"Problematical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the moment; or possibly the Grand Turk was deficient in that clearness of strategical instinct which never in any circumstances forgoes a present advantage for something which may turn out well in a problematical future. Soliman, sore, sullen, and unapproachable, dwelt in his palace brooding over the misfortunes which had been his lot since the death of Ibrahim. Barbarossa, who so recently had lost practically all that he possessed, and who ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... of the Hochelagan race, the question how long they had been in the St. Lawrence valley must be problematical. Sir William Dawson describes the site of Hochelaga as indicating a residence of several generations. Their own statements regarding the Huron country—that they "had never been there", and that they gathered their knowledge of it from the Ottawa Algonquins, permits ...
— Hochelagans and Mohawks • W. D. Lighthall
... principally by the screw and rudder, which answer their purposes to admiration. I regard the project as thoroughly successful, and the easy navigation of the air in any direction (not exactly in the teeth of a gale) as no longer problematical. We could not have made head against the strong wind of yesterday; but, by ascending, we might have got out of its influence, if requisite. Against a pretty stiff breeze, I feel convinced, we can make our ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the diadem of Poland, the Polish monarch then being in a state of visible decline. The project was approved; and, like a profound politician, the bishop prepared for an event which might be remote, and always problematical, by sending into Poland a natural son of his, Balagny, as a disguised agent; his youth, his humble rank, and his love of pleasure, would not create any alarm among the neighbouring powers, who were alike on the watch to snatch the expected spoil; but as it ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... words of a far-distant man: "Attack of the mole-men growing increasingly ferocious ... heat-ray projectors—almost invincible ... our forces have entered the Tonah Basin—they are descending into the crater. But whether warfare can be carried on advantageously under ground is problematical...." Rawson unconsciously gritted his teeth behind his set lips as ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... countermeasures. On the top of Mount Whitney Miss Francis still labored. New assistants were flown to her as the old ones wandered down the great rockslide from the old stone weatherhouse off into the Grass during fits of despondency, went mad from the realization that, except for problematical survivors on the polar caps, they were alone in an abandoned hemisphere, or died of simple homesickness. In the researchlaboratories of Consolidated Pemmican formulas for utilizing the Grass were still tinkered with, and the death of almost every publicspirited ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... we review our state and history in life. From time to time, however, and specially, I think, in talking art, talk becomes elective, conquering like war, widening the boundaries of knowledge like an exploration. A point arises; the question takes a problematical, a baffling, yet a likely air; the talkers begin to feel lively presentiments of some conclusion near at hand; towards this they strive with emulous ardour, each by his own path, and struggling for first utterance; and then ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she hopes it will. She wants to leave it here for me and my problematical children. The tribal sense runs rampant ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... he knew had rolled off the slightly sloping roof after accomplishing their duty. If only he could lay hands on them they might be made to serve again but the darkness would make this problematical. There was that log he had mentioned to Jack—with it he fancied he might do something to keep up the feverish interest in the game and hold ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... the temples of Seti I. and Ramses II. at Abydos,[*] while the other was discovered in the tomb of a person of rank named Tunari, at Saqqara.[**] They divided this interminable succession of often problematical personages into dynasties, following in this division, rules of which we are ignorant, and which varied in the course of ages. In the time of the Ramessides, names in the list which subsequently under the Lagides formed five groups were made to constitute ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... difficult to say whether or not the feeling which had awakened in our hero's breast was the feeling of love; for it is problematical whether or not men who are neither stout nor thin are capable of any such sentiment. Nevertheless, something strange, something which he could not altogether explain, had come upon him. It seemed as though ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... endowed by nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature, so their grand maxim is, to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it. Neither is reason among them a point problematical, as with us, where men can argue with plausibility on both sides of the question, but strikes you with immediate conviction; as it must needs do, where it is not mingled, obscured, or discoloured, by passion and interest. I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... Charles Metcalfe, but between them and Her Majesty's Government. I see, therefore, nothing in prospect but a renewal of the scenes of 1837, and 1838, only on a larger scale. Whether the point contended for is worth that price, or will be even obtained at that price, is problematical. I see no alternative, unless some enlightening, healing agency interpose. I pray for the safety of our Zion and people, especially, while I implore Divine interposition in behalf of our ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... very carefully masked, withdrawal from the sphere of her influence. The passage about Soho was perfectly clear to her mind, although to many it might have seemed to convey an agreeably worded acceptance of her suggestion, only laying its translation into action in a rather problematical future, the sort of future which would become present when "neither of ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... Parson B———, with thy pale student's brow and rubicund nose, with thy rusty and tattered black coat overswept by white flowing locks, with thy professional white neckcloth scrupulously preserved when even a shirt to thy back was problematical,—art by no means to be overlooked in the muster-roll of vagrant gentlemen possessing the entree of our farm-house. Well do we remember with what grave and dignified courtesy he used to step over its threshold, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... a different destiny, although such evidences might not be wanting. Yes, we might find the evidences which, duly weighed, would make us shudder in view of our possible or probable future. We might come to think it very problematical whether our country has sufficient vital force to work into good American citizens the hordes of infidels, paupers, criminals, cast upon our shores from the nations of the old world;—whether our country has sufficient wisdom to guide its own vexed domestic ...
— National Character - A Thanksgiving Discourse Delivered November 15th, 1855, - in the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church • N. C. Burt
... may have to retain the same partner for several dances, or even for the greater part of the evening, he will, unless he is a Bayard absolutely sans peur et sans reproche, naturally think twice of engaging a lady from whom his release is problematical. Hence the tendency is to increase the triumphs of the belle, and decrease the chances of the less popular maiden. It is also extremely uncomfortable for a girl to feel that a man has (to use the ugly slang of the occasion) ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... stay here to solve the riddle," said Becker; "the storm seems disposed to abate; and the more that it was unreasonable to face certain destruction in a vain endeavor to assist a problematical shipwreck, the more it is incumbent upon us now to go in quest of ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... possession, put together more or less symmetrically according to our taste, and practically unpaid for. If we manage to sell it in time we shall get the difference between what is paid and what we owe. That is our capital. It is problematical, to say the least of it. If we realise less than ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... country where every parish had its own special saint and special legend of him. These sixty-six lives may have contained (Mr. Gibbon says must have contained) at least as many thousand lies. Perhaps so. To severe criticism, even the existence of a single apostle, St. Patrick, appears problematical. But at least there is the historical fact, about which admits of no mistake, that they did grow up in some way or other, that they were repeated, sung, listened to, written, and read; that these lives in Ireland, and all over Europe and over the earth, wherever the catholic ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... temple of the Homeric language was erected. If there are scholars who know their Plautus or Lucretius, Comparative Philology will give them a key to grammatical forms in ancient Latin, which, even if supported by an Ambrosian palimpsest, might still seem hazardous and problematical. As there is no field and no garden that has not its geological antecedents, there is no language and no dialect which does not receive light from a study of Comparative Philology, and reflect light in return on more general problems. As in geology again, so in Comparative Philology, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... up for this poor lady, whose usefulness in the world is apparently problematical. She seems to me like a picture which has fallen from its gilded frame and lies, face downward, on the dusty floor. The picture never was as needful as a window or a door, but it was pleasant to see it in its place, and it would be pleasant to see it there again, and I, for one, should be ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... other worms the eyes are entirely wanting, or their existence is very doubtful. Whether the black points at the extremities of what Swammerdam calls the horns of the common snail, are organs which really possess the power of vision, is still problematical. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... wavering, precarious, undecided, irresolute; questionable, involved; ambiguous, enigmatical, problematical, equivocal, vague, indefinite. Antonyms: certain, implicit, sure, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... danger. He recognized the fact that Clancy was both capable and useful, and was already inclined to make him one of his chief lieutenants in the South. He understood the young man's relations to his daughter perfectly, and was not at all averse to a union between them. At the same time, he knew how problematical Caroline's action would be, and that it would be useless for him to appear for or against the match. He was aware of his daughter's attitude in regard to marriage, and also convinced that she ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... Settlement Cliffs and the machine was wholly problematical; yet, once he should come within striking distance of the scene of his disaster, he felt positive of being ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... from the water, at the sand-drifts, was twenty-five miles; if we went back we lost all our previous labour, and could not do so without leaving the dray behind, and if we went forward, it was very problematical whether water could be procured within any distance attainable by our ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... have done had he been armed is problematical. What he did was remain moveless, even as he was breathless and powerless, but for his naked hands, either for offence or defence. For that November was armed was as unquestionable as his mastery of ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... in the fresh air, walking westward to his club, he found himself wondering more and more what could have possessed him to throw away a guinea—when he had few enough for legitimate expenses—on an article of such exceedingly problematical value. ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... he will. But what sort of a prospect is it for you to bind up your fortunes with my father's? The future is so very problematical, you know. ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... United States is almost entirely dependent upon outside sources for its antimony, although there are inadequately known reserves in this country which might be exploited if prices were maintained at a high level. The future of United States smelters is problematical. China, the world's chief source of antimony, at present dominates the market in this country, largely due to the low cost of production ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... come to occupy a high fatalistic ground towards the pair. If it was written upon their foreheads that they should marry, the inscription was none of mine; and, of course, it was true, as John had indignantly stated, that Dacres might do very much worse. One's interest in Dacres Tottenham's problematical future had in no way diminished; but the young man was so positive, so full of intention, so disinclined to discussion—he had not reopened the subject since that morning in the saloon of the Caledonia—that one's ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... a not unduly deferred second marriage to a titled gentleman, Sir Thomas Button,—a knight so scantily and at the same time so variously described, as "a worthy person who had great places," and "a bad member" of "mutinous and unworthy carriage," that one is content to leave him as a problematical character. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... unsafe to add the scene on a cylinder preserved in the British Museum, representing two figures, a man (with horns) and perhaps a woman, both clothed, on either side of a fruit-tree, towards which they stretch out their hands.23 For the meaning of this is extremely problematical. Some better monumental illustration may some day be found, for it is clear that the Babylonian sacred literature had much to tell of offences against the gods in the primeval ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... which common sense affirms and Berkeley denies. In any case it was a work of great merit to have transferred the existence of objects beyond our ideas, of things-in-themselves, out of the region of the self-evident into the region of the problematical. We never get beyond the circle of our ideas, and if we posit a thing-in-itself as the ground and object of the idea, this also is simply a thought, an idea. For us there is no being except that of the perceiver and the perceived. Later we shall meet two other ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... the presence of the fellow was more of an incumbrance than a help. But for the delay caused by Long's rush to his help, the whites would have made a dash for liberty themselves, though the question of their escape was problematical to ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... destruction of railways, folding pontoons, and a field telegraph, now form part of our equipment. The opportunities for the use of the latter in the course of rapid movements—i.e., just in the most important sphere of our activities—seem to me highly problematical, as I have already pointed out; and the waggons which transport the bridging equipment are too heavy to be always at hand when most needed. Essentially, it seems only fitted to facilitate the progress of smaller bodies of troops, and would hardly ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... condition of Europe clearly shows, that the lamp of liberty, which was lighted here, has burned with a brilliancy so steady as to have reflected its light across the Atlantic. Whether it will be there permitted to shine, is somewhat problematical. But should a "holy alliance of legitimates" extinguish it, it will be but for a season. Kings, Emperors and Priests cannot succeed much longer in staying the march of freedom. The people are sensibly alive to the oppression ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... effort of delivering and fetching the lad to and from school when the public school bus passed the Holden home. Brennan relied upon the Mitchells to see James upon the bus and to check him off when he returned. Whether James would have been missed earlier even with a personal delivery is problematical; certainly James would have had to concoct some other scheme to gain him his hours of ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... month since she had left the Warren with her mother, with some gentle anticipations of pleasure, but none that were exaggerated or excessive. All that was likely to happen, as far as she knew, was that dinner party at Mrs. Benson's, and a play or two, and a problematical hall. This was all that the "vortex" meant about which her mother had laughed; she had not any idea at that time that the vortex would mean Dick Cavendish. But now that she fully understood what it meant, and now that it was all over, and her agitated little bark had come out of it, and had ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... every sort. And while champions of the Union would fight with all the prestige of law, national history and the status quo on their side, Europe's aid to the South, or even that of the border slave States, was more than problematical, as was a successful career for the Confederacy in case its independence should chance to be won. Events proved that the very defence of slavery had best prospect in the Union, and it seems as if this might have been foreseen by all, as ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... which were, however, at bottom nothing more than the revered portraits of his ancestors. The ancients had no kind of decisive, clear, and least of all dogmatically fixed ideas about the immortality of the soul and a life hereafter, but every one in his own way had lax, vacillating, and problematical ideas; and their ideas about the gods were just as various, individual, and vague. So that the ancients had really no religion in our sense of the word. Was it for this reason that anarchy and lawlessness reigned ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... more visionary prospect. Otherwise, one was not to retire without the other being equally satisfied. If England attacked France, Spain was to help; but occupied as she was with Granada the amount of aid likely to be forthcoming was problematical. In brief, Henry was prepared to pay for the marriage, and Spain could ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... all could forecast its trend and its results. But the controversy now developed was insidious—its influences, its weapons, its designs, and its possible end, were in a measure hidden from the public—public opinion was divided, and its results, for good or ill, problematical. The wisest political sagacity and the broadest statesmanship possible were needed, and in their application no time ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... medicated salts advertised under various trade names as preventives against worms is problematical. Commonly they contain little else than ordinary salt, the other substances being in such small quantity that their therapeutic effect is practically negligible. Definite evidence that they are ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... pause, and in the silence a horse, proceeding from the moors in the direction of the house, was distinctly heard; and nothing could be less problematical than that one of his shoes ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... territory, must hasten the dismemberment of a large portion of our country, or a dissolution of the government. On the whole, we think it may with candor be said, that whether the possession at this time of any territory west of the river Mississippi will be advantageous, is at best extremely problematical. For ourselves, we are very much inclined to the opinion that, after all, it is the Island of N. Orleans by which the command of a free navigation of the Mississippi is secured, that gives to this interesting cession its greatest value, and will render it in every view of immense benefit to our country. ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... the first of these questions, Mr. Hume, not perhaps intentionally, makes the best justification of it by saying that while Charles lived the projected republic could never be secure. But to justify taking away the life of an individual upon the principle of self- defence, the danger must be not problematical and remote, but evident and immediate. The danger in this instance was not of such a nature, and the imprisonment or even banishment of Charles might have given to the republic such a degree of security as any government ought to be content with. It must be confessed, ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... 155; and there succeeded, in subsequent editions, a paragraph aiming to show that the inferred structure of the Sun's interior was congruous with the low specific gravity of the Sun—a conclusion which, as indicated on p. 156, implies some very problematical assumptions respecting the natures of the unknown elements of the Sun. There then ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... lady in a party of four men, and he invited the Professor's wife as an excellent neutral figure-head, to keep her in countenance. Ladies were scarcer then in Oxford than they are nowadays. The married fellow was still a tentative problematical experiment in those years, and the invasion of the Parks by young couples had hardly yet begun in earnest. So female society was still at a considerable local premium, and Berkeley was glad enough to secure even colourless old Mrs. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... outline, and every fin, even his evil eyes and teeth, visible far under water, as the glittering fiend comes up from below, snaps his lump out of the whale's side, and is shouldered out of the way by his fellows. We were unlucky indeed, in the matter of sharks; for, with the exception of a problematical back-fin or two, we saw none in the West Indies, though ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... with the Indians of the Pacific coast, and the settlement of Astoria was planted at the mouth of the Columbia river. Whether Astor would have been able to carry out the remainder of his plan is purely problematical, for before he had it fairly under way, the war of 1812 began, and he was forced to abandon the enterprise. The story of this far-reaching project has been told by Washington Irving in his "Astoria." Until his death, he continued to enlarge and increase ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... the Queens Eleanor and Mary, accustomed to look upon proper men in Flanders and Germany, that he was fain to win their favor by making certain attempts in the tournament, in which his success was sufficiently problematical. "His body," says his professed panegyrist, "was but a human cage, in which, however brief and narrow, dwelt a soul to whose flight the immeasurable expanse of heaven was too contracted." [Cabrera] ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... almost vanished; but, as his worldly dominions steadily diminished, the spiritual pretensions of the Holy Father no less steadily increased. For seven centuries the immaculate conception of the Virgin had been highly problematical; Pio Nono spoke, and the doctrine became an article of faith. A few years later, the Court of Rome took another step: a Syllabus Errorum was issued, in which all the favourite beliefs of the modern world— the rights of democracies, the claims of science, the sanctity of free speech, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... physical as well as moral Struggle before the poor man, and knew that after all it was exceedingly problematical whether he could be saved. Before he went away he told Mrs. Bruder to make her husband some very strong coffee in the morning, and to let him drink it through the day. As for Bruder, he had resolved to die rather than touch ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... things in this discourse which I do not now approve; my judgment being not a little altered since the writing of it; but whether for the better or the worse, I know not: neither indeed is it much material, in an essay, where all I have said is problematical. For the way of writing plays in verse, which I have seemed to favour, I have, since that time, laid the practice of it aside, till I have more leisure, because I find it troublesome and slow: but I am no way altered ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Hierakonpolite dynasty of Upper Egypt, which, as it occurs before the time of Mena and the Ist Dynasty, he calls "Dynasty 0." Dynasty 0, however, is no dynasty, and in any case we should prefer to call the "predynastic" dynasty "Dynasty I." The names of "Dynasty minus One," however, remain problematical, and for the present it would seem safer to suspend judgment as to the place of the supposed royal names "Ro" and "Ka"(Men-kaf), which Prof. Petrie supposes to have been those of two of the kings of Upper Egypt who reigned before Mena. The king "Sma"("Uniter") ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... a word is said about a cackling rooster! Worse still, a crowing hen is so rare a thing that its very existence is problematical. I never heard of one out of that couplet. I have made diligent inquiry, but I have not been able to find any person who had heard, or who had ever seen or heard of any one who had heard, a crowing hen. But these very hands have fed, these very eyes seen, and these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... whatsoever of the governmental order. The successful operation of proportional representation in adjoining countries, especially Belgium and Sweden, renders it probable that the system will be adopted ultimately in Holland. The future of woman's suffrage is more problematical. Women already possess the right to vote in the proceedings of the dike associations if they are taxpayers or if they own property adjoining the dikes, and in June, 1908, the Lutheran Synod gave women the right to vote in ecclesiastical affairs ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... on November 7 resulted disastrously for Douglas. It was soon found that the Legislature on joint ballot would probably give a majority for Senator against Shields, the incumbent, or any other Democrat who had supported the Nebraska bill. Who might become his successor was more problematical. The opposition majority was made up of anti-Nebraska Democrats, of what were then called "abolitionists" (Lovejoy had been elected among these), and finally of Whigs, who numbered by far the largest portion. But these elements, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... deposits extended to the north of the Laurentian Hills, as well as the outline of that portion of the continent in those times, remains still very problematical; but the investigations thus far undertaken in those regions would lead to the supposition that the same granite upheaval which raised Canada stretched northward in a broad, low ridge of land, widening in its upper part and extending to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... criticisms during the second day's debate. The unkindest cut of all was delivered by the SPEAKER. Mr. MOLTENO had asked whether Members who were landowners or farmers might vote on a measure affecting their financial interests, and Mr. LOWTHER replied that the benefits were "so problematical and so uncertain" that he thought they might. Mr. MOLTENO used his freedom to vote against the Second Reading; but only a handful of Members followed his example. Mr. RUNCIMAN and his friends decided that abstention was the better part ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... was there, moored alongside a small quay. From the nearest building it was necessary to cross a low wharf some fifty yards in width, and De Sylva's whispered commands could not restrain the eager men when escape appeared no longer problematical but assured. They broke, and ran, an almost fatal thing, as it happened, since the soldiers whom Philip had seen from the rock were still on board. One of them noticed the inexplicable disorder among ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... misgivings about our legal right to call Germany to account. And I have heard that a fourth, who had been prominent as a pacifist in the days of an earlier conflict, had written a letter to a colleague as late as the evening of August 1, saying that a war declared merely on grounds of problematical self-interest would create such an outcry in Great Britain as had never been heard here before—leaving us a derided and, therefore, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... from early marriage? You may justly conclude that their native island and town can contain but a limited number. Emigration is both natural and easy to a maritime people, and that is the very reason why they are always populous, problematical as it may appear. They yearly go to different parts of this continent, constantly engaged in sea affairs; as our internal riches increase, so does our external trade, which consequently requires more ships and more ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... Executive will scarcely venture to characterize as either judicious or constitutional. In the year which has just elapsed, things have been managed in a manner which must excite universal reprobation. Even the alleged performances of the army are problematical, and—" ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... way from a clerkship to an important and responsible post in the Bank of England, and settled accounts with religion and with literature in a right English way, by reading the Bible and 'Tom Jones' through every year, and very little else. More problematical and elusive is the figure of his first wife, Margaret Tittle, with whom, to judge from the character of her eldest son, literary and artistic sensibility first mingled in the hard practical Browning stock. In ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... we don't do that in Jingalo. No Jingalese Church-woman may throw away her whole life on so problematical a benefit as a religious vow of celibacy. She may lease herself to Heaven for a given number of years, but ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... making, slips its neck into it and little by little dives into the Cetonia's belly, so that the original state of affairs appears to be exactly restored. And yet its successful rearing is henceforth highly problematical. It is possible that the larva will prosper, complete its development and spin its cocoon; it is also possible—and the case is not unusual—that the Cetonia-larva will soon turn brown and putrid. We then see the Scolia itself turn brown, distended as it is with putrescent foodstuffs, and then ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... would have been enormous for the support of an army of 200,000 men in Spain. Moreover, the hostile and insurrectionary state of the local authorities rendered regular and legal requisitions almost impossible; and the want of navigable rivers, good roads, and suitable transport, rendered problematical the possibility of moving a sufficient quantity of stores in an insurrectionary country. Besides, no great detachments could have been made to regulate the administration of the provinces, or to pursue the insurgent corps into the fastnesses of the mountains. In fine, by this system, he would ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... century of tossing and tumult, another, and that of less value, is grown? A faith, a crystallizing principle for many millions of people is not grown in a day; if it can be grown in a century is problematical. The fact, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... furnishes much more food. The advantage of growing it northward in the Western mountain valleys when sown in spring, as intimated by the writer of the bulletin already referred to, would seem to be at least problematical, since it could not be sown early enough in the spring to produce a crop as early as alfalfa already established. It would then be grown also as the crop of the season, rather than as a catch crop. The place for Egyptian clover in the rotation is clearly that of a winter crop, to provide ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... vessels insecure. An immense deal of work would consequently still remain to be performed before a corresponding outlet into the Pacific could be obtained; and whether this can be accomplished is yet problematical. In the interval, a railroad, on the plan above suggested, would answer many, although not all the purposes desired by the commercial community, and serve as a preparatory step for a canal, should it be deemed feasible. After the country has been cleared of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... she knew that it lay to the south. The days went by, and she lived on the cocoanuts that had kept her afloat. They supplied her with drinking water and with food. But she did not drink all she wanted, nor eat all she wanted. Rescue was problematical. She saw the smoke of the rescue steamers on the horizon, but what steamer could be expected to come to lonely, ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... men turned out under Captain Robert Patterson. They were given ammunition, as well as two pack-horses, by the Commissary Department. Every man was entitled to pay for the time he was out. Whether he would ever get it was problematical; at the best it was certain to be given him in worthless paper-money. Their hunters kept them supplied with game, and each man carried a ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... seemed to us problematical in its outcome, we did not dare to borrow money or to induce friends to invest; and of course Mission funds were not available. For the day has not yet arrived when all those who seek by their gifts to hasten the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... was told that this was not the point. “There were those on his side who held that grace is not given to all, and even the examiners themselves had declared, in a full meeting of the Sorbonne, that this opinion was problematical.” This was, in fact, his own view; and he confirmed it by what he said was a celebrated passage of St Augustine, “We know that grace is not given to all men.” He was equally unfortunate in his second inquiry. His neighbour, opposed as he was to Jansenism, would not condemn the ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... charter, which expired in 1811, had been renewed in due season it would have been enabled to continue specie payments during the war and the disastrous period to the commerce of the country which immediately succeeded is, to say the least, problematical, and whether the United States Bank of 1816 produced a restoration of specie payments or the same was accomplished through the instrumentality of other means was a matter of some difficulty at that time to determine. Certain it is that for the first ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... infernal detective. Bechamel had told his wife he was going to Davos to see Carter. To that he had fancied she was reconciled, but how she would take this exploit was entirely problematical. She was a woman of peculiar moral views, and she measured marital infidelity largely by its proximity to herself. Out of her sight, and more particularly out of the sight of the other women of her set, vice of the recognised description ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... various religious organizations and charities in which he was interested, and it was characteristic of him that he could not wait until he had the actual cash in hand, but, even while his own future was uncertain, he made donations of large blocks of stocks, which, while of problematical value while the litigation was proceeding, eventually rose to much ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... little problematical. The left and right we satisfied ourselves about at once, but the centre was in a class by itself. We demanded an investigator, somebody with wide ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... telescope; the poor observer is then exposed to the alternative of abandoning to some other more fortunate person than himself, the ascertaining a phenomenon that will not recur during his lifetime, or introducing into the science results of problematical correctness. Finally, to complete the observation, he must read off the microscopical divisions of the graduated circle, and for what opticians call indolent vision (the only sort that the ancients ever required) ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... amount of human suffering. A plan, for instance, is on foot for sending twenty of the patients to Madeira for the winter. The British Consul, to his honour, guarantees their maintenance, if the Hospital will pay their passage out and home. Some may say—An unnecessary expense—a problematical benefit. Be it so. I believe that it will not be such; that it may save many lives—they may revive: but were it not so, I would still say Give. Let them go, even if every soul in that ship were doomed. ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... plough was useless and the hoe must be used. She must tell Samson: Samson, whom she held in an artless exaltation of hero-worship; Samson, who was so "smart" that he thought about things beyond her understanding; Samson, who could not only read and write, but speculate on problematical matters. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... . . . The Department, by the way, was going to have a cruiser drop in at Mogador, to look into the looting of the Methodist Missionary stores at Fruga. There was a remote chance that this cruiser might call at the Rock, on the homeward journey. But it was problematical. . . . And that had been the end of it all, the ignominious end. And still again the despairing Durkin was being confronted and challenged and mocked by this call to him from half way round the world. It maddened and sickened ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... cast off. It was tantalizing fall weather. The sea-breeze, which had blown steadily all summer, was gone, and in its place were capricious winds and murky skies which made the time of arriving anywhere extremely problematical. We started on the first of the ebb, and as we slipped down the Carquinez Straits, I looked my last for some time upon Benicia and the bight at Turner's Shipyard, where we had besieged the Lancashire Queen, and ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... the cold. It became more and more difficult for well-gloved hands to leave the warm muff or the fur-lined coat to take out a copper for the beggar, and more and more desperate became the struggle for bread amongst the problematical existences [Footnote: The problematical existences. Explain this ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... pound of arrowroot; the native had nothing left and was wholly dependant on me for his subsistence. Now we had been seven days on our route, and had made but little more than seventy miles, and as the men were much weaker than when they first started it appeared to me to be extremely problematical whether we should ever reach Perth unless some plan different from what we had hitherto pursued was adopted. And even granting that we did eventually make this point, it was evident that we must previously be ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... "That, of course, is problematical," we answered, with the embarrassment men of our age might feel at being instigated to talk politics with a prime minister. "What we do know, for certain, is that Russia is now, with her Transcaspian railroad, within about forty ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... been known to all the world as his wife? With the possible exceptions of the Brownings and one or two others, the case is hardly recorded where a poet has been inspired to his highest efforts by his wedded wife, and it is extremely problematical whether or not in the present instance the fire and fervor of Ariosto's lines could have been kindled at a domestic hearth which all the world might see. The secret marriage was probably insisted upon by the wife, and all honor to Alessandra Strozzi ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... Chalmers had upon his hearers, and upon the readers of his "Astronomical Discourses." No one was satisfied with his arguments, no one could answer them, but every one wanted to try what he could make of them, as we try to find out a riddle. "By his so potent art," the art of laying down problematical premises, and drawing from them still more doubtful, but not impossible, conclusions, "he could bedim the noonday sun, betwixt the green sea and the azure vault set roaring war," and almost compel the stars in their ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... worked. But, unfortunately, the principle of isolation which the Porte has adopted with regard to these remote provinces, together with the want of enterprise among its inhabitants, the result of four hundred years of indolence on the one hand and oppression on the other, renders it problematical whether their ample resources will ever be developed. Should Turkey, however, arise from her lethargy, should genuine civilisation spread its branches over the land, we may then confidently anticipate a glorious future for her south-Slavonic provinces, doubting not that they will some day ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... repeated. Every rebellion subdued, and plot discovered, contributes to the firmer establishment of the Prince: in the latter case, the knot of conspirators is entirely broken, and they are to begin their work anew under a thousand disadvantages; so that those diligent inquiries into remote and problematical guilt, with a new power of enforcing them by chains and dungeons to every person whose face a minister thinks fit to dislike, are not only opposite to that maxim which declares it better that ten guilty men should escape than one innocent suffer, but likewise leave a ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... think Elgin about the most problematical public man in high position I had ever met, but I now know him one of the ablest. Deeds, not ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... protection, they render it certain that such proceedings must be attended with a total loss. Whatever may be said by theorists, the profit to be derived from reclamation of waste lands in Ireland is at least but problematical. The repeal of the corn-laws must render any such attempt ruinous; and, as if it were not enough to expose the Irish farmer to foreign competition, the ministry are now trying, and "they hope with success," to destroy the home market; by substituting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... whole number of licensed manufacturers and merchants, a fourth at most realize profits, another fourth hold their own, and the rest are constantly running behind in their business. Take, then, half at most of the six million so-called leaders in enterprises, which we will add to the very problematical twelve million landed proprietors, and we shall attain a total of fifteen million Frenchmen in a position, by their education, their industry, their capital, their credit, their property, to engage in ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... investment, business, and sabotage, should have an appreciably better chance of survival in the long run if the present conditions of warlike preparation and national insecurity were maintained, or if the projected peace were left in a somewhat problematical state, sufficiently precarious to keep national animosities alert, and thereby to the neglect of domestic interests, particularly of such interests as touch the popular well-being. On the other hand, it has also appeared that the cause of peace and its perpetuation ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... less intensely the menace from injunctions than the officials who might face a prison sentence for contempt of court. Probably for this reason the "delivery" of the labor vote by the Federation has ever been so largely problematical. That the Federation leaders were able to force the desired concessions from one of the political parties by holding out a quid pro quo of such an uncertain value is at once a tribute to their political sagacity as well as a mark ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... confounded them all in a splendid confusion of criticism the fruit-time had gone by. There was left but to expatiate on the hoard which summer had bequeathed, or to speculate, if he chose, on the possible yield of a future and most problematical year. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... paralysis resulting from the political interference by the tariff walls of newly-created states with the established economic relations of agricultural areas and manufacturing centers, and an unwillingness of the farmer to do business with a currency so debased that its value is highly problematical. So we see the great city of Vienna,[26] once one of the gayest and most brilliant capitals of Europe, now reduced to destitution, and the cities not only of Russia but of Germany being forced to revert to the ancient system of barter in order to ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... islands affords shelter from all heavy seas, and there are good harbours at convenient distances. I entertain, indeed, sanguine hopes that the skill and exertions of my friend Captain Parry will soon render this question no longer problematical. His task is doubtless an arduous one, and, if ultimately successful, may occupy two and perhaps three seasons; but confiding as I do, from personal knowledge, in his perseverance and talent for ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... of an hour taking a bearing based upon the problematical position of the lights, the height and density of the box screen and then boldly and rapidly opened the door, stepped through and closed it behind him. His calculations had been accurate. He found himself in a room, the extent of which he could only conjecture. What, however, interested ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... related to the religious evolution, and tends to substitute itself for religion, since its aim is for humanity to have its own "earthly paradise" here, without having to wait for it in the hereafter, which, to say the least, is very problematical. ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... thousands like himself. If he could have gone to an asylum and surrounded his infirm will by every possible safeguard, he might have been carried through the inevitable period of horrible depression; but even then the habit had become so confirmed that his chances would have been problematical, for experience sadly proves that confirmed opium-consumers are ever in ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... a maid of all work was what servants call "a barrack." A spendthrift and glutton, devoid of order as of money, as is often the case with women engaged in the occupations that depend upon chance, and in the problematical methods of gaining a livelihood in vogue in Paris, the depilator, who was almost always involved in a lawsuit of some sort, paid but little heed to her small servant's nourishment. She often went away for the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... General Government; that without it, I suppose he thinks, we might have done as well, or perhaps better, than we have done in spite of it. * * * Whether we of the South would have been better off without the Government, is, to say the least, problematical. On the one side we can only put the fact, against speculation and conjecture on the other. * * * The influence of the Government on us is like that of the atmosphere around us. Its benefits are so silent and unseen that they are seldom thought ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... acquisition in conquered Saghalien—not noted by the newspapers—is beds of coal and iron of vast area. These may enable Japan, in her determination to become a manufacturing nation, to be eventually independent of other countries for basic supplies. But success in this direction is problematical, to say the least. ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... see that I was conscious of what I owed him. He was as mild as contrition and as copious as faith; he was never so fine as on a shy return, and even better at forgiving than at being forgiven. I dare say it was a smaller matter than that famous night at Wimbledon, the night of the problematical sobriety and of Miss Anvoy's initiation; but I was as much in it on this occasion as I had been out of it then. At about 1.30 he ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... Scripture tells us of St John the Baptist, that when in the wilderness 'his meat was locusts and wild honey,' we have no reason to suppose that he lived always even on these. What these locusts were is problematical, but it is likely they were the fruit of the locust-tree, Hymenaea, which bears a pod containing a sort of bean, enclosed in a whitish substance of fine filaments, as sweet as sugar or honey. The wild bees frequent these trees, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... have I confessed—pulvere cineribusque— that our side had twice failed at the inconsiderable distance of two yards, even after discarding the small thirty-two. But that further confession will be forthcoming is now wildly and preposterously problematical. For I have discovered the true exorcism for demoniac influence in putting. It is this: First catch your putter. Put the whole length of the shaft up your sleeve. Then—but I must retain something for next Saturday's notes, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various
... poverty. That troubles you not at all: you have sophistries and to spare to reassure you: the sacred rights of property, the fair struggle for life, the supreme interests of that Moloch, the State and Progress, that fabulous monster, that problematical Better to which men sacrifice the Good,—the Good of other men.—But for all that, the fact remains, and all your sophistries will never manage to deny it: "You have too much to live on. We have not enough. And we are as good as you. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... true as the nose on your face. That precious Phil, was a cowardly whelp all his life—so was his father. D—n you, sirra; where did you get your cowardice? I'm sure it was not from me; that is if you be mine, which is a rather problematical circumstance; for I take it you are as likely to be the descent of some rascally turnkey or hatchman, and be hanged to ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... however, getting the better of problematical risk, I went in. The room allotted me lay on the ground floor just off the garden, and I had not been there many minutes before I became aware, as one does, that I was being stared at. The culprit instantly ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... at the long slope in front of us. It was steep and bad going. Anscombe might get up it on the horse before the Kaffirs overtook us, but it was extremely problematical if we could do so. I might perhaps if I mounted behind him and the horse could bear us both, which was doubtful, but how about our poor servants? He saw the doubt upon my face and said in ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... the flattery he had bestowed on the young lord. "I have no wish to avoid a fight, but I say again, there is no chance of its taking place for many hours to come, at least at the slow rate at which we are now overhauling the chase, and if we take her—which is problematical—we shall find it a difficult matter to ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... of Rome in Latium may be mainly regarded as direct extensions of her territory and people presenting the same general features, a further and special significance attached to the conquest of Alba. It was not merely the problematical size and presumed riches of Alba that led tradition to assign a prominence so peculiar to its capture. Alba was regarded as the metropolis of the Latin confederacy, and had the right of presiding among the thirty communities that belonged to it. The destruction of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... American stake in the cost of the European War, it is important to find out first just how much money has been expended and what the likelihood of future outlay will be. Like every other phase of the stupendous upheaval this one is both speculative and problematical. ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... relations. Both Russia and England rejected France's proposal. The motive usually assigned to the Emperor Alexander is his hatred of everything associated with slavery. His own most famous action was the liberation of the Russian serfs. The motives of the British ministry, however, appear more problematical. ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... existence of such a society as that of the Rose-cross was problematical, it was quite evident that somebody or other was concerned in the promulgation of these placards, which were stuck up on every wall in Paris. The police endeavoured in vain to find out the offenders, and their want ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... he, taking of his hat, "the reception I offer you is rather problematical; but let me beseech you to give us the pleasure of your society. You are a little embarrassed for the moment; you must, indeed, permit me to advance what may be necessary. I ask it as a favour; we must not part so soon after ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lovingly understood. There was no art in the telling, only a sweet naturalness and an apparent honesty—the honesty of purpose that comes to people in lonely places. Her stories were all of the class that magazine editors call "homely, heart-interest stuff," not deep or clever or problematical— the commonplace doings of common people—but it found an entrance into the hearts ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... acquisition of wealth, and who are not cemented by any common ties of nationality. Under these circumstances, and bearing in mind the immense political machinery which the Papacy can set to work in Canada, the transfer of British institutions to the colony must at present remain a matter of problematical success. It is admitted that the failure of representative institutions arises from the unworthiness of constituencies; and if the efforts which are made by means of education to elevate the character of the next generation of electors should prove ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... had hung himself in it, but I do not know to this day whether it was true or not. The doubt did not prevent him from dangling at the door-post, in my consciousness, and many a time I shunned the sight of this problematical suicide by keeping my eyes fastened on the book before me. It was a very simple device, but perfectly effective, as I think any one will find who employs it in like circumstances; and I would really like to commend it to growing boys troubled as ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells |
