"Improbable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Carthage, when surrendering Sicily, could hardly desire to retain the island of Lipara which had long been occupied by the Roman fleet, and the suspicion, that an ambiguous stipulation was intentionally introduced into the treaty with reference to Sardinia and Corsica, is unworthy and improbable. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the systole, I take it to be impossible: the arteries would then have to fill while they contracted, to fill, and yet not become distended. But if it be said: during diastole, they would then, and for two opposite purposes, be receiving both blood and air, and heat and cold, which is improbable. Further when it is affirmed that the diastole of the heart and arteries is simultaneous, and the systole of the two is also concurrent, there is another incongruity. For how can two bodies mutually connected, which are simultaneously distended, attract or draw anything from ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... is ten to one that my friend Peter is among them."—Id. "I doubt not that such objections as these will be made"—Locke cor. "I doubt not that it will appear in the perusal of the following sheets."—Buchanan cor. "It is not improbable, that in time these different constructions maybe appropriated to different uses."—Priestley cor. "But to forget and to remember at pleasure, are equally beyond the power of man."—Idler cor. "The nominative case follows the verb, in interrogative or ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... prove its entire falsity from their own researches. Materials, indeed, are many relating to the events that befell the Waldstaette during their conflicts with the bailies, whom they succeeded in expelling from their country; and it seems in the highest degree improbable that, had Tell and his friends lived and taken so prominent a part in effecting their country's freedom as is popularly assigned to them, they should have been entirely ignored by all contemporary writers, as well as by subsequent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the inability made him more or less an object of suspicion. The atmosphere struck him as it never had before, causing him to feel a doubt of his gentility. Could a man suffer from passion, heart-searchings, or misgivings, and remain a gentleman? It seemed improbable. One of his fellow-guests, a man called Edgbaston, small-eyed and semi-bald, with a dark moustache and a distinguished air of meanness, disconcerted him one day by remarking of an unknown person, "A half-bred ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... first and fourth Gospels were written by the apostles Matthew and John, "from personal knowledge and recollection" ("Evidences," p. 87), and that they must therefore be either true, or wilfully false; the latter being most improbable, as they would then be "villains for no end but to teach honesty, and martyrs without the least prospect of honour or advantage" (Ibid, page 88). But supposing that Matthew and John wrote some Gospels, we should need proof that the Gospels which we have, supposing ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... seemed a sheer waste of opportunity to tell her the truth when she would believe a falsehood just as readily; but, since the truth happened to be quite as improbable as a lie, ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... interest in a possible, probable, or even improbable love-affair always surprises the average man—surprises, and sometimes ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... This was so improbable, so contrary to everything Barroux knew of the business, that for a moment he felt quite scared. Then he waved his hand as if to say that others might as well look after their own affairs, and reverted to himself. "Oh! as for me," he said, "Hunter called on me more than ten times, and made ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... also in many lands with all the significations except that of "wife." It is proper here to mention that the suggestion of several correspondents that the Indian sign as applied to "wife" refers to "lying together" is rendered improbable by the fact that when the same tribes desire to express the sexual relation of marriage it is gestured otherwise. Many signs but little differentiated were unstable, while others that have proved the best modes of expression have survived as definite and established. Their prevalence and ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... steps to one of the houses within sight. She pushed the door, and entered a little parlour, where a fire and a lamp made cheery welcome. By the hearth, in a round-backed wooden chair, sat a grizzle-headed man, whose hard features proclaimed his relation to Eve, otherwise seeming so improbable. He looked up from the volume open on his knee—a Bible—and said in a ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... calling herself Rosalba states that she was brought out of the forest, fifteen years since, by a lady in a car drawn by dragons (this account is certainly IMPROBABLE), that she was left in the Palace Garden of Blombodinga, where Her Royal Highness the Princess Angelica, now married to His Royal Highness Bulbo, Crown Prince of Crim Tartary, found the child, and, with THAT ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it ceased to be inflammable, and, upon the whole, I concluded that it was so when it was diminished a little more than one half; for a quantity which was diminished exactly one half had something inflammable in it, but in the slightest degree imaginable. It is not improbable, however, but there may be great differences in the result of ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... passed this evening, Mr. Hervey was led to suspect, notwithstanding the reasons which made it apparently improbable, that the fair Annabella was the secret cause of Mr. Vincent's frequent visits at her aunt's. It was natural that Clarence should be disposed to this opinion, from the circumstances of his own situation. During three hours that he stayed at Mrs. Luttridge's, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... poultry in abundance; but the fear of a long passage down the Mediterranean obliges us to be frugal, wishing, if possible, to avoid putting into any place before we reach the fleet off Cadiz,—a thing scarcely possible, and rendered still more improbable from our little progress the ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... smile, "that story might sell for something to a writer of sensation novels; but I should hardly have expected to hear it from a sensible gentleman like yourself. Pray, on whose testimony do you expect me to believe such an improbable fiction?" ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... houses to swill sack; never"—but here the voice of the discontented woman, who, in her excitement, had risen from her seat and walked away, was lost in the pantry, or rather subdued into an inarticulate grumble; and Spikeman, after waiting awhile, and finding it improbable that the conversation would be resumed, knocked in a peculiar manner on the door, which was almost immediately opened by ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... wise in time, and at the right time; and my whole foreign policy was based on the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis to make it improbable that we would run into ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... very improbable phenomena may yet appear which, when once established, will not astonish us more than we are now astonished at all that science has taught us during the last century," Charles Robert Richet, Nobel Prizeman in physiology, has declared. "It is ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... which rose unbidden to his lips. He had certainly been wallowing in romance since the telephone called him to the Central Hotel, but even in the pages of fiction he had never found a more wildly improbable theory than the likelihood of John Delancy Curtis allowing any consideration short of death to separate him from such a bride as Lady Hermione within the short space of time she apparently regarded as the possible span of ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... blow with the elbow on the region of the heart; a sudden angina is produced, which is promptly fatal. Neither, upon similar showing, can it commence in obstructed breathing. Then the commencement of the changes must be sought in the brain. Now it is analogically by no means very improbable, that the functions of the nervous system admit of being brought to a complete stand-still, the wheels of the machinery locking, as it were, of a sudden, through some influence directly exerted upon it, and that this state of interrupted function should continue for a very considerable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... abysmal and revolutionary. He lifts melodrama to the dignity of an important business, and makes it a means to an end that the mere shock-monger never dreams of. In itself, remember, all this up-roar and blood-letting is not incredible, nor even improbable. The world, for all the pressure of order, is still full of savage and stupendous conflicts, of murders and debaucheries, of crimes indescribable and adventures almost unimaginable. One cannot reasonably ask a novelist to deny them or to gloss over them; all one may demand of him is that, if he make ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... sometime Deacon of the Wrights, married, first, Alan Stevenson, who died May 26, 1774, "at Santt Kittes of a fiver," by whom she had Robert Stevenson, born 8th June 1772; and, second, in May or June 1787, Thomas Smith, a widower, and already the father of our grandmother. This improbable double connection always tends to confuse a student of the family, Thomas Smith being doubly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... plentifully enough to pave the prairie. All this applies chiefly to city real estate. Inflation beyond investment basis never touched farm lands; but as a prominent editor remarked, "No fool thing that ever failed was half as improbable as the fool things that have succeeded. Men have literally been kicked into fortunes; and the carefulest man has often been the biggest fool by not biting ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... want to say something which is for your ears alone. Something within me tells me that I shall succeed beyond my dreams. Were it not for some circumstances that make such an idea highly improbable, even absurd, I should think Helen's education would surpass in interest and wonder Dr. Howe's achievement. I know that she has remarkable powers, and I believe that I shall be able to develop and ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... brain reeled. It was improbable that the millennium could have arrived with a jerk; on the other hand, he had distinctly heard one of his clerks complain that his salary was ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... later Sumerian period the eyes of the ruling classes are found to be similar to those of the Ancient Egyptians and southern Europeans. Other facial characteristics suggest that a Mongolian racial connection is highly improbable; the prominent Sumerian nose, for instance, is quite unlike the Chinese, which is diminutive. Nor can far-reaching conclusions be drawn from the scanty linguistic evidence at our disposal. Although the languages of the Sumerians and long-headed Chinese are of the agglutinative variety, ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... and sunken cheek, the gradual, but certain progress of disease and death; and while all England rung with the renown of the young, but almost unrivalled orator, and both parties united in anticipating the certainty and brilliancy of his success, I felt how improbable it was, that, even if his crime escaped the unceasing vigilance of justice, this living world would long possess any traces of his genius but the remembrance of his name. There was something in his love of letters, his habits of luxury and expence, the energy ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of love, there is one which common sense and romance have often combined to hold obnoxious, improbable, or ridiculous, but which has always seemed to me the most real and pathetic form that the passion ever takes—I mean, love in spite of great disparity of age. Even when this is on the woman's side, I can imagine circumstances that would make it far less ludicrous and pitiful; and there ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... this little performance was enough to make Pope's relations to the Addison set decidedly unpleasant. Addison is said (but the story is very improbable) to have enjoyed the joke. If so, a vexatious incident must have changed his view of Pope's pleasantries, though Pope professedly appeared as his defender. Poor old Thersites-Dennis published, during the summer, a ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... that she could bear it no longer, so she had come to tell me the real truth, and humble my pride. Perhaps I would not have believed her if I had not known that Maxime did intend to go to England that night. He had told me that he wanted to see an uncle there on business. At once his story seemed improbable. I believed that the girl was telling me the truth. I have always had a hot temper, which often escapes beyond control. A wave of rage rushed up to my head, and made a red flame leap before my eyes. As the girl talked on, smiling insolently, ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... with Marguerite—! But cold reason said that escape was improbable enough for me alone. For a woman of the House of Hohenzollern the prison of Berlin had walls of granite ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... payments could be resumed and maintained. Besides, no one believes that $100,000,000 of bank notes will be issued under this act, and this provision only relieves some people from an idle fear of an improbable event. You must have noticed that when banks retire their notes, as they have done and will do rapidly, this is a reduction of the currency, while every issue of notes to new or old banks involves a retirement of a ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... not improbable that when a young man was chosen crown prince he had an establishment of his own assigned to him, and this became his palace which he occupied when he became emperor. When a man died, and especially when an emperor ...
— Japan • David Murray
... advantage of the United States does not, then, consist in a federal constitution which allows them to carry on great wars, but in a geographical position, which renders such enterprises improbable. ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... up to oust the earl's. He grinned as he lay awake in the night, picturing to himself how the woman in the next room would take it. Him and his son together her ladyship might find almost too much for her! But for many years he had indulged in no allusion to the possible improbable, allowing her ladyship to refer to Arthur as the heir without hinting at the ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... also not such that we can form a distinct notion of the Sa@mkhya thought as it developed in the Upani@sads. It is not improbable that at this stage of development it also gave some suggestions to Buddhism or Jainism, but the Sa@mkhya-Yoga philosophy as we now get it is a system in which are found all the results of Buddhism and Jainism in such a ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... additional reason for his refusing these conditions: but he had so many other just and equitable motives for his conduct, that it is superfluous to assign a cause, which the great prudence and advanced age of that monarch rendered somewhat improbable. [FN [p] Bened. Abb. p. 508. [q] Bened. Abb. p. 517, 532. [r] Ibid. p. 519. [s] Ibid. p. 521. Hoveden, p. 652. [t] Brompton, p. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... mind that was incapable of believing the improbable, and the current explanation of these late hours was very improbable, indeed. Major Flint often told the world in general that he was revising his diaries, and that the only uninterrupted time which he could find in this pleasant whirl of life at Tilling was when he was alone ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... planted along a gravelled walk. While I reminded myself that the gravel must have been imported from a spot at least ten miles distant, I was further shocked by discovering a most improbable golf green, in gloomy survival. Then I detected a series of kennels facing a wired dog run. This was overwhelming in a country of simple, steadfast devotion to the rearing of cattle ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... among the imported Negroes of the olden time. The blood or venom of snakes, spiders, and lizards is supposed to be employed for this purpose. The results of its administration are so peculiar, however, and so entirely improbable, that one is supposed to doubt even the initial use of poison, and figure it in as part of the same general delusion. For instance, a certain man "swelled up all over" and became "pieded," that is, pied or spotted. A white physician who was ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... not always pleasant; they are always fantastic, improbable, disconnected; and because when we are asleep we cannot have the sort of dreams we like. We ought to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... which succeeded in alienating from him his dearest friends, and which eventually included all the ablest and most distinguished persons of the age. Not only does such a conspiracy appear, upon the face of it, highly improbable, but the evidence which Rousseau adduces to prove its existence seems totally insufficient; and the reader is left under the impression that the unfortunate Jean-Jacques was the victim, not of a plot ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... they have been placed, shall run in the proper channels and produce good results. What will be the ultimate result passes the wit of man to say. That India should reproduce Europe in religious morals and law seems highly improbable; but whatever changes take place will depend upon other causes than legislation. The law can only provide a convenient social framework. The utmost that we are entitled to say is that the maintenance of peace, order, and the supremacy of a law, which leaves all religious inquiries to find ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... with my husband," said Mrs. Pitkin. "The boy's story is ridiculously improbable. I can't understand how he has the face to stand there and expect Uncle Oliver ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... a serious and important one, and is in a sense so disquieting, that, like you, I would gladly turn to any one who could proffer some information concerning it,—were he ever so young, were his ideas ever so improbable—provided that he were able, by the exercise of his own faculties, to furnish some satisfactory and sufficient explanation. It is just possible that he may have had the opportunity of hearing sound views expressed in reference to the vexed question of the future of ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... 2: This word has been much discussed. The older etymologists explained it as meaning worth stealing. A more improbable conjecture is that it means worth a stall or place. It is used of ships in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. As applied to men, Skeat thinks it meant good or worthy at stealing; but the etymology ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... to remain personally inactive; for I had observed that about two miles to the eastward the river flowed through a slight depression, which had thus become converted into a water vley, or wide sheet of shallow water, where I thought it not improbable that I might find a few widgeon to afford a welcome change from the buck meat that had now become our almost continuous fare. Moreover, I had begun to break to the saddle the two ponies which Moshesh had given me, and had already advanced ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... interpreter, that he is wholly open, innocent, and true, and that, through such a person, whether forgetful of his author, or hurried by his scribe, it is more than probable you may hear what Heaven knows to be best for you; and extremely improbable you should take the least harm,—while by a careful and cunning master in the literary art, reticent of his doubts, and dexterous in his sayings, any number of prejudices or errors might be proposed ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... Goldberg devices — rocket jetpacks, catapults, magnetic traps, high-powered slingshots, etc. These were usually delivered in large cardboard boxes, labeled prominently with the Acme name. These devices invariably malfunctioned in violent and improbable ways. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... this scheme was counteracted, or by what interposition she was induced to lay aside her design, I know not; it is not improbable that the lady Mason might persuade or compel her to desist, or, perhaps, she could not easily find accomplices wicked enough to concur in so cruel an action; for it may be conceived, that those who had, by a long gradation ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... are to credit the Italian historians, Gonsalvo peremptorily refused to include the Neapolitan lords within it. Thus much is certain; that, after having been taken and released, they were now found under the French banners a second time. It seems not improbable, therefore, that the French, however naturally desirous they may have been of protection for their allies, finding themselves unable to enforce it, acquiesced in such an equivocal silence with respect to them as, without apparently compromising ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... Improbable stories and those presenting impossible or unreal things are not necessarily bad; in fact they are often good and distinctly serviceable. No matter how true they appear to a child, the time comes when he rejects them as impossible, although he may always be indebted to them for keen ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... governed by mere routine, or by the convenience of the poet, whose property they are.... His portraits are caricatures by dint of their very likeness, being extravagant tautologies of themselves; as his plots are improbable by an excess of consistency; for he goes thoroughstitch with whatever he takes in hand, makes one contrivance answer all purposes, and every obstacle give way to a predetermined theory.... Old Ben was of a scholastic turn and had dealt a little in the occult ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Mrs. Cowperwood had trailed them—in all probability her father. He wondered now what he should do to protect her, not himself. He was in no way deeply concerned for himself, even here. Where any woman was concerned he was too chivalrous to permit fear. It was not at all improbable that Butler might want to kill him; but that did not disturb him. He really did not pay any attention to that thought, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... to ligaments or cartilage. Where a complete luxation of the metacarpophalangeal joint exists, it is probable that in most cases sufficient injury to collateral and capsular ligaments has been done to render complete recovery improbable, ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... tuerentur for intuerentur in Sec. 77; (5) of neutiquam in Sec. 42; (6) of the nominative of the gerundive governing an accusative case in Sec. 6. In every instance the notes will supply a refutation of the allegation. That Cicero should attempt to write in any style but his own is exceedingly improbable. ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... have no fear. I have just said good-bye to them. I am going away to-morrow, and it is improbable that I shall ever see either of ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... respectable owners. Perhaps the final outcome will be that more drastic regulations are adopted than would have been the case had the shifting in ownership not taken place. There would still remain the possibility of the evasion of the law, and it is not at all improbable that the progress in the technique of evasion would outstrip the progress in regulation, thus leaving the tenant with a balance of disadvantage from ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... indubitable seeings, hearings, doings, and sufferings; which you and I have heard of in this popular vein of talk, would amply excuse the wildest fictionist for the most extravagant adventure—the more improbable, the nearer truth. Talk of the devil, said our ancestors—let "&c." save us from the consequence. Think of any thing vehemently, and it is an even chance it happens: be confident, you conquer; be obstinate in willing, and events shall bend humbly to their lord: nay, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... opponents, who began this Parliament by confidently calculating upon his death before the dissolution, are now beginning to admit that it is by no means improbable that Mr. Gladstone may survive the century. Nor was it quite so fantastic as it appears at first sight, when an ingenious disciple told him the other day that by the fitness of things he ought to live for twenty years yet. 'For,' said this political arithmetician, 'you have ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... true proportions of the fact he had asserted. And, further, if the telegram had not been his, why should the photographic distortion be trusted as a phase of his existence? But after a while it seemed so improbable to her that God's sun should bear false witness, that instead of doubting both evidences she was inclined to readmit the first. Still, upon the whole, she could not question for long the honesty of Somerset's denial and if that message had indeed been sent ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... otherwise, to anything that has not been properly submitted in evidence. He is guilty of unfair practice in telling the jury about the defendant's family or circumstances, unless this has been part of the case, which is improbable. He knows this well; so does his opponent and the judge. And should the opposing lawyer protest, the judge will say, looking up, "Be careful, counselor, be careful." The counselor bows respectfully ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... Mansurov, however, called at once to offer his congratulations to Alexander, and called also upon Draga. It has even been suggested that Russia arranged the affair, and that Draga was her tool. This is, however, improbable. It was more likely the achievement of an ambitious and most foolish woman. But that Russia jumped at it as the very best means of compassing Alexander's ruin cannot be doubted, for no less a person than the Tsar ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... did seem improbable, and Mrs. Lapham was shaken. She could only say, "Penelope felt just the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... at was a page of fashion cartoons, curious human hieroglyphs that women can read and run to buy. Highly improbable garments were sketched on utterly impossible figures—female eels who could crawl through their own garters, eels of strange mottlings, with heads like cranberries, feet like thorns, and ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... of the China Sea. Don't look so distressed, Amy. Pete's a novelist. They never do anything but dream horrible dreams. Generally they go so far as to put them into print, and people read 'em and say they are wildly improbable,—especially if they have a happy ending. It's always the happy ending that makes them improbable,—but popular. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... declared he knew nothing of Lucien, but Mercier knew everything about him and much about her, too. She would not believe him until she had questioned him closely. As Mercier frankly answered her, she understood with how improbable a tale Barrington had deceived her. Mercier was quick with advice. He knew that Madame la Marquise had no great affection for his friend Lucien. This other man might discover the trick played upon him and frustrate them. A hundred ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... course, is an extreme one; but that of C. and D. is almost as bad. They are men of prudence, and persuade E. to go with them, as a makeweight. 'If we should ever disagree,' they say, 'as to what is to be done—which, however, is to the last degree improbable—the majority of votes shall carry it'—an arrangement which only delays the ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... placed close to the fire, and the heat was sufficient to melt a portion of one of them, which, mixing with the siliceous sand at its base, produced a stream of glass. There is nothing impossible or even very improbable in this story; but we may question whether the scene of it is rightly placed. Glass was manufactured in Egypt many centuries before the probable date of the Phoenician occupation of the Mediterranean coast; and, if the honour of the invention ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... that this man had been with Doddridge Knapp, and that it was his voice I had heard? This in turn seemed improbable, hardly possible. ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... another by a consequential address, or by detailing improbable stories or using "great swelling words"; to ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Semitic-Babylonian word kalumum, "young animal, lamb," the latter zukakibum, "scorpion"; cf. Poebel, Hist. Texts, p. 111. The occurrence of these names points to Semitic infiltration into Northern Babylonia since the dawn of history, a state of things we should naturally expect. It is improbable that on this point Sumerian tradition should have merely reflected the conditions of ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... such a way as to derive from it real enjoyment and satisfaction. A part of the severe disillusionment following marriage, depends upon the lack of normal sexual sensibility in the wife; and it is by no means improbable that this state depends in some cases upon the education received in girlhood. If it is impressed on anyone from childhood upwards that a particular act is disgusting and shameful, ultimately inhibitions may arise, owing to which the natural impulse ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... the country, should demand its presence in every negro home of this country. In keeping in touch with the doings of our people in the east and northern states through the Defender. To the Majority of the Middle western race people it seem quite improbable that opportunities for good wage earning positions such as factory work and too a chance for advancement would be given to the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... This event happened the year after Mary was removed from Bolton Castle, in Yorkshire, to Tutbury Castle, in Staffordshire, and placed under the care of the Earl of Shrewsbury. Her captivity at Wingfield is stated to have extended to nine years; but it is improbable that so large a proportion of the time she was in the custody of this nobleman, should be spent here: for it is well known, that from 1568 to 1584, she was at Buxton, Sheffield, Coventry, Tutbury, and other places, and, if her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... town took on a new interest to us cold outsiders after hearing its strange and almost improbable story. We could have scarcely believed that San Ildefonso had actually been overlooked in the transfer of the country from Mexico to the United States, and had for nearly forty years been hidden away between the Sierra and the sea; but if we were disposed to doubt the word of the good father, here ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... rather what is an improbability?" answered her companion. "It is only a matter of the capacity of the age to receive what is new. A few years ago electricity was improbable, yet look at the telegraph and the telephone. Still further back, who would have believed that railways would exist above ground and under ground, and mock at the difficulties of rivers and mountains? What have you discovered strange enough to ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... also in the house of More in that noble and witty circle which to Erasmus appeared ideal. That house was also frequented by the friend whom Erasmus had made during his former sojourn in England, and whose mind was perhaps more congenial to him than any other, Andrew Ammonius. It is not improbable that during these months he was able to work without interruption at the studies to which he was irresistibly attracted, without cares as to the immediate future, and not yet burdened by excessive renown, which afterwards was to cause him as ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... heaven to witness she would never part with that ring, unless she sent it to the king himself upon some great disaster befalling her; and Bertram, on the king's questioning him how he came by the ring, told an improbable story of a lady throwing it to him out of a window, and denied ever having seen Helena since the day of their marriage. The king, knowing Bertram's dislike to his wife, feared he had destroyed her: and he ordered his guards to seize ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... opposite side of the graveyard, there came a sound as of someone walking; and, looking up, Maggie saw approaching her the bent figure of the old woman, who seemed unusually excited. Her first impulse was to fly, but knowing how improbable it was that Hagar should seek to do her harm, and thinking she might discover some clew to the mystery if she remained, she sat still, while, kneeling on Hester's grave, old Hagar wept bitterly, talking the while, but so incoherently that Maggie could distinguish ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... popularity. In that expedition, Smith and Fitzpatrick were robbed of their horses in Green River valley; the place where the robbery took place still bears the name of Horse Creek. We are not informed whether the horses were stolen through the instigation and management of Rose; it is not improbable, for such was the perfidy he had intended to practice on a former occasion toward ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... may not Storms be reckoned among those Woes, with which the Devil does disturb us? It is not improbable that Natural Storms on the World are often of the Devils raising. We are told in Job 1.11, 12, 19. that the Devil made a Storm, which hurricano'd the House of Job, upon the Heads of them that were Feasting in it. ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... not too often forget that a very short time—in fact, barely three years—passed between the appearance of Tom Jones and the appearance of Amelia? that although we do not know how long the earlier work had been in preparation, it is extremely improbable that a man of Fielding's temperament, of his wants, of his known habits and history, would have kept it when once finished long in his desk? and that consequently between some scenes of Tom Jones and ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... brother," admitted Georgiana, smiling to herself. "But as far as our lodger is concerned, you need have no fear of any but the most businesslike relations, even though I worked beside him—as is quite improbable—for a year. He's ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Here all other contingencies HAVE failed. When I found that the leading international agent, who had just left London, lived in a row of houses which abutted upon the Underground, I was so pleased that you were a little ...
— The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans • Arthur Conan Doyle
... better than to be the wife of a United States Senator?" He paused a moment, then, with a gallant sidelong glance at his companion, resumed in a concise whisper, which had the effect of a disclosure, "Prophecies, especially political prophecies, are dangerous affairs, but it seems to me not improbable that before many years have passed the wife of Senator Lyons will be equally prominent—be as conspicuous socially as the wife of ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... Federal authorities, and many Virginians in the field might abandon the Confederate States army. The State would be lost, and North Carolina and Tennessee would have an inevitable avalanche of invasion precipitated upon them. The only hope would be civil war in the North, a not improbable event. What could they do with four millions of negroes arrogating equality ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... pimples, and the whole as blue as the usual state of Mr. Crawford's spirits. Upon this member Abe levelled his attacks, in rhyme, song, and chronicle; and though he could not reduce the nose he gave it a fame as wide as to the Wabash and the Ohio. It is not improbable that he learned the art of making the doggerel rhymes in which he celebrated Crawford's nose from the study of Crawford's own ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... It is improbable that General Gordon's character was formed wholly by the exertions of his sister, but Claire in her eagerness rather overlooked the question of material. There was nothing in Maurice himself that was wrong, but he belonged to a class of young men who are always ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... Campbell stalked into my office, demanding you from all the winds. I had never heard of your existence; but I had known your father; and from matters in my competence (to be touched upon hereafter) I was disposed to fear the worst. Mr. Ebenezer admitted having seen you; declared (what seemed improbable) that he had given you considerable sums; and that you had started for the continent of Europe, intending to fulfil your education, which was probable and praiseworthy. Interrogated how you had come to send no word to Mr. Campbell, he deponed that you had expressed a great ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... extraordinary gallantry with which, refusing to be brought home, he defended himself behind a pump, until overpowered by numbers. It may have been that he was too bright a genius to live long, or it may have been that he took some pernicious substance into his bill, and thence into his maw—which is not improbable, seeing that he new-pointed the greater part of the garden-wall by digging out the mortar, broke countless squares of glass by scraping away the putty all round the frames, and tore up and swallowed, in splinters, the greater part of a wooden staircase ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... opinion,' said the dismal man, interrupting him, 'and I want none. You are travelling for amusement and instruction. Suppose I forward you a curious manuscript—observe, not curious because wild or improbable, but curious as a leaf from the romance of real life—would you communicate it to the club, of which you have spoken ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... deposits, containing alumina or clay as their essential ingredient, it cannot be said that any of these have been actually shown to be of organic origin. A recent observation by Sir Wyville Thomson would, however, render it not improbable that some of the great argillaceous accumulations of past geological periods may be really organic. This distinguished observer, during the cruise of the Challenger, showed that the calcareous ooze which has been already spoken of as covering large areas of the floor of the Atlantic ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... to Tarbes, the Gascons, and Cagnotte. I was grabbed by the jacket in the nick of time, and Josephine, my nurse, had the happy thought to tell me that Cagnotte, tired of waiting for us, was coming that very day by the stage-coach. Children accept the improbable with artless faith; nothing strikes them as impossible; only, they must not be deceived, for there is no impairing the fixity of a settled idea in their brains. I kept asking, every fifteen minutes, whether Cagnotte had not yet come. To quiet me, Josephine bought on the Pont-Neuf a ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... on the whole, improbable. A mere universal disgust with war is no more likely to end war than the universal dislike for dying has ended death. And though war, unlike dying, seems to be an avoidable fate, it does not follow that its present extreme unpopularity will end it unless people not only desire but see ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... their capital and the Army of Northern Virginia it was doubtful whether Johnston's men would have the spirit to stand. My belief was that he would make no such attempt; but I adopted this course as a precaution against what might happen, however improbable. ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... a miraculously foolish book. Titled villains, impossible parvenus, abductions, and convents abound in its pages, and all are as stupid as they are improbable. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... not harrow you with these thoughts again. It may be God's pleasure that I should outlive this war; but as, with His will, I am determined that I will never lay down my sword till the soldiers of the Republic are driven from the province, it is most improbable that I should do so. You must teach yourself, Victorine, to look for my death, as an event certain to occur, which any day may bring forth; and when the heavy news is brought to you, bear it as a Christian woman should bear the ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... each) of Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy; while a fragment of two splendid "Cantos on Mutability" is supposed to have belonged to a seventh book (not necessarily seventh in order) on Constancy. Legend has it that the poem was actually completed; but this seems improbable, as the first three books were certainly ten years in hand, and the second three six more. The existing poem comprehending some four thousand stanzas, or between thirty and forty thousand lines, exhibits so many and such varied excellences that it is difficult ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... hardly touches the lower classes, while among the upper classes there was naturally far less temptation to be rid of the burden of maintaining such few children as most families produced. On the whole it appears highly improbable that in the truly Roman part of the empire there was any considerable destruction of infant life or exposure of infants. It does not follow that, because the strict law does not prevent you from doing a thing, you will therefore do it, in the face of public disapproval ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... seems not improbable that the King and Louvois were but stupidly and cruelly nervous about what Dauger MIGHT know. Saint- Mars, when he proposed to utilise Dauger as a prison valet, manifestly did not share the trembling anxieties of Louis XIV. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... the late king had lost the esteem of his people by his partiality toward his favorites, by the concessions made to foreigners, especially to M. Lambert, and by his vacillating course in religious matters. His private life was such as to render it highly improbable that he had become a Christian; yet Mr. Ellis, the English missionary, exercised ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... company. Marietta was not betrothed to Jacopo Contarini yet, but there was no doubt that she would be before many days; to "respect" undoubtedly meant that he must not try to win her away from her affianced husband; if he had ever dreamt that in some fair, fantastically improbable future, Marietta could be his wife, he had parted with the right to dream the like again. Therefore, when he had stood awhile looking up at her window that morning, he sighed heavily and ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... in a reverent and grateful loyalty Michael would have laid down his life for her, as gladly as Dante would have done for "his lady." But Michael would have laid down his in silence, as one casts off a glove. He had never read the "New Life." It is improbable that it would have made any impression on him if he had read it. He never associated words or books or poetry with feelings. What he felt he held sacred. He was unconsciously by nature that which others ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... "when the ranch is sold at auction to satisfy the mortgage your father will bid it in at the amount of the mortgage, It is improbable that he ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... A famous painting represents him, with his little son and the castaway crew, huddling among the engulfing icebergs. That may have been; but it is improbable that the dauntless old pathfinder would have succumbed so supinely. Three traditions, more or less reasonable, exist about his end. When Captain James came out twenty years later seeking the North-West Passage he found on a little island (Danby), south-east from Charlton ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... or other "varmint", run the young turkeys off their reservation? That seemed improbable at this time of year—and so early in the evening. Foxes do not usually go hunting before midnight, nor ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... been fifty-nine at the time of his marriage, they said, and sixty at the birth of his son, and must have died shortly after, leaving his infant orphaned both of father and mother. This was possible, perhaps, but improbable. They added that the child was beautiful as the day,—just as we read in all the fairy tales. King James put an end to these rumours, evidently without foundation, by declaring, one fine morning, Lord ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... grandson of Edward IV.; the Poles were grandsons of his brother, Clarence, whose daughter, their mother the Countess of Salisbury, was living still. The theory that a tyrant might be deposed and another scion of the royal house substituted, had ample precedent; and it is in no way improbable that the Courtenays, who were all-powerful in the West, might have been ready enough in conjunction with the Poles to make a bid for the throne, if they could have found or created a favourable opportunity. The Cardinal had warning ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... and valvular insufficiency (imperfect closure of the valves). The functional disturbances are (almost without exception) due to digestive difficulties. In the first class, if the case is well advanced and the patient past the meridian of life, recovery is improbable, although life may be considerably prolonged. The second class of cases can be cured, with reasonable certainty, by ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell |
