"Plausibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... further experiment. Indeed he went further, and characterized the Baron as the most intolerable formal pedant he had ever had the misfortune to meet with, and the Chief of Glennaquoich as a Frenchified Scotchman, possessing all the cunning and plausibility of the nation where he was educated, with the proud, vindictive, and turbulent humour of that of his birth. 'If the devil,' he said, 'had sought out an agent expressly for the purpose of embroiling this miserable country, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... scheme for the sake of re- establishing his reputation; but this hope was never realized. Perhaps whatever he touched ceased from that moment to be either reliable or respectable. However, since Snaffle was possessed of so inexhaustible a fund of plausibility that he never failed to find investors who placed confidence in his wildest statements, it after all made very little difference to him what his reputation or his ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... sundering of tender ties and hardness toward the cast off Hagars that is inconsistent with the Christian spirit. An earnest, Godly man, a missionary friend of the writer, under whose ministry a heathen chief was converted, was misled by the plausibility. The chief had a number of wives; he had children by them; he was much attached to his wives and was fond of his children, and they all seemed to love him and clung to him. The missionary in the kindness of his heart did not interfere with the family, permitting ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... the descendants of the ancient Egyptians, who were scattered amongst the nations by the Assyrians. This belief they principally found upon particular parts of the prophecy from which we have already quoted, and there is no lack of plausibility in the arguments which they deduce therefrom. The Egyptians, say they, were to fall upon the open fields, they were not to be brought together nor gathered; they were to be dispersed through the countries, their idols were to be destroyed, and their images ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... accommodation. A drag-hunt is quite a different thing. The drag can be made to any strength; enabling hounds to run as if they were tied to it, and can be trailed so as to bring in all the dangerous places in the country with a certain air of plausibility, enabling a man to look round and exclaim, as he crams at a bullfinch or brook, 'he's leading us over a most desperate country—never saw such fencing in all my life!' Drag-hunting, however, as we said before, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... drew himself up to his full height and uttered these strange words with a sad majesty that was very imposing. But General Rolleston, steeled by experience of convicts, their plausibility and their histrionic powers, was staggered only for a moment. He deigned no reply; but told Helen that Captain Moreland was waiting for her, and she had better go ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... to a degree in which he was without a rival in the world, he sought only to escape his difficulties by inactivity, and he trusted to provide himself with a refuge against all contingencies by waiting upon time. Even when at length he was compelled to act, and to act in a distinct direction, his plausibility long enabled him to explain away his conduct; and, honest in the excess of his dishonesty, he wore his falsehood with so easy a grace that it assumed the character of truth. He was false, deceitful, treacherous; yet he had the virtue of not pretending to be virtuous. He was a real man, though but ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... them, have made so little use of the auxiliary verbs in doing it, as they have done—So that, except Raymond Lullius, and the elder Pelegrini, the last of which arrived to such perfection in the use of 'em, with his topics, that, in a few lessons, he could teach a young gentleman to discourse with plausibility upon any subject, pro and con, and to say and write all that could be spoken or written concerning it, without blotting a word, to the admiration of all who beheld him.—I should be glad, said Yorick, interrupting my father, to be made to comprehend ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... was again—the same, familiar, disarming plausibility of Martin's, the old trick of making her seem to be the ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... which he was a proficient. His splendid appearance, his captivating address, his thorough familiarity with the modes of society, gave him the entree to many houses where his talents amply requited the hospitality he received. He possessed, amongst his other gifts, an immense amount of plausibility, and people found it, besides, very difficult to believe ill of that well-bred, somewhat retiring man, who, in circumstances of the very narrowest fortunes, not only looked and dressed like a gentleman, but actually brought up a daughter with a degree of care and an amount of regard to ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... this is not progression—and progression under the Legislative Union—to what can the predicate be more truthfully applied? Statistics are apt to be barren and uninforming and can be adapted, with almost equal plausibility, to support the arguments of either side; but these figures are eloquent and speak for themselves. They embody a large and vital portion of the history of Irish Primary Education, and are a proof ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... provisions of the instrument as a whole yield but one meaning. The treaty is not broad enough to sustain the passage of troops in time of war. Nor would there seem to be any plausibility in the claim that certain mutual explanations exchanged between the two Governments at the time of the signing of the treaty gave tenable ground for the fulfilment of such a right as that which was granted ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... laws that will always prevail amidst over-crowded humanity so long as humanity endures. The picture of this swarming concentrated humanity has some effective possibilities, but, unhappily, if, instead of that obvious rule-of-three sum, one resorts to an analysis of operating causes, its plausibility crumbles away, and it gives place to an altogether different forecast—a forecast, indeed, that is in almost violent contrast to the first anticipation. It is much more probable that these coming cities will not be, in the old sense, cities at all; they ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... characteristic of the author. It is occupied with Dr. Caustic's description of his mechanical and scientific contrivances, embracing all sorts of possible and impossible projects; every one of which, however, has a ridiculous plausibility. The inexhaustible variety in which they flow forth proves the author's invention unrivalled in its way. It shows what had been the nature of Mr. Fessenden's mental toil during his residence in London, continually ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... first projected by Sir John Blount, who had been bred a scrivener, and was possessed of all the cunning, plausibility, and boldness requisite for such an undertaking. He communicated his plan to Mr. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Secretary of State. He answered every objection, and the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... other people, whatever pains or trouble he takes for his own security—to watch, for instance, as vigilantly that his neighbour's house as that his own is not broken into. And while the one solitary claim of any plausibility to universal equality of treatment requires to be largely qualified before it can be conceded, there is no other claim of the kind which does not carry with it its own refutation; there is no other which does not partake of the absurdity patent in the communistic ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... on her without a full knowledge of the minute particulars, and, moreover, a pretty fair capacity to understand such details and their various relations. Before proceeding with the narrative of the event referred to, we may remark that while, on the one hand, it may be argued, with great plausibility, that her numerous disasters and misfortunes prove that she is unfitted for the navigation of the sea, it may, on the other hand, be argued, with equal plausibility, that the very fact of her having come through ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... considerations give a front and plausibility to the hypothesis, that, in some cases of dreams and sensorial illusions, which have turned out true and significant intimations of the death of absent persons, there may have been at the bottom of them a relation established between the minds or nervous systems of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... affairs of life, in which our passions or our mystical intuitions fix our beliefs beforehand. It finds arguments for our conviction, for indeed it HAS to find them. It amplifies and defines our faith, and dignifies it and lends it words and plausibility. It hardly ever engenders it; it ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... final warning, permit the suggestion that bizarre combinations of characters very probably will be difficult to sell. Make your combinations within the limits of plausibility, and use characters that are seen upon the stage often enough to be hailed with at ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... placed at various distances from the disc in question; and it was found that the drawings made by those who were just too far off to see distinctly, bore out the above theory in a remarkable manner. Recently, however, the plausibility of the illusion view has been shaken by photographs of Mars taken during the opposition of 1905 by Mr. Lampland at the Lowell Observatory, in which a number of the more prominent canals come out as straight dark lines. ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... befallen him. Experience had taught me the insecurity of a canoe, and that was the only kind of boat which Pleyel used; I was, likewise, actuated by an hereditary dread of water. These circumstances combined to bestow considerable plausibility on this conjecture; but the consternation with which I began to be seized was allayed by reflecting that, if this disaster had happened, my brother would have received the speediest information of it. The consolation ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... no denying that, and I saw that under its influence the slight suspicions which I had imparted to poor honest-hearted, straightforward Mr Austin were melting like snowflakes under a summer sun. Still, under all the plausibility, the delicate flattery, and the elaborate politeness of the man, there was a vague indefinable something to which I found it quite impossible to reconcile myself; and I watched him as a cat does a mouse, anxious to note whatever suspicious circumstances might transpire, ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... greatness and joint interest of his Highness and this Nation, by E. W., Esq. The author was Edmund Waller, still under a cloud for his old transgression, but recovering himself gradually by his wealth, his plausibility and fine manners, and his powers of versifying. Here are four of ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... the true heir of Orleans; and the vulgarity of form in his body of limbs, power of endurance, greed of gain, and hard, cunning intellect, so unlike all traits of the weak, but more "genteel" Bourbon race, might well lend plausibility to such ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... and moving question, and at last frames a conclusion with painstaking precision in perfectly clear language, it is not pleasant to have that accurate utterance misstated with tireless reiteration, and with infinite art and plausibility. But for this vexation Lincoln could find no remedy, and it was in vain that he again and again called attention to the fact that he had expressed neither a "doctrine," nor an "invitation," nor any "purpose" or policy whatsoever. But as it seemed not altogether ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... Ganges, and Burrampooter to the South. The valleys within this space, which our readers, by referring to a map, will find to be correctly delineated, abound with nutritive fruits and vegetables, and with all animals capable of being tamed. There is evidently, therefore, some plausibility in the notion that mankind sprung originally from the East, and that from that quarter civilization is derived; but what portion of knowledge was allotted to the primitive people, or how far their descendants have surpassed or fallen short ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... time there was in that market-town one of those adventurous, speculative men, who are the more dangerous impostors because imposed upon by their own sanguine chimeras, who have a plausibility in their calculations, an earnestness in their arguments, which account for the dupes they daily make in our most sober and wary of civilized communities. Unscrupulous in their means, yet really honest in the belief that their objects can be attained, they are at once ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... these are the externals or clothes of men. It is necessary to look behind them and beyond them if we would reach the genuine human heart. One of the reasons why he detested what he called stump oratory was because he believed it to be a great school of insincerity. Its end was not truth, but plausibility. It was the effort of interested men to throw opinions into such forms as might most captivate uninstructed men; to keep back every unpopular side; to magnify everything in them that was seductive. He once said to me that two great curses seemed to him eating away the heart and ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... with this reasoning? Then try it on another case,—for despotism is exactly parallel. The New Testament does not expressly denounce that, and for the same reasons; and the arguments for passive obedience have been with equal plausibility drawn from its pages. Will the Transatlantic republicans approve despotism on the same authority? —Despotism has wrought at least as much misery to mankind as slavery, and probably much more. Was it a duty of the Apostles, instead of laying down ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... a moment have admitted that he was jealous of his old comrade, but would almost have liked to be accused of it: for this would have given him a chance he rather lacked and missed, the right occasion to declare with plausibility that motives he couldn't avow had no application to his case. How could a man be jealous when he was not a suitor? how could he pretend to guard a property which was neither his own nor destined to become his own? There could be no question of ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... Jamie was, Black Jock's plausibility appealed to him, and he began to think that Walker perhaps was not so bad as he was made to appear. Again, Jamie knew that Rundell was a man of hasty temper and impulsive judgments, and could not brook trouble, and he began to think that perhaps ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... These losses are doubtless irreparable so far as the stocks in question are concerned. The losers will have to look elsewhere for recovery. That they will do so with good courage is not to be doubted. It might be argued with reasonable plausibility that Americans are the greatest fatalists in the world; the readiest to take chances and the least given to whining when the cards ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... Emperor": Mei Yao-ch'en asks, with some plausibility, whether there is an error in the text as nothing is known of Huang Ti having conquered four other Emperors. The SHIH CHI (ch. 1 ad init.) speaks only of his victories over Yen Ti and Ch'ih Yu. In the LIU T'AO it is mentioned that he "fought seventy ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... the alleged legal obligation to return fugitives, it has more plausibility, but has it in reality any firm foundation? Americans boast of making their own laws, and of amending them whenever circumstances render it necessary. How, then, can they excuse themselves, or expect the civilized world to excuse them, for making, or sustaining, unjust and cruel laws? The Fugitive ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... ordinary human being, so that even the faithful can only contend that the Buddha was of superhuman stature. Whether it is the relic which was venerated in Ceylon before the arrival of the Portuguese is a more difficult question, for it may be argued with equal plausibility that the Sinhalese had good reasons for hiding the real tooth and good reasons for duplicating it. The strongest argument against the authenticity of the relic destroyed by the Portuguese is that it was found in Jaffna, which had ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... part with the mummy that we could hardly get her to accept a merely nominal price. To give plausibility to the purchase, we said we wanted the rags for a paper-mill. Joyously did Leonora and I call a passing chariot, and, with the mummy between us, we drove to our abode. I was surprised on the way by receiving a ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... between them. This is very convincing if we find it possible to believe that we live in two unconnected worlds. But if we find it impossible to believe this—and surely the impossibility is patent—its plausibility is gone. It is a shining example of this false abstraction when we are told, as though it were a conclusive objection to all that the New Testament has to say about the relation of sin and death, that 'the specific penalty of sin is not a ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... of plausibility—he could convince people, against their instincts, even against their wills, that he was telling the truth. And Mary, after a swift ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... repeating, that the cruelty of the daughters is an historical fact, to which the poet has added little, having only drawn it into a series by dialogue and action. But I am not able to apologise with equal plausibility for the extrusion of Gloucester's eyes, which seems an act too horrid to be endured in dramatick exhibition, and such as must always compel the mind to relieve its distress by incredulity. Yet let it be remembered ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... virtue, or generally of conduct, is proved from this in our Lord's instance? For if he was not God, and then had become God—if, not being king, he was preferred to the kingdom, your reasoning would have had some faint plausibility. But if he is God, and the throne of his kingdom is everlasting, in what way could God advance? Or what was there wanting to him who was sitting on his Father's throne? And if, as the Lord himself has said, the Spirit is his, and takes of his, and he sends it, it is not the ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... with my counsellors; they had undertaken to guide and control me. If they failed they, more than I, must answer for the failure. Sophistry of this kind passes well enough with one who wants excuses, and may even array itself in a cloak of plausibility; it was strong in my mind by virtue of the strong resentment from which it sprang, and the strong ally to which its forces were joined. Passion and self-assertion were at one; my conquest would be two-fold. While the Countess was brought to acknowledge my sway, those who had hitherto ruled ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... the Rat. "They said that no criminal laws had ever been known to prevail against cheek and plausibility such as yours, combined with the power of a long purse. So they arranged to move their things in to Toad Hall, and sleep there, and keep it aired, and have it all ready for you when you turned up. They didn't guess what was going to happen, of course; still, they had their suspicions of the Wild ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... long secluded from the world, had little opportunity of hearing the unfavourable rumours of their guest's character, which were pretty generally abroad; and if now and then a suspicion was suggested to the elder lady, the tact and plausibility with which it was discovered and removed, rather tended to strengthen than weaken his position in her esteem. As for Kate, the advice and cautions of meddling friends of course only fixed her more firmly in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... particular notice, that of a young man named Angukualak, the son of a most noted sorcerer, Uiverunna. His parents had instructed him in all the secrets of their art, and his confession gives at least plausibility to the opinion, that the influence of Satan is permitted to be sometimes visibly exercised, in the dark places of the earth, though, while the effects of that influence are palpable in the perpetration of the grossest vices ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... had some plausibility. No other creature would be so likely to trouble a person who had an antipathy to it. Dogs are very apt to make the acquaintance of strangers, in a free and easy way. They are met with everywhere,—in one's daily walk, at the thresholds of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... try every influence he could once have set in motion, and as it were to gather his strength for a mighty tussle with the king of terrors, when his pale fingers should tap at his cell door. I have seen two of his letters, written with consummate plausibility and adroitness, and which have given me altogether a very high idea of his powers. But they were all received with a terrifying coldness or with absolute silence. There was no reasoning against an intuition. Every human being felt that the verdict was true, and that the judgment, when it ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... correcting a volume of poetry. He had advertised in 1756 a new edition of Shakspeare which was to appear by Christmas, 1757: but he dawdled over it so unconscionably that it did not appear for nine years; and then only in consequence of taunts from Churchill, who accused him with too much plausibility ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... jurisdiction, of supreme law, are thought by most men, once and forever, to have satisfactorily answered. It was a complaint, certainly, which the South had had ever since the Constitution was formed, and which could with no plausibility be brought forward as a justification of war, while there existed a Constitutional tribunal for adjusting difficulties of Constitutional interpretation. Yet, as it was almost universally asserted, of course, by the Northern partisan presses, and by Northern Congressmen, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... period great hostilities arose between the advocates of segars and their opponents, which occupied the attention of thousands, who took a lively interest in the successful issue of the controversy. By the advocates for the practice it was urged with some plausibility of statement, that as to the pleasure of a segar, none but those who used them ought to express an opinion upon the point—that to appeal to experience, tobacco was in more universal use among nations than ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... some instances forming long ridges of detritus along the surface. These are curious considerations, and it has become a question of much interest, by what means, and under what circumstances, was such a current produced. One hypothetical answer has some plausibility about it. From an investigation of the nature of glaciers, and some observations which seem to indicate that these have at one time extended to lower levels, and existed in regions (the Scottish Highlands an example) where ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... she made a little pause, as if to gather plausibility. "The Grand Union was very full, and he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... imputed them exclusively to the government of Jan de Witt and his adherents; who, they said, had betrayed and sold the country to France; and this accusation to which their late pusillanimous counsels gave but too strong a color of plausibility, the heads of the Orange party, though well aware of its untruth, diligently sustained and propagated. The ministers of the Church, always influential and always on the alert, made the pulpits resound with declamations against the treachery and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... stations belonging to a seaman, from an apprentice boy in the coal trade, to a post-captain in the royal navy, he has had no opportunity of cultivating letters. After this account of myself, the public must not expect from me the elegance of a fine writer, or the plausibility of a professed book-maker; but will, I hope, consider me as a plain man, zealously exerting himself in the service of his country, and determined to give the best account he is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... perfectly true, in a certain sense, that all difference of function is a result of difference of structure; or, in other words, of difference in the combination of the primary molecular forces of living substance; and, starting from this undeniable axiom, objectors occasionally, and with much seeming plausibility, argue that the vast intellectual chasm between the Ape and Man implies a corresponding structural chasm in the organs of the intellectual functions; so that, it is said, the non-discovery of such vast differences proves, not that they are absent, but that Science ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... least a year too late; but we must now see that the time selected for its promulgation was as skilfully chosen as its aim was laudable. Had it come out a year earlier, in 1861, the friends of the Rebels could have said, with much plausibility, that its appearance had rendered a restoration of the Union impossible, and that the slaveholders had no longer any hope of having their property-rights respected under the Federal Constitution. But by allowing seventeen months to elapse before issuing it, the President compelled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... with the weaker creatures around him the Frankish king was always right. It was always they, not he, who had befouled the stream. In this, shall I say, shameless plausibility of wrong, the founder of the Frankish monarchy was a worthy prototype of Louis ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... talked of the conference before them, and Firmin, with a certain want of assurance that would have surprised him in himself in the days of his Professorship, sought to define the policy of his companion. 'In its broader form, sir,' said Firmin; 'I admit a certain plausibility in this project of Leblanc's, but I feel that although it may be advisable to set up some sort of general control for International affairs—a sort of Hague Court with extended powers—that is no reason whatever for losing sight of the principles of ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... considered as of a traumatic nature, no external violence having any apparent agency in producing it, and it is our belief that it is due to a peculiar degeneration or softening of the bones themselves, a theory which acquires plausibility from the consideration of the spongy consistency of the sesamoids. The disease is a peculiar one, and the suddenness with which different feet are successively attacked, at short intervals and without any obvious cause, seems to prove the existence of some latent, morbid cause which has been unsuspectedly ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... 1877, and by panics we do not mean such local whirlwinds as have desolated Wall Street, but wide-spread commercial crises, affecting all branches of business. This periodicity is ascribed, and with much plausibility, to the fact that inasmuch as panics are the result of certain mental conditions, they recur as soon as the experience of the previous one has lost its influence, or, in other words, as often as a new generation comes into the management of affairs, which is about every ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... conquered; nor numbers, nor even a good cause, for the French were more numerous than the English, and were shamefully attacked by Henry V. on their own soil. Many an argument from simple enumeration may thus be turned into an induction of greater plausibility according to the ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... he was talking benevolent fictions; and yet there was plausibility in his argument. The law did not allow parole on sentences of a year or under, but on anything over one year, a convict was eligible, and our sentence of twenty-four hours over the twelvemonth therefore brought us within this provision. In imposing that extra day, the judge ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... with what seemed absolute frankness about her future life in the cottages, answering little questionings of Lady Shuttleworth's with a discretion and plausibility that would have warmed Fritzing's anxious heart, dwelling most, for here the ground was safest, on her uncle, his work, his gifts and character, and Lady Shuttleworth, completely fascinated, had offered her help of every sort, help ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... quite so much concerned as before Fred had made his suggestion. The unpleasant idea of lawless tramps having caught Colon, to hold him for ransom, had begun to lose plausibility in the mind of ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Tennysonian Muse, the Sibyl of Rizpah and Vastness and Lucretius and The Voyage, to whom it must seem impertinent beyond the prophet's wont; there are—(but they scarce count)—who grub (as for truffles) for meanings in Browning. But it was not uttered to please, and in truth it has enough of plausibility to infuriate whatever poet-sects there be. Especially ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... with no little show of plausibility, Why—in the face of such manifold hostility and such persistent opposition, why press the movement for revision any further? Is it worth while to divide public sentiment in the Church upon a question that looks to many to be scarcely more than ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... invented ungodly predicaments from which he could extricate himself and be pleased if he kept his shirt on his back; Casey Ryan as the owner of a garage might justly be considered a joke pushed to the very limit of plausibility. Yet Casey Ryan became just that after two weeks of cramming on mechanics and the compiling of a reference book which would have made a fortune for himself and Bill if they had thought ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... all the facts of Alberti's life are to be found in the Latin biography included in Muratori. It has been conjectured, and not without plausibility, by the last editor of Alberti's complete works, Bonucci, that this Latin life was penned ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the means of making away with his nephews, whose deaths were considerably more essential to him. But can this accusation be allowed gravely? if Richard aspired to the crown, whose whole conduct during Edward's reign was a scene, as we are told, of plausibility and decorum, would he officiously and unnecessarily have taken on himself the odium of slaying a saint-like monarch, adored by the people? Was it his interest to save Edward's character at the expence of his own? Did Henry stand in his way, deposed, imprisoned, and ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... to their distance from us, whatever objections might have been made on that account before the invention of the mariner's compass, nothing can be alledged for it, with any colour of plausibility in the present age. Men can now sail with as much certainty through the Great South Sea, as they can through the Mediterranean, or any lesser Sea. Yea, and providence seems in a manner to invite us to ...
— An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens • William Carey
... to seem more than he is will generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention to ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... said Lord Mayor and Viscount Montagu, a great number of merchants and notable personages riding before, and a large troop of servants and apprentices following, was conducted through the City of London (with great admiration and plausibility of the people, running plentifully on all sides, and replenishing all streets in such sort as no man without difficulty might pass) into his lodging situate in Fant Church (Fenchurch) Street, where were provided for him two chambers richly hung and decked over and above the gallant ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt
... grass-widow, free of all cares. Then, to her astonishment and disgust, Nina was born. She had not bargained for Nina. She found herself in the tiresome position of a mother whose explanations of her child lack plausibility. One lodging-housekeeper to whom she hazarded the statement that Lemuel was in Australia had saucily replied: 'I thought maybe it was the North Pole he ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... case of "Mademoiselle Marni" Miss Bingham herself must have spent an enormous sum that she would probably have hesitated to invest in some enterprise sane or possible. The play was a turgid coagulation of illogical episodes lacking in all plausibility. This particular actress is generally happy when she can select for herself a character that is beloved by all the masculine members of the cast. Apparently, she "sees" herself in this role. She likes to appear as the personification ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... If mere plausibility be sufficient ground to justify a derivation, where is there a more plausible one than that "news," intelligence, ought to be derived from [Greek: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... turns aside from hypotheses not to be tested by any known logical canon familiar to science, whether the hypothesis claims support from intuition, aspiration or general plausibility. And, again, this method turns aside from ideal standards which avow themselves to be lawless, which profess to transcend the field of law. We say, life and conduct shall stand for us wholly on a basis of law, and must ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... that it became very celebrated in his time. The story about Cortez finding a broken-nosed image in the knapsack of one of his soldiers is not mentioned either by himself or Bernal Diaz, and must therefore be an afterthought, to give plausibility to a subsequent imposition. From this point Cortez and his party, without their women or treasures, trudged along to the foot of the hills to Tepeac, or Guadalupe, and thence around the foot of Tezcuco to ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... in his uniform, commenced dividing their jibes between him and his horse, evincing not the slightest respect for either. The question which should mount first was now mooted. The major insisted that he would see his superior officer first in the saddle; while the general argued, with equal plausibility, that courtesy demanded that the major should mount first, he being the guest of the city. They debated the point for some time; and at last compromised the matter by agreeing to mount together. This difficulty being settled, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... he abruptly. "You would be pale too if you had nothing to eat." He could hardly speak the words and felt his strength falling. But there was some plausibility in his reply; and the ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... history and poetry are two things; and though the poet has no right to contradict the historian, yet, if he find two opinions upon points of history, he may certainly take that which is most susceptible of poetical ornament; particularly if it have sufficient plausibility, and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... stop, while the chauffeur, dropping to the ground, rummaged fiercely with the interior. Green leaned back in the shadow, his eyes fixed on the steps leading to Grell's house. There was a sufficient air of plausibility about the whole accident to impress any one but ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... is a mere counterfeit of it, for it does not enable a man to solve any problem whatever, and remains incapable of understanding all that is living, complex, and concrete. Abstraction is its original sin, presumption its incurable defect, and plausibility ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... attractive in plot, able in construction, happy in invention, and their general tendency may be to fall within the definition of "life's little ironies"; yet, in spite of these admirable qualifications, the majority of these stories are unconvincing, lacking in balance, in plausibility, in that virtue which may be defined as "the writer's imagination," whose lack is something more than careless writing. How often one puts down a story with the feeling that it would take little to make it a "rattling ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... gold but has no effect upon iron. Furthermore, a substance than can corrode a solid body may nevertheless be unable to "fret" a different body which is considerably softer and thinner, if the "texture" does not admit the small particles.[55] Reasoning by analogy served to explain the logical plausibility. In other words, he was very open-minded. He refused to dismiss all such claims, and provided analogy as a reason for keeping his mind open; yet he refused to accept particular claims of medicine that dissolved stones, ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... you would say if, in some of these moments of unnecessary intermingling with questionable things and doubtful people, you were brought suddenly to this, that you had to formulate into some kind of plausibility your reason for being there? I am afraid it would be a very lame and ragged set of reasons that many of us would have to give. Well! better that we should now have to answer the question 'What doest thou here?' than that we should have to fail in answering the future ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 'furiously to think' (1)—yet for the most part without great success in the way of finding a solution. The supposition that (1) the creed, rite or legend in question has sprung up, so to speak, accidentally, in one place, and then has travelled (owing to some inherent plausibility) over the rest of the world, is of course one that commends itself readily at first; but on closer examination the practical difficulties it presents are certainly very great. These include the migrations of customs and myths in quite early ages of the earth ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... for the present collection. It represents a Belasco interest and conviction greater than are to be found in any of his other plays. While there are no specific claims made for the fact that PETER materializes after his death, it is written with plausibility and great care. The psychic phenomena are treated as though real, and our sympathy for PETER when he returns is a human sympathy for the inability of a spirit to get his message across. The theme is not etherealized; one does not see through a mist dimly. There was not even ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... become apparent that success in a prosecution of Ralegh depended solely on the plausibility and consistency of Cobham's accusations. They were peculiarly deficient in those qualities. Ralegh has recorded that Cobham's remorse for the evil wrought by his charges of July 20 commenced within the building in which they had been uttered. At any rate, on the 29th he retracted them more or less ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... patched together, or invented where seemly, the story of lanky ABE, with his axeman's skill, his immense physical strength, his poor head for shopkeeping, his passion for books, his lean purse and "shrinking pants," his wit, courage and resource. A romance of reasonable interest and plausibility is woven round young Lincoln's story. Perhaps Mr. BACHELLER makes his hero speak a little too sententiously at times, and certainly some of his other folk say queer things, such as, "What so vile as a cheap aristocracy, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... me with panic. I revolved them anew, but they only acquired greater plausibility. No doubt I had been the victim of malicious artifice. Inclination, however, conjured up opposite sentiments, and my fears began to subside. What motive, I asked, could induce a human being to inflict wanton injury? I could not account for ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... by it if, by good chance, there had not been people at hand with a great many vessels of water for the service of the bath, with all which they had much ado to extinguish the fire; and his body was so burned all over that he was not cured of it a good while after. And thus it was not without some plausibility that they endeavor to reconcile the fable to truth, who say this was the drug in the tragedies with which Medea anointed the crown and veils which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... complacently he now admitted it! As for the circumstances under which he asserted the document to have been written, M. Zola could make nothing of them. 'So far, the explanations explain nothing,' said he; 'take them whichever way you will, there is no sense, no plausibility even, in them. Hitherto I always thought Esterhazy a very shrewd and clever man, but after reading his statements in the "Times" and the "Chronicle" I no longer know what to think. Still, one point is gained; he admits having written the bordereau, and others hereafter will tell ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... scholars. To my mind, indeed, this forgery itself proves the falsehood of the Gospel narrative; it shows that the early Christians felt the necessity of some corroborative evidence, and they manufactured it to give their own statements an air of greater plausibility. ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... put on that one side, which was embroidered, formed a collar round the neck, whilst the rest hung behind like a hood. By analogy with the scarf of our Protestant clergy, which is clearly the stole of the Roman Church retained under a different name, this suggestion is not without some degree of plausibility. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... 'detain;' and this, it appears to me, has much the same force and intention as the previous words. It is to be noted, however, that it is separated from them by the disjunctive 'or;' and, therefore, it might be argued with some plausibility that any act of forceful or fraudulent detention, after notice, by persons who have originally acquired a child's custody in a lawful way, came within the section. The point is new, and of great importance; and if the Protestant Detectoral Association feel disposed ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... already sketched some of the reasons suggestive of such a theory of derivation of species, reasons which gave it plausibility, and even no small probability, as applied to our actual world and to changes occurring since the latest tertiary period. We are well pleased at this moment to find that the conclusions we were arriving at in this respect are sustained by the very high authority and ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... (The Castaway) as a piece of homely, effective narrative. (Defoe wrote for the man in the street. He was a literary jack-of-all-trades whom dignified authors of his day would not countenance, but who possessed genius.) It relies upon directness and plausibility of substance and style rather than temerity of phrase. Yet it never sags into tameness. Notice how everyday expressions ("My business was to hold my breath," "I took to my heels") add subtly to our belief that what Defoe is telling us is true. Notice also that such ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... avaricious designs, and screen his name from opprobrium, he told the world that I was hopelessly insane; and that the discovery of this fact, one hour after his marriage, had induced him to send me abroad under the care of a faithful and judicious nurse. To give plausibility to this statement, a paragraph was inserted in the New York papers announcing that I was a raving maniac and an inmate of an English asylum for lunatics. Mr. Clayton, my lawyer, was the sole surviving witness ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... the effect these things would have on the minds of the ignorant and superstitious, and he turned them against Hanz with such skill as to completely get the better of him. In short, he would assert his innocence with so much plausibility that the simple-minded settlers began to believe him the saint he set himself up for, and Hanz the sinner who ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... contradictory conceptions of a single human being. But it was not so; 'the elements' were 'so mixed' in Mr. Gladstone that his bitterest enemies (and his enemies were never mild) and his warmest friends (and his friends were never tepid) could justify, with equal plausibility, their denunciations or their praises. What, then, was the truth? In the physical universe there are no chimeras. But man is more various than nature; was Mr. Gladstone, perhaps, a chimera of the spirit? Did his very essence lie in the confusion of ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... dismissal of the serpent into the fountain, which is neither averred nor denied, like a devil cast out as in old times, is puerile; but Hawthorne was, in other tales, not averse to a naturalistic explanation of his mysteries, as if a basis of matter of fact, however irrelevant essentially, gave more plausibility to their truth. If the snake is "egotism," if it is the torture of self in a man, if its cure is the loss of self in love, then making the snake real and physical is absurdity; medicine and morals ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... further. Prudhomme's newspaper poured contempt over gold as security for the currency, extolled real estate as the only true basis and was fervent in praise of the convertibility and self-adjusting features of the proposed scheme. In spite of all this plausibility and eloquence, a large minority stood firm to their earlier principles; but on the 29th of September, 1790, by a vote of 508 to 423, the deed was done; a bill was passed authorizing the issue of eight hundred millions of new assignats, but solemnly declaring that in no case should the entire ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... reasonably enough, that plays written by intelligent men for an intelligent public could not be quite so dull as tradition proclaimed; and though to rob the classics of their terrors needed much audacity and some irreverence, the new ideas won ground by sheer force of plausibility. Unfortunately, to the modern scholar an intelligent public meant a public of modern scholars. He peopled the Attic theatre with an audience of cultivated liberals, and by "a good play" meant the sort of play such a public would relish. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... Spanish theory have contented themselves with stating that Lyly borrowed from Guevara, and pointing out the parallels between the two writers. But it is possible to give their case a greater plausibility, by showing that Guevara was no isolated instance of such Spanish influence, and by proving that during the Tudor period there was a consistent and far-reaching interest in Spanish literature among a certain class of Englishmen. ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... opposing his claim stoutly asserted that he was a miller of Landreslaw, called Rebok, and that he was a creature of the Duke of Saxony, who coveted the Brandenburgian possessions, and who, being a relative of the family, had thoroughly instructed him as to the private life of Voldemar. His plausibility, and the accuracy of his answers, however, led many persons of influence to believe that he was no counterfeit. The Emperor Charles IV. (of Bohemia), the Primate of Germany, the Princes of Anhalt, and the Dukes ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... boss," the would-be merchant invented boldly, throwing plausibility to the winds. "Came home last night, crying like everything. There isn't enough to eat, and we have to pay the gas bill, so ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... disguises its real tendency, and puts on an engaging and attractive appearance. Many a young woman, who would be shocked at the imputation of an intrigue, is extremely flattered at the idea of a sentimental connexion, though perhaps with a dangerous and designing man, who, by putting on this mask of plausibility and virtue, disarms her of her prudence, lays her apprehensions asleep, and involves her in misery; misery the more inevitable because unsuspected. For she who apprehends no danger, will not think it necessary to be always upon her guard; but will ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... too austere prohibitions. "Well, then, I will go back to my mother: I am sure I wish I had never——": "Go": And so the parting may have come about, not wholly by her arrangement, but harshly and with some quarrel on his part. There are not wanting subsequent facts that might lend a plausibility to this version of the story. [Footnote: Milton's mother-in-law, having occasion, seven years afterwards (1651), to advert to her daughter's return home so soon after her marriage, distinctly attributed it to Milton himself. The words are, "He having turned away his ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... be maintained with some plausibility that the rural schools of the West are superior to those farther east. The East is conservative and slow to change. The West has fewer traditions to break. Many strong personalities of initiative and push have come out of the East and taken ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... was it justifiable to mind his own business? And if he did not mind it, what possible chance had he against a power so ruthless and so cunning? An accident to a man driving a loaded wagon down the Spirit Canyon grade had a diabolic plausibility that no man in the country could question. Brit, he reasoned, could not have known before he started that his rough-lock had been tampered with, else he would have fixed it. Neither was Brit the man to forget the brake on his load. If Brit lived, he might talk as much as he pleased, but he ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... article was in type too early for a review of Dellenbaugh's identification of Cibola with a more southeasterly locality. His arguments bear some plausibility, but they are by ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... doleful chants, by unwedded maids. Youths and maidens dedicated locks of their hair in his temple before marriage. His grave existed at Troezen, though the people would not show it. It has been suggested, with great plausibility, that in the handsome Hippolytus, beloved of Artemis, cut off in his youthful prime, and yearly mourned by damsels, we have one of those mortal lovers of a goddess who appear so often in ancient religion, and of whom Adonis is the most ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... overheard them, Patterson the Bishop of Edinburgh came in; and with many interjections, mingled with wishes for a calm procedure, he told the Lords of our escape. He was indeed, to do him justice, a man of some repute for plausibility, and take him all in all for a prelate, he was, in truth, not void of the charities of human nature, compared with others ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... that somehow floated and saved me even while cutting me off from any degree of direct performance, in fact from any degree of direct participation, at all. There presumably was the interest—in the intensity and plausibility and variety of the irrelevance: an irrelevance which, for instance, made all pastors and masters, and especially all fellow-occupants of benches and desks, all elbowing and kicking presences within touch or view, so many monsters and horrors, so many wonders and splendours ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... at any time endorse the scheme. Sir John Macdonald, as a practical man, saw at once a fatal objection {145} in the sacrifice of Canadian self-government which it involved.[3] Some of the members of the Imperial Federation League urged with plausibility that political federation would bring the colonies new power in the shape of control over foreign policy, rather than take old powers away, but Macdonald much doubted the reality of the control it would give. Nevertheless the Imperial Federation League and its branches did useful ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... the sanction thus given, or from its typographical beauty, or from the plausibility of its new readings, this edition continued in favour, and even 'rose to the price of 10l. 10s. before it was reprinted in 1770-1, while Pope's, in quarto, at the same period sold off at Tonson's sale for 16s. per copy.' ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... and hares, clay pictures that had been dried and had crumpled, threats and consequent "languishing" and death, these were the trappings of the stories. The tales were old. Only the Malking Tower incident was new. But its very novelty gave a plausibility to the stories that were woven around it. There was not a single person to interpose a doubt. The cross-examinations were nothing more than feeble attempts to ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... she said, "has all the plausibility of his class. He has learned it in the money school, where these things become an art. He believes himself secure—he is even now seeking for me. He is all prepared with his story. ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... which (in truth) seem such incoherent shreds, that it is impossible to tie them together; and therefore, what I purpose is, to answer such objections to the Test, as are advanced either by this author, or any other which have any appearance of reason, or plausibility. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... analysis; and certain grave antiquaries dismember it accordingly into two Druidical words, "Gurch" and "I;" corresponding, they tell us, to our own words, "Power" and "Water;" which, an' it be so, we see not how they can derive Vichy from this source. Others, with more plausibility, hold Vichy to be a corruption of Vicus. That these springs were known to the Romans is indisputable; and, as they are marked Aquae calidae in the Theodosian tables, they were, in all probability, frequented; and the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... the days of Hiero I., soon after the Persian war, but on the site of a temple still more venerable. One seeks a reason for the location of this holy place at such a distance from the city. Holm, the German historian of Sicily, argues with some plausibility that this was no mere suburb of Syracuse, but the original Syracuse itself. In the first place, the list of the citizens of Syracuse was kept here down at least to the time of the Athenian invasion. In the second ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... forward to show that either the Solomonic legend or any traces of Judaic symbolism and traditions existed either in the monuments of the period or in the ritual of the masons before the fourteenth century, it is surely reasonable to recognize the plausibility of the contention put forward by a great number of masonic writers—particularly on the Continent—that the Judaic elements penetrated into Masonry by means of the Templars.[295] The Templars, as we have already seen, had taken ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... stock, and that some of these people carried their religion and their learning into China. No proof however is adduced, either by him or others, of such a communication; and an assertion directly the contrary might have been made with equal plausibility. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... a feeble lamentation, but he was evidently a person whose objections nobody was accustomed to heed. Captain Magnus, who might with plausibility have urged claims superior to those of all the rest, assented to the arrangement with a willingness which filled me with boding. I had caught his restless furtive eye fixed gloatingly upon me more than once. I saw that he was aware of my terror, and exulted in it, and took a feline pleasure in ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... historic than artistic value, since the names of at least half of them might be transposed, and the change be undetected by ninety-nine out of every hundred who see them. If all the French battles were thus displayed, it might be urged with plausibility that these galleries were historical in their character; but a full half of the story—that which tells of French disaster and discomfiture—is utterly suppressed. The battles of Ptolemais, of Ivry, of Fontenoy, of Rivoli, of Austerlitz, &c. are here as imposing as ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... begin the discourse," nor "to sing," nor "to sing alternately," nor "to correspond," nor "to be favourably disposed" (Ewald), nor "to obey" (Hitzig), but always, and everywhere, "to answer." All these explanations will lose their plausibility, if we only consider, that it is not always necessary that a question be expressed by words, but that it may be implied in the thing itself—especially in the case of the lively Orientals, for whom things, even the most mute, have a language. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... either under plea of immemorial occupancy or of possession by right of conquest, the land was often claimed, and the claims urged with more or less plausibility by several tribes, sometimes of the same linguistic ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... letter it seems to me that if you were not you, and I were not I, you might with some plausibility accuse me of being—what?—in love with Miss Bretherton? But you know me too well. You know I am one of the old-fashioned people who believe in community of interests—in belonging to the same world. When ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... than philosophic. Wilson's character was the grand object of attack and defence, and round it all the hard fighting was done. Though it was pure and blameless, it offered some points which an unscrupulous adversary might readily misconstrue, with some show of plausibility. His free, erratic life, his little imprudences, his unguarded expressions, and the reckless "Chaldee MS.," might, with a little twisting, be turned to handles of offence, and wrested to his disadvantage. But the fanatic zeal of his opponents ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... of personal pronouns being a proof of Japanese "impersonality," i.e., of lack of consciousness of self, this very deficiency may, with even more plausibility, be used to establish the opposite view. Child psychology has established the fact that an early phenomenon of child mental development is the emphasis laid on "meum" and "tuum," mine and yours. The child is a thoroughgoing individualist ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... referred to in this connection, constitutes in itself a recognized problem (see also page 27) of great difficulty; for it is a human failing to avoid the mental effort involved in thinking through such a problem, and to rely on rules whose plausibility and seeming simplicity are frequently a measure of their incompleteness ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... admitting it did start before you, you had plenty of time to water the saddle stock and overtake it before it could possibly reach the herd. I can tell a lie myself, but a good one always has some plausibility. You rascals were up ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... avail in the general theory of relativity. The motion of clocks is also influenced by gravitational fields, and in such a way that a physical definition of time which is made directly with the aid of clocks has by no means the same degree of plausibility as in the special theory ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... very ready with a tender of this my pleasant person, and my dear freedom? And could you moreover have thought it would have been so haughtily rejected?—No—Curse it! Let me do her justice, too. It is not haughtily. She puts as many smiles, and as much sweetness, and plausibility, into her refusal as heart could desire. But refusal ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... barbarian, and barbarism is not humanity but inhumanity; hence the unfitness to the case, of such illogical reasoning as is adopted by the advocates of Negro equality. Human equality, as applied to the Negro, is an idle fantasy, without even the shadow or semblance of plausibility. White men are equals in few things; certainly not in physical nor mental capacity, nor power. The equality declared by our Revolutionary Sires was the political equality of white men. Let us arise from that ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... theory was new to him. It seemed to have a certain plausibility. He wanted to think it over before committing himself ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... admiration; and the divisions caused by the schism of Novatian supplied them with a specious apology for enlarging their jurisdiction. The argument from the necessity of unity, which was urged so successfully for the creation of a bishop upwards of a hundred years before, could now be adduced with equal plausibility for the erection of a metropolitan; and, from this date, these prelates undoubtedly exercised archiepiscopal power. Seventy years afterwards, or at the Council of Nice, [359:1] the ecclesiastical rule ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... "an unqualified separate Education," because it is said, with some plausibility, that the manner in which theology mixes up with history and moral philosophy renders common instruction in them almost impossible. The reasoning is pushed too far. Yet the objection should be well weighed; though we warn those who push it very far not to fall into the ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... of power, Baby, the inquisitive postmaster and keeper of the bridge, was unlike the new arrival in Bonaventure. The abilities of the Honourable Tom Ferrol lay in a splendid plausibility, a spontaneous blarney. He could no more help being spendthrift of his affections and his morals than of his money, and many a time he had wished that his money was as inexhaustible ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his own arms. The use and necessity of personal experience consisted in the power of choosing and applying what had been read, and of discriminating by the light of analogy the practicable from the impracticable, and probability from mere plausibility. Without a judgment matured and steadied by actual experience, a man would read to little or perhaps to bad purpose; but yet that experience, which in exclusion of all other knowledge has been derived from one man's life, is in the present day scarcely worthy of ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... know whether to count on Lockwood as an ally or not. My estimation of him had been rising and falling like the barometer in a summer shower. I had been convinced that he was against us. But his manner and plausibility now equally convinced me that I had been mistaken. I felt that it would take some supreme action on his part to settle the question. That crisis ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... fineness with which, as by some really ghostly finger, he brings home to our inmost sense his inventions, daring as they are—the skeleton ship, the polar spirit, the inspiriting of the dead corpses of the ship's crew. The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner has the plausibility, the perfect adaptation to reason and the general aspect of life, which belongs to the marvellous, when actually presented as part of a credible experience in our dreams. Doubtless, the mere experience of the opium-eater, the habit he must almost necessarily fall into ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... friend as only a priest could be to such a sinner. But he could not think of any approach sufficiently delicate. Northwick was not a Catholic, and the church had no hold upon him. Besides, he had a certain plausibility and reserve of demeanor that forbade suspicion, as well as the intimacy necessary to the good which Pere Etienne wished to do the lonely and silent man. Northwick was in those days much occupied with a ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... former lecture I went over some of the fechnerian reasons for their plausibility, or reasons that at least replied to our more obvious grounds of doubt concerning them. The numerous facts of divided or split human personality which the genius of certain medical men, as Janet, Freud, Prince, Sidis, and others, have unearthed were ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... obtained from the scattered passages of antient authors and etymology, have enabled him to clear up the history of the remotest ages, and to elucidate objects hitherto surrounded with darkness and error. Upon the whole, it will be allowed by all who are capable judges of the subject, that the plausibility of his hypothesis is frequently apparent, his scheme great, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... Oriental origin, showing Buddhistic traits in the kindly relations between the slave and the lion; but the parallels he gives are by no means convincing, though the general evidence for Oriental provenance of many of Phaedrus' fables gives a certain plausibility to this derivation. From our present standpoint this is of less importance since Androcles, though it has spread through Europe and is current among the folk, is clearly of literary origin and is one of the few examples where we can trace such ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... you costly sanitariums, wherein to rest and be treated.' But only the rich or a favored few may avail themselves of these. If these remedies or retreats were infallible and could reach all mankind, there might be some plausibility in such arguments; but such is not the case, as you must know. Where, in God's Word, which is conceded to be the guide for humanity, do you find authority for ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... he came there, who and how many are his comrades, what he wants in such a desert place, and why he carries arms, though spoken with a cunning plausibility, has no effect upon the knowing sailors. They proclaim him and his party, some eight or ten men, who are clamorously squabbling in the jungle at no great distance, to be a rough and lawless set of marauders, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... was the great heavy-headed clock in the passage. He did not appear at all to know that he had come down in the world through being sold by auction for two pounds ten. He said with great plausibility, "My worth is not to be measured by the amount of money I can command; I am the same personage as before." And I thought it a very true observation, but the philosophy thereof was a little discounted by his haughty demeanour, which had certainly gone up as he himself had come down; and that is ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... did not despair. The Austrian diplomatists propounded a new scheme of politics, which, it must be owned, was not altogether without plausibility. The great powers, according to this theory, had long been under a delusion. They had looked on each other as natural enemies, while in truth they were natural allies. A succession of cruel wars had devastated ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Many, alarmed at the consequences which occasionalism would seem to involve, have embraced an opposite scheme. They criticise the definition of the laws of nature, and contend that occasionalism derives all its plausibility from adroitly availing itself of the ambiguities of language. They would have us view the creation as a species of clock, or other machinery, which, being once made and wound up, will for a time perform its movements without the assistance or even presence of its maker. But ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... knowledge of the great world, she had considerable knowledge of human nature, which stood her wonderfully in stead. She had no notion of being made sport of for the elegantes, and, with all Lady Masham's plausibility of persiflage, she never obtained her end, and never elicited anything really absurd by all attempts to draw her out—out she would not be drawn. After an unconquerable silence and all the semblance of dead stupidity, Lady ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... by which he governed. His father was a Presbyterian minister, who taught that slavery was divine, and both were generous and lenient masters. He was the embodiment of the slave power. All its brute force, pious pretenses, plausibility, chivalry, all the good and bad of the Southern character; all the weapons of the army of despotism were concentrated in this man, the friend of my friends, the man who stood ready to set me on the pinnacle ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... indifference, but, as I must think, covert zeal, for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself; I hate it because it deprives our republic of an example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and, especially, because it forces so many really good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticising the Declaration ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... although the sentiments of the characters are reported in concealed blank verse that smacks of theatrical rant, though the absurd Oriental digressions, the disguises, the frequent poisonings, and fortunate accidents all detract from the naturalness and plausibility of the tale, yet one cannot deny the piece occasional merits, which if smothered in extravagances, are hopeful signs of a coming change. The very excess of strained and unnatural incidents indicates that the popular palate ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially because it forces so many good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... think, considering his youth, that he deserved great credit for his discretion and judgment; for I believe that many an older man might have been deceived by the plausibility of their manners and ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... door, when he detained me. He has, I must admit, a marvellous plausibility, for though at first he seemed to rely on the all-importance of these documents to your lordship—how far they would compromise you in the past and impede you for the future, how they would impair your influence, and ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... suspicions was the charming simplicity and apparent truthfulness which, in common with all readers of Bernal Diaz, he has found to be the distinguishing characteristics of the narrative. "A striking feature," he tells us, "in Spanish literature, is the plausibility with which it has carried a fictitious narrative through its most minute details, completely captivating the uninitiated. If its supporters were not permitted to write truth, they succeeded in getting up a most excellent imitation. In Bernal Diaz the alleged ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... that travelled as far as Ceylon went by sea, either from the coasts of Bengal or Orissa or Bombay. Besides, the expedition of Rama is obviously fabulous, for his army was composed not of Aryans but of apes. All things considered, there seems to be most plausibility in the third hypothesis[30]. Certainly Rama was a local hero of Ayodhya, and probably he was once a real king; so it is likely enough that an old saga (or sagas) attached itself early to his memory. And as his fame spread abroad, principally on the wings of ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... predicted, not without plausibility, that if this great empire should sink before the rising genius of some new state, when all it has accomplished in arts and arms, and its wealth, its literature, its machinery, are forgotten, its ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... was. Her hull, her rigging filled my eye with a great content. That feeling of life-emptiness which had made me so restless for the last few months lost its bitter plausibility, its evil influence, dissolved in ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... conspiracy at the outset as he was to play the traitor at the close. The extraordinary manner in which this man was always trusted afresh by the friends whom he perpetually betrayed, is one of the mysteries of psychological history. His plausibility and powers of fascination must have been marvellous. An agreement was drawn up, signed by the six, and entrusted to Aumerle (who cleverly slipped out of the inconvenience of signing it himself), containing ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... the rudest of the species, and of every thing that is odious in human nature, when corrupted to the extreme. Desperadoes in courage, and gluttons in revenge, they have also the low cunning and the treacherous plausibility with all the licentious propensities of the most designing and profligate of mankind. Their advancement in the arts which render life comfortable, and sometimes, too, embellish even vice, cannot in any measure redeem them into favourable estimation. They are in most points inferior (perhaps ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... is more and more conceded; and the point now usually made is not that the Jeffersonian maxim excludes women, but that "the consent of the governed" is substantially given by the general consent of women. That this argument has a certain plausibility may be conceded; but it is equally clear that the minority of women, those who do wish to vote, includes on the whole the natural leaders,—those who are foremost in activity of mind, in literature, in art, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... to deal with a criticism of Esperanto which has an air of plausibility. It is urged that Esperanto does not carry the process of simplification far enough, and that in two important points it shows a retrograde tendency to revert to a more primitive stage of language, already left behind by the most advanced ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... Holtzmann, Die Synoptischen Evangelien, p. 255 sq.; Ebrard, The Gospel History (Engl. trans.), p. 247; Bleek, Synoptische Erklarung der drei ersten Evangelien, i. p. 367. The theory rests upon an acute observation, and has much plausibility. ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday |
