"Possibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... parson's everlastin' preaching and giving examples how taking a pin has been the start of a feller coming to the gallows; and this is a much worse beginning than a pin! If the only way of rarin' them not to steal was to put 'em where there was no possibility of stealing nothink, a pretty sort of honesty that would be; you might as well say the only way to rare a girl modest was to let her never have a chance of being nothink else. Some people, of course, has different views, but ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... It had never occurred to her that Fritz was quite as likely to arrive before Leo Ulford as Leo Ulford to arrive before Fritz. Why had she never thought of so obvious a possibility? She could not imagine. The difference between the actuality and her intense and angry conception of what it would be, benumbed her mind for an instant. She was completely confused. She sat still with the book of poems on her lap, and gazed at Lord Holme as he came towards her, taking ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... that you should make yourself acquainted, as far as may be practicable, with the general character and financial standing of each Postmaster in your Division who has charge of Money Order or Savings Bank duties; and in any case where you have reason for suspecting the possibility of irregular practices, or a disposition to withhold—even for short periods—Post Office monies, a confidential report should be made to the Postmaster General, in order that a close supervision may be kept by the Superintendent on ...
— General Instructions For The Guidance Of Post Office Inspectors In The Dominion Of Canada • Alexander Campbell
... prominent office-holders had recently perpetrated a lie of the latter type. Such a barefaced, impudent, obvious lie, that there was no possibility of covering it up, and the whole country talked of it. Music halls laughed at it, comic papers and comic songs rang with it, election ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... man born of splendid parents, good surroundings, the best of advantages, a fair intellectuality, with the possibility of being president of the United States, and with courage of a field general. Think of him lying stagnant in a prison cell. This does not apply alone to the highway outlaw, but to those outlaws who are sometimes called by the softer name "financier." Not long ago I heard a man speak of a ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... Of the possibility of his non-appearance she would not think; but when the fear that she was perhaps looking for him in vain assailed her, the blood crimsoned her face as if she felt the shame of a humiliating insult. Yet why should ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... faults as she can be. She will not talk to her neighbors about them, nor magnify them, nor dwell upon them. She, alas! will never be without her share of blame; for the world, rightly or wrongly, often dowers the wife with the faults of the husband, and, seeing no possibility of interfering and assigning to each his or her share, suspects both. Moreover, in many cases she will have to blame herself chiefly. We take it that the great majority of women marry the men that they choose. If they do not do so, they ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... to warn the others of their danger. But the girl positively and firmly refused to comply. At that moment no human power, short of an exercise of superior physical force, could have induced her to quit the Ark. The exigency of the moment did not admit of delay, and the Delaware seeing no possibility of serving his friends, cut the line and by a strong shove forced the scow some twenty feet clear of the piles. Here he took the sweeps and succeeded in getting a short distance to windward, if any ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... the heavy man till he hollered, but the effort had been noticeable. Casey wondered uneasily whether by any chance he, Casey Ryan, was growing old with the rest of the world. That possibility had never before occurred to him, and the thought was disquieting. Casey Ryan too old to lick any man who gave him cause, too old to hold the fickle esteem of those who met him in the road? Casey squinted belligerently at the Old-man-with-the-scythe and ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... children. Mary bore up nobly; so, too, did the boys. For myself, I could not offer a word of consolation, for I knew that we were still ten miles from the foot of the mountain. I thought of the possibility of riding on ahead, and bringing back some water in the vessels; but I saw that my horse could never stand it. He was even now unable to carry me, and I was afoot, leading him. Cudjo also walked by the side of the oxen. Another of these ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Simply because the matter does not rest with me. You have proceeded with a high hand, Madame, or rather your duchess has. Nothing will come of it. Had there been any possibility of my considering your proposals, this kidnaping ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... possibility of either command mistaking the other for a friend, but Sherburne, despite his youth, had in him the instinct for quick perception and action which distinguished the great cavalry leaders of the South like Jeb Stuart, Turner Ashby and others. ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... how I liked their city, and if better than Tripoli. I always replied, Haier (better). It is singular that though these merchants are so enterprising themselves in the interior of Africa, they cannot conceive of the possibility of a Christian coming so far from home into The Desert, and when I tell them I wish to go to Soudan, or Bornou, or Timbuctoo, they look at me with incredulity and say, "No, no, you cannot go so far, you will die, or the people will kill you." They ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... long ago. Those who are rash enough to predict publicly beforehand commonly give us what they hope, or what they fear, or some conclusion from an abstraction of their own, or some guess founded on private information not half so good as what everybody gets who reads the papers,—never by any possibility a word that we can depend on, simply because there are cob-webs of contingency between every to-day and to-morrow that no field-glass can penetrate when fifty of them lie woven one over another. Prophesy as much as you like, but always hedge. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... these many puzzling things, from day to day. A momentous possibility seemed to be dawning on her view; but she was like one who, being but half-awake, cannot decide whether the brightness of coming day may not, after all, be merely a dim dream-light which will presently ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... and set about all his preparations with his usual care, but with a serenity never previously seen in him. Up to that time he had continued to work as usual, not relaxing for an instant; for there was a possibility that Kotzebue might die or be killed by somebody else before the term that Sand had fixed to himself, and in that case he did not wish to have lost time. On the 7th of March he invited all his friends to spend the evening with him, and announced his departure ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... more than necessary for living in a style befitting his position. He had abundant opportunity for making money, but this his nice sense of honor forbade. It is even stated that he would never allow any invention to be used on the road that could by any possibility be of any profit to himself or to any of his friends. He was continually besieged by American inventors, but in vain. The honor of the profession he regarded as a sacred trust. He served the Emperor with the fidelity that characterized all his actions. His unswerving ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... the open window and put the rifle to her shoulder. She pulled the trigger. There was no discharge. Not satisfied with one trial she worked the rifle until there was positively no possibility of any load being ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... native springs and sources, you see, which (hanging a few sticks and straws, that, as less considerable, would otherwise be more troublesome, upon the banks of their peculiar channels) derive the full stream of business into the Senate, so pure, and so far from the possibility of being troubled or stained (as will Undeniably appear by the course contained in the ensuing order) with any kind of private interest or partiality, that it shall never be possible for any assembly hearkening to the advice or information ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... the more open land near the beach, the possibility of making a successful cast of the spear became more and more doubtful. Finally the savage shrunk into the bushes and ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... visited since Turner's embassy to Tibet in 1789; and hence it was highly important to explore scientifically a part of the chain which, from its central position, might be presumed to be typical of the whole range. The possibility of visiting Tibet, and of ascertaining particulars respecting the great mountain Chumulari,* [My earliest recollections in reading are of "Turner's Travels in Tibet," and of "Cook's Voyages." The account ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... guests wandered softly in and out of the rooms, and looked at the golden oranges glimmering against their dark leaves, and put themselves into positions that suggested the possibility of flirtation. Young ladies whose study of German literature had never gone beyond Ollendorff gazed pensively at the oranges, and murmured the song of Mignon. Couples of maturer growth whispered the details of ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... irreparable. The reconciliation of Herod and Pontius Pilate[270] was the subject of his worst alarm; and a slight exercise of ecclesiastical tyranny was but a moderate price by which to ensure himself against so dangerous a possibility. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... hundred, headed by Earl Warenne himself, and his brothers-in-law, Guy of Lusignan and William of Valence, secured their retreat to the spacious castle of Pevensey, of which Warenne was constable, and from which the possibility of continuing their flight by sea remained open. Of greater military consequence was the successful escape of the lords of the Welsh march, whose followers were next day the only section of the royalist army which was still a fighting force. This was the only immediate ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Wild, it does not the less concern us to make a true estimate of his intellectual capacity. Nothing is more unwise than to assume that a man's brain must be limited because his moral sense is small; yet no mistake is more common. Napoleon the Third may play an important part in History, though by no possibility an heroic one. In reading this little volume, one cannot fail to be struck with the presence of mind and the absence of heart of which it gives evidence. It is the advertisement of a charlatan, whose sole inheritance is the right to manufacture the Napoleonic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... other circumstances he would certainly not have understood, not have imagined the possibility of such an insinuation against his poor mother, who was so kind, so simple, so excellent. But his spirit seethed with the leaven of jealousy that was fermenting within him. His own excited mind, on the scent, as it were, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... us to believe that almost every continent has been broken up into islands even during the later tertiary periods; and in such islands distinct species might have been separately formed without the possibility of intermediate varieties existing in the intermediate zones. By changes in the form of the land and of climate, marine areas now continuous must often have existed within recent times in a far less continuous and uniform condition than ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... indulge in. She had even come hardly to heed words which in the early days of her married life would have wounded her to the quick. She had readjusted her conception of her husband's character, and if she still cherished illusions in regard to him, she no longer believed in the possibility of changing his opinions ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... "You'll think me childish, but I never did. I suppose I vaguely faced the possibility, but I put it from me. We had each other and our love—that ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... life, and were old and withered, or sickly, or crippled, had not laid up dreams of good houses and fields and sheep and cattle; for they had never possessed enough to think of the possession of more as a possibility. It seemed as if their lives had been so poor and rigid in circumstance that they did not fix their minds, as more prosperous people might do, on thoughts of customary pleasure. The stories that they ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... of nominalism. Locke, with his predecessors, had maintained that all reality is individual, and that universals exist only in the abstracting understanding. From this point Berkeley advances a step further, the last, indeed, which was possible in this direction, by bringing into question the possibility even of abstract ideas. As all beings are particular things, so all ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... person to label such a definitely British practice as shanty-singing with a French title. If there had been such a thing in French ships as a labour-song bearing such a far-fetched title as (un) chante, there might have been a remote possibility of the British sailor adopting the French term in a spirit of sport or derision, but there is no evidence that any such practice, or any such term, achieved any vogue in French ships. As a matter of fact, the Oxford Dictionary (which prints it 'shanty') states that the word ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... hands down, but since she hadn't, there was no use in worrying about it. By the time supper was over that evening, the stock of the Brimfield Football Team had risen to close to par, and anyone who had had the temerity to even suggest the possibility of a victory for Claflin would have ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... way of warming a nursery—or indeed any other room, where MERE warmth is demanded—is by means of air heated in other apartments, and admitted through openings in the floor or fire-place. The air is not only thus made more pure, but every possibility of accidents, such as having the clothes take fire, is precluded. This last consideration is one of very great importance, and I hope will not be much longer overlooked in ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... no battery connected to the grid it has no possibility of influencing the electron stream which the plate is attracting to itself. We say, then, that the grid is uncharged or is at "zero potential," meaning that it is zero or nothing in possibility. But when the grid is charged, no matter ...
— Letters of a Radio-Engineer to His Son • John Mills
... the modern oath of office of a teacher, and the possibility of dismissal for insubordination, is a natural development from the oath of fealty and obedience (84 b) of the mediaeval teacher? Is this true also for our modern ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... In view of the possibility of the 'Aurora' not relieving them, the party went through their food-supplies, finding that these were sufficient for another year, with the exception of meat. With regard to coal, two tons of briquettes remained, which, augmented by good ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... persist to support the glorious cause in which they had engaged—that if the threatened sacrifice should follow they would carry a parent's blessing, and the good opinion of every virtuous citizen with them, to the grave; but if from the frailty of human nature—of the possibility of which she would not suffer an idea to enter her mind—they were disposed to temporize and exchange this liberty for safety, they must forget her as a mother, nor subject her to the misery of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... on board ship or round the camp fire when their search carried them so far inland that it was impossible to return to the yacht at night. Several times, accompanied by Pecheray guides, they had been gone for ten days at a time, but never found a trace of the lost man. There was the faint possibility that he had been found and cared for by wandering Indians, but what was far more likely was that French might stumble upon the spot where he died. Even in that land of beasts and birds of prey something would ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... marriages contracted at the various Paris town halls. From morning till night the mayors and their assistants have been kept busy uniting couples who would be separated the same day or the next, when the husband joined his regiment. At the bare announcement of the possibility of war, the marriage offices at the town halls were literally taken by assault. As there was no time to be lost, arrangements were made by the chief officials to accept the minimum of documentary proofs of identity in all cases where the bridegrooms were called upon to serve their country. ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... little errand at her bidding. When we two were alone, cousin Holman recurred to Holdsworth's marriage. She was one of those people who like to view an event from every side of probability, or even possibility; and she had been cut short from indulging herself in this way ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... great natural resources, skilled labor force, and modern capital plant Canada can anticipate solid economic prospects in the future. The continuing constitutional impasse between English- and French-speaking areas is raising the possibility of a split in the federation, making foreign investors ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... that potentiality awakens another quality of horror,—the horror of infinite Possibility. For this Inscrutable that pulses through substance as if substance were not at all,—so subtly that none can feel the flowing of its tides, yet so swiftly that no life-time would suffice to count the number of the oscillations which it makes within the fraction of one ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... the changes produced by human action in the physical conditions of the globe we inhabit; to point out the dangers of imprudence and the necessity of caution in all operations which, on a large scale, interfere with the spontaneous arrangements of the organic or the inorganic world; to suggest the possibility and the importance of the restoration of disturbed harmonies and the material improvement of waste and exhausted regions; and, incidentally, to illustrate the doctrine that man is, in both kind and degree, a power of a higher order than any of the other forms of animated ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... back wall of his arched apartment. They were empty—he confirmed his instinct on that point quickly enough, for the events of the morning left him in the mood for refreshment. It was uncomfortable all this; there was always the possibility of justice miscarried; but at no time had he any fear of savage reprisals such as had alarmed him when Mungo Boyd locked him up in Doom and the fictitious broken clan cried "Loch Sloy!" in darkness. For this was not wholly the wilds, and Argyll's manner, though stern, was that of ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... appear frequently as opponents of the Church. This condition was doubtless due to the prominence given the resurrection from the dead among the themes of the apostolic preaching, the Twelve continually bearing testimony to the actual resurrection of Christ. Sadducean doctrine denied the actuality and possibility of a bodily resurrection, the contention resting mainly on the ground that Moses, who was regarded as the supreme mortal lawgiver in Israel, and the chief mouthpiece of Jehovah, had written nothing concerning life after death. The following is taken from Smith's Dictionary of the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... die!" cried the leader; and, at his gesture of command, uplifted blades were arrested in air, and like leopards crouching in act to spring, the Hebrews surrounded their prisoner, to prevent the possibility of his making ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... 1825 John Stevens, who for ten years past had been advocating steam railroads, built a circular road at Hoboken to demonstrate the possibility of using such means of locomotion. In 1823 Pennsylvania chartered a company to build a railroad from Philadelphia to the Susquehanna. But it was not till 1827, when the East was earnestly seeking for a rapid and cheap means of transportation ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... never see—imagine, moreover, that the death of this mandarin, this man, almost a myth, would make you a millionaire, and that you have but to lift your finger, at home, in France, to bring about his death, without the possibility of ever being called to account for it by any one; say, what would ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... George II. pocketed, and never afterwards produced or attempted to carry out his father's will, may have suggested to the scandalous the possibility of a similar act on ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... out in Chapter I of Part III that there is no possibility of conflict between empirical and scientific knowledge. Modern Voice Culture seems to present a direct contradiction of this statement. The vocal teacher's empirical understanding of the voice conflicts ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... gloaming after her cousin's departure, Norma dreamed dreams and was happy—her eyes softened, and her lips smiled. Then her face darkened slowly, and the hands in her lap clinched themselves. In her fierce joy in the possibility of her reward coming to her at last, was mingled a dread that the cup might be dashed from her ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... Suppression and Prevention of the White Slave Traffic and many others—stand for the final abolition of commercialized vice. Local vice commissions, such as the able one recently appointed in Chicago, although composed of members of varying beliefs in regard to the possibility of control and regulation, united in the end in recommending a law enforcement looking towards final abolition. Even the most sceptical of Chicago citizens, after reading the fearless document, shared the hope ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... that fearful burning mood, her heart beating, her cheek flushing, that Nydia awaited the possibility of Glaucus's return before the night. He crossed the portico just as the first stars began to rise, and the heaven above had assumed ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... before the return of the drogher with his midshipmen, or should she not appear until he had endeavoured to ascertain their fate. The colonel asked Murray's opinion. Alick gave it, but advised him to apply to Captain Hemming on the possibility of his sending the Tudor on to Jamaica before the frigate. His heart beat with hope that this might be done, and Stella's countenance brightened when ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... understand, when the words are used, that a blaze of splendour is to be attained at the cheapest possible price. But, in this instance, money was no object;—such an amount of money, at least, as could by any possibility be spent on a lady's clothes, independently of her jewels. With reference to diamonds and such like, the archdeacon at once declared his intention of taking the matter into his own hands—except in ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... The possibility of an interaction between the celestial orbs had occurred to astronomers before the time of Newton; for instance, in the ninth century to the Arabian Musa-ben-Shakir, to Camillus Agrippa in 1553, and to Kepler, who suspected its existence from observation of the tides. Horrox also, writing in 1635, ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... tried it himself and slunk, defeated, into a deeper obscurity. Perhaps he committed suicide; for one can easily imagine that a man who thought he had found a way to cut his own hair and then found that he hadn't, would be thrown into a suicidal depression. There is the possibility that he succeeded in cutting his own hair, and was immediately 'put away,' by his sensitive family where nobody could see him but the hardened attendants. The important fact is that the invention never got on the market. ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... features and tendencies it is intensely antagonistic, and this antagonism may be conceived to have its keenest edge and greatest force in the city from which it has for ages maintained its sway over the millions of India. If any religion could be considered entrenched by local advantages beyond the possibility of overthrow, Hinduism might be declared secure at Benares, if not against assault, at ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... secretarial nature that offered itself. He kept to nothing for long, being easily dissatisfied, and ever on the look out for the "job" that might conceal the kind of adventure he wanted. Once the work of the moment proved barren of this possibility, he wearied of it and sought another. And the search seemed prolonged and hopeless, for the adventure he sought was not a common kind, but something that should provide him with a means of escape from a vulgar and noisy world that bored him very much indeed. ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... distance a coyote barked. Her courage began to depart, as the dusk deepened; it seemed to her as if all the loneliness in the world had come home to roost. It was no use to watch for the fence now; it would apprise her of its presence when she came to it. Regardless of the possibility of running into its iron barbs, she walked faster; at times she ran. A star came ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... assemble and organize an overwhelming force in the interior on his own side of the line, and, concealing his purpose, make a sudden assault upon some one of our posts so distant from any other as to prevent the possibility of timely succor or reenforcements, and in this way our gallant Army would be exposed to the danger of being cut off in detail; or if by their unequaled bravery and prowess everywhere exhibited during this war they should repulse ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... his goodness, or to how few he is beholden: and if he have cast away favours, he hates either to upbraid them to his enemy, or to challenge restitution. None can be more pitiful to the distressed, or more prone to succour; and then most where is least means to solicit, least possibility of requital. He is equally addressed to war and peace; and knows not more how to command others, than how to be his country's servant in both. He is more careful to give true honour to his Maker than to receive civil honour from men. He knows that this service is free and noble, and ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... possibility of misunderstanding, that his work had been interrupted long enough, Dulkinghorn got up, and, opening the sitting-room door, led the way into the hall. As he stood with his hand on the latch of the front door, Mary ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... except against the perversity of such a lot as his. And in this lay the germ of a self-pity, which is a specter to be dreaded more than anything else in life. While deploring the conditions under which he must live, robbed, as he believed he was robbed, of the possibility of winning for himself all those things which belong to the manhood really existing beneath his exterior of denial, he yet felt he would rather have his bread divided than be denied that trifling food which made it possible for ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... very extreme and extraordinary occurrences, that could not, by possibility, have been considered, make exceptions. And Caleb, thinking, as he did, that he was in great danger from the cow, if he had thought of my command at all, he would have done perfectly right to have considered so extraordinary a case an exception, and so have retreated towards the brook, notwithstanding ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their faces that they despaired of the possibility of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... writing to me next time. When I asked you to address me under care of my publishers, I did not realize that in the course of business I might find it necessary to change them sometimes, and so to avoid any possibility of confusion, will you please in future address all ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... with the last morsel of town slander, or a poor author who could not get due payment for the efforts of his brain, or a poor governess on whose feeble stamina the weight of the world had borne too hardly. But men who by possibility could be lovers did not make their way thither, nor women who could be bores. In these latter days, that is, during the present London season, the doors of it had been oftener opened to Mrs. Harold Smith than to any other person. ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... result in fractures of the neck of the femur in old people and in certain other fractures, such as fracture of the patella, of the olecranon, coronoid and coracoid processes, and although this does not necessarily involve interference with function, the patient should always be warned of the possibility. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... personalities essentially different in origin and in tendency," he said. "Yet the most important fact in the political history of recent years is the possibility, I should say the necessity, to introduce unity of views in the government of the republic. These are ideas which you, my dear Garin, have expressed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sentiment or practical good. Every ennobling tendency, every redeeming trait is cunningly caricatured, and so cleverly ridiculed that is impossible to respect them afterwards. It is hard to tell what another era may bring forth of good, but it is certain that ours has killed, to the very possibility of a future regeneration, every germ and atom of solid morality, that sustained it. Perhaps that is what was wanted, the end may be achieved now. It has been clearly and undeniably proved to the world, that there is no longer any God, there is no eternity, no atonement, no recompense. We are ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... most important matter relating to a good lawn. In selecting a site upon which to build, not the least consideration should be the possibility of having a fine lawn, one that will cost as little as possible to keep in a nice and attractive condition. The nearer level the land is, the better. If a house is built on an elevation back from the road, a sloping lawn has a good ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... In spite of the possibility that she and Anne might be the subject of unpleasant comment, Grace made up her mind to enjoy herself. She was fond of dancing, and knew that she would have plenty of invitations to do so. David would look after ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... than eternal fidelity—this love is the love for another man's wife. Between unmarried young men and young women, kept carefully apart by the system which gives away a girl without her consent and only to a rich suitor, there is no possibility of love in these early feudal courts; the amours, however licentious, between kings' daughters and brave knights, of the Carolingian tales, belong to a different rank of society, to the prose romances made up in the fourteenth century for the burgesses of cities; the intrigues, ending in marriage, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... grounded, while Figure 40 shows the wiring to be used when the negative side of the line is grounded. In either case, the "live" wire connects to the lamp bank. The purpose of this is to eliminate the possibility of a short-circuit if any part of the charging line beyond the ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... very famous friend, Swami Trailanga, who was reputed to be over three hundred years old. The two yogis often sat together in meditation. Trailanga's fame is so widespread that few Hindus would deny the possibility of truth in any story of his astounding miracles. If Christ returned to earth and walked the streets of New York, displaying his divine powers, it would cause the same excitement that was created by Trailanga decades ago as he passed through ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... only creature who had wholly won her. "Child, I am not good, but not so bad that I dare not look in your innocent face and call you friend. I never had one of my own sex. I never knew my mother; and no one ever saw in me the possibility of goodness, truth, and justice but you. Trust and love and help me, Octavia, and I will reward you with a better life, if I can ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard
... showed him a drift running from the foot of the shaft. Along this he dragged himself slowly, uncertain of direction but determined to find out what possibility of escape his prison offered. For two hundred yards the tunnel led forward and brought him up sharply at an impasse. A ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... ailing at this time, the mother would have accompanied her son. The possibility of damp sheets weighed heavy on her mind; and landladies who filch from the tea-caddy, with landladies' girls, pert and familiar, preparing insidious gruel and seductive cups of coffee, were the lions which her imagination conjured up as prowling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... as keen a watch as the besieged to guard against the possibility of any of them escaping. A hat which Chris squeezed out through a crack between the posts was promptly riddled ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... thing her soul most craved. Yes, it was cruel, cruel. It would have been easier if he had not told her of his love, if he at least had left it a thing merely to be guessed at, a pleasant dream which she could have kept always as a sort of fairy possibility. ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... That possibility didn't seem to me now half so terrifying as did the old bogey of not getting a raise. I suppose for one thing this was because we neither of us felt so keenly the responsibility of the boy. In the old days we had both thought that he was doomed if we didn't save enough to send ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... had incontinently fled, or was nursing his wrath in the kitchen, or already fulfilling his threat of waiting on the pavement outside the restaurant, we could not guess. Another waiter appeared with the dinners they had ordered. A momentary thrill of excitement passed over us at the possibility that Tournelli had poisoned their soup; but it presently lapsed, as we saw the couple partaking of it comfortably, and chatting with apparent unconcern. Was the scene we had just witnessed only a piece of Southern exaggeration? ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... long after, in the apartment destined for the exhibition. This, however, was so crowded that every place at the windows for seeing the parade was taken, and the row formed opposite to see the first Consul as he passes through the room to take horse, was so thick and threefold filled, that not a possibility existed of even a passing peep. Madame d'Henin would have retired, but as the whole scene was new and curious to me, I prevailed with her to stay, that I might view a little of the costume of the company; though I was sorry I detained her, when I saw her perturbed spirits ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... whatever may be the public judgment about other matters, it is with real satisfaction, and without claiming any merit but that of attention to my duty, that I can conclude this account with an observation which facts enable me to make, that our having discovered the possibility of preserving health amongst a numerous ship's company for such a length of time, in such varieties of climate, and amidst such continued hardships and fatigues, will make this voyage remarkable in the opinion of every benevolent person, when the disputes about a southern continent ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... possibility of exactly picturing the serving of a meal in early days; but one peculiarity is known of the dinner—the pudding came first. Hence the old saying, "I came in season—in pudding-time." In an account of a Sunday dinner given at the house of John Adams, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the possibility that they intended to murder him, but Holt could not associate Selfridge with anything so lawless. The man was too soft of fiber to carry through such a programme, and as yet there was need of nothing so drastic. No, this little kidnapping ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... condition of the matter. But such is the condition of man on earth that his free-will can be bent to good or evil. Hence, although this sacrament of itself has the power of preserving from sin, yet it does not take away from man the possibility ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... "The possibility, or, rather, the high probability, that such is the design of the oviparous generation of the Infusoria, and such the common mode of the diffusion of their ova, renders the hypothesis of equivocal generation, which has been so frequently ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... to wait patiently till I could learn from Heinrich's own lips that he had abandoned his early friend. I could never get myself to believe in the possibility of his unfaithfulness; and the remembrances of our mutual studies in the Book of Truth seemed always to suggest the impossibility of his acting so completely at variance with the impressions he had ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... policy is contrary to the aspirations, feeling and interests of the country, and if the Government obstinately continues in this way it will provoke disturbances of the greatest gravity." It was the first allusion to the possibility of a revolution, but the King listened without flinching. M. Malinoff concluded: "For these reasons we beg your Majesty, after having vainly asked the Government, to convoke the Chamber immediately, and we ask this convocation for the precise ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... possibility, Father," replied Philip; "he may have been cast on shore and have wandered in another direction. It is possible, although anything but probable; but since you ask me my opinion, I must say candidly that I consider he is no earthly messenger—nay, I am sure of it. That he is mysteriously ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in too great a rage with the unhappy woman to make it possible to bring him back to calm reason. Besides, who can draw the limits around the region of possibility? Every day we see the range of reality extending more widely. Unseen and unknown influences, marvellous correspondences, invisible bonds, some kind of mysterious magnetism, are, on the one hand, proclaimed as undoubted facts, and denied on the other ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... "She fixed the hour, mind you, probably knowing that Venner would comply with her request. Hence there exists a possibility that she designed to get him away from his store at just that time, in order that the robbery could ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... had tossed sleepless in similar solicitude, and their wigs, had they not been wigs, would have turned grey of themselves. Their only consolation had been that neither outdid the other, and so long as each saw the other's brown wig, they had refrained from facing the dread possibility of having to sell off their jewellery in a desperate effort of emulation. Gradually Madame Depine had grown to wear her wig with vindictive endurance, and Madame Valiere to wear hers with gentle resignation. And now, here was Madame la Proprietaire, a woman five years younger and ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... almost impossible to deflect his conversation into any other channel. Twenty years' intimacy with the eccentric nobleman had largely obliterated that sense of deference with which an English servant usually approaches his master. An English underling's idea of nobility is the man who never by any possibility works with his hands. The fact that Lord Chizelrigg had toiled at the carpenter's bench; had mixed cement in the drawing-room; had caused the anvil to ring out till midnight, aroused no admiration in Higgins's mind. In addition to this, the ancient nobleman ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... the sanatorium," suggested Barney, "and if it be within the range of possibility I shall learn whether the man who lies there is Leopold or another, and if he be the king I shall serve him as loyally as you would have served me. Together we may assist him to gain the safety of Tann and the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... drew a small sabre, which he wore with his uniform, instantly cut the balloon in several places, and destroyed the curious apparatus, which the aeronaut had constructed, with infinite labour and ingenuity, for the purpose of trying the possibility of aerial navigation. ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... regarder comme voleurs tous les acquereurs des biens des emigres. Il faudroit, pour le bonheur de la France, qu'elle fut places dans le meme etat ou elle etait avant la Revolution." He would not listen to my reasons against the possibility of effecting such a plan, even were the plan just and reasonable in itself. I told him that for the emigrants to expect to get back their property was just as absurd as for the descendants of those Saxon families in England, whose ancestors were dispossessed of their estates by William the ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... Charlie determined to have an explanation with his mother and sister; he made a clean breast as to the misdoings on the slate, and boldly coming to the point, suggested the possibility of his being able to support himself, one day, as an artist, instead of a commission merchant. Poor Miss Patsey, this was a sad blow to her! It had been her cherished ambition to see Charlie an upright, prosperous merchant; and now that his prospects were brightening, and ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... naturally into the way of regarding it half with the eye of its permanent master. It had not only been his entirely so far as management was concerned for more than twelve months, but there had been always the possibility that it would be his to have and to hold, to do with as he thought best, if Wayne should not come back. But Wayne had come back. The coffee was eloquent of the fact; the slothfulness of the bunk house shouted it in his ears. He felt a sense of ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... it possible to state that their purpose was to injure certain individual persons who should purchase stock, when by no possibility could they know who the persons were that would become purchasers? If that could have been stated, can you suggest any name which in any way might have ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... prefer to stop here, we can give you a comfortable bed," said Franz, "and Annette will have something to eat. I told her that there was a possibility that ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... love that cheered his rival. That he was conscious of such hopes, there is little reason to suppose; for the most powerful minds are not always the best acquainted with their own feelings. Had Fanshawe, moreover, acknowledged to himself the possibility of gaining Ellen's affections, his generosity would have induced him to refrain from her society before it was too late. He had read her character with accuracy, and had seen how fit she was to love, and to be loved, by a man who could find his ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... critics of the Government. Lord Loch will be interested in reading Mr. Reitz's account of the way in which his visit to Pretoria was regarded by the Transvaal Government. It shows that it was his visit which first alarmed the Boers, and compelled them to contemplate the possibility of having to defend their independence with arms. But it was not until after the Jameson Raid that they began arming in earnest. As there is so much controversy upon this subject, it may be well to quote here the figures ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... early part of '45,—I think in April,—when we were all gathered together, discussing, as usual, the possibility of leading a life in accordance with Nature. Abel Mallory was there, and Hollins, and Miss Ringtop, and Faith Levis, with her knitting,—and also Eunice Hazleton, a lady whom you have never seen, but you may take my wife ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... was a sister whose husband was 'wounded and missing'—probably, as Bridget firmly believed, already dead. And the meaning of that fact—that possibility—was writ so large on Nelly's physical aspect, on Nelly's ways and plans, that there was really no getting away from it. Also—there were other people to be considered. Bridget did not at all want to offend or alienate Sir William Farrell—now less than ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gazed in unbelieving horror at the seemingly panic flight of the man who had so strangely dominated her life and her brother's, during these past few hours. He had faced death at Rodney Hade's pistol, he had been lazily calm at the possibility of a rush from the Caesars. He had shown himself fearless, amusedly contemptuous of danger. Yet here be was fleeing for his very life and leaving the Standishes at the ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... dialect in which, for example, no sermon is ever preached, and in which no book is ever printed, except for fun; a dialect "familiar, but by no means vulgar." Besides, even if our Englishwoman could by any possibility bring herself to say to a mendicant, "Excuse me, dear; I, too, am a poor devil," she would still not have the opportunity of putting the last word punctually into the feminine, which does so complete ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... other people may be resorted to on the occasions already described in Part I., Chapter 5, of this work, but the possibility of their acquisition, their fitness for cohabitation, the danger to oneself in uniting with them, and the future effect of these unions, should first of all be examined. A man may resort to the wife of another, for the purpose of saving his own life, when he perceives ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... case, it must be provided that no possibility should exist of an humiliation such as she had suffered on the preceding evening. And as she intended to remain at the head of Wirtemberg's court, it was imperative Johanna Elizabetha should be removed. Murder no ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... begin to have the entirely novel possibility in the world: some sort of collective effort for a collective purpose, beyond the personal greeds and fears, factions and hatreds. So the state, instead of fulfilling its old function of serving as the tool ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... For ten years we knew no separate life—I thought no separate hopes. She had loved, been on the eve of marriage, her lover had died: that was her heart's history, and henceforth the idea of love had fallen out of both our lives—not the idea only, but the possibility of love. I thought so—she ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... when he had thanked the man. He was tired and his horse was far from fresh, but he understood that Wandle's team was in a worse condition. There was a possibility of his overtaking him, if he pushed on at once. Leaving the stable, he meant to walk a short distance to ease his aching limbs, but he saw a mounted man trotting up the street and called out ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... part—but I had to know whom you were protecting, whom you suspected of killing Spencer—I thought—forgive me—your father guilty. Until you said last night that you were shielding me, I had no idea of such a possibility; then I jumped to the conclusion that you had seen me in this house on Tuesday night, and imagined you were the person creeping up to the attic. Then, then—God help me!—came the idea that German gold had corrupted you, also. I put you ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... reconnoitred once more. The man was on the opposite side of the road, with his eyes on the windows of the salon. When he caught sight of me he walked slowly away. He might have been signalling to Yvette, who was still under lock and key, but this possibility did not disturb me, as escape was out of the ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... good general paper were required, to obtain success. Still, the sine qua non was what the representative of the old Oxford in Matthew Arnold's Friendship's Garland calls "the good old fortifying classical curriculum." I could by no possibility have reached the heights of "Hittal," who, it will be remembered, wrote "some longs and shorts about the Caledonian boar which were not bad." Though English verses came so easily, Latin verses did not come ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... authority in the perplexities which from time to time divided the Nonjurors. It was mainly to him that Nelson owed his return to the established Communion. Dodwell had been very ardent against the oaths; when he conceived the possibility of Ken's accepting them, he had written him a long letter of anxious remonstrance; he had written another letter of indignant concern to Sherlock, on news of his intended compliance.[28] But his special standing point was based upon the argument that it was schism of the worst order to side with ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... that have been disseminated through subsequent pollution of the milk are typhoid fever, diphtheria, scarlet fever and cholera, but, of course, the possibility exists that any disease germ capable of living and thriving in milk may be spread in this way. In addition to these diseases that are caused by the introduction of specific organisms (the causal organism of scarlet fever has not yet been definitely determined), ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... French proverb. We must eat, so the first thing to do is to decide on which direction a raid is to be made: that means scouting, and the discovery of the nearest Boer store of provisions, with sheep and cattle. We are quite alone here, without the possibility of my words being heard, so I can speak out freely. Scouting parties must go out at once in the direction of each of the three commandos, and on the strength of their reports ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... He perceived suddenly, without possibility of doubt, that she had never considered him in the light of a lover, had never thought seriously about him at all, and that what he had taken to be an experienced woman of the world was in reality an ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... regarding the possibility of dividing matter into the so-called four primary elements, fire, air, earth, and water, which obtained in one form or another till the birth of modern chemistry, had naturally an important ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman |
