"Plausibly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... special magistrates, they allege that they are greatly controlled by the planters. They associate with the planters, dine with the planters, lounge on the planters' sofas, and marry the planters daughters. Such intimacies as these, the gentlemen very plausibly argued, could not exist without strongly biasing the magistrate towards the planters, and rendering it almost impossible for them to administer equal justice to the poor apprentice, who, unfortunately, had no sumptuous dinners to give them, no luxurious sofas to offer them, nor dowered daughters ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... that no passage in Mandeville can be plausibly traced to Marco Polo, with one exception. This is (Halliwell's ed., p. 163) where he states that at Ormus the people, during the great heat, lie in water,—a circumstance mentioned by Polo, though not by Odoric. We should suppose it most likely that this fact had been interpolated ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a jest—Nancy's telling Aunt Bell that her reason for going to Edom was too foolish to give even to herself. At least such reticence to self is often sincerely and plausibly asserted by the very inner woman. Yet no sooner had her train started than her secret within a secret began to tell itself: at first in whispers, then low like a voice overheard through leafy trees; then loud and louder until all the noise of the train did no more than confuse the words so that ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... thinking deeply, and he turned his eyes wistfully to the upland slopes of his farm. Mr. Weeks had talked plausibly, and if all had been as he represented, the plan would not have been a bad one. But the widower did not yearn for the widow. He did not know much about her, but had very unfavorable impressions. Mrs. Holcroft had not been given to speaking ill of anyone, but she had always shaken ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... soldier by a turn of the hand as it were. Given courage, physical vigour, and fair practical aptitude, a lawyer, a merchant, or a civil engineer could take sword in hand and at short notice head a squadron or muster an army. This view has so far as I know been set forward by no one more plausibly than by Jacob D. Cox, a stout civilian soldier who led well the Twenty-third Corps and later became Governor of Ohio and a successful Secretary of the Interior. I once met General Cox in an interesting way, on a Sunday afternoon, ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... to detect some motive hostile to his wooing, however plausibly veiled in the guise of zeal for his election, in this officiousness of Harley's. But Lord L'Estrange's manner to Violante was so little like that of a jealous lover, and he was so well aware of her engagement to Randal, that the latter abandoned the suspicion he had before conceived, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dependence upon them. "You are in truth, my advisers," he said, "for when I ask you for information I will have no way of checking it up, and must act upon it unquestioningly. We will be deluged with claims plausibly and convincingly presented. It will be your task to establish the truth or falsity of these claims out of your specialized knowledges, so that my positions may be taken ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... against [Greek: ek ges]—[Greek: ex ouranou]: against [Greek: choikos]—[Greek: ho Kyrios]. Remove [Greek: ho Kyrios], and some substitute for it must be invented as a counterpoise to [Greek: choikos]. Taking a hint from what is found in ver. 48, some one (plausibly enough,) suggested [Greek: epouranios]: and this gloss so effectually recommended itself to Western Christendom, that having been adopted by Ambrose[555], by Jerome[556] (and later by Augustine[557],) it established itself in the Vulgate[558], and is found in all the later Latin writers[559]. ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... superstition, any immorality, any blasphemy during them. And so as to the state of countries which have long had the light of Catholic truth, and have degenerated. I might have admitted nothing against them, and explained away everything which plausibly told to their disadvantage. I did nothing of the kind; and what effect has this had upon this estimable critic? "Dr. Newman takes a seeming pleasure," he says, "in detailing instances of dishonesty on the part of Catholics."—p. 34. Blot ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... essential part of the duty of ships of war, and especially when peace took from them so much of their military function, was to afford to the commerce of the nation proper protection, of which a necessary feature, according to the ideas of the age, was the interdiction of foreign traders. A seaman, he plausibly argued, could decide better than an unprofessional man the questions of injuries and distress upon which the unlawful traffic largely hinged. "In judging of their distress, no person can know better than the sea officers," he wrote to ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... why not have the duty committed to himself and his people? Not improbably the charge might be proposed to him; he would wait awhile, and see; if, however, he had to formally request it, could anything be more plausibly suggestive than the relation between the captaincy of that Port and residence in the Palace of Julian? The idea was too natural to be refused; if granted, he was master of the situation. It would be like holding the keys of the city. He ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... so often and so plausibly presented in favour of Home Rule, which urges that the Imperial Parliament is overburdened with local affairs, contains an element of truth. It would, however, be more in accordance with the facts to put the case the other way round: ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... that many honorable and patriotic men do not feel as I do on this subject, I am personally unwilling to take part in an agitation which may have some tendency to cause a public enemy to persist in armed resistance, or may be, at least, plausibly represented as having this tendency. There can be no doubt that, as a matter of fact, the country is at war with Aguinaldo and his followers. I profoundly regret this fact;... but it is a fact, nevertheless, and, as such, must weigh in ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... daughter endowed with a large portion of that vain gift called beauty. Her father and family are people of bad principle, without conscience or honesty, and, withal, utterly destitute of religion—not but that they carry themselves very plausibly to the world. Among such people, my Lord, it is not possible that this engaging damsel, who is now so youthful and innocent, could resist the evil influence of the principles that prevail in her family. Indeed, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... judgments, the more convinced I am that, with the exception of such physical and moral facts as no one can now throw doubt upon, all else is matter of opinion and argument; and we know well that there is hardly an argument to be found anywhere, against which another argument cannot plausibly be adduced. Hence, though it is plain that the various opinions of men differ greatly in probability and in the weight which should be attached to them, it seems to me that we are wrong when we blame those who differ ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... Balthazar, the headsman, or executioner, of the powerful and aristocratical canton of Berne, was about to be smuggled into their company by the cupidity of the former, contrary, not only to what was due to the feelings and rights of men of more creditable callings, but, as it was vehemently and plausibly insisted, to the very safety of those who were about to trust their fortunes to the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... practises all the tricks by which wit is counterfeited. He lays trains for a quibble; he contrives blunders for his footman; he adapts old stories to present characters; he mistakes the question, that he may return a smart answer; he anticipates the argument, that he may plausibly object; when he has nothing to reply, he repeats the last words of his antagonist, then says, "your humble servant," and concludes with a laugh ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... of the case came in aid of the favorite disposition of their minds. They charged their victims with being the authors of that cruelty, which had its true origin in their own remorseless hearts. Their plea for additional rigor, being plausibly urged, was favorably received by a community darkened by prejudice. Few regarded with pity, and most with stoical indifference, this barbarous correction for crimes anticipated, and rigorous penance for offences existing only in the diabolical fancies of their tormentors. The truth ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... knowledge, or even if it never came to her knowledge, and that her plea of failure to receive it in time was not a competent excuse. This might be alleged in any case, and any delay of travel might be brought forward to account for non-appearance as plausibly as this trumped-up accident in which nobody was hurt. He did his best, which was also his worst, and the judge once more addressed the Squire, who stood waiting for Bartley's counsel to close. "I was about ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... second time—compared with which the first was insignificant. And this time it was curious: he could not subdue her physique, as he did before; she was ready for him each day, and she was animated, much more voluble, she was ready to jest. The reason being, that she fought now on plausibly good grounds: on behalf of her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... reference to beginning the New Year. Then his meaning revealed itself. That story to her mother about having been attacked by ruffians at the bottom of King Street had been an invention, a ruse to account plausibly for his presence on her mother's doorstep! And she had never suspected that the story was not true. In spite of her experience of his lying, she had never suspected that that particular statement was a lie. What a ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... integrity, because he was a spirit fallen from his first glorious perfection, and therefore must appear in such shape which might argue his imperfection and abasement, which was the shape of a beast; otherwise [he plausibly contends] no reason can be given why he should not rather have appeared to Eve in the shape of a woman than of a serpent. But since the fall of man the case is altered; now we know he can take upon him the shape ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... compressed Gerrit's heart; he felt that, in an involuntary exclamation, he had clearly shown the depth of his dismay. Damn the fellow, why had he burst out in this public indecent manner! The situation he had plausibly created, the thing he managed to insinuate, was an insult to them all—to his wife, Taou Yuen, coldly composed beyond, himself and to Nettie. He stood with his level gaze fixed in an enraged perplexity ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... receiving a thankful acknowledgment on the whistle. He secured the figures by his dead-reckoning; but the carefully kept log-book also showed longitude by chronometer sights, taken when the sun shone, with his old quadrant and older watch, and corrected to bring a result plausibly near to that of the reckoning by log and compass. But the log-book contained no reference to the loss of the chronometer. That was to happen at ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... he lifted his hat, one might see that the dark hair, speciously waved, was as accurately parted in the middle as though the line had been run by an engineer. The voice of Inspector Val, low and lazy, fell on the ear as plausibly soft as the ripple of a brook. His eyes wore a sleepy, intolerant expression, as if tired with much seeing and inclined to resent the infliction of further spectacles. The nose was thin and high, and jaw and cheek bones were thin and high to ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... regretted having contradicted him and tried to think how he might mend his mistake with words that would soothe Jesus; but, as it often is on such occasions, the more we seek for the right words the further we seem to be from them, and Joseph did not know how he might plausibly unsay his story that he had carried him without vexing Jesus still further: he is sure an angel carried him, Joseph said: he felt the feathers of the wings brush across his face, and he is now asking himself ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... tell his story, but to no effect; Falto and his fellow-judges dryly remarked to one another that the prisoner was trying to clear himself, by plausibly admitting the existence of the conspiracy, but of course suppressing the real details. Agias reasoned. He was met with obstinate incredulity. He entreated, prayed, implored. The prejudiced rustics mocked at him, and hinted that they ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... reasonable to expect that even rival commentators would be satisfied; yet Dr. Warburton proposes pantler'd, in a note, of which he is not injur'd by the suppression; and Mr. Upton having in his first edition proposed plausibly enough, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... establishing correct principles in our national administration, but in preserving for their local communities the benefits of social order and economical and honest government. At least until the good offices of kindness and education have been fairly tried the contrary conclusion can not be plausibly urged. ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... then, that I make, is just this—there was something in the character of Jesus Christ which could be plausibly explained to commonplace people ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... drove up to the Waldorf, and, after settling with the cabman, went into the office. He registered from Washington; said his mother and father had been abroad, and that he had come down to await the arrival of their steamer. He told his story plausibly and had no trouble, since he offered to pay for them in advance, in engaging his rooms; a ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... for the commercial and maritime interests on which its growing wealth and prosperity hung; and the most important point in the wars was not the triumph of Edward IV over the Lancastrians in 1461, but his triumph over Warwick, the kingmaker, ten years later. The New Monarchy has been plausibly dated from 1471; but Edward IV had not the political genius to work out in detailed administration the results of the victory which he owed to his military skill, and Richard III, who possessed the ability, made himself impossible ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... remain closed upon that day. Let work be planned for seven days of the week. Let the hum of the mills and the roar of commerce go on. Take no note of the Sabbath day, either in business or recreation or worship, and conditions will soon be upon us, such that we may urge as plausibly, that the Sabbath is effete, possible to our slow going fathers but inconsistent with the necessary rush ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least as considered in the light of a practical scheme, I need scarcely say that I nowise coincide. Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as young ladies (Madchen) are, to mankind, precisely the most delightful in those years; so young gentlemen (Bubchen) do then attain their maximum of detestability. Such gawks (Gecken) ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... modern critics (e.g. F. Dummler, "Antisthenica," p. 29 foll.) maintain plausibly that the author is here glancing (as also Plato in the "Ion") at Antisthenes' own treatises against the Rhapsodists and on a more correct interpretation of Homer, {peri exegeton} and ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... royal mistress; but they soon became blended with the regrets of the Marquis that his listener should have formed so close an alliance with his nephew as to have drawn down upon him the suspicion of the Court; and plausibly as these regrets were expressed, M. de Soissons was soon enabled to discover that the wily Italian had been instructed to ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... opinion of some naturalists, that the acquired habits, as well as the natural instincts of animals, are transmitted to their progeny; and in comparing the causes commonly assigned, and plausibly supported, for the peculiarities of national character, with the very early age at which these peculiarities shew themselves, one is almost tempted to believe, that something of the same kind may take place in the ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... perceiving the result of its spontaneous efforts. Necessity would thus appear behind liberty and duty before it. This summons to life to go on, and these conditions imposed upon it, might then very plausibly be attributed to a Deity existing beyond the world, as is done in religious tradition; and such a doctrine, if M. Bergson should happen to be holding it in reserve, would perhaps help to explain some obscurities in his system, such, for instance, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... retreated to make their last stand. The donjon contained the great hall, and principal rooms of state for solemn occasions, and also the prison of the fortress; from which last circumstance we derive the modern and restricted use of the word dungeon. Ducange (voce DUNJO) conjectures plausibly, that the name is derived from these keeps being usually built upon a hill, which in Celtic is called DUN. Borlase supposes the word came from the darkness of the apartments in these towers, which were thence figuratively ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... plant. This letter shall be sealed up again in its twelve silly envelopes and go by registered post to Hagan's correspondent. You shall have till to-morrow morning to invent all those things which we want Fritz to believe about the Navy. Make us out to be as rotten as you plausibly can. Give him some heavy losses to gloat over and to tempt him out of harbour. Don't overdo it, but mix up your fiction with enough facts to keep it sweet and make it sound convincing. If you do your work well—and ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... myself talked in other ways as plausibly as I could, in my Psychology, and talked truly (as I believe) in certain selected cases; but for other cases the natural way ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... letters between Dudley and Thomas Blount, a gentleman of good family, whom he addresses as 'Cousin.' Blount, long after, in May 1567, was examined on the affair before the Privy Council, and Mr. Froude very plausibly suggests that Blount produced the copies in the course of the inquiry. But why COPIES? We can only say that the originals may also have been shown, and the copies made for the convenience of the members of the ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... requireth, receive the Notions of their duty, chiefly from Divines in the Pulpit, and partly from such of their Neighbours, or familiar acquaintance, as having the Faculty of discoursing readily, and plausibly, seem wiser and better learned in cases of Law, and Conscience, than themselves. And the Divines, and such others as make shew of Learning, derive their knowledge from the Universities, and from the Schooles of Law, or from the Books, which by men eminent in those Schooles, and ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Presently I was aware that the stranger's eye was directed on myself; and there ensued a conversation, some of which I could not help overhearing at the time, and the rest have pieced together more or less plausibly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more recent date, it was white in colour; and, as an appanage of the legal profession, it was worn by judges and pleaders alike. The strings were used to tie the coif to the head, and were fastened under the chin. It has been plausibly suggested that the Black Cap which judges assume, when passing sentence of death, was a device for concealing the coif, ecclesiastical justices being debarred from pronouncing capital sentence; and ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... either for their material and form, or for the values which they express. In some cases the actual object may be beautiful; sometimes the beauty may lie almost wholly in the image, emotion, or idea evoked. "Home, Sweet Home," for example, may be plausibly held to win admiration rather for the sentimental associations which it evokes in the singer or hearer than for its verbal or melodic beauty. The enjoyment which people without any musical gifts, out on a camping or canoeing trip, experience ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... (within the province of the Art) but that we should begin our discourses so as to conciliate the hearer's good-will, or raise his expectation, or prepare him to receive what follows?—to state the case before us so concisely, and yet so plausibly and clearly, as that the substance of it may be easily comprehended?—to support our own proofs, and refute those of our antagonist, not in a confused and disorderly manner, but so that every inference may be fairly deducible from the premises?—and, ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... hatred against him. You wrong another, know yourself to have acted basely, and are enraged, not against yourself—for no one hates himself—but against the innocent cause of your baseness; reasoning very plausibly, 'But for that fellow, I should never have been base; for had he not existed I could not have been so, at any rate against him;' and this hatred is all the more bitter, when you reflect that you ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... more reason why you should make no secret of it," he argued plausibly. "Come! Out with it! ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... have passed either at a public school or a university. Born without shyness or trepidation, from her youth upwards she had perfect self-possession and patience. She loved dialectics and could put her case logically, plausibly and eloquently; and, although quite as unemotional as her brothers, she had more enterprise and indignation. In her youth she was delicate, and what the French call tres personelle; and this prevented her going through ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... it is also a function of government to organise the people and—although, just as we may think that Blake's poem finally beats Ruskin's prose on Ruskin's own ground, we may think, too, that the government that best represents the people will finally best organise the people—it may quite plausibly be said that in this business an aristocratic or militant government will, in an imperfectly conditioned civilisation (such as that of the world to-day), excel a democratic government. Nevertheless, we still say with an easy mind that a democratic ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... Massachusetts {53} had guaranteed bonds of local roads to the extent of eight millions, without ever having to pay a cent of the interest; and though New York's experience had been more chequered, the successes were stressed and the failures were plausibly explained away. ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... would-be pupil in the art of taking tobacco that if he pleases to be a practitioner, he shall learn in a fortnight to "take it plausibly in any ordinary, theatre, or the Tiltyard, if need be, in the most popular assembly that is." The Tiltyard adjoined Whitehall Palace and was the frequent scene of sports in which Queen Elizabeth took the greatest delight. Here took place, not only tilting properly so ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... sort of visible or plausibly conjecturable effect is not at all the same thing as to ask for miracles. Mr. Wells proclaims with all his might that the Invisible King works the most marvellous and beneficent changes in the minds of his devotees; why, then, do ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... regarded it, arose in the following manner. The present was an age of monopolies and patents, granted by a crown ever eager to obtain money under any pretext, however unjustifiable and iniquitous, provided it was plausibly coloured; and these vexatious privileges were purchased by greedy and unscrupulous persons for the purpose of turning them into instruments of extortion and wrong. Though various branches of trade and industry groaned under the oppression inflicted upon them, there were no means of redress. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... Cirencester, especially if Hampton (Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire), which is only six miles from Oakley Wood, be the real site of the great and important battle, as was, a few years since, very plausibly argued by Mr. John Marks Moffatt, in a paper inserted, with the signature "J. M. M.," in Brayley's Graphic and Historical Illustrator, p. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... stranger to be the Sunchild? People are continually thinking that such and such another is the Sunchild come down again from the sun's palace and going to and fro among us. How many such stories, sometimes very plausibly told, have we not had during the last twenty years? They never take root, and die out of themselves as suddenly as they spring up. That the man is a poacher can hardly be doubted; I thought so the moment I saw him; but I think I can also prove to you that he is not ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... of civil society, and of private life. Increase of freedom in the State may sometimes promote mediocrity, and give vitality to prejudice; it may even retard useful legislation, diminish the capacity for war, and restrict the boundaries of Empire. It might be plausibly argued that, if many things would be worse in England or Ireland under an intelligent despotism, some things would be managed better; that the Roman Government was more enlightened under Augustus and Antoninus than under the Senate, in the days ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the beautiful walls of Notre Dame d'Anvers, through Grande Place and past the Hotel de Ville, the cab proceeded, dogged by what might plausibly be asserted the most persistent and infatuated soul that ever crossed the water; and so on into the Quai Van Dyck, turning to the left at the old Steen dungeon and, slowing to a walk, moving ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... ordinary course upon the credit of these divinations wherein we are so often deceived. If the ordinary rule of descent were to be violated, and the destinies corrected in the choice they have made of our heirs, one might more plausibly do it upon the account of some remarkable and enormous personal deformity, a permanent and incorrigible defect, and in the opinion of us French, who are great admirers ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the information I received—in perfect good faith on his part—from the man who keeps the inn? The visit to the London doctor, and the assertion of failing health, were adopted as the best means of plausibly severing the lady's connection (the great lady now!) with a calling so unworthy of her as the keeping of an inn. Her neighbors at the seaport were all deceived by the stratagem, with two exceptions. They ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... today have the original adult stages telescoped into their embryos, and the statement that the resemblance between certain characters in the embryos of higher animals and corresponding stages in the embryos of lower animals is most plausibly explained by the assumption that they have descended from the same ancestors, and that their common structures ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
... fifty years ago no newspaper could plausibly have made that statement, and, if it had, its office would probably have been wrecked by a mob of insulted citizens; but the Clothing Industry knew us better than Dr. Jaeger, better even than we knew ourselves. Its ideal picture of a handsome, snappy young fellow, madly enjoying himself ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... uncle occupied my attention. He was shivering a good deal, and it was all I could do to resist my desire to get him into a comfortable bed at once. But I wanted to appear plausibly in this part of the world. I felt it would not do to turn up anywhere at dawn and rest, it would be altogether too conspicuous; we must rest until the day was well advanced, and then appear as road-stained pedestrians seeking ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... facts very plausibly, very seductively, to John Porter. Porter almost unreasonably scented charity in Crane's proposal. He believed that the bet was a myth; Crane was trying to present him with this sum as a compensation ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... causes) to be "the antecedent which it invariably follows," we do not use this phrase as exactly synonymous with "the antecedent which it invariably has followed in our past experience." Such a mode of conceiving causation would be liable to the objection very plausibly urged by Dr. Reid, namely, that according to this doctrine night must be the cause of day, and day the cause of night; since these phenomena have invariably succeeded one another from the beginning of the world. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... corrupted officials followed the lead of their leader, Dumont's National Woolens Company, in making sweeping but stealthy changes in their prices, wages, methods and even in their legal status. They hoped thus to enable their Legislature plausibly to resist Scarborough's demand for a revision of the laws—why revise when the cry of monopoly had been shown to be a false issue raised by a demagogue to discredit the tried leaders of the party and to aggrandize himself? And, when Scarborough had been thoroughly "exposed," ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... terminating in a bud, with two branching twigs growing from it, and a harmless nondescript fly or butterfly perched on the back of it. The combination of a familiar sight and a threatening sound would very plausibly result in cautious immobility. As for its instantaneous assumption of the pose, to move instantaneously is the next best thing to not moving at all. It is less likely to startle than a slow movement. Twigs which have been bent get suddenly released in the natural course ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... the disturbers, protesting, commanding, imploring, and plausibly answering severe questions. "Well, when do you expect us to git this work done?" "We got our work to do, ain't we?" until finally the tumult ceased, the saw slowing down last of all, tapering off reluctantly into a silence of plaintive disappointment; ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... inside the political state, but always outside of it. The state concerned itself with the trivial question of killing people, but wisely left alone the whole business of getting them born. A Eugenist might indeed plausibly say that the government is an absent-minded and inconsistent person who occupies himself with providing for the old age of people who have never been infants. I will not deal here in any detail with the fact that some Eugenists have in ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... against them so strong as there is to demonstrate this son to have plotted against me? Yet does this parricide presume to speak for himself, and hopes to obscure the truth by his cunning tricks. Thou, O Varus, must guard thyself against him; for I know the wild beast, and I foresee how plausibly he will talk, and his counterfeit lamentation. This was he who exhorted me to have a care of Alexander when he was alive, and not to intrust my body with all men! This was he who came to my very bed, and looked about lest any one should lay snares for me! This was he who ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... of it," replied Buller with equal directness. "I'm pleased with what I hear of you, and I like a gentleman, but Bradley explains his puzzling conduct very plausibly: it is no use being factious and hindering business in the House, as he says. And it can't be denied that there's Tory members in the House as factious as any of them pestilent Radical chaps that get up strikes out of doors. I'm ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... in America were men of Norse stock. More than a thousand years ago Greenland was explored by Vikings from Iceland, and a hundred years later Leif Ericsson discovered a land—Markland, the land of woods—which is plausibly identified with Newfoundland. Still keeping a southern course, the adventurer came to a country where grew vines, and where the climate was strangely mild; it is likely enough that this landfall was in Massachusetts or Virginia. The name ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... the following words: "In what language could the unrighteous principles of denying freedom to colored people in this country, (which amounts to the same thing as demanding the expulsion of those already free,) be more effectually and yet more plausibly inculcated than in those very words of Gen. Harper you have, with so much ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... the Angers expedition when the Prior of Paray sent such a bombshell among his accomplices; and the dates of his return and arrest remain undiscoverable. M. Campaux plausibly enough opined for the autumn of 1457, which would make him closely follow on Montigny, and the first of those denounced by the Prior to fall into the toils. We may suppose, at least, that it was not ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... against such a proclamation—also threatening an immediate rupture of friendly relations,—for the whole populace was claiming that an act of treason had been committed, plausibly asserting that the announcement of the Commission applied for by Admiral Dewey was a ruse, and that what General Otis was scheming for was to keep us quiet while he brought reinforcement after reinforcement from the United States for the purpose of crashing ...
— True Version of the Philippine Revolution • Don Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy
... prevail, and these must be closely connected with the circumstances of the day. No recital in an Act of parliament can prove incontestably that the monasteries were stews, or worse. That such a thing could be plausibly alleged, and generally believed, is itself important, and history must take account of popular views. Debates were not reported in the sixteenth century, nor was freedom of speech in Parliament recognised by the Crown. There was nothing to ensure a fair trial ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... still remained firm, they took other grounds, and plausibly argued that the troops and other officials needed aid as well as the poor; and, as by the words of his vow, he had bound himself to distribute the contents of the treasury to those who had claim to relief, the public servants certainly ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... and Timber Act" was passed in 1878 by Congress. An amendment passed in 1892 made frauds still easier. This measure was another of those benevolent-looking laws which, on its face, extended opportunities for the homesteader. No longer, it was plausibly set forth, could any man say that the Government denied him the right to get public land for a reasonable sum. Was ever a finer, a more glorious chance presented? Here was the way open for any individual homesteader to get one hundred and sixty acres ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... me all himself. You think he'll hold out? Wait a bit, he'll take his words back. I am waiting from hour to hour for him to come and abjure his evidence. I have come to like that Nikolay and am studying him in detail. And what do you think? He-he! He answered me very plausibly on some points, he obviously had collected some evidence and prepared himself cleverly. But on other points he is simply at sea, knows nothing and doesn't even suspect that ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... as the adventures of Joan are, it must be admitted that they are very naturally worked out and very plausibly presented. Altogether this is an ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... only theoretically possible. Constable, with all his independence, dared not throw over all received canons of art. And Gericault, while daring to paint a modern theme, daring still more to embody it in forms plausibly like average humanity, and refusing to place on a raft in mid-ocean a carefully chosen assortment of antique statues, still did not think, apparently, that the heavily marked shadows prevalent throughout his picture were never seen under ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... success. But indeed this very worship, like any worship, even devil-worship, proves him rather a mystic than a materialist. The Frenchman who retires from business when he has money enough to drink his wine and eat his omelette in peace might much more plausibly be called a materialist by those who do not prefer to call him a man of sense. But Americans do worship success in the abstract, as a sort of ideal vision. They follow success rather than money; they follow money rather than meat ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... him to be deranged; so that his large estate was his great misfortune, to enjoy which his enemies had recourse to fraud, and pretended to doubt of the mercy of Heaven in restoring him from the condition of a brute to that of a man. In short, he talked so plausibly that he made the rector appear venal and corrupt, his relations unnatural, and himself so discreet that the chaplain determined to take him immediately to the archbishop, that he might be satisfied ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... is always ready to take both sides; she makes a point of contradicting herself plausibly. 'Let her speak first on my behalf,' says Drink, 'and then ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... Boche set out to demonstrate that an Attack, provided your Artillery preparation is sufficiently thorough, and you are prepared to set no limit to your expenditure of Infantry, must ultimately succeed. To do him justice, the Boche supported his assertions very plausibly. His phalanx bundled the Russians all the way from Tannenburg to Riga. The Austrians adopted ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... week in the monsoon, a day or so having been expended in running into Fuchau for coal. She certainly seemed to have lost the speed credited to her in former cruises; the cause for which was plausibly thought to be the decreased rigidity of her hull, owing to the wear and tear of service. In the days of sailing-ships there was a common professional belief that lessened stiffness of frame tended to speed; and a chased vessel ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... in the original there was a lefthand or opening single quote mark just after the letter "t" and the whole word including the single quote mark was enclosed in double quote marks. The opening single quote mark is more plausibly a comma which printer has placed upside down. Changed to comma. (we are told he is "smart," meaning, of ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... of law be regarded in the way in which these theorists regarded them—that is, as one vast complex whole—it is not surprising that the mind should often evade the task it has set to itself by falling back on some ingenious conjecture which (plausibly interpreted) will seem to reconcile everything, or else that it should sometimes abjure in despair ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... provides that "The awarding of premiums, if any, shall be done and performed by said Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, subject to the approval of the Commission created by this act." Even if such construction could be accepted as plausibly tenable, which the Commission denies, it could only be so regarded by virtue of previous conformity to the rules providing for the nomination of jurors by the company and their approval by the Commission. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... the mysteries of this man—the only one for which his friends could not always account plausibly—was his habit of dropping out for a day or a week at irregular intervals, leaving no clue by which he could be traced. While he was merely a private citizen these disappearances figured in the local notes of the Gaston Clarion as business trips, object and objective point unknown ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... oscillations we trace a steady lowering of the temperature. Unless we put a strained and somewhat arbitrary interpretation on the facts of the geological record, earlier ages knew nothing of our division of the year into pronounced seasons and of the globe into very different climatic zones. It might plausibly be suggested that we are still living in the last days of the Ice-Age, and that the earth may be slowly returning to a warmer condition. Shackleton, it might be observed, found that there has been a considerable ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... even politely, with that. He hoped it hadn't been ruinously bad. One thing, Leslie wasn't trying to pass the buck, and considering how Ham O'Brien had mishandled his end of it, he could have done so quite plausibly. ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... forms in the first case alluded to by Foster (viz., the trial of Berkeley, Maltravers, &c., for treason, in the murder of Edward II.[16]) might be more plausibly attacked, because they were tried, though in Parliament, by a jury of freeholders: which circumstance might have given occasion to justify a nearer approach to the forms of indictments below. But no such ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... money being the object, the man having money, whether loyal or disloyal, would be a victim. This practice doubtless existed to some extent, and it was a real additional evil that it could be, and was, plausibly charged to exist in greater extent than ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... encouraged to hope that all forms may be thus explained." The author does not tell us what the mysterious adaptations are, nor does he offer us the explanations which, in his opinion, explain them. We cannot, therefore, criticise his views, and can only remind his readers that, because an explanation plausibly explains an occurrence, it is by no means always therefore certain to be the true explanation; it may, indeed, be ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... which, used by Ptolemy and Pliny in a more confined, by Ammianus and Procopius in a larger, sense, has been derived, ridiculously, from Sarah, the wife of Abraham, obscurely from the village of Saraka, (Stephan. de Urbibus,) more plausibly from the Arabic words, which signify a thievish character, or Oriental situation, (Hottinger, Hist. Oriental. l. i. c. i. p. 7, 8. Pocock, Specimen, p. 33, 35. Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 567.) Yet the last and most ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... concedes that analogy would press the conclusion still further; while he admits that "the more distinct the forms are, the more the arguments fall away in force." To command assent we naturally require decreasing probability to be overbalanced by an increased weight of evidence. An opponent might plausibly, and perhaps quite fairly, urge that the links in the chain of argument are weakest just where the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... ripened. Within the amphitheatre, at various levels, rose grimly a few stumps and shreds of cedars long dead and long indifferent to the future ravages of the enemy. The whole scene was, to-day, plausibly gentle and inert. It was indeed a bridal of earth and sky, with the self-contained approval of the blue deep and no counter-assertion from any ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... which is best regulated and most easily governed? which has most of the fear of God in it, the deepest reverence for his word, that where the Bible is read or from which it is excluded? It is easy for ingenious men to reason plausibly, and tell us that such and such injurious effects must follow from making sacred things too familiar to the youthful mind; but who ever heard of such effects following from the use of the Bible ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... furnish him with the means of returning to Rome; he had observed that I had two mules, and if I would let him have one of them and would despatch with him a confidential servant to take charge of the relics, he would at once send them to me. This plausibly expressed proposition pleased me, and I made up my mind to test the value of the somewhat ambiguous promise at once;[22] so giving him the mule and money for his journey I ordered my notary Ratleig (who already desired to go to ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the scene. Van Berg felt the hand of the young lady trembling in nervous apprehension upon his arm, from which, in her embarrassment, she forgot to remove it. But the artist did not fail her, and in answer to Mr. Burleigh's eager questions as to the cause of the accident, explained all so plausibly, and in such a matter-of-fact manner as left little more even to be surmised. His brief and prosaic history of the affair concluded with the following implied tribute to his companion, which still further relieved her from fear ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... anywhere without his gun, and he flattered himself he was as quick on the draw as the average. Besides, he knew better now than to trust himself alone with Lynch or any of the others on some outlying part of the range where a fatal accident could plausibly be laid to marauding greasers, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... vassal of the new god, though of course also plausibly rendering homage to the old, is reported a comet-like body, of Oct. 27, 1890, observed at Grahamstown, by Eddie. It may have looked comet-like, but it moved 100 degrees while visible, or one hundred degrees in three-quarters of an hour. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... not come to his brother's house that night, but about the time he might be expected to arrive there came a note from him instead. It was plausibly written, and gave a plausible excuse for his absence. He told John of sudden tidings with regard to some foreign business. These tidings were really true. Jasper said that a confidential clerk had gone to the foreign port where they dealt to inquire into this special ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... different couplet to that in the text, and certainly more logical. (Dobell's 'Prospect of Society', 1902, pp. xi, 2, and Notes, v, vi). Mr. Dobell plausibly suggests that this Tory ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... Particular Baptist Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs would wreck the empire. The Stuarts wrecked even the tight little island which was the nucleus of the empire by their Scottish logic and theological dogma; and it may be sustained very plausibly that the alleged aptitude of the English for self-government, which is contradicted by every chapter of their history, is really only an incurable inaptitude for theology, and indeed for co-ordinated thought in any direction, which makes them equally impatient of systematic despotism and ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... suppose, since you know of the existence of the two Tadekkas. But the one of which you have just spoken is the Tadekka of Ibn-Batoutah, located by this historian seventy days from Touat, and placed by Schirmer, very plausibly, in the unexplored territory of the Aouelimmiden. This is the Tadekka by which the Sonrhai caravans passed every ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... l. 168. H.-So. plausibly conjectures this parenthesis to be a late insertion, as, at ll. 180-181, the Danes also are said to be heathen. Another commentator considers the throne under a "spell of enchantment," and therefore ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... any explanation of his process of reasoning—it was enough for him that it was right, and that it was his; while Beauclerc, who cared not for any man's opinion, was always so ingeniously wrong, and could show all the steps of his reasoning so plausibly, that it was a pity he should be quite out of the right road at last. The general hated metaphysics, because he considered them as taking a flight beyond the reach of discipline, as well as of common sense: he continually asked, of what use ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... was this commercial deflection in the old wars, an impression appears to prevail that in the future it must be much more serious. It is argued plausibly enough not only that our trade is far larger and richer than it was, but also that, owing to certain well-known economic changes, it is far more a matter of life and death to the nation than in the days when food and raw material did not constitute the bulk of our imports. In view of the new conditions ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... Starr explained plausibly his haste, sent a friendly message to the mother and Luis, and rode on thoughtfully. Now and then he turned to glance behind him at the dust cloud rolling rapidly around ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... the flower of the Spanish troops in the narrow passes of the Alpine mountains; and they promised to support him in this undertaking with an army of fifty thousand Huguenots. This advice, however, whose dangerous object was not easily to be mistaken, was plausibly declined by Charles IX., who assured them that he was both able and anxious to provide for the security of his kingdom. He hastily despatched troops to cover the French frontiers; and the republics of Geneva, Bern, Zurich, and the Grisons ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... gained among weak perceivers—find the ease of slighting what they cannot refute, and are determined, as I hear, to hold it not worth the answering. In which number I must be forced to reckon that Doctor who, in a late equivocating Treatise plausibly set afloat against the Dippers, diving the while himself with a more deep prelatical malignance against the present State and Church Government, mentions with ignominy the 'Tractate of Divorce;' yet answers ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... was on a visit at Newstead, being one evening with a party who were diverting themselves in front of the abbey, Lord Byron by accident pushed her into the basin which receives the cascades; and out of this little incident, as my informant very plausibly conjectures, the tale of his attempting to drown Lady ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... may grow out of each other plausibly enough, but by no pre-ordained necessity, and with no far-reaching interdependence. We live, in such plays, from moment to moment, foreseeing nothing, desiring nothing; and though this frame of mind may be mildly agreeable, it involves none of that complexity of sensation with which we ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... back in Halle before the end of September, and George Muller went home to spend the rest of his vacation. To account plausibly to his father for the use of his allowance a new chain of lies was readily devised. So soon and so sadly were all his good ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... prejudice which he encountered as a freeman, and took his place in history. "As few of the world's great men have ever had so checkered and diversified a career," says Henry Wilson, "so it may at least be plausibly claimed that no man represents in himself more conflicting ideas and interests. His life is, in itself, an epic which finds few to equal it in the realms of either romance or reality." It was, after all, no misfortune for humanity that Frederick Douglass felt the ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... This first attempt of Lord Byron at reviewing (for it will be seen that he, once or twice afterwards, tried his hand at this least poetical of employments) is remarkable only as showing how plausibly he could assume the established tone and phraseology of these minor judgment-seats of criticism. For instance:—"The volumes before us are by the author of Lyrical Ballads, a collection which has not undeservedly met with a considerable share of public ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... that we cannot be really or directly unselfish. The analysis, indeed, is so defective that it can hardly be applied intelligibly. Hume observes that no man would rest his foot indifferently upon a stool or a gouty toe. The action itself of giving pain would be painful, and cannot be plausibly resolved into an anticipation of an 'end.' This, again, is conspicuously true of all the truly social emotions. Not only the conscience, but the sense of shame or honour, or pride and vanity act ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... be plausibly attributed to a process of Natural Selection; hypotheses are produced in abundance and variety, and those unfit to bear verification are destroyed, until only the fittest survive. Wallace, a practical naturalist, if there ever was one, as well as an eminent theorist, takes the same view as Whewell ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... Whereto:—"Why, dost not see?" returned the lady. "Troth do I," rejoined he, "and somewhat else have I seen that I would I had not." And so he questioned her of what had passed, and she, being mightily afraid, did after long parley confess that which she might not plausibly deny, to wit, her intimacy with Spinelloccio, and fell a beseeching him with tears to pardon her. "Lo, now, wife," quoth Zeppa, "thou hast done wrong, and, so thou wouldst have me pardon thee, have a care ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... been designated as Cyrus's successor in a time of revolution, because there was, at that time, no prince of the royal family who could take the inheritance. Those, therefore, who were disposed to insist on the claims of a legitimate hereditary succession, might very plausibly claim that Darius's government had been a regency rather than a reign; that Xerxes, being the oldest son of Atossa, Cyrus's daughter, was the true representative of the royal line; and that, although it might not be expedient ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... that day. He represented Rundell as being in an explosive mood, and that he was furious at the men taking the idle day, and that he had threatened that if they were not at work next day, he would lock them out. So plausibly did he speak, and so sincere did his concern appear, that Jamie, who was withal a simple man, and aware that the circumstances of his comrades would not admit of a very long fight, began to think it might be ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... the case, to Mr. Carlyle, so plausibly put, that he began to think it might be all for the best. He had great reverence for his sister's judgment; force of habit is strong upon all of us. Still ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... So plausibly did Avendano tell this fib that the landlord was quite taken in by it. "Very well, friend," said he, "you may stop here ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... interest, and who, if they were not inclined to attack the reigning family, yet considered the introduction of that family as, at best, only the least of two great evils, as a necessary but painful and humiliating preservative against Popery. The Minister might plausibly say that Pulteney and Carteret, in the hope of gratifying their own appetite for office and for revenge, did not scruple to serve the purposes of a faction hostile to the Protestant succession. The appearance of Frederick at the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... honest work and yet contrived to dress so well? Everyone liked him, despite his borrowing propensities. He was so infernally pleasant, and always on the spot. He had a lovely varnish of culture; it was more than varnish; it was a veneer, a patina, an enamel: weather-proof stuff. He could talk most plausibly—art, music, society gossip—everything you please; everything except scandal. No bitter word was known to pass his lips. He sympathized with all our little weaknesses; he was too blissfully contented to think ill of others; he took it for granted that everybody, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... often happens that the detective appears to be in the writer's pay, and aids the deception by leading the reader off on false scents. Be that as it may, the professional sleuth is in nine cases out of ten a dummy by malice prepense; and it might be plausibly argued that, in the interests of pure art, that is what he ought to be. But genius always finds a way that is better than the rules, and I think it will be found that the very best riddle stories contrive to drive character and riddle side ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... had concealed from me his change of name, and his intimacy at the very house to which I had frankly offered to present him; the familiarity which his creature had contrived to effect with Miss Trevanion's maid; the words that had passed between them,—plausibly accounted for, it is true, yet still suspicious; and, above all, my painful recollections of Vivian's reckless ambition and unprincipled sentiments,—nay, the effect that a few random words upon Fanny's fortune, and the luck of winning an heiress, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... writes, the employment of Brahmans for the performance of ceremonies appears to be a very recent reform for, as a rule, in sacrifices and funeral ceremonies, the worshipper's sister's son performs the functions of a priest. "Among the Pasis of Monghyr this ancient custom, which admits of being plausibly interpreted as a survival of female kinship, still prevails generally." The social status of the Pasis is low, but they are not regarded as impure. At their marriage festivals, Mr. Gayer notes, boys are dressed up as girls and made to dance in public, but they do not ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... suspicions and inferences, she suggested direct inquiry about the principals in the supposed evil actions against her. That inquiry could be conducted only through sorcery itself, and Say at first trembled. She feared, and not without good cause, an appeal to evil powers. Still Shotaye spoke so plausibly; she assured so strongly her friend of her own discretion and fidelity, and was so insistent upon her constant success in everything she had undertaken as yet,—that the woman yielded at last against her own convictions. Something within her seemed to speak and say, "Do not tread forbidden ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... could promptly put myself at her disposal, it would have cast suspicion on the validity of reasonings and conclusions which rested on no independent inquiry, and appealed to no past experience. In that case it might have been plausibly objected by opponents that I was the serviceable expedient of an emergency, and never, after all, could be more than ingenious and adroit in the management of an argument which was not my own, and which I ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... peril for the purpose of giving new security to that which was already perfectly secure? Those who held this language were twitted with their inconsistency, and asked why they had not ventured to oppose the bill in the preceding session. They answered very plausibly that the events which had taken place during the recess had taught an important lesson to all who were capable of learning. The country had been threatened at once with invasion and insurrection. No rational man doubted that many traitors had made preparations ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to collect all known savage and civilised stellar myths, and see what points they have in common. If they all agree in character, though the Greek tales are full of grace, while those of the Australians or Brazilians are rude enough, we may plausibly account for the similarity of myths, as we accounted for the similarity of flint arrow-heads. The myths, like the arrow-heads, resemble each other because they were originally framed to meet the same needs out of ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... the doctor's opinion, for one thing. Then it was pretty plausibly substantiated by a trick of the weather. There was a shower at eleven-thirty last night from which the ground was still wet early this morning. The local Chief of Police covered himself with glory by noticing that the earth beneath Varr's body ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... fear Yates is playing the fool with me. Still evasive, though plausibly so. I have just had an interview. To-morrow I must and will come to ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... sagacity, on a level with that other discovery which she had made the evening before and with regard to which his especial errand to-day had been to congratulate her afresh. It brought him, however, less satisfaction than it appeared to bring to his clever companion; for, as he observed plausibly enough, Gordon was quite out of his head, and, this being the case, of what importance was ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... talk it over with you, eh?" Bill sneered. "Told you it was all on the square, did he? Explained it all very plausibly, I suppose. Probably suggested that you try smoothing me down, too. It ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... had been waiting in the dark at the top of the stairs, listening, was infinitely rejoiced that her project had been explained so plausibly, and yet in such perfect good faith, and she flew off to dress in high spirits. Had she mentioned it to her father, he would have doubted, taken it as her scheme, and perhaps put a stop to it: but hearing of it from Frederick, whose pleasures were so often thwarted, was likely ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fresh tidings, new fuel for the flames. Mr Gainsborough had driven again into Blentmouth and taken the train for London. Two portmanteaus and a wicker-crate, plausibly conjectured to contain between them all his worldly possessions, had accompanied him on the journey. He was leaving Blent then, if not for ever, at least for a long while. He had evaded notice in his usual fashion, and nearly driven over Miss S. when she tried to get ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... the fastenings of the doors secure and likewise those of all the windows, until they came to the kitchen. There, the cook had left a window up, which plausibly explained the marauder's mode of ingress. Then, at Cora's insistence, and to Laura's shivering horror, they searched both cellar and garret, and concluded that he had escaped by the same means. Except Laura's bed, nothing in the house had been disturbed; ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... notable instance was that of Sterret, naval officer at New Orleans, "a noisy and clamorous reviler of the Administration," and lately busy in a project for insulting a Louisiana Representative who had voted for Mr. Adams. Secretary Clay was urgent for the removal of this man, plausibly saying that in the cases of persons holding office at the pleasure of the Administration the proper course was to avoid on the one hand political persecution, and on the other any appearance of pusillanimity. Mr. Adams replied that if Sterret had been actually engaged in insulting a representative ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Bavarian, and clergy to frustrate Wallenstein's scheme. They represented that he was a traitor, that he was plotting with the enemies of the empire, that he crowded his camp with Protestants, that he wanted to be king, and compassed the death of his master. Some of it was plausibly near the truth; and their suspicions were confirmed when the Duke of Weimar took Ratisbon. The Elector of Bavaria had sent full warning; the Aulic Council had sent positive orders. But Wallenstein refused ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... the Art of the Greeks we come to what, more plausibly than any other, may be regarded as the central point of their scheme of life. We have already noticed, in dealing with other topics, how constantly the aesthetic point of view emerges and predominates in matters ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... as a general principle that the private morals of an adult citizen are no concern for the State. But that involves a decision to disregard certain types of bargain. A sanely contrived State will refuse to sustain bargains wherein there is no plausibly fair exchange, and if private morality is really to be outside the scope of the State then the affections and endearments most certainly must not be regarded as negotiable commodities. The State, ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... impossible that if Plato had his Dialogues to compose among us, he would give his whole strength to working up our own resources, and not trouble himself with Greek. The popular dictum—multum non multa, doing one thing well—may be plausibly adduced in behalf of parsimony in the ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Tucca, that Dekker hit upon in his reply, "Satiromastix," and he amplified him, turning his abusive vocabulary back upon Jonson and adding "An immodesty to his dialogue that did not enter into Jonson's conception." It has been held, altogether plausibly, that when Dekker was engaged professionally, so to speak, to write a dramatic reply to Jonson, he was at work on a species of chronicle history, dealing with the story of Walter Terill in the reign of ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... not that of Addison, of Berkeley, or of Helps; its peculiarities are due to the eccentricity of an always eccentric being; but it is neither affected nor deliberately imitated. It has been plausibly asserted that his earlier manner of writing, as in Schiller, under the influence of Jeffrey, was not in his natural voice. "They forget," he said, referring to his critics, "that the style is the skin of the writer, not a coat: and the public is an old woman." Erratic, metaphorical, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... Nicoll has shown, Tonson owned certain rights in the publication of the plays, rights derived ultimately from the printers of the First Folio. Precisely when he decided to publish a revised octavo edition is not known, nor do we know when Rowe accepted the commission and began his work. McKerrow has plausibly suggested that Tonson may have been anxious to call attention to his rights in Shakespeare on the eve of the passage of the copyright law which went into effect in April, 1710.[2] Certainly Tonson ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... the plural gradually loses its plural signification, because the etymology and original signification have become indistinct;—the third, when the plural stands for the abstract. Not one of these cases, however, is applicable here. Those interpreters have most plausibly removed the difficulty who understand [Hebrew: mvcativ] to be really a repeated act of going forth, and refer it to the Old Testament doctrine of the Angel of the Lord. Thus Jerome: "Because He had always ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... pleased that she had taken me into her confidence and deeply curious as to the Italian connoisseur. What she had told so frankly and plausibly did not, however, touch upon the matter of the interest shown by the American State Department in my aunt's arrival at Barton, which troubled me much more than the antics of the Italian who had followed the women ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... plot and enjoy her brief happiness. It cannot be more than brief, for Milly is certainly doomed. But when she dies, and Densher is free for Kate again, who will be the worse for the fraud? Milly will have had what she wants, her two friends will have helped themselves in helping her. So Kate argues plausibly; but it all depends on keeping poor exquisite Milly safely in the dark. If she should discover that Kate and Densher are in league to profit by her, it would be a sharper stroke than the discovery of ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... from Glasgow. She had led a migratory life with her son—who was what he called a bell-hanger, but in fact a tinker of the worst grade—for many years, and was at last returned to the muckle town in a state of great destitution. She gave the parishioners a history of the Mysterious Bride, so plausibly correct, but withal so romantic, that everybody said of it (as is often said of my narratives, with the same narrow-minded prejudice and injustice) that it was a made story. There were, however, some strong testimonies of ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... all the business of the nation, considered as an interrelated whole, by the Government, for the best interests of the entire community, likewise regarded as a whole. This the Navigation Act did for over a century after its enactment; and it may be plausibly argued that, as a war resort at least, it afterwards measurably strengthened the hands of Great Britain during the wars of the French Revolution. No men suffered more than did the West India planters from its unrelieved enforcement after 1783; yet ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... thought a thing amiss of each other. I presume that the most insidious falsehoods are daily carried to you, as they are brought to me, to engage us in the passions of our informers, and stated so positively and plausibly as to make even doubt a rudeness to the narrator; who, imposed on himself, has no other than the friendly view of putting us on our guard. My answer is, invariably, that my knowledge of your character is better testimony to me of a negative, than any affirmative ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... thus a twofold answer to William's claim, that Herbert could not grant away even the rights of his sisters, still less the rights of his people. Still it was characteristic of William that he had a case that might be plausibly argued. The people of Maine had fallen back on the old Teutonic right. They had chosen a prince connected with the old stock, but who was not the next heir according to any rule of succession. Walter was hardly worthy of such an exceptional honour; he showed ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... his slaves, was dragging her away, when he was prevented by the people, drawn together by her cries. 9. At length, after the first heat of opposition was over, he led the weeping virgin to the tribunal of Ap'pius, and there plausibly exposed his pretensions. 10. Clau'dius asserted that she was born in his house, of a female slave, who sold her to the wife of Virgin'ius, who had been childless. That he had credible evidences to prove the truth of what ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... to be observed that the chief seat of Lycanthropy was Arcadia, and it has been very plausibly suggested that the cause might he traced to the following circumstance:—The natives were a pastoral people, and would consequently suffer very severely from the attacks and depredations of wolves. They would ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... and a frequent one, of equivocal phenomena, phenomena that are reconcilable indifferently with either of two assumptions, though less plausibly reconciled with the one than with the other, concerns the position of stars that seem connected with each other by systematic relations, and which yet may lie in very different depths of space, being brought into seeming connection only by the human eye. There have ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... long mountain road to Springtown, and it was understood than he did not inquire too curiously in the matter of commissions. The stores and fodder which Enoch delivered over to him in exchange, together with a plausibly varying amount of hard cash, seemed to Simon an ample return for the scrawny cattle he sent to market. And Enoch, for his part, was always willing to testify that Amberley was a pleasant man to ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller |
