"Tenable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... therefore, after some consideration, George sent back a message to the effect that he and his party would remain where they were for exactly thirty minutes, during which Basset must do all that he could to render his position completely tenable, because at the expiration of that time the advance upon the Grand Plaza would begin. For half an hour, therefore, the party under the command of the young captain crouched, silent and motionless, upon the beach, during the whole of which seemingly endless time George was ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... in their meetings for Divine worship for the sake of listening to any outward performances. If this principle is once departed from, there is no tenable ground to prevent a gradual lapse into a full adoption of those forms out of which our Society was brought in the beginning. If the Scriptures are to be read in our meetings, how easy is it to conclude that a careful selection, such as is provided in the liturgies of some religious bodies, ...
— On Singing and Music • Society of Friends
... whom, indeed, are Polycarpe, Chrysotom, and Eusebius, to have in a manner suspected rather than believed, the immortality of the soul; yet we have no evidence of their ever having, by the finest process of ratiocination, so thoroughly convinced themselves as to introduce it generally as a tenable thesis on the portico. A beautiful thread of implicit belief and fervent hope, of after life, assimilating to the hunting-ground of our own American Indians, and though sensuous still, a step far in advance of the ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... dispute the passage—a most advantageous post for an army so much inferior in force; but the influence of beauty is not confined to courts. The mistress of the inn was handsome; when I saw her there were still some remains of beauty; and, to preserve her house, the general gave up the only tenable station. He was afterwards broke for ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... and imprisoned on a charge of high treason. Eudolf was exiled. Werner, who took refuge in his castle, was besieged there by the imperial troops, against whom he valiantly defended himself for several months. At length, however, finding that his stronghold was no longer tenable, he contrived to make his escape, leaving the nest to the imperialists empty of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... Prince, formed the second great point of discussion between the parties, and brought equally adverse principles into play. Mr. Fox, still maintaining his position on the side of Royalty, defended it with much more tenable weapons than the question of Right had enabled him to wield. So founded, indeed, in the purest principles of Whiggism did he consider his opposition, on this memorable occasion, to any limitation of the Prerogative ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... certain males, with whom it was particularly desired to match them. A change in the constitution of the female may sometimes have occurred before she was put to the second male; but in other cases this explanation is hardly tenable, for a female, known not to be barren, has been unsuccessfully paired seven or eight times with the same male likewise known to be perfectly fertile. With cart-mares, which sometimes will not breed with stallions of pure ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... only Katherine's sorrows, but the unselfish action of another woman went to make Julius March's position at Brockhurst tenable. A few days after Ormiston's momentous interview with his sister, news came of Mrs. St. Quentin's death. She had passed hence peacefully in her sleep. Knowledge of the facts of poor, little Dickie Calmady's ill-fortune had been spared her. For ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... may be, but necessarily, for our evident interests are involved, in some instances directly, in others by very probable implication. Under existing conditions, the opinion that we can keep clear indefinitely of embarrassing problems is hardly tenable; while war between two foreign states, which in the uncertainties of the international situation throughout the world may break out at any time, will increase greatly the occasions of possible collision ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Page want the Paternoster ruby? It was impossible even to surmise a tenable theory. His parsimony was notorious; he was a bachelor without known kith or kin, and had never before been known to evince the slightest interest in ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... of Redemption possible which shall not be mainly metaphor or simile? THE PROBLEM OF THE INCARNATION The approach is to be "a posterioria" In fact, God and man are only known to us in and by Jesus Only in Christ is the love of God as taught in N.T. tenable To know Jesus in what he can do, is antecedent to theory ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... Jaffa, where the garrison was put to the sword. It is the sad law of war. I desire that the necessity for such a frightful act should he spared to me, as well as to the brave Austrian nation. The place is not tenable." ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... a very bad letter, but it was a deplorably unwise one. When had Colonel Bellairs ever indited a wise one! But he made his precarious position even less tenable by ignoring the fact that Lord Lossiemouth's fortunes had altered, by asserting that he had had it in his mind to write to this effect the previous Christmas but had not had time. When Colonel Bellairs concocted that ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... assertion? Is the historical evidence on which you build trustworthy? And if in certain departments this evidence is clearly untenable, what guarantee have you that in other departments evidence of similar character is tenable? The fine-spun abstractions of the Platonists and their kin, unchecked by a natural science which had not yet the appliances necessary for its growth; the orthodoxies of the various churches, so singularly differentiated in the course of development from the simplicity ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... temple, as though to still the dull, constant throbbing that brought to his mental agony the added torment of physical pain. For these three days now he had fought with mind and body and soul against the one conclusion that was tenable—the conclusion which to-night, robbing him of every hope in life, bringing a grief and anguish greater than he could bear, cold logic was finally forcing him to accept. She would have known the torment of anxiety in which he lived, and if her plans had only been delayed or checked, if it had ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... as long as it is tenable is not heroic. It is simple duty. To defend it after it has become untenable, and even to die in so doing, is not heroic, but a noble madness, unless an advantage is to be gained thereby for one's own side. Then, indeed, it rises towards, if not into, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... to be ashamed of it. The truth is just the contrary. People, whom fate and their sinful mistakes have placed in a given condition, form such views of life generally that they are enabled to consider their condition useful and morally tenable. In order, however, to maintain such views they instinctively cling to such circles in which the same views are held. We are surprised when we hear thieves boasting of their cleverness, or murderers boasting of their cruelty, but that is only because their circle is limited, ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... had heard of Mr Easy and his arguments; he was a humorist, and more inclined to laugh than to be angry; at the same time he considered it necessary to show Jack that under existing circumstances they were not tenable. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Yet the hair-dresser seemed to find in that very dependence his best happiness, and to have built up a factitious self-respect from the very ruin of true dignity. His position was the antipodes of Balder's, yet, if results were evidence, it was tenable and more successful. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... of a respectable body of facts that I do not know how to explain except on the theory that I am dealing with some invisible intelligence. I hold that as the only tenable ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... Queres had taken refuge was tenable only for a short time, because the Canada Ancha has no permanent water-supply. There were a few pools, however, containing remnants of the rain that had lately fallen. But that was not enough. To abandon the groves, in which they felt comparatively safe in presence of the ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... I'm a plain business man. I come along. I see a good opening. Nobody seems to have tenable grants. I stake out claims, locate squatters, start to build. It seems to me your rangers have overlooked certain precautions. That's unfortunate for them. I'm prepared to hold my claim and to back all the squatters who work for me. If you don't like it you ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... of the old Empire under a plea of being oppressed. They claimed only the natural and sacred right of acting upon their honest convictions; and surely no one will pretend to say that their position was not as just and tenable, or that it was less honourable than that of those who had rebelled. I am not going to say that there was no cause of complaint on the part of those who threw down the gage of war. The truth about that matter has been conceded long ago. The enactments of the ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... made logical and tenable only on the assumption that such evolved conditions, insuring cross-fertilization, were of distinct advantage to the flower in the competitive struggle for existence, and that all cross-fertilized flowers were thus the ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... in informing you" (so ran the letter) "that the Governors of the Seaton High School have decided to award you a Scholarship tenable for ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... said this distinction in character is owing to the different estimation of principles and morals in the two nations. The solidity and purity of our ethics and religious creeds may have given a superior tone to our moral feeling; but has that man a tenable ground to value himself on either, whose respect to sacred things grows out of a respect to himself: on the other hand, is not humility the very foundation of the real Christian? For our part, we should be glad to see this national reserve lessened, if not done ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... certain military officers received a confidential communication having reference to the defence of the Belfast barracks. They were requested to examine and report upon the possibility of these buildings being tenable against a coup de main, were ordered to examine the loop-holes for musketry, to prepare plans of the same, and to duly submit them to the proper authorities, giving their opinion as to the practicability and sufficiency of existing arrangements in the event of the buildings being ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... plenary inspiration can be made to fit the facts which a careful study of the writings themselves bring before us. These writings are not inspired in the sense which we have commonly given to that word. The verbal theory of inspiration was only tenable while they were supposed to be the work of a single author. To such a composite literature no such theory will apply. "To make this claim," says Professor Ladd, "and yet accept the best ascertained results of criticism, ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... years (1884-'86) it has at times been very faint, so as barely to be visible. The persistence of this object for so many years leads me to infer that the formerly accepted theory, that the phenomena seen on the surface of the planet are atmospheric, is no longer tenable. The statement so often made in text-books, that in the course of a few days or months the whole aspect of the planet may be changed, is obviously erroneous. The oval white spots on the southern hemisphere of the planet, nine degrees south of the equator, have been systematically observed at every ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... red steers and the gray mare; of the shaggy watch-dog and the tabby-cat; of home in all its minutiae. Its familiar scenes visited him with a vividness which added ten-fold to their influence. He was as far abstracted as the mosquitos, which gathered in swarms upon every tenable spot of his flesh, would permit, when his meditations were disturbed by the gentleman who occupied the next chair. He wore the uniform of the army, and was battling the mosquitos with the smoke of a plantation cigar, ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... accrue to England from such a destruction of the balance of power; her position as mediator was only tenable so long as neither Francis nor Charles had the complete mastery. War on the Emperor was, no doubt, out of the question, but that was no reason for war on France. Prudence counselled England to make herself strong, to develop her ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... few hurried mouthfuls of food they set to work to drag up the materials of the raft, lest the sea might carry them off during the night. The task accomplished, they at length lay down in the tent, which the doctor had rendered more tenable than it otherwise would have been by putting up a close paling on the weather side. Fortunately no rain fell, but the wind, which as the night advanced blew with great force, found its way ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... discharged, and Ramsay then gave the order to fire in return. This was done, but without injury to the seamen of the cutter, who were protected by the hammocks, and Ramsay having already three of his men wounded, found that the post below was no longer tenable. A consultation took place, and it was determined that the passage on the lower deck and the cabin should be abandoned, as the upper deck it ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... dangerous, which returns to the charge of copying, but changes what lawyers call the venue of the trial from classical to Eastern lands. According to this theory, which came up when its classical predecessor was no longer tenable, the traditions and tales of Western Europe came from the East, but they were still all copies. They were supposed to have proceeded entirely from two sources; one the Directorium Humanae Vitae of John of Capua, translated between 1262-78 from a Hebrew version, which again came from an Arabic ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... is tenable. In the troublous times of Ireland, and, unhappily, it has had scarcely any other kind, the monasteries and ecclesiastical buildings of every description were generally spared, even by the most ruthless marauders; and, had this ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... geologists and volcanists are equally unable to agree in all details concerning this form of the earth's ailment. After all theories relating to the cause of volcanoes have been considered, the one that is most tenable and is sustained by the largest number of scientific men is that which traces volcanic effects back to the old accepted cause of internal fires in the center of the earth. Only in this way can the molten streams of lava emitted by ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... of nearly three to one, while its left flank and lines of communication with Havre were seriously menaced by a huge body of Uhlan cavalry. In a word, the positions taken up by the whole of the Allied centre and left were no longer tenable. To hang on would have been to court disaster. There was nothing for it but to cut ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... "It is not tenable," said Mr. Stone. "But it is restful. The wind is everywhere and nowhere, and nothing can be hidden from it. When I have missed that little girl, I have tried, in a sense, to become the wind; but I have ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in other words, that it is perpetually giving out heat without apparently becoming cooler. At first blush this seemed to contradict the great physical law of the conservation of energy, but physicists were soon agreed that a less revolutionary explanation of the phenomenon is perfectly tenable. The giving off of heat is indeed only an additional evidence of the dissipation of energy to which the radio-active atom is subjected. And no one now believes that radio-activity can persist indefinitely ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... more meritorious towards our civic commonweal, the more you, High-honored Gentlemen [of the Catholic persuasion], accept, with all frankness of colleague-love and amity, me and the Evangelical brother Raths now introduced by Royal grace and power; and make the new position generously tenable and available to us;—and thereby bind with us the more firmly the band of peace and colleague-unity, for helping up this dear, and for some years greatly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... if, as in science so in faith, reason were everything, our position would hardly be tenable, for then there should be no vagueness but clear vision. But the will enters for something in our act of faith. If everything we believe were as luminous as "two and two are four," a special act of the will would be utterly uncalled for. We ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... a superficial resemblance into thinking two unrelated key-syllables identical. Let us consider two sets of words. The first, which is related to the tain group (see below), has a key-syllable that means holding: tenant, tenement, tenure, tenet, tenor, tenable, tenacious, contents, contentment, lieutenant, maintenance, sustenance, countenance, appurtenance, detention, retentive, pertinacity, pertinent, continent, abstinence, continuous, retinue. The second has a key-syllable that means ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... they wrote like Cicero because they ended every sentence with "esse videtur:" but while he was boasting of his freedom from servile imitation, did he not fall into the other extreme, running after strange words and affected phrases? Even in his much-belauded 'Miscellanea' was every point tenable? And Tito, who had just been looking into the 'Miscellanea,' found so much to say that was agreeable to the secretary—he would have done so from the mere disposition to please, without further motive—that he showed himself quite worthy to be made a judge in ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... installation. "All who pass here," writes a Tours habitant, "state that there is no difference in the country between these times and Robespierre's[5187]..... It is certain that the soil is not tenable, and that the people are continually threatened with exactions as in a conquered country.... Proprietors are crushed down with impositions to such an extent that they cannot meet their daily expenses, nor pay the cost of cultivation. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Mirat, and still retaining a portion of the intrenchments, raised by our countrymen when they besieged Falaise, in 1417.—By this eminence the castle is completely commanded, and it is not easy to understand how the fortress could be a tenable position; as the garrison who manned the battlements of the dungeon and Talbot's tower, must have been exposed to the missiles discharged from the catapults and balistas planted ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... Bowers. Never more than six Scholarships a year had been given and in 1718 the income was L31 a year. In 1890 there were apparently two Carr Exhibitions of L50 a year each, while at the present day there is one of L50 tenable for three years, but it is possible that in a few years another Exhibition may be ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... leader, "to have done with this fooling"; and though he was blamed by the Balfourites for his abruptness of speech, the country adopted his opinion. Gradually it seemed to dawn on Mr. Balfour that his position was no longer tenable. He slipped out of office as quietly as he had slipped into it; and the Liberal party entered on ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... instance, he hated brutality. Both his own nature and that fine Athenian humanity which by study he had made his own were revolted by barbarous punishments. That there may be men too vile to live seemed to him, doubtless, a tenable opinion—he could forget all about the fallibility of human judgments—but "Quant a moy," he says, "en la iustice mesme, tout ce qui est au dela de la mort simple, me semble pure cruaute." To hurt others for our own good is not, he dimly perceived, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... and personal freedom, but not with that of political power or autonomy. But political freedom had been denied them because they did not admit the common ideas of duty which were its basis. This position, however, was not tenable, and was the source of great disorders. The Protestants, in like manner, could give reasons for several kinds of persecution. They could bring the Socinians under the category of blasphemers; and blasphemy, like the ridicule of sacred things, destroys reverence and awe, and ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... OBJECTION AS TO LANGUAGE TENABLE.—Again, whether there can be or be not external things, it is agreed on all hands that the proper use of words is the marking our conceptions, or things only as they are known and perceived by us; whence it plainly follows that in the tenets we have laid down there is nothing inconsistent ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... Happiness principle.' But Mr. Mill, to whom Mr. Darwin refers, has expressly shown that the Greatest Happiness principle is a STANDARD, and not a FOUNDATION, and that its validity as a standard of right and wrong action is just as tenable by one who believes the moral sense to be innate, as by one who holds that it is acquired. He says distinctly that the social feelings of mankind form 'the natural basis of sentiment for utilitarian morality.' So far from holding ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... it can be shown that Marx's philosophy of human society is essentially unsound, then the proposition to regenerate human society simply by economic reorganization is also unsound. Let us see whether the positions of the economic socialists are tenable in the light of the sociological principles which have been emphasized in the ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... the vanity that obsesses young authors. It did not even present itself to me as a tenable theory that the book might have been left behind on purpose, as being of no further use to the owner. It only occurred to me that, if I did not act swiftly, the poor girl would suffer a loss beside which the loss of a purse ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... Hanoverian, he had brought no feelings of hostility from the older days of conflict. Moderate, tactful, restrained, patriotic, he was the only man who, when difficulties arose, was always able to approach the Chancellor, sure of finding some tenable compromise. Different was it with Lasker, the ablest of Parliamentary orators, whose subordination to the decisions of the party was often doubtful, and whose criticism, friendly as it often was, ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... part, attach but secondary importance to controversial defences of the faith. No doubt they have their office; they may confirm a waverer, they may establish a believer, they may show onlookers that the Christian position is tenable; they may, in some rare cases of transcendent power, prevent a heresy from spreading and from descending to another generation. But oftenest they are barren of result, and where they do their work, it is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... as was made evident by the census of hallucinations, by far the larger number of apparitions reported are those of persons still alive and well. In these cases, nobody being dead, it is absurd[L] to raise the cry of spirits, and the only tenable hypothesis is that, through one of the several causes which seem to quicken telepathic action, a spontaneous telepathic hallucination has been produced. Now, the experiments conducted by the society and by independent investigators ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... cause accepted by these few is a true cause, since unquestionably during the life of the individual organism changes of function produce changes of structure; and while it is a tenable hypothesis that changes of structure so produced are inheritable; yet it was manifest to those not prepossessed, that this cause cannot with reason be assigned for the greater part of the facts. Though in plants there are some characters which may not irrationally be ascribed to the ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... more dead men. The mangled mattresses no longer stopped the windows. The last discharge seemed as if it would have carried away the mill. The position had ceased to be tenable. Nevertheless, the ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... It is not tenable, therefore, in theory, that the increase of capital produces, or tends to produce, a general decline of money prices. Neither is it true that any general decline of prices, as capital increased, has manifested itself in fact. The only things ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... you apprehend that on a concession you shall be pushed by metaphysical process to the extreme lines, and argued out of your whole authority, my advice is this: when you have recovered your old, your strong, your tenable position, then face about,—stop short,—do nothing more,—reason not at all,—oppose the ancient policy and practice of the empire as a rampart against the speculations of innovators on both sides of the question,—and you will stand on great, manly, and sure ground. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... ditch that surrounded the earth-work. The cannonading during the day was so furious that the fort was often almost reduced to ruins, but in the night the destruction was repaired. A fleet of gunboats joined the land batteries in bombarding the fort, and at last succeeded in making it no longer tenable. Guns had been dismounted, the bomb-proof had been destroyed, and the sides of the earth-work were full of breaches where the huge ten-inch balls had ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... the theory of water erosion tenable it is assumed that the Colorado river started in its incipiency like any other river. After a time the river bed began to rise and was gradually pushed up more and more by some unknown subterranean force as the water cut deeper and deeper ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... hypothesis seemed the more tenable, when, after a thorough search, we found no pocketbook and less than a dollar in ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... is the notion tenable of any special improbability applying to this particular pretension. For centuries has England enjoyed—1st, civil liberty; 2d, the Protestant faith. Now in those two advantages are laid the grounds, the very necessities, a priori, of a superior ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... had ridden to see how affairs were looking, he was surprised, raising his eyes to the Calvary, to see it was unoccupied; there was not a zouave to be seen there, they had abandoned the plateau that was no longer tenable by reason of the terrific fire from the batteries at Fleigneux. With a despairing presentiment of impending disaster he was spurring as fast as he could to the right, when he encountered Dumont's division, flying in disorder, broken and tangled in inextricable ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... of the seriousness of purpose shown by this well-known writer. Bubnov holds that the forms first found in Europe are derived from ancient symbols used on the abacus, but that the zero is of Hindu origin. This theory does not seem tenable, however, in the light of the evidence ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... herself; and in pale attention she listened for the reply of the affrighted Euphemia, who, half assured that her whim of creating a mutual passion in the breast of Thaddeus was no longer tenable, without either shame or remorse she exclaimed, "Indeed, Mr. Somerset, you are right; I never should have thought of Mr. Constantine if he had not teased me every time he ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... and is an attribute of matter; yet that is something wholly different from what is understood by the term. Thus far science has pointed out no distinction between dead and living protoplasm, and the affirmation that the primordial cells are the source of life is not tenable, since the cell is an organization that presupposes life, and so, at most, the original cell could be designated as but the first expression of life. For a short time it was assumed that life came to the earth through meteors or parts of worlds that had gone to pieces, but this idea was soon ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... possessed, is sufficiently like "the meaning of a lady's dress, &c." Cobbett despised andsoforths, for their lack of meaning; and I find none in this one, unless it be, "of tinsel and of fustian." This gloss therefore I wholly disapprove, judging the position more tenable, to deny, if we consequently must, that either a phrase or a participle, as such, can consistently govern the possessive case. For whatever word or term gives rise to the direct relation of property, and is rightly made to govern the possessive ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... have been tenable, though highly improbable, if you had been an innocent young maid, but he knew perfectly well that your novitiate was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... again in his mind every reason, tenable and untenable, that he could frame to account for Agnes' sudden and unexplained trip. He thought she probably had gone for her mail, or to send a telegram and receive a reply, or for money, or something which she needed in camp. More than once he took up the probability that she had gone off on ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... Charles as rebels; a policy by which he both intimidated that people, and produced an irreparable breach between them and the English.[*] That prince immediately attacked Reole, where the earl of Richmond himself commanded; and as the place seemed not tenable, the English general drew his troops to the water side, with an intention of embarking with the greater part of the army. The enraged Gascons fell upon his rear, and at the same time opened their gates to the French, who, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... account satisfactorily for the strange ceremony with which he greeted each new face. Had he been discovered upon the mainland, or any other place than the almost unknown island that had been his home, they would have concluded that he had formerly been a pet of man; but that theory was not tenable in the face of the isolation of his uninhabited island. He seemed continually to be searching for someone, and during the first days of the return voyage from the island he was often discovered nosing about in various parts of the ship; but after he ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... speculators, and showed they were utterly inadequate to the solution of the problem. This scrutiny consisted in searching for the ground of "contradiction"[571] with regard to each opinion founded on sensation, and showing that opposite views were equally tenable. It inquired on what ground these opinions were maintained, and what consequences flowed therefrom, and it showed that the grounds upon which "opinion" was founded, and the conclusions which were drawn from it, were contradictory, and consequently ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... does not differ essentially in hardness from that in the regions below, and hence the theory that all the adjacent land was once as high as the summit of the mountain, and was subsequently worn away by the action of water and weather, is hardly tenable. The gneiss of this region is not especially rich in other mineral contents. Some fine specimens of mica have however been obtained from the summit of Wachusett. The only other extraneous mineral found there to any great extent is the sulphuret of iron before mentioned. ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... is the chief cause of a temporary Trojan reverse. He relies on the Dream sent from Zeus in the opening lines of Book II., the Dream which was not in kernel A; the Dream which he communicated to nobody; the Dream conveying the promise that he should at once take Troy. This is perhaps a tenable theory, though Agamemnon had much reason to doubt whether the host would obey his command to arm, but an alternative theory of why and wherefore Agamemnon does great feats of valour, in Book XI., will later be propounded. Note that the events of Books XL.-XVIII., by Mr. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... came coasting down with smoking tires and fire-spitting brake-shoes, and between the loss of the water for his horses, and the hemming in of his rifle-ranges by rail right of way, Uncle Sam declared Fort Reynolds no longer tenable for cavalry. The regiment had been sent elsewhere, and only a quartermaster-sergeant and a ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... Ballingarry, and its results. He agreed in the propriety of going a second time to meet Mr. O'Brien, and urging upon him the necessity of some decisive course. The startling events of the two preceding days too clearly proved that his position was not tenable, and that whatever might be resolved on, it was indispensable to remove from Ballingarry. It was then night, and we were all sorely taxed by long riding and want of rest. Not one of us was able to mount, so we placed hay in a car on which we flung ourselves, and ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... the general mind of polite travelers; nor have I less admired her aptitude in collation of essentially illustrative facts, so as to bring the history of a very widely contemplative range of art into tenable compass and very graceful and serviceable form. Her reading, indeed, has been, with respect to many very interesting periods of religious workmanship, much more extensive than my own; and when I consented to edit the volume ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... considering only the amount necessary to the purchaser, and his means. Even Condillac had said: une chose n'a pas une valeur, parcequ'elle coute, mais elle coute (du travail ou de l'argent), parcequ'elle a une valeur. (Commerce et Gouvernement, 16.) Ricardo's doctrine is more tenable than appears at first blush. We need only to interline his theory of rent, admit that capital is accumulated labor, subtract all objects constituting a natural monopoly, and not forget that the intrinsic value of labor is one of the causes of the difference of price of different ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... the best skill of Washington was likely only to qualify defeat. He was advised to destroy New York and retire to positions more tenable. But even if he had so desired, Congress, his master, would not permit him to burn the city, and he had to make plans to defend it. Brooklyn Heights so commanded New York that enemy cannon planted there would make the city untenable. Accordingly Washington placed half his force ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... mutually contradictory: "The complete contradiction that exists in the homoousios carried in its train a whole army of contradictions which increased as thought advanced," says Harnack. Yes, so it was, and so it had to be. And he adds: "Dogma took leave for ever of clear thinking and tenable concepts, and habituated itself to the contra-rational." In truth, it drew closer to life, which is contra-rational and opposed to clear thinking. Not only are judgements of worth never ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... imbedded is in many cases one gigantic fossil, composed of the remains of microscopic forms of life, common-sense, which, after all, is the final tribunal, came to the aid of belabored science. It was conceded that the only tenable interpretation of the record in the rocks is that numerous populations of creatures, distinct from one another and from present forms, have risen and passed away; and that the geologic ages in which these creatures lived were of inconceivable length. The rank and file came thus, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... my lud," returned Mr. Balais, after a hurried conversation with the little attorney, "that my client is not in a position to dispute the evidence just adduced. He prefers to throw himself upon the mercy of the court, on the ground—a very tenable one, I think—of his youth and," he was going to add "inexperience," but, under the circumstances, he thought it better not—"of his extreme youth, my lud; my unhappy client is barely eighteen ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... batons represented in this book differ in the number of holes bored through them. It is thought that the number of holes indicated the rank of the owner. Although many theories are given regarding the use of batons, the one which seems most tenable to the author is that which views them as marks of distinction and instruments used in magical ceremonies and ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... hypothesis about Mohammed, that he was a scheming impostor, a falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be no longer tenable ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... scientific, moral, and aesthetic, as three principles by which he estimates the excellence of a work. His own examples, indeed, prove that to him a thing is already judged in being classified. The work of art is judged, then, by its relation to the type. Is this position tenable? I hold that, on the contrary, it precludes the possibility of a critical judgment; for the judgment of anything always means judgment with reference to the end for which is exists. A bad king is not the less a bad king for being a good father; and if his kingship ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... death was he anything but alive to the world. By the same token, was he not alive? And by the same token, here on the Elsinore, has not the land-world ceased? May not the pupil of one's eye be, not merely the centre of the world, but the world itself? Truly, it is tenable that the world exists only in consciousness. "The world is my idea," said Schopenhauer. Said Jules de Gaultier, "The world is my invention." His dogma was that imagination created the Real. Ah, me, I know that the practical Miss West would dub my metaphysics a depressing ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... to me. I can only answer, that no one can be more devotedly attached to the King than I myself,—that I am very partial to his merits and blind to his defects;—and that, in short, I would be the last man in the world to give up his cause where it was tenable. Nevertheless, I must confess, that if all his grandfather of Navarre's morals have not descended to him, this poor King has somehow inherited a share of the specks that were thought to dim the lustre of that great Prince—that Charles is a little soft-hearted, or so, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... who had the knack of seeing the ludicrous side of things ever really won their confidence, partly owing to their own natural want of humor, and partly to their careful cultivation of a habit of solemnity of mind as the only thing that can make an "advanced" position really tenable, to say nothing of comfortable. The causes of all successes, as of all failures, in the literary world are of course various, and no doubt there is a good deal of truth in all that has been said in solution of the comic-paper problem. American humorists of the best ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... states, that the first of his ancestors, who came to this country, was Rudra Sen, the son of Chandra Sen, Raja of Chitaur, descended of Ratna Sen, first Chauhan chief of that city; but I think that this account is not tenable, and Samar Bahadur, the brother of Rana Bahadur, gives one totally different, and, in my opinion, more probable. He says, that Ratna Sen, instead of being the first Raja of Chitaur, was the last of these princes; and that Naya Sen, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... the whole he, a southern overseer, pronounced himself decidedly in favour of free labour, upon grounds of expediency. Having at the beginning of our conversation declined discussing the moral aspect of slavery, evidently not thinking that position tenable, I thought I had every right to consider Mr. ——'s ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... scarcely of any historical moment at all; the real Empire is effectual only as an exponent of just law, military order, and mechanical art, to untrained races, and as a translation of Greek thought into less diffused and more tenable scheme for them. The Classic zone, from the beginning to the end of its visible authority, is composed of these two elements—Greek imagination, with Roman order: and the divisions or dislocations of the third and fourth century are merely the natural ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... into the bloody house of life. But Mr. Price (I think that's his name) is still anxious that they should not be hurt by cigarettes. That is the sort of maniacal isolation that can be found in the deserts of Bromley. That cigarettes are bad for the health is a very tenable opinion to which the minister is quite entitled. If he happens to think that the youth of Bromley smoke too many cigarettes, and that he has any influence in urging on them the unhealthiness of the habit, I should not blame him if he gave sermons ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... murder it is, of course nobody knows anything with certainty. But in my judgment there is only one tenable theory of Will Whittaker's disappearance, and that is, that he was murdered and his body hidden. Mead is the only enemy he was known to have, and Mead had threatened to kill him. The evidence, while, of course, not conclusive, is ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... beginning, but it was the beginning of the end. That slavery was to be put down without political action in a government carried on by the ballot was never a tenable proposition, and the inevitable work was at last inaugurated. It was done opportunely. Harrison and Van Buren were alike objectionable to anti-slavery men who understood their record. To choose between them was to betray the cause. Van Buren had attempted to shelter the slave trade under ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... they do? What could they? Compared with this question, the riddle of the Sphinx was simple, the supposition that they were going to batter coast-walls in the S. Pacific being hardly now tenable. The Boodah finally came to rest some miles North of lat. 50 deg. and East of long. 20 deg.: and there—just on the northern rim of the Gulf Stream where it divides, part toward Ireland, and part ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... this class the second explanation is the only tenable one,—namely, that there are certain extraordinary powers resident in the nervous organism which are capable of acting in opposition to the ordinary energies of nature; that an intangible material exists outside the body and penetrates physical objects, through ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... that the second Gospel, in spite of its superior originality and adhesion to the normal type, still does not entirely adhere to it or maintain its primary character throughout. The theory that we have in the second Gospel one of the primitive Synoptic documents is not tenable. ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... third point of view alone can give joy. Only is it tenable? Is there a particular Providence directing all the circumstances of our life, and therefore imposing all our trials upon us for educational ends? Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... months—paying twelve pounds for the whole term, and hoping to be able to stay till the end of October. The living is cheaper than even at Florence, so that there has been no extravagance in coming here. In fact, Florence is scarcely tenable during the summer from the excessive heat by day and night, even if there were no particular motive for leaving it. We have taken a sort of eagle's nest in this place, the highest house of the highest of the three villages which are ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... it assume my noble Fathers person,[3] Ile speake to it, though Hell it selfe should gape And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, If you haue hitherto conceald this sight; Let it bee treble[5] in your silence still: [Sidenote: be tenable in[4]] And whatsoeuer els shall hap to night, [Sidenote: what someuer els] Giue it an vnderstanding but no tongue; I will requite your loues; so, fare ye well: [Sidenote: farre you] Vpon the Platforme twixt eleuen and twelue, [Sidenote: a leauen and ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... landing, and formed on the beach under cover of a tremendous cannonade of round shot, and showers of grape and canister from the fleet, that swept the adjacent plain, and compelled the British to retire. General Vincent, finding the works torn to pieces by the enemy's artillery, and no longer tenable against so overwhelming a force, caused the fort to be dismantled, and the magazines to be blown up, and retreated to Queenston, leaving the Americans to take possession of the ruins of the fort. The British loss consisted of fifty-two killed ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... and gourd. From there we could see the missing two, lingering at the dooryard gate, in the bright moonlight. As we finished drinking, "Gentlemen," murmured Harry, "I fear our position is too exposed to be tenable." ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... Dukla and Lupkow and north of Uzsok fighting was resumed with intense vigor. Painfully digging through the snowdrifts the Austrians retired from the Smolnik-Kalnica line, now no longer tenable. Storm hampered the pursuing enemy, who captured the Cisna railway station on April 4, 1915, with all its rolling stock and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the Kansas-Nebraska Bill has been a much discussed subject among historians in recent years. The older view that Douglas was simply playing into the hands of the "slavepower" by sacrificing Kansas, is no longer tenable. This point has been elaborated by Allen Johnson in his study of Douglas ("Stephen A. Douglas: a Study in American Politics"). In his "Repeal of the Missouri Compromise", P.O. Ray contends that the legislation of 1854 originated in a factional controversy ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... in his magazine, at the end of November, 1907: "The tradition which many hold that the condition of poverty is ordinarily and as a matter of course to be explained by personal faults of the poor themselves is no longer tenable. Strong drink and vice are abnormal, unnatural and essentially unattractive ways of spending surplus income." Dr. Devine very frankly and bravely admits that poverty is an unnecessary evil, "a shocking, loathsome excrescence on the body politic, ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... the Boyne Club that Ham was showing a tendency to straighten up, surprise and incredulity were genuine. He was drinking less,—much less; and it was said that he had severed certain ties that need not again be definitely mentioned. The theory of religious regeneration not being tenable, it was naturally supposed that he had fallen in love; the identity of the unknown lady becoming a fruitful subject of speculation among the feminine portion of society. The announcement of the marriage of Hambleton Durrett ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... else you. Reconciliation is problematic; may be possible, or, far more likely, is impossible. It is now pretty generally admitted that the Parliament, having vanquished Charles First, had no way of making any tenable arrangement with him. The large Presbyterian party, apprehensive now of the Independents, were most anxious to do so; anxious indeed as for their own existence; but it could not be. The unhappy Charles, in those ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... first invasion of the Saracens had never appeared in Syria—not much unlike one engaged in single combat who, distrustful of his own abilities and fearing the worst, summons together his whole strength in hopes of ending the dispute with one decisive blow. Troops were sent to every tenable place which this inundation of the Saracens had not as yet reached, particularly to Caesarea and all the sea-coast of Syria, as Tyre and Sidon, Accah, Joppa, Tripolis, Beyrout, and Tiberias, besides another army to defend Jerusalem. The main body, which was designed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... been suggested[*] that the naturalism of Tell-el-Amarna owes some of its inspiration to the influence of the fugitives who brought with them from Crete the traditions of the great art of Knossos. Such a suggestion is no longer so improbable as it seemed to be in 1901, when it was still a tenable theory that the new development of Egyptian art was due to Mesopotamian influence, and came from Mitanni with Queen Tyi, the wife of Amenhotep III. Now that it is certain that Tyi was no Mitannian, but a native Egyptian, that door is closed, and we must ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... loss to account for his invitation to Green Fancy under the circumstances. The confident attitude of those responsible for Miss Cameron's detention evidently was based upon conditions which rendered their position tenable. Their disregard for the consequences that might reasonably be expected to result from this visit was puzzling in the extreme. He could arrive at no other conclusion than that their hospitality was inspired by a desire to disarm him of suspicion. An open welcome to the house, while a bold ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... is still a Church for him; that this extant Church, which he long took for an extinct shadow, is not such, but a substance; upon which he can anchor himself amid the storms of fate;—and he does so, even taking orders in it, I think. Such could by no means seem to me the true or tenable solution. Here clearly, struggling amid the tumults, was a lovable young fellow-soul; who had by no means yet got to land; but of whom much might be hoped, if he ever did. Some of the delineations are ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... Congreve was not tenable; whatever glosses he might use for the defence or palliation of single passages, the general tenour and tendency of his plays must always be condemned. It is acknowledged, with universal conviction, that the perusal ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... of the body is mechanical, and that thought, as exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of the brain, I think the position of the 'Materialist' is stated, as far as that position is a tenable one. I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain this position against all attacks; but I do not think, in the present condition of the human mind, that he can pass beyond this position. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... of the Army of the Ohio entered Allatoona on June 1st, and reported the gorge a place he could hold against a superior force. [Footnote: Id., p. 379.] General Johnston was so well persuaded that his position was no longer tenable that he issued the same day a confidential order directing a withdrawal, but recalled it late in the day in view of the changes evidently going on at our extreme right, and so remained a few days longer. [Footnote: Id., ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Hanoverian general, Hammerstein, and his adjutant Scharnhorst, who afterward became so noted, made a gallant defence. When the city became no longer tenable, they boldly sallied forth at the head of the garrison ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... only one of the revolutionary committee who had remained with the mob, not with any purpose to restore or preserve order, but because he found the company and the occasion entirely congenial. He had had no opportunity, at least no tenable excuse, to kill or maim a negro since the termination of his contract with the state for convicts, and this occasion had awakened a dormant appetite for these diversions. We are all puppets in the hands of Fate, and seldom see the strings that move us. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... western countries of Europe, ceased in consequence of their conversion to Christianity; for that, under the humanizing influence of religion, they staid at home, and cultivated the arts of peace. But the hypothesis is, I fear, not very tenable. Christianity, in even a purer form than that in which it first found its way among the ancient Scandinavians, and when at least as generally recognized nationally as it ever was by the subjects of Haco, has failed to put ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... meets you and frightens you, you will plunge it into your bosom? Oh! that must not be. Edmee, we must find some means of changing a position which is no longer tenable. I take it that you do not wish to deprive him of your father's friendship by confessing to the latter the monstrous bargain you were forced to make with this bandit at Roche-Mauprat. But whatever may happen—ah! ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... of conduct, on which the whole doctrine of liberty rests, seems metaphysical and arbitrary. They are reluctant to admit there are any self-regarding acts at all. This reluctance implies a perfectly tenable proposition, a proposition which has been maintained by nearly all religious bodies in the world's history in their non-latitudinarian stages. To distinguish the self-regarding from the other parts of conduct, strikes them not only as unscientific, but as morally and socially mischievous. ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... early graperies, gardeners have a prejudice against growing any other plants than the grapevines lest red spiders, thrips, or mealy bugs are introduced with the plants, but in the case of mushrooms no such grounds are tenable. As the vines have yielded their fruit by midsummer and ripened their wood early so as to be ready for starting into growth again in December or January, the grapery is kept cool and ventilated in the ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... I to myself, 'there is an end to coquetry, it is beaten on all sides; it is gone, never to return. She has seen that the affair is a little too deep for that, and the field not tenable. She will erect barriers in order to defend herself and will no longer attack.' Thus we pass from the period of amiable smiles, sweet glances, and half-avowals to that of severity and prudery, while waiting for the remorse and despair of the denouement. I am sure that at this time she called to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... founder of Cartesianism himself. D'Alembert points out that the disciples violate the first maxims of their chief. He describes the hypothesis of vortices and the doctrine of innate ideas as no longer tenable, and even as ridiculous; but do not let us forget, he says with a fine movement of candour, that it was Descartes who opened the way; he who set an example to men of intelligence, of shaking off the yoke of scholasticism, of opinion, of authority—in ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... friend. In reasoning against it, my arguments will, to a certain extent, be those of an orthodox Trinitarian;[1] since we might both maintain that the belief in the absolute divine morality of Jesus is not tenable, when the belief in every other divine and superhuman quality is denied. Should I have any "orthodox" reader, my arguments may shock his feelings less, if he keeps this in view. In fact, the same action or word in Jesus may be consistent or inconsistent with moral ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... Picchu, of the life lived by its citizens, and of the ancient towns of which it was the most important. At present I must rest content with a discussion of its probable identity. Here was a powerful citadel tenable against all odds, a stronghold where a mere handful of defenders could prevent a great army from taking the place by assault. Why should any one have desired to be so secure from capture as to have built a fortress in such an ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... is usually one of the prime nobility, elected by the students in convocation; and he holds the office for life. He is the chief magistrate in the government of the University. The Chancellor of Cambridge is also elected from among the prime nobility. The office is biennial, or tenable for such a length of time beyond two years as the tacit consent of the University may choose to ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... hesitation in deciding that the first was the most tenable ground; but, from the peculiar circumstances of the case, it merited consideration, if the principle could be saved, whether facility in the provision might not result from a compliance. An attentive examination of the subject and papers, however, soon convinced ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... man, the colour of the skin is the most conspicuous and one of the best marked. It was formerly thought that differences of this kind could be accounted for by long exposure to different climates; but Pallas first shewed that this is not tenable, and he has since been followed by almost all anthropologists. (52. Pallas, 'Act. Acad. St. Petersburg,' 1780, part ii. p. 69. He was followed by Rudolphi, in his 'Beytrage zur Anthropologie,' 1812. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... is warranted by the grants of 1417 and 1419; excepting that in these the Commons make the argument intended to support the charge against Henry's veracity still less tenable, by inserting a phrase which might seem to exclude the very object for which application for the subsidy was made. The application was made especially for the supplies necessary to carry on the war abroad; the ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... What a feeling of helpless despair came over me with the conviction that the journey of the last two days had been in vain! I seated myself on a rock, upon the summit of a commanding hill, and cast my eyes along the only route which now seemed tenable—down the Yellowstone. How many dreary miles of forest and mountain filled the terrible panorama! I thought that before accepting this discouraging alternative I would spend a day in search for a pass. Twenty miles at most would take me into the Madison Valley, ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... marsh became more tenable. The smallest song birds from the woods flitted along the ditches; there were days, too, when the ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... and paid his men as the preliminary to the resumption of the offensive. The attack commenced on the following morning, and promised to prove of an arduous nature; but by a skillful flank movement Major Gordon carried two stockades in person, and rendered the whole place no longer tenable. The rebels evacuated their position and retreated, closely pursued by the imperialists. The villagers, who had suffered from their exactions, rose upon them, and very few rebels escaped. The pursuit was continued for a week, and the lately victorious army ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... them impatiently by saying, "Yes; but I want you to tell me the PARTICULAR GO of it!" Had his question been about truth, only a pragmatist could have told him the particular go of it. I believe that our contemporary pragmatists, especially Messrs. Schiller and Dewey, have given the only tenable account of this subject. It is a very ticklish subject, sending subtle rootlets into all kinds of crannies, and hard to treat in the sketchy way that alone befits a public lecture. But the Schiller-Dewey view of truth has been ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... atom of iron since the earth was formed and would so remain to the end of time. The Alchemists were sneered at as fanciful dreamers or madmen, but since Professor J. J. Thomson's discovery of the electron, the atomic theory of matter, is no longer tenable. The principle of radio-activity has later vindicated the Alchemists. Science and the Bible agree in teaching, that all that is, has been formed ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... each month by the menstrual discharge. Under ordinary conditions this obstruction must seriously interfere with the entrance of the spermatozoa into the cavity of the uterus, and renders the former theory, recently revived by Bossi, quite tenable, that impregnation is most likely to occur just after the ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... origin of the evolutionistic method to the influence of natural science. The view is tenable that theology led the way. Probably this is a case of alternate and reciprocal debt. Quite certainly the evolutionist method in theology, in Christian history and in the estimate of scripture, has received vast reinforcement from biology, in which evolution ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... Van Cortlandt family found a safe asylum when the manor house on the Croton was no longer tenable. In March, 1777, General McDougal posted his advance guard here when the British took possession of Peekskill. Eighty of his men, under Lieutenant-Colonel Willet, receiving permission to attack some two hundred of the British that had taken possession of a height a little south ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... order to secure their own independence, and to prevent the accumulation of new burdens on the people by the growth of a civil list debt, they passed the Establishment Bill. By that bill thirty-six offices tenable by members of Parliament were suppressed, and an order of payment was framed by which the growth of any fresh debt was rendered impracticable. The debt on the civil list from the beginning of the present reign had amounted to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... next few days. One of them undoubtedly was the Valentine situation. Beside Audrey's predicament and Chris's wretched endeavor to get away and yet prove himself a man, his own position seemed, if not comfortable, at least tenable. He would have described it, had he been a man to put such a thing into words, as that "he and Natalie didn't exactly ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Montmorency. M. le Prince de Tingry, in the presence of the Queen, used to call her cousin. The ancient household of the Kings of France had prerogatives acknowledged in the state. Many of the offices were tenable only by those of noble blood, and were sold at from 40,000 to 300,000 franca. A collection of edicts of the Kings in favour of the prerogatives and right of precedence of the persons holding office in the royal ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... example, where the limestone-forming seas produced an abundance of corals, crinoidea, and shell-fish. Admitting for a moment a re-origination of species after a cataclysm, as has been surmised by some geologists, though the hypothesis is always becoming less and less tenable, it harmonizes with nothing so well as the idea of a creation by law. The more solitary commencements of species, which would have been the most inconceivably paltry exercise for an immediately creative power, are sufficiently worthy of one ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... to L.] I pray you all, If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight, Let it be tenable[64] in your silence still; And whatsoever else shall hap to-night, Give it an understanding, but no tongue; I will requite your loves. So, fare you well: Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, I'll ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... theory—everything made out of nothing by a personal God—is no longer regarded as tenable by intelligent individuals, though miracle and special providence are often included in accounting for the vicissitudes of life, just as the so-called scientist superficially and flippantly uses the word "coincidence," as though it really ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... very difficult—premature, outside my province. And so—by not knowing—I was free: and when I stated the basis of the Peace terms, I stated them (and I was secure then in my power to do so) in terms which should in honour have made those secret treaties no longer tenable. There was my first great error—I acknowledge it, Tumulty: ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... change been recommended. The Committee suggest that the post of Vice-President of the Department should not be held by a Minister with a seat in Parliament, nor yet by a regular civil servant, but should be an office sui generis tenable for five years with power of reappointment. No effect has so far been given ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... great benefits enjoyed in this regard by the Jewish race to the soberness of their lives. This position is, however, not altogether tenable, if by that we mean abstemiousness; they are extremely temperate, but not abstemious. Tissot, Cornaro, Lessius, Hufeland, Humphry, Sir Henry Thompson, as well as the older Greek and Roman authorities, all are agreed that an abstemious life ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... of provisions to the army which were collecting at Mzez Ammar. Well, we arrived safely at our various camps of Drean, Nech Meya, and Amman Berda. We made a little detour to visit Ghelma. I had curiosity to see it, as formerly it was an important city. I must say that a more tenable position I never beheld. But I tire ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... before Whitsuntide 1643; and the return of the wife to her relations, her refusal to come hack, and Milton's chagrin and anger so occasioned, must have been matters not of after Michaelmas 1643, but of at least a month or two before the August of that year. This is quite a tenable supposition; for there are other inaccuracies in Phillips, and the register of the place and date of Milton's marriage with Mary Powell has not been found. (2) On the whole, however, Phillips's recollections ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the fact that in considering these organs to be the ears of flies, I antagonize Lee and others who consider them olfactory in character.[20] The position I take in regard to these organs is, however, a tenable one, and one that ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... artium atque excellentia Verbi Dei declamatio—can hardly be taken seriously, as it was regarded by the author himself rather as a clever paradox. Francis Sanchez, on the other hand, formulated a tenable theory of the impossibility of knowing anything. A riper theory of perception, following Paracelsus and anticipating Leibnitz, was that of Edward Digby, based on the notion of the active ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... during his old age, he conducted a large school in this settlement, being the first English school that was taught in that then frontier part of the country. This appears to be the only tenable reason that has been assigned for the change of the family ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... in quest of Robinson, whose haunts he knows. There was much talk concerning what should be done, how to protect my honour's person, and to postpone commencing a defence which must make Ahab desperate, before we can ascertain that the grounds are really tenable. This much I think I can see, that the trustees will rather pay the debt than break off the trust and go into a sequestration. They are clearly right for themselves, and I believe for me also. Whether it is in human possibility ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... mountains and the ship went down, and all these disconnected and meaningless and terrible objects were all part of one dark and fearful conspiracy of goodness, one merciless scheme of mercy. That this scheme of Nature was not accurate or well founded is perfectly tenable, but surely it is not tenable that it was not optimistic. We insist, however, upon treating this matter tail foremost. We insist that the ascetics were pessimists because they gave up threescore years and ten for an eternity of happiness. We forget that ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton |
