessary privations and its consequent ignorance, is a barrier, perpetual and insuperable, against usefulness and happiness and honor, we turn to the name and memory of Bunyan as an embodied denial of the impeachment, and as carolling forth their cheerful rebuke of such unmanly and ungodly ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... insuperable, darling," Temple said. "If the younger generations start weakening we'll fix the Omans. I wouldn't want to wipe them ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... by a supine and a divided people, himself clothed with no authority compelling subordination, and, with the exception of his brother Louis (who was slain at the battle of Mookerheyde), without a single captain of generous military capacity,—with such odds, seemingly insuperable, William of Orange met the chief captains of his generation, and made head against them, creeping forward, as the tides do, till they own the shore. When these facts are co-ordinated, his achievements become phenomenal. His resiliency was tremendous. In some significant regards, his military ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... 'but I did not expect that you would have thus returned any service I may have rendered you. I have been wrong, I confess, to permit the intimacy which has existed between you and all the members of my family; but I tell you at once that I have an insuperable objection to any one of my daughters marrying a man whose family is unknown to me. For yourself I shall always entertain the truest regard, and I must beg you to receive this answer as final. Though Mrs Leslie and I shall regret the loss of your society, you will see that, under the ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... band. It was Cardillac alone who, active in wickedness, sought for his victims and found them throughout the entire city. And it was because he acted alone that he was enabled to carry on his operations with so much security, and from the same cause arose the insuperable difficulty of getting a clue to the murderer. But let me go on with my story; the sequel will explain to you the secrets of the most atrocious but at the same time of the most unfortunate ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... it was founded. We find so little change in our souls by our devotions, because we neglect the practice of self-denial and mortification, live wedded to the world, and slaves to our senses and to self-love, which is an insuperable obstacle to this principal effect of holy prayer. Cuthman, after the death of his father, employed his whole fortune and all that he gained by the labor of his hands, in supporting his decrepit mother: and afterwards was not ashamed to beg for her subsistence. To furnish ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... feeling of being accountable for the discovery which had changed his prospects. They would have done anything for him that they could, but all Lord Kirkaldy's interest was at the foreign office, or with his fellow-diplomates, and here he soon found an insuperable bar. Mark's education had stood still from the time of Miss Headworth's flight till his father's second marriage, his energies having been solely devoted to struggles with the grim varieties of governess ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shadows cast by bone are, at least at present, an insuperable obstacle to skiagraphing the soft translucent organs of the body which are enclosed within a more or less complete bony case, as the rays will be intercepted by the bones. Efforts, therefore, to skiagraph the heart, the lungs, the liver, and stomach, and all the pelvic organs, probably will be fruitless ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... was our way, and the country would have to be difficult indeed to stop our getting on to the plateau. Our plan was to go south, and not to leave the meridian unless we were forced to do so by insuperable difficulties. I foresaw, of course, that there would be some who would attack me and accuse me of "shabby rivalry," etc., and they would perhaps have had some shadow of justification if we had really thought of taking Captain Scott's route. But it never occurred to us for ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... convince a jury of the defendant's guilt. Even though a person's guilt be apparent to all, the difficulties in shattering the protecting wall which the law erects around every accused man or woman, are frequently insuperable. Evidence which convinces the police or the prosecuting attorney of the defendant's culpability is as likely as not to be found incompetent in court and barred from the record. The result is a verdict of acquittal and all the work of the police ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... about it immediately; but, I confess, that if the thing had been urged upon me by almost any other person, I should not have done it. 'Well, then,' said I, 'William, we will give your little corn a trial, for it is not too late yet.' But now a difficulty that appeared to be insuperable arose; namely, that the seed was all gone! The seed was all planted in Sussex. As soon as I reflected on this, I became really eager to make the experiment; so true it is, that we seldom know the full value of what ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... to work with zeal to study anew, and I considered myself bound in honor not to make farther advances with the daughter until I should feel satisfied with my proficiency with the law. It was all in vain. I had an insuperable repugnance to the study; my mind would not take hold of it; or rather, by long despondency had become for the time incapable of any application. I was in a wretched state of doubt and self-distrust. I tried to finish the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... the facts bear witness that there were grave imperfections in our work. After a heroic battle, fought under insuperable difficulties, and when there was every promise of still more brilliant triumphs, the cause went into an eclipse, from which it emerged only after many years ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... more violent and abrupt than would answer to a steady pressure resulting from overpopulation, and too extensive for mere warlike incitement; they answer more completely to the experience of some irresistible necessity arising from an insuperable physical cause, which could drive in hopeless despair from their homes the young and the old, the vigorous and feeble, with their cattle, and waggons, and flocks. Such a cause is the shifting of the soil and disturbance ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... The difficulty seemed insuperable—at least where you were dealing with Tristrams. Mina could not but acknowledge that. For Harry, having nothing to give, would take nothing. And Cecily, having much, was thereby debarred from giving anything. And if that miracle ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... been imported. Here, the planters are now urged to adopt for themselves measures of a similar kind. The whole course of proceeding in the two countries in reference to the negro having been so widely different, there are, however, difficulties in the way that seem to be almost insuperable. The power to purchase the slaves of the British colonies was a consequence of the fact that their numbers had not been permitted to increase. The difficulty of purchasing them here is great, because of their having been well fed, well clothed, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... remainder of the day, felt, as may be imagined, but little at his ease; for—to say nothing of his insuperable repugnance to the discharge of any of his former duties—his uneasiness under the oppressive civilities of Mr. Tag-rag; and the evident disgust towards him entertained by his companions; many most important considerations ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... necessary to produce effect; and at the same time, to avoid that exaggerated representation of passion which represses the very emotions it is intended to excite. The means by which the genius of this great actor has accomplished so important an effect, and overcome the difficulties which seem insuperable to the rest of his countrymen, afford the best illustration that can be given of the talents and imagination he displays. Talma appears to have thought, and most justly, that the only manner in which the French tragedies can approach and interest the heart, is by ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... been made by Mr. T.R. Crampton, by Messrs. Whelpley and Storer, and by Mr. G.K. Stephenson; but a difficulty has presented itself which seems at present to be insuperable, that the slag fluxes the walls of the furnace, and at that high temperature destroys them. If it be feasible to keep the flame out of contact with solid surfaces, however, perhaps even this difficulty can ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... Nevill, second son of the Earl of Westmoreland and Countess Joane, twenty-five years at the lowest computation; or, if we take the date which they assign for the death of Lord Ferrers of Wemme, forty years older than her husband,—a difference this, which, although perhaps it might not prove an insuperable impediment to marriage where the lady was a great heiress, would undoubtedly put a bar on all hopes of issue: whereas it stands on record that they ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... like Canada, to steady and industrious men like the young Morrisons, the impediments were not insuperable, nor, indeed, did they take ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... the most unimaginable happiness, of a kind which would perhaps have hardly satisfied his more modern instincts. She saw a maiden of indescribable beauty, brought up in unapproachable perfections, guarded by the all but insuperable jealousy of an ideal home. Orsino was to love this vision, and none other, from the first meeting to the term of his natural life, and was to win her in the face or difficulties such as would have made even Giovanni, the incomparable, look grave. This ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... and wars, and become splendid in the eyes of all mankind; sometimes, as in this case, they have only deserved to succeed, and to be splendid in the eyes of judges. How get these masses of enemies lured away, so that you could try such a thing? There lay the difficulty; insuperable altogether, except by the most fine and appropriate treatment. Of a truth, it required a connected series of the wisest measures and most secret artifices of war;—and withal, that you should throw over them such a veil as would lead your enemy to see in them ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... it, would have rejoiced to do it. But I found it otherwise, and this frequently to my sorrow. There was an aversion in persons to appear before such a tribunal as they conceived the privy council to be. With men of shy or timid character this operated as an insuperable barrier in their way. But it operated more or less upon all. It was surprising to see what little circumstances affected many. When I took out my pen and ink to put down the information, which a person was giving me, he became evidently ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... not very particular whether the blood is human or not. In Shoka land especially, branches with thorns and small flying prayers are placed on each road to prevent their immediate return. These are said to be insuperable barriers to the ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... 1606, but without any result. Early in 1607 however the efforts were renewed, and negotiations were actively set on foot for the purpose of concluding a peace or a truce for a term of twelve, fifteen or twenty years. There were, however, almost insuperable difficulties in the way. In the first place the stadholders, the military and naval leaders, the Calvinist clergy, and the great majority of the traders honestly believed that a peace would be detrimental to all the ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... add, Hatteras," he said, "that we ought not to lose an instant; we ought to load the sledge with all our provisions, and take as much wood as possible. A journey of six hundred miles under such circumstances is long, I confess, but not insuperable; we can, or rather we ought, to make twenty miles a day, which would bring us to the coast in a month, that is to say, ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... should not be any insuperable objection to it on your part, I will do myself the pleasure of being in your arms the first week in August, that I may be some time with you before I take my departure ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... of the whole matter is simple enough, and the necessary measures to be taken to remedy it are no less simple—barring sentimental objections which will probably prove insuperable. A monarchy, even a sufficiently inane monarchy, carries the burden of a gentlemanly governmental establishment—a government by and for the kept classes; such a government will unavoidably direct the affairs of state with a view to income on invested ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... connecting that point with Bosna Serai, branch roads might soon be made throughout the province. The nature of the country is not such as would render the difficulty of doing this insuperable, and the rivers over which it would pass are already spanned by good and serviceable bridges, the relics of better days. That the expense attending it would soon be defrayed by the increased traffic is acknowledged by all, and we may ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... it was easy to discern the influence of the queen. In addition to her original causes of aversion to Carlos, she regarded him with hatred as the insuperable obstacle to her own child Ferdinand's advancement. Even the affection of John seemed to be now wholly transferred from the offspring of his first to that of his second marriage; and, as the queen's ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... he felt the old man's eyes upon him, and did not relish the implication. "Still, I fancy the same difficulty would be met with anywhere else, and that encourages me to ask if you would have any insuperable ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... account of the bringing home of Weber's remains to Dresden from London has a perennial interest. We know how Wagner idolized his mighty predecessor, and can imagine the ardour with which he threw himself into this work. Seemingly insuperable obstacles, most of them placed in the way through the native stupidity and perversity of German and English officialdom, had to be overridden, and Wagner triumphed. The speech delivered on the occasion of the re-interment is characteristic—exceptionally so even for ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... would then refuse to take it. For the other point, I must tell you, my dear child, fairly, that in goodness to the poor boy, I hope you will give it up. He is to make his fortune in your way of life, if he can be so lucky, It will be an insuperable obstacle to him that he is with you in the light of a menial servant. When you reflect that his fortune may depend upon it, I am sure you will free him from this servitude, Your brother and I, you know, from the very first, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... people have never taken fear for a counselor. They have never taken doubt for a guide. They have obeyed the impulses of their blood. They have hearkened to the voice of our God. They have surmounted insuperable obstacles on the wings of a mighty faith; they have solved insoluble problems by the sovereign rule of liberty; they have made the bosom of the ocean and the heart of the wilderness their home; they have subdued nature and told history a new tale. Let American statesmanship listen ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... slave trade some such arrangement might be made as that of mixed tribunals for the trial of slave-trading vessels, and alleged that divers European powers were uniting for this purpose, Mr. Adams suggested, as an insuperable obstacle, "the general extra-European policy of the United States—a policy which they had always pursued as best suited to their own interests, and best adapted to harmonize with those of Europe. This ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Spanish possessions and those of the other maritime powers became more marked as time went on. The insuperable conservatism of the home government gave little opportunity for the development of a class of energetic and progressive colonial officials, and financial corruption honeycombed the whole colonial ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... by land between the two cities, by such primitive means of travel as are now available, and (secondly) to minutely observe the natural characteristics of the countries passed through, in order to ascertain whether these offer any insuperable obstacle to the construction ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... desirable companion combines quick feelings, with a serene, self-possessed temper. Spare no efforts in ascertaining how near the individual who addresses you approaches this ideal. An utter failure, should present, in your view, an insuperable obstacle to a connection with him ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... sufficient to prevent anything like the sculpture of the Greeks; and the doctrine of the resurrection of the body in the early Christian church, and the teaching that man was made in the image of God, formed an almost insuperable obstacle to the study of ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... once he was married his father would "come round." His father always did come round. But the more he thought of it, the more impossible it seemed to him that he should ask his father's consent at the present moment. Lady Mabel's presence in the house was an insuperable obstacle. He thought that he could do it if he and his father were alone together, or comparatively alone. He must be prepared for an opposition, at any rate of some days, which opposition would make his father quite unable to entertain ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... feel passion, she did not resent his. When, after one of those embraces, his mouth curled with a little bitter smile, as if to say, "Yes, much you care for me," she would feel compunctious and yet aggrieved. But the trouble lay deeper—the sense of an insuperable barrier; and always that deep, instinctive recoil from letting herself go. She could not let herself be known, and she could not know him. Why did his eyes often fix her with a stare that did not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... vegetarian soups we are chiefly dependent for flavour on the vegetables themselves, and consequently great care must be taken that these flavourings are properly blended. The great difficulty in giving directions in cookery-books, and in understanding them when given, is the insuperable one of avoiding vague expressions. For instance, suppose we read, "Take two onions, one carrot, one turnip, and one head of celery,"—what does this mean? It will be found practically that these directions vary considerably according to the neighbourhood ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... majority of the delegates. The problem that confronted each side was to secure the filling of a sufficient number of the disputed seats with its retainers to insure a majority for its candidate. In the solution of this problem the Taft forces had one insuperable advantage. The temporary roll of a nominating convention is made up by the National Committee of the party. The Republican National Committee had been selected at the close of the last national convention four years before. It accordingly represented ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... a rapture too great to be borne by living man, and was shadowed with insuperable misery. It was as though it had been remoulded by the hand of God and the hand of Satan, working together and in harmony. You have seen that seal upon my own. But you have never seen it in the degree that Stanton bore it. The eyes were wide open and ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... world." Previous to this crisis the English had retired; but when, in 1673, our country sought to resume friendly relations, the connexion existing between the English and Portuguese courts proved an insuperable obstacle.(2) Subsequent overtures made in 1849, were courteously but firmly rejected; though the period of Japan's isolation was, as later events proved, almost at an end. In 1853, the Government of the United States despatched a fleet across the Pacific, under the command of Commodore Perry, to ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... no council was held for the first three hundred years of the church's existence. The church, nevertheless, as regarded her spiritual state, was highly prosperous and extended rapidly. Councils came as exigencies arose, and when there was no insuperable impediment to their assembling. They were in their time a source of great and lasting good, whilst their record remains shedding light on the centuries as they pass. There had already been eighteen OEcumenical Councils, that of Trent, held three hundred years ago, having been ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... during childhood that the formation of strict habits of truthfulness is at once most sure and most easy. The difficulty is indeed increased ten thousandfold, when the neglect of parents has suffered even careless habits on this point to be contracted. The difficulties, however, though great, are not insuperable to those who seek the freely-offered grace of God to help them in the conflict. The resistance to temptation, the self-control, will indeed be more difficult when the effort begins later in life; ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... very few words written across it. "It can't be done," were the few words which Sir Raffle Buffle had written across the note from his private secretary. Here was a difficulty which Johnny had not anticipated, and which seemed to be insuperable. Sir Raffle would not have answered him in that strain if he had not been very much ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... advantage. This is not the mother's only objection to me, or only proof of that frailty she justly ascribes to me. To prove me innocent of this charge will not reconcile her to her daughter's marriage. It will only remove one insuperable impediment to her ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... time there are insuperable difficulties in proposing any substitute for the family. In the first place, all society at present rests on this institution, so that we cannot easily discern which of our habits and sentiments are parcels of it, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the time when the books of the New Testament were collected into one volume, as also about the authors of that collection, are extremely different. This important question is attended with great and almost insuperable difficulties to us in these latter times" (Mosheim's "Eccles. Hist.," p. 31). These difficulties arise, to a great extent, from the large number of forgeries, purporting to be writings of Christ, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... came to him after reading the delightful pages of a French romancer. But all this tells us merely what we knew well enough before: that from colonial days to the present hour the Atlantic has been no insuperable barrier between the thought of Europe and the mind of America; that no one race bears aloft all the torches of intellectual progress; and that a really vital writer of any country finds a home in the spiritual life of every other country, even though it may be difficult to find his ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... never really seen and enjoyed. I found an aged Frenchman of modest mien perched on a little platform beneath it, behind a great hedge of altar-candlesticks, with an admirable copy all completed. The difficulties of his task had been well-nigh insuperable, and his performance seemed to me a real feat of magic. He could scarcely move or turn, and could find room for his canvas but by rolling it together and painting a small piece at a time, so that he never enjoyed ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... would be included in the idea of Composite Unity; one involving many, and many collapsed into one. Some such enigma was probable in Reason's guess at the nature of his God. It is the Christian way; and one entirely unobjectionable: because it is the only insuperable difficulty as to His Nature which does not debase the notion of Divinity. But there ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Glacier theory: if a glacier most gradually disappeared from mouth of Spean Valley [this] would account for buttresses of shingle below lowest shelf. The difficulty I put about the ice-barrier of the middle Glen Roy shelf keeping so long at exactly same level does certainly appear to me insuperable. (499/5. For a description of the shelves or parallel roads in Glen Roy see Darwin's "Observations on the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, etc." "Phil. Trans. R. Soc." 1839, page 39; ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Philippe, or rather the German side of the frontier?... A craggy cliff, a series of peaks and ravines which make this part of the Vosges an insuperable rampart...." ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... may we not draw a moral from the story of his life as faintly and imperfectly shadowed forth in the preceding sketch? Does it not show us how we may overcome obstacles deemed by us insuperable, and how we may seek to become something better than what we are? The poet's name will go down to future ages as the idol of his countrymen; may the beneficial effect produced by a mind like his upon the character and aspirations ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... assumed want of youth and good looks, Johnson's knowledge of womankind, to say nothing of his self-love, should have prevented him from urging this as an insuperable objection. He might have recollected the Roman matron in Juvenal, who considers the world well lost for an old and disfigured prize-fighter; or he might have quoted Spenser's description ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... his lack of all local and linear ties, made them (for all the charm he exercised) regard him with something of the shyness of pious Christians toward an elfin child. But though mother and child gave them a sense of insuperable strangeness, it plainly never occurred to them that both would not be gradually subdued to the customs of Saint Desert. Dynasties had fallen, institutions changed, manners and morals, alas, deplorably declined; but as far back as memory went, the ladies ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... scarcely know whether or not it would be 'good form' to insist on fighting with your bare fists," he said, "but I know that it would be most unusual. Still, I am not sure that its singularity would constitute an insuperable bar to its acceptance by the seconds. At any rate there will be no harm in offering the suggestion to de Albareda; he is a thorough good fellow all through, and you may safely leave yourself in his hands. But, if you will pardon me for saying so, my young friend, it appears ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... to domesticate and make use of him. For most purposes three horses are more "handy" than one elephant. The elephant is caught when he is already grown up, and then trained. It is as a matter of economy that he is not bred in confinement, and not because there is any insuperable difficulty in the matter. Occasionally elephants have ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... elephant, with thine! 'Twixt that, and reason, what a nice barrier, For ever separate, yet for ever near! Remembrance and reflection how allayed; What thin partitions sense from thought divide: And middle natures, how they long to join, Yet never passed the insuperable line! Without this just gradation, could they be Subjected, these to those, or all to thee? The powers of all subdued by thee alone, Is not thy reason all these ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... regenerated by the same molecular structure? or rather, how is it possible for animal spirits to become extinct as long as the molecular structure of which they are necessary concomitants remains unaltered? In these questions the old insuperable difficulties reappear in new forms, but on these we need not dwell. Apart from anti-materialistic arguments of general applicability, there is a mode of refutation specially adapted to the Cartesian form of materialism, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... attention, and sometimes penetration; whose understanding is often obstructed by prejudice, and often dissipated by remissness; who comes sometimes to a new study, unfurnished with knowledge previously necessary; and finds difficulties insuperable, for want of ardour ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... in his father. And perhaps nothing will tend to lift the whole subject of paternity in the popular mind to the plane where it belongs, as will this love and knowledge, when it is bred in the child from his early years. Many difficulties in handling this subject that become insuperable might never even exist if the knowledge of fatherhood, if love and respect for it and for the father as the giver of life, were bred into the boy at an early age. Moreover a certain shyness, which often makes it more difficult for fathers to talk to their sons ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... advanced age, such a task as that now partially executed, would, perhaps, have presented insuperable difficulties, but for the assistance rendered me by Mr. Earp, who, with great perseverance, has unravelled—what, in the lapse of time, had become the almost inextricable confusion of my papers. ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... gentlemanly young men like myself," and Miles glanced approvingly on his new and fashionable costume. "If she still turns a cold eye upon me that worthy dad of mine must manage to get the young fisherman out of the way—it won't do to have him interfering—and with a clear stage I shall not have insuperable difficulties ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... the early years of our acquaintance that indicated a departure from the faith in which he had been reared. That his extreme views upon religious subjects, and his manner, exceedingly offensive at times, of expressing them, formed an insuperable barrier to his political advancement, cannot be doubted. But for his unbelief, what political honors might have awaited him cannot certainly be known. But recalling the questions then under discussion, the intensity of party feeling, and the enthusiasm ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... have seen bitter scorn heaped on the few who have labored for internationalism in thought and feeling. We have seen the attempt of labor at internationalism utterly break down under the pressure of patriotic motive. We are finding that the same concentration on immediate and local interests is an insuperable bar to the realization of an ideal of internationalism which would effectively deal with questions arising between nations and put an end to war. The Church failed to establish a spiritual internationalism; the indications are that ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... This difficulty appeared insuperable even to the iron will of Anicza. It was a test even she could not submit to. She stamped her foot with rage and uttered again and again the word Dracu, which in Roumanian means nothing less than his highness ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... her in building a house. The qualifications insisted on were these five: good medical advice somewhere in the neighborhood; first-rate means of education; elegant (or, what most people might think, aristocratic) society; agreeable scenery: and so far the difficulty was not insuperable in the way of finding all the four advantages concentrated. But my mother insisted on a fifth, which in those days insured the instant shipwreck of the entire scheme; this was a church of England parish clergyman, who was to be strictly orthodox, faithful to the articles of our English ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Aristides have flourished 500 B.C., rather than 250, 120, or any other number of years? No conceivable relation—hardly so much as any fanciful relation—can be established between the man and his era. And in this one (to all appearance insuperable) difficulty, in this absolute defect of all connection between the two objects that are to be linked together in the memory, lies the startling task of Chronology. Chronology is required to chain together—and so that one shall inevitably recall the other—a ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... floundering into pools, breaking through bushes, and finally scrambled up the steep embankment. How to board the train seemed a problem which was insuperable, if the cars were moving at any speed. There was little foothold by the side of the track, and undoubtedly the train was moving quickly, for now the noise of it was a dull roar, and he, who was not wholly unacquainted with certain unauthorized forms of travel, could judge to ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... love her. She was morally frightened. She wanted to do penance. So she kneeled to Dawes, and it gave him a subtle pleasure. But the distance between them was still very great—too great. It frightened the man. It almost pleased the woman. She liked to feel she was serving him across an insuperable distance. She ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... to tread the rounds of the same gloomy monotony. He saw the grey stone walls, the iron doors; the flagging of the "yard" bare of grass or trees—the cell, narrow, bald, cheerless; the prison garb, the prison fare, and round all the grim granite of insuperable barriers, shutting out the world, shutting in the man with outcasts, with the pariah dogs of society, thieves, murderers, men below the beasts, lost to all decency, drugged with opium, utter reprobates. To this, Dyke had been brought, Dyke, than whom no man had been ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... insular situation, enormous mercantile navy and flourishing trade in coal have enabled her to resume her pre-war economic existence almost entirely, no country has emerged scatheless from the War. The rates of exchange soar daily to fantastic heights, and insuperable barriers to the commerce of European nations are being created. People work less than they did in pre-war times, but everywhere a tendency is noticeable to consume more. Austria, Germany, Italy, France are not different phenomena, but different ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... distance, and spent what remained of the day in carefully reconnoitring the fort, which seemed only too strong. In conjunction with Leyderdorp, the head-quarters of Valdez, a mile and a half distant on the right, and within a mile of the city, it seemed so insuperable an impediment that Boisot wrote in despondent tone to the Prince of Orange. He announced his intention of carrying the fort, if it were possible, on the following morning, but if obliged to retreat, he observed, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... honorable gentleman from Kentucky considered well the claim he now advances? If it were not disrespectful I would ask, has he ever read the decision which he now tells us is an insuperable barrier to the adoption of this great measure ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... of course, be absolutely necessary should the State ever engage in old-age insurance, as has been done in Germany and England; though the practical difficulty of such a scheme would have been thought by our fathers insuperable on account of our Federal and State system of government, and the necessary free immigration of American workmen from ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... with the southern secession from the Old School, and in full agreement with it in morals and politics. The two bodies were not long in finding that the doctrinal differences which a quarter-century before had seemed so insuperable were, after all, no serious hindrance to ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... upon a few weak words to say What is already written in the hearts 185 Of all that breathe?—what in the path of all Drops daily from the tongue of every child, Wherever man is found? The trickling tear Upon the cheek of listening Infancy Proclaims it, and the insuperable look 190 That drinks as if it never ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Foremost among these is the turbot; a fish held in high honour since the time of the Roman emperors. Nor must we omit honourable mention of lobster, whitebait, mullet and eels. It is true that some people have an insuperable aversion from eels, but it is the mark of the enlightened feeder to conquer these prejudices. Besides, no one is asked to eat conger-eel at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... it can easily be "explained away." In fact, the rationalistic explanation of the whole thing is patent and on the surface. There is only one little difficulty, and that, I fancy, is by no means insuperable. In any case this one knot or tangle may be put down as a ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... birth. The duty of caring for it and bringing it up is to be undertaken by the mother, aided, when necessary, by the State. This is a terrible injustice against the father and the child. It seems to me to be the great and insuperable difficulty against any scheme of State Endowment of Motherhood. I cannot enter into this question now, and will only state my belief that a child belongs by natural right to both its parents. The primitive form of the matriarchal ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... on the game board, it is well to remember that the most overwhelming victories have been won by the skill and audacity of a great leader, which overcame odds that would be reckoned by the experts as insuperable. ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... people. They came as the friend, not the hereditary enemy, of the savage. They tendered the calumet—a symbol well understood by every Indian—and were received as allies and brethren. They had no national prejudices to overcome: the copper color of the Indian was not an insuperable objection to intermarriage, and children of the mixed blood were not, for that reason, objects of scorn. An Indian maiden was as much a woman to a Frenchman, as if she had been a blonde; and, if her form was graceful and her features comely, he would woo her with as ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... questioned by any one who thinks, and will give the subject a moment's reflection; and the difficulty lies in the nature of things, the one being the work of the Creator, and the other of the creature. We shall therefore assume as a fact, the eternal and insuperable difference between Art and Nature. That our pleasure from Art is nevertheless similar, not to say equal, to that which we derive from Nature, is also a fact established by experience; to account for which we are necessarily led to the admission of another fact, namely, that there exists in Art a ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... not have been the same insuperable difficulty, a sovereign lady holding high military office as a matter of course; but we have thrown aside some noble traditions, and America ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... seemed that to disable the leading ships came to the same thing as disabling the weathermost. The solution eventually arrived at was of course a concentration on the rear, but to this at the time there were insuperable objections. The rear was normally the most leewardly end of the line, and an oblique attack on it could be parried by wearing together. The rear then became the van, and the attack if persisted in would fall on the leading squadron with the ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... be gay. She made a great effort to look happy, to hide, not her melancholy, as heretofore, but an insuperable loathing. From that day she no longer regarded herself as a blameless wife. Had she not been false to herself? Why should she not play a double part in the future, and display astounding depths ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... the Nepaul government is to keep the roads by which their country is approached in as impassable a state as possible, vainly imagining that, in case of a war, the badness of the roads would offer an insuperable obstacle to our progress, and compel us to relinquish any attempt to penetrate to Katmandu. This delusion ought to have been dispelled by the occupation of Muckwanpore by Sir David Ochterlony; not that it is a contingency they need take much trouble to provide against, since it would never ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... stream is turned from its course by some insuperable barrier, the poor girl, with no means of making her affection known to the object of it, found consolation in very insignificant ways: to secure his notice for a moment, to be able to render him any slight service, and to fancy that she was of use to him was enough, and ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... of Vicksburg is raised, or supplies are thrown in, it will become necessary very shortly to evacuate the place. I see no prospect of the former, and there are many great, if not insuperable obstacles in the way of the latter. You are, therefore, requested to inform me with as little delay as possible, as to the condition of your troops and their ability to make the marches and undergo the fatigues necessary ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... will only name one, and one for which he is not responsible; but yet it would be insuperable, as far as I am concerned. His father is an Englishman of the most pronounced type, and this young man is quite like him. I want no ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... communication in this life are made easier. It seems absurd that, whereas we may actually speak and hear the voice in reply of those who answer us while we are hundreds of miles apart, there yet should be an insuperable barrier between ourselves and those who, for aught we know, may be quite near us. It seems almost as though we must be under a spell which prevents the communication which we long for, and as though almost any day we may wake up to find how unreal ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... possibly to that instinct of contradiction of which I was speaking? A great deal of time is lost in profitless conversation, and a good deal of ill temper frequently caused, by not considering these organic and practically insuperable conditions. In dealing with them, acquiescence is the best of palliations and silence ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... wig."—Page 99 [This letter is a famous crux in the biography of Dryden. It has been suggested that the writer was Southerne, but it is impossible to make things tally. As Dryden certainly had paid his court to the great by 1670, if not by 1665, there is the almost insuperable difficulty of supposing that the writer could have associated with Dryden in parties of pleasure seventy-five years before date—a difficulty all the more difficult in that he only claims to be in his eighty-seventh year. It would be worthy of little attention, if the eager ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... whom I have spoken. As the mother was slave, the children were so also at birth, but they had been manumitted by their father. One of them was being educated in Germany; and it was intended that both should spend their lives in that country, the taint in their blood being an insuperable bar to their ever acquiring social position ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... answered the baron. "When I proposed for Julia's hand, I didn't know my wife had a daughter to marry. And if that were not the case, I am inclined to think the secret alluded to by the young lady, would prove an insuperable obstacle to the ratification ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... the reader's charitable consideration in respect of the first stanza, the insuperable difficulties of which seem to have been purposely contrived in order to warn off trespassers at the very boundary of the alluring domain. I have got over the inhibition—somehow—but David and the Sibyl must ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... do you mean? I am aware of that," he answered, with some sadness. "But twenty years is not an insuperable ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... had always thought as an example, that the restraints upon the sex were insuperable only to those who think them so, or who noisily strive to break them. She had taken a course of her own, and no man stood in her way. Many of her acts had been unusual, but excited no uproar. Few helped, but none checked her; ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... therefore an insuperable obstacle, as far as the majority of minds are concerned, to the discovery that the established principles of education are absolutely false. These principles will never be questioned. It is good enough for the average ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... seriously upon my future conduct. I found the archbishopric sunk both in its temporals and spirituals by the sordidness, negligence, and incapacity of my uncle. I foresaw infinite obstacles to its reestablishment, but perceived that the greatest and most insuperable difficulty lay in myself. I considered that the strictest morals are necessarily required in a bishop. I felt myself the more obliged to be strictly circumspect as my uncle had been very disorderly and scandalous. I knew likewise that ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... little compassion, and the gay and feverish existence of New York spread out invitingly before her in a vision full of piquant contrasts with the death-in-life of the Five Towns! But her beloved girls! They were an insuperable barrier. She could not leave them; she could not forfeit the right to look them in the eyes without embarrassment ... And then the next moment—somehow, she did not know how—the difficulty of the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... importance when we try to answer the questions: To what extent is the Roman Church fettered by her own past? Is there any insuperable obstacle to a modification of policy which might give her a new lease of life? We have seen how much importance is attached to the Church's title-deeds. Is tradition a fatal obstacle to reform? Theoretically, the tradition which she traces back ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... regarding success and failure as one, and engaged himself in a protracted struggle to get behind the deceptive seeming into the reality that remained unseen. After years of sustained efforts, he succeeded in overcoming almost insuperable difficulties in the way of the realisation of the great dream of his life. The closed doors at last opened, and the seemingly impossible became possible. The secret of the plant world stood revealed ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... time and plant! If," he concluded musingly, "we had been merely able to recover the lost bags, I believe, with but a touch or two, I could have remedied the peccant engine. But what with the loss of plant and the almost insuperable scientific difficulties of the task, our friends in France are almost ready to desert the chosen medium. They propose, instead, to break up the drainage system of cities and sweep off whole populations with the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Central European Powers have announced their intention of following in the near future with regard to undersea warfare," the President wrote, "seems for the moment to threaten insuperable obstacles, but its apparent meaning is so manifestly inconsistent with explicit assurances recently given us by those powers with regard to their treatment of merchant vessels on the high seas that I must believe that explanations will presently ensue which will put a different aspect ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... that some portions of it were, for longer or shorter periods, invaded by the sea; but any break of continuity was probably not prolonged; for Mr. Wallace's investigations in the Eastern Archipelago have shown how narrow a sea may offer an insuperable barrier to the migration of land animals. In Palaeozoic times this land must have been connected with Australia, and in Tertiary times with Malayana, since the Malayan forms with African alliances are in several cases distinct from those of India. We know as yet ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... it go from Charybdis to Scylla is precisely the fact that it is not organized. We have reached as yet only the second phase of its evolution, and already we have met upon our road two chasms which seem insuperable,—division of labor and machinery. How save the parcellaire workman, if he is a man of intelligence, from degradation, or, if he is degraded already, lift him to intellectual life? How, in the second place, give birth among laborers to that solidarity of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... of the launch. His main concern at that moment was an unexpected obstacle he had discovered, and which threatened to defeat his enterprise. A raft of logs had been placed around the iron-clad to protect her from any such attack. There she lay, not fifty feet away; but this seemingly insuperable obstacle intervened. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... was now checked for long by a constitutional and insuperable aversion to angling with worm. If the gardener, or a pretty girl-cousin of the mature age of fourteen, would put the worm on, I did not "much mind" fishing with it. Dost thou remember, fair lady of the ringlets? Still, I never liked bait-fishing, and these ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... drifted for an hour the holy man approached a narrow strand, shut in by steep mountains. He went along the coast for a whole day and a night, passing around the reef which formed an insuperable barrier. He discovered in this way that it was a round island in the middle of which rose a mountain crowned with clouds. He joyfully breathed the fresh breath of the moist air. Rain fell, and this rain was so pleasant that the holy man said ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... approbation. He regretted to say, however, that these distinguished practitioners, in common with a gentleman of the name of Gimlet-eyed Tommy, and other members of a secondary grade of the profession whom he was understood to represent, entertained an insuperable objection to its being brought into general use, on the ground that it would have the inevitable effect of almost entirely superseding manual labour, and throwing a great number of highly-deserving persons ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens |
