"Tenable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... advantage could accrue to England from such a destruction of the balance of power; her position as mediator was only tenable so long as neither Francis nor Charles had the complete mastery. War on the Emperor was, no doubt, out of the question, but that was no reason for war on France. Prudence counselled England to make herself strong, to develop ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... theory was scarcely tenable. They walked farther along the path and found that it was one used by workmen, evidently, leading at last down the steep mountain side and across to the Rattler. They surmised that it must be one made by the ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... purposes of the individuals who at some particular time compose a government, may be indispensable links in the chain of causation by which even the general causes produce their effects; and I believe this to be the only tenable ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... shone and there was not a cloud in the sky; but nothing definite, nothing which could give hope to the distracted mother or do more than divide the attention of the police between two different but equally tenable theories. Then came the cablegram from Mr. Ocumpaugh, which threw amateur as well as professional detectives into the field. Among the latter was myself; which naturally brings me back once more to my ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... the globe among such powers is, as a matter of fact that must be faced approvingly or deploringly, now only a question of time" (p. 3). "The notion that a nation has a right to do what it pleases with its own territory, without reference to the interests of the rest of the world is no more tenable from the International Socialist point of view—that is, from the point of view of the twentieth century—than the notion that a landlord has a right to do what he likes with his estate without reference to the interests ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... that even St. Julien, exposed to fire from right and left, was no longer tenable in the face of overwhelming numerical superiority. The Third Brigade was therefore ordered to retreat further south, selling every yard of ground as dearly as it had done since 5 o'clock on Thursday. But it was found impossible, without hazarding ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... they were likely to be aided by the masters through facilities for cash earnings, price concessions and honest accounting of instalments, notwithstanding the lack of legal requirements in the premises. Loria's explanation of the "central phenomenon" is therefore hardly tenable. ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... against his temple, as though to still the dull, constant throbbing that brought to his mental agony the added torment of physical pain. For these three days now he had fought with mind and body and soul against the one conclusion that was tenable—the conclusion which to-night, robbing him of every hope in life, bringing a grief and anguish greater than he could bear, cold logic was finally forcing him to accept. She would have known the torment of anxiety in which he lived, and ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... adopted; and the Duke of Perth called upon General Blakeney to surrender. The answer was, that the General had always hitherto been regarded as a man of honour, and that he would always behave himself as such, and would hold out the place as long as it was tenable. Upon this, fresh works were erected; and Monsieur Mirabel, the chief engineer, gave it as his opinion that the castle would be reduced in a few days. The unfortunate result of that ill-advised siege, and the consequent retreat of the Prince from Stirling, have been, with every appearance ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... them were killed before effecting their purpose. A number of additional cannon now arrived from Augusta, and so heavy and incessant a fire was opened upon the stockade from three batteries that on the 17th it was no longer tenable, and the garrison evacuated it in ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... not,' Babylon admitted. 'You are an ingenious theorist, but I happen to know that Prince Eugen always has his wine opened in his own presence. No doubt it would be opened by Hans. Therefore the wine theory is not tenable, my friend.' ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... dirty work and a willingness to take chances. Already he had run his original shoestring to fifteen thousand dollars cash in hand. It scarcely seemed possible. It gave him a startling vision of the profits in the salmon industry, and it was not a tenable theory that men who had controlled such a source of profits would sit idle while he undermined their monopoly. Nevertheless he had made that much money in four months. He had at his back a hundred fishermen who knew him, liked him, trusted him, who were anxious that he should ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... views of Luys are accepted as true, but to a less extent than taught by Luys. The prevalent idea that a lesion of one hemisphere produces a paralysis upon the opposite side of the body alone is no longer tenable, for each hemisphere is connected with both sides of the body by motor tracts, the larger of the motor tracts decussating and the smaller not decussating in the medulla. Hence a lesion of one hemisphere produces paralysis upon the opposite side ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... benefits enjoyed in this regard by the Jewish race to the soberness of their lives. This position is, however, not altogether tenable, if by that we mean abstemiousness; they are extremely temperate, but not abstemious. Tissot, Cornaro, Lessius, Hufeland, Humphry, Sir Henry Thompson, as well as the older Greek and Roman authorities, all are agreed that an abstemious ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... mend the shattered bodies of fools and knaves who, by joining the forces of militarism, had betrayed the Sacred Cause of the International Solidarity of Labour. His first ground for complaint was scarcely tenable; with his dwindling business the post of clerk had dwindled into a sinecure. To sit all day at the receipt of imaginary custom is not a part fitted for a sane and healthy young human being. Still, from Gedge's point of view ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... was he anything but alive to the world. By the same token, was he not alive? And by the same token, here on the Elsinore, has not the land-world ceased? May not the pupil of one's eye be, not merely the centre of the world, but the world itself? Truly, it is tenable that the world exists only in consciousness. "The world is my idea," said Schopenhauer. Said Jules de Gaultier, "The world is my invention." His dogma was that imagination created the Real. Ah, me, I know that the practical Miss West ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... in the general mind of polite travelers; nor have I less admired her aptitude in collation of essentially illustrative facts, so as to bring the history of a very widely contemplative range of art into tenable compass and very graceful and serviceable form. Her reading, indeed, has been, with respect to many very interesting periods of religious workmanship, much more extensive than my own; and when I consented to ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... if, as in science so in faith, reason were everything, our position would hardly be tenable, for then there should be no vagueness but clear vision. But the will enters for something in our act of faith. If everything we believe were as luminous as "two and two are four," a special act of the will would be utterly uncalled for. We must be able, free to dissent, and ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... notion tenable of any special improbability applying to this particular pretension. For centuries has England enjoyed—1st, civil liberty; 2d, the Protestant faith. Now in those two advantages are laid the grounds, the very necessities, a priori, of a superior morality. But watch ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... point to point the Circassians fell back, defending their successive stations desperately, answering every call to surrender with shouts of defiance, and holding each spot until the fall of their comrades warned them that the place was no longer tenable. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... evidently possesses two points of moral truth and power, and, if not tenable as strict science, is yet instructive as symbolic poetry. First, it embodies, in concrete shapes the most vivid and unmistakable, the fact that beastly and demoniac qualities of character lead men down towards the brutes and fiends. Rage makes man a tiger; low cunning, a fox; coarseness and ferocity, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the preservation of type. If there were no force of heredity or tradition, there could be no system or classification of natural or of societal forms; the creation hypothesis would be the only tenable one, for there could be no basis for a theory of descent. If there were no variation, all of nature and all human institutions would show a monotony as of the desert sand. Heredity and tradition allow respectively of the accumulation of organic or societal variations through repeated ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... following these field sports that they placed their greatest reliance of catching me upon the hop, they being ever on the watch to take the meanest advantage of the slightest trespass or other occurrence, upon which they could find an action, regardless whether it was tenable ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... hours after reaching camp Charlotte, he received intelligence of the success of Lt.-Col. Washington, against the British post held at Clermont, South Carolina, by the British Colonel Rugely. Rugely was well posted in a redoubt, which was tenable except against artillery. Washington's force consisted only of cavalry. A pleasant 'ruse de guerre' of the latter, which produced some little merriment among the Americans at the expense of the British colonel, enabled ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... to the charge of copying, but changes what lawyers call the venue of the trial from classical to Eastern lands. According to this theory, which came up when its classical predecessor was no longer tenable, the traditions and tales of Western Europe came from the East, but they were still all copies. They were supposed to have proceeded entirely from two sources; one the Directorium Humanae Vitae of John of Capua, translated ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... to form a course of instruction which could bear the name of a religious one, and yet meet the views of all, and clash with the consciences and prejudices of none, was manifestly impossible. The religious public in the United States has felt that there was no tenable ground between thorough religious instruction and the broadest toleration. Driven by the circumstances of their country to accept the latter course, they have exerted themselves to meet this omission in the public schools by a most comprehensive ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... larceny, and send me to the penitentiary. But, having a vast deal more sense than the District Attorney, he saw that the idea that I had carried off these negroes to sell them again for my own profit was not tenable. It was plain enough that my intention was to help them to escape. The judge therefore, who did not lack ingenuity, went to work to twist the law so as, if possible, to bring my case within it. Even he did not venture to say that merely to assist slaves to escape was stealing. Stealing, ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... is still a Church for him; that this extant Church, which he long took for an extinct shadow, is not such, but a substance; upon which he can anchor himself amid the storms of fate;—and he does so, even taking orders in it, I think. Such could by no means seem to me the true or tenable solution. Here clearly, struggling amid the tumults, was a lovable young fellow-soul; who had by no means yet got to land; but of whom much might be hoped, if he ever did. Some of the delineations ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... permitted to remain long in peaceable possession of their most recent conquest; for on the 3rd of June, a considerable French armament arrived off Point a Pitre. Fort Fleur d'Epee was taken by storm, and the place not being tenable after this loss, the British crossed over to Basseterre. Several prisoners were taken by the French, and amongst them were some of the Carolina Corps, for in the return of that corps for February, 1795, dated March 1st, there is the following note: ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... view alone can give joy. Only is it tenable? Is there a particular Providence directing all the circumstances of our life, and therefore imposing all our trials upon us for educational ends? Is this heroic faith compatible with our actual knowledge of the laws of nature? Scarcely; But what this faith makes objective we ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... transfixing, Interchanged the blow and thrust, Hurling warriors in the dust. Street by street, and foot by foot, Still Minotti dares dispute The latest portion of the land Left beneath his high command; With him, aiding heart and hand, The remnant of his gallant band. Still the church is tenable, 910 Whence issued late the fated ball That half avenged the city's fall, When Alp, her fierce assailant, fell: Thither bending sternly back, They leave before a bloody track; And, with their faces to the foe, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... one, had been a party, and, after considerable opposition, the prince was made regent under several temporary restrictions. With certain exceptions, he was precluded from granting any peerage or office tenable for life; the royal property was vested in trustees for the king's benefit, and the personal care of the king was entrusted to the queen, with the advice of a council. In this form, the regency bill was passed on February 4, 1811, after a protest from the other sons ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... landing, and formed on the beach under cover of a tremendous cannonade of round shot, and showers of grape and canister from the fleet, that swept the adjacent plain, and compelled the British to retire. General Vincent, finding the works torn to pieces by the enemy's artillery, and no longer tenable against so overwhelming a force, caused the fort to be dismantled, and the magazines to be blown up, and retreated to Queenston, leaving the Americans to take possession of the ruins of the fort. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... haunts he knows. There was much talk concerning what should be done, how to protect my honour's person, and to postpone commencing a defence which must make Ahab desperate, before we can ascertain that the grounds are really tenable. This much I think I can see, that the trustees will rather pay the debt than break off the trust and go into a sequestration. They are clearly right for themselves, and I believe for me also. Whether it is in human possibility that I can clear off these ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... that the present position of the French Protestant church is no longer tenable, for its principle of doctrinal faith restrains free examination. It is, however, in a transition-period, and there is an indication of progress in the present interest in great questions of theology. For the doctrines of Protestantism we should substitute ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... way of this theory; Sawyer would never have betrayed me, nor had I any friends at all likely to undertake such an enterprise; nevertheless the supposition that I was the victim of a practical joke seemed on the whole the only one tenable. Half expecting to catch a glimpse of some familiar face grinning from behind a chair or curtain, I looked carefully about the room. When my eyes next rested on my companion, he ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... accepted in England, and made a considerable impression in France, as affording a tenable barrier against scepticism. It was, as I have said, in philosophy what Whiggism was in politics. Like political Whiggism it included a large element of enlightened and liberal rationalism; but like Whiggism it covered an aversion ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... French Republic. Mr. Gallatin asked if a declaration of war could not be moved as an amendment, but the speaker, Mr. Dayton, made no reply. Mr. Gallatin objected that Congress could not declare a state of facts by a legislative act. But this view, if tenable then, has long since been abandoned. In witness of which it is only necessary to name the celebrated resolution of the Congress of 1865 with regard to the recognition of a monarchy in Mexico. July 6 the House went into committee of the whole on the state of the Union to ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... as since the first invasion of the Saracens had never appeared in Syria—not much unlike one engaged in single combat who, distrustful of his own abilities and fearing the worst, summons together his whole strength in hopes of ending the dispute with one decisive blow. Troops were sent to every tenable place which this inundation of the Saracens had not as yet reached, particularly to Caesarea and all the sea-coast of Syria, as Tyre and Sidon, Accah, Joppa, Tripolis, Beyrout, and Tiberias, besides another army to defend Jerusalem. The ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... towne, and a large, as being the chiefe See of the Bishop there, and hauing a goodly Cathedrall Church in it, with a right goodly Abbey, a Nunnery, and an exceeding fine College of the Jesuites, and was by naturall situation, as also by very good fortification, very strong, and tenable enough in all mens opinions of the better judgement. Their building was all of a kind of hard stone, euen from the very foundation to the top, and euery house was in a manner a kinde of a fort or Castle, altogether flat-roofed in the toppe, after the Turkish manner, so that many men together, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... human society is essentially unsound, then the proposition to regenerate human society simply by economic reorganization is also unsound. Let us see whether the positions of the economic socialists are tenable in the light of the sociological principles which have been emphasized in the previous ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... needed decoration, once more proposed that his fellow-labourer in Rome should settle in Munich, but with no avail; the King evidently had little cordiality for the artist, and so employed others on the plea, not wholly tenable, that Overbeck was better in oil than in fresco. Thus the large acreage of wall surfaces dedicated to Christian Art in the churches of Munich and the Cathedral of Spires fell into the hands of Cornelius, Hess, and Schraudolph. It is impossible not ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... divisions are formed in our politics as systematic as those which prevail in Great Britain. Such as opposed the constitution, from a hatred to the Union, can never be conciliated by any overture or atonement. By others it is meditated to push the construction of Federal powers to every tenable extreme. A third class, republican in principle, and, thus far, in my judgment, happy in their discernment of our welfare, have, notwithstanding, mingled with their doctrines a fatal error—that the State assemblies are ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... single objection which is made to woman suffrage is tenable. No one will contend but that women have sufficient capacity to ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... a German baroness acquainted neither with Jews nor with music, humored as it was by that foreign trick in the book, the idioms of another tongue; but the latter theory was too false on its face to be tenable, and then people left off caring about it. It is perhaps an idle infirmity, this request for the personality of authors; yet it is indeed a response to the fact that there never was one who did not prefer to be esteemed for himself rather than for his writing,—and, ascending, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... what follows shows the vanity that obsesses young authors. It did not even present itself to me as a tenable theory that the book might have been left behind on purpose, as being of no further use to the owner. It only occurred to me that, if I did not act swiftly, the poor girl would suffer a loss beside which the loss of a purse or vanity-case ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... discharge. Under ordinary conditions this obstruction must seriously interfere with the entrance of the spermatozoa into the cavity of the uterus, and renders the former theory, recently revived by Bossi, quite tenable, that impregnation is most likely to occur just ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... if that is to be accounted a valid reason against suicide, it involves the recognition of asceticism; that is to say, it is valid only from a much higher ethical standpoint than has ever been adopted by moral philosophers in Europe. If we abandon that high standpoint, there is no tenable reason left, on the score of morality, for condemning suicide. The extraordinary energy and zeal with which the clergy of monotheistic religions attack suicide is not supported either by any passages in the Bible or by any considerations of weight; so that it looks as though ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... not the only possible theory. There is another view of our relations to such places as Egypt and India which is entirely tenable. It may be said, "We Europeans are the heirs of the Roman Empire; when all is said we have the largest freedom, the most exact science, the most solid romance. We have a deep though undefined obligation to give ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... on the one hand, lies against England, an antagonist disgrace lies upon Rome, the Note of idolatry. Let us not be mistaken here; we are neither accusing Rome of idolatry nor ourselves of schism; we think neither charge tenable; but still the Roman Church practises what is so like idolatry, and the English Church makes much of what is so very like schism, that without deciding what is the duty of a Roman Catholic towards the Church of England ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... extensive; for though the trustees for establishing the colony of Georgia, by a particular scheme of good management, painfully conducted by the gentleman engaged here in that charitable enterprise, has put that small part of the colony, which he has not yet been able to establish, in a tenable condition, against the Spaniards of Florida which lie to the southward; yet the back exposition of those colonies to the vast number of French and Indians which border on the westward, must, in case of a war, cry greatly aloud for your Majesty's gracious and timely ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... soldiers, who testified before a court of inquiry that it was in such condition that in rainy weather neither they nor their ammunition could be kept dry. As neither the Assembly nor the merchants of Albany would make it tenable, the garrison was withdrawn before winter by order of the Governor. [Footnote: Examinations at a Court of Inquiry at Albany, 11 Dec. 1745, in N. Y. ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... me not strict enough in my morals, but that position is hardly tenable. There are many kinds of lying which I do not approve. I do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else; and I do not like the lie of bravado, nor the lie of virtuous ecstasy; the latter was affected by ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... enemy's flank, which lay entirely exposed to their fire, when advices were received from General Lambert of the repulse on the left bank of the river. Thornton was unwilling to retire from the battery, but Colonel Dixon, who had been sent by General Lambert to examine it and report whether it was tenable, having reported that it was untenable unless with a larger force than Lambert could spare, he was required to return to the left bank of the river, and the troops at all ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... general results, perhaps the most striking feature which the collection brings out is that sailing tactics was a purely English art. The idea that we borrowed originally from the Dutch is no longer tenable. The Dutch themselves do not even claim the invention of the line. Indeed in no foreign authority, either Dutch, French or Spanish, have I been able to discover a claim to the invention of any device in sailing ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... of a respectable body of facts that I do not know how to explain except on the theory that I am dealing with some invisible intelligence. I hold that as the only tenable theory I am ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... "We must not be astonished," he remarks, "if in a short time the Protestants carry through such great repairs and so difficult to be believed. No sooner have they set foot in a place than they consider its position and deliberate as to what can be done to render it strong, or at least tenable. In all diligence they execute their decisions and enterprises, however great and difficult they may be, by the good order they practise and by a prompt obedience to the commands given them. So that I confess that they surpass us in prudence and conduct. Moreover, so soon ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... escort a convoy of provisions to the army which were collecting at Mzez Ammar. Well, we arrived safely at our various camps of Drean, Nech Meya, and Amman Berda. We made a little detour to visit Ghelma. I had curiosity to see it, as formerly it was an important city. I must say that a more tenable position I never beheld. But I tire ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... theory respecting the origin of the Christian Church and the Scriptural Canon to make good both these positions alike. Otherwise it can have no standing ground. My object in the following investigations is to show that neither position is tenable. ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... hypothesis about Mohammed, that he was a scheming impostor, a falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be no longer tenable to any one. ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... party," says Professor Nanson of Melbourne, "is to find the popular mind by the issue of a number of contests between the 'ins' and the 'outs.' But owing to the multiplicity of political issues, this theory is now no more tenable than is the theory that every question can be answered by a plain 'yes' or 'no.' ... We require a system capable of finding the mind of the people on more than one issue. With such a system all the difficulties caused at present by ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... and Ramsay then gave the order to fire in return. This was done, but without injury to the seamen of the cutter, who were protected by the hammocks, and Ramsay having already three of his men wounded, found that the post below was no longer tenable. A consultation took place, and it was determined that the passage on the lower deck and the cabin should be abandoned, as the upper deck it would be ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... extensive flat south of the mountain range spoken of, across which many high mountain peaks could be seen. One of these he thought must be Mount St. Elias, as it overtopped all the others; but, as Mount St. Elias is about one hundred and eighty miles distant, his conclusion is not tenable. From his description of this mountain it must be more than twice the height of the highest peaks seen anywhere on the lower river, and consequently must be ten or twelve thousand feet above the sea. He stated that the current in the river was very swift, as far as he ascended, ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... Burnouf translated from the Divyavadana. But what Burnouf considers as the distinguishing mark of a Vaipulya Sutra, viz. the occurrence of Bodhisattvas, as followers of the Buddha Sakyamuni, would no longer seem to be tenable ("Les presence des Bodhisattuvas ou leur absence interesse done le fonds meme des livres ou on la remarque, et il est bien evident que ce seul point trace une ligno de demarcation profonde entre les Sutras ordinaires et les Sutras developpes." Burnouf. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... claims that John Paul Jones had riches and influence in Virginia after the death of his brother, but the claim is not tenable according to an exhaustive review of his book in the Virginia Historical Magazine. In the face of the present exhibit, and in the view of the fact that Jones himself spoke of living for two years in Virginia on fifty pounds, the story of his wealth cannot be credited. ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... by the friends of the corn laws, that by growing our own consumption we shall keep the price of corn within moderate bounds and to a certain degree steady. But this also is an argument which is obviously not tenable; as in our actual situation, it is only by keeping the price of corn up, very considerably above the average of the rest of Europe, that we can possibly be made to grow ...
— Observations on the Effects of the Corn Laws, and of a Rise or Fall in the Price of Corn on the Agriculture and General Wealth of the Country • Thomas Malthus
... ship went down, and all these disconnected and meaningless and terrible objects were all part of one dark and fearful conspiracy of goodness, one merciless scheme of mercy. That this scheme of Nature was not accurate or well founded is perfectly tenable, but surely it is not tenable that it was not optimistic. We insist, however, upon treating this matter tail foremost. We insist that the ascetics were pessimists because they gave up threescore years and ten for an eternity of happiness. We forget that the bare proposition of an eternity of ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... my sincere convictions. According to the Constitution, as I understand it, in the light of the past and of its true principles, there is no other conclusion which is rational or tenable, which does not defy authoritative rules of interpretation, does not falsify indisputable facts of history, does not affront the public opinion in which it had its birth, and does not dishonor the memory ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... informed by a native authority on that country that "in some places all powers both executive and judicial were delegated for a fixed period to natives by the sovereign. This institution was styled Thalavettiparothiam or authority obtained by decapitation. . . . It was an office tenable for five years during which its bearer was invested with supreme despotic powers within his jurisdiction. On the expiry of the five years the man's head was cut off and thrown up in the air amongst a large concourse of villagers, each of whom vied with the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... obscurantism, there survived so much of a sense of decency regarding the ancient traditions as to exempt the liberty of scientific teaching from the indignity of that preventive censure which in those days rendered repressive legislation superfluous. In their search for some tenable and tangible criterion of the scientific character of any publication, the men of that time, it is true, hit upon a somewhat absurd one in making the test a test of bulk—books of more than twenty forms were exempt from censure. But however awkward the outcome, the aim of the provision is ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... means. Even Condillac had said: une chose n'a pas une valeur, parcequ'elle coute, mais elle coute (du travail ou de l'argent), parcequ'elle a une valeur. (Commerce et Gouvernement, 16.) Ricardo's doctrine is more tenable than appears at first blush. We need only to interline his theory of rent, admit that capital is accumulated labor, subtract all objects constituting a natural monopoly, and not forget that the intrinsic value of labor is one of the causes ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... only one of the revolutionary committee who had remained with the mob, not with any purpose to restore or preserve order, but because he found the company and the occasion entirely congenial. He had had no opportunity, at least no tenable excuse, to kill or maim a negro since the termination of his contract with the state for convicts, and this occasion had awakened a dormant appetite for these diversions. We are all puppets in the hands of Fate, and seldom see the strings that move us. ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the marsh became more tenable. The smallest song birds from the woods flitted along the ditches; there were days, too, when the ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... beauty of the idea, they point to the fact that they themselves no longer believe in it, or practise it. To their minds, it has become no more than the survival of a superstition, which is no longer tenable. Under such circumstances, they can see no justification for imposing it upon the ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... containing most detailed information as to his strength, dispositions, and designs; referring to the reinforcements he expected, and disclosing his belief that the line of the Rappahannock was no longer tenable. But the enterprise had an indirect it upon the enemy's calculations, which was not without bearing on the campaign. Pope believed that Stuart's advance on Catlett's Station had been made in connection with Jackson's attempt ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... that early in the month of March Mr. Davis and General Lee had a consultation about the situation of affairs in and about and Petersburg, and they both agreed places were no longer tenable for them, and that they must get away as soon as possible. They, too, were waiting for dry roads, or a condition of the roads which would ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... he had ridden to see how affairs were looking, he was surprised, raising his eyes to the Calvary, to see it was unoccupied; there was not a zouave to be seen there, they had abandoned the plateau that was no longer tenable by reason of the terrific fire from the batteries at Fleigneux. With a despairing presentiment of impending disaster he was spurring as fast as he could to the right, when he encountered Dumont's division, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and after deluging the little pier broke with a heavy, thunderous noise, and sent a tremendous shower of broken water over the canvas of the rough tent, nearly driving it flat, and proving that the position where Mr Dallas lay would not be tenable much longer. ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... self-reliance or dignity. Yet the hair-dresser seemed to find in that very dependence his best happiness, and to have built up a factitious self-respect from the very ruin of true dignity. His position was the antipodes of Balder's, yet, if results were evidence, it was tenable and more successful. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... have converted into chyle. Certain figurative expressions in Scripture taken literally, which refer to a class of wild animals whose real destiny is rather, it would seem, to be extirpated than to be changed, coupled with the belief, now no longer tenable, that there was a time, ere man had sinned, when there was no death among the inferior creatures, and of course no eaters of flesh, rendered the belief easy of reception; but it involved a miracle nowhere recorded; and the burden of the ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... country; on the other hand the rock does not differ essentially in hardness from that in the regions below, and hence the theory that all the adjacent land was once as high as the summit of the mountain, and was subsequently worn away by the action of water and weather, is hardly tenable. The gneiss of this region is not especially rich in other mineral contents. Some fine specimens of mica have however been obtained from the summit of Wachusett. The only other extraneous mineral found there to any great extent is the sulphuret of iron before mentioned. The common name ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... Scotland Yard with the guarantee of secrecy demanded by Forbes? Well, he must put himself right with Forbes without delay— tell him straightforwardly that the bond could not hold. Theydon was no lawyer, but he was assured that an agreement founded on positive wrong was not tenable, ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... heat without apparently becoming cooler. At first blush this seemed to contradict the great physical law of the conservation of energy, but physicists were soon agreed that a less revolutionary explanation of the phenomenon is perfectly tenable. The giving off of heat is indeed only an additional evidence of the dissipation of energy to which the radio-active atom is subjected. And no one now believes that radio-activity can persist indefinitely without actually exhausting the substance of the atom. Even ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... but the great mass persevered, and the men with the torches now advancing, cast them amidst the heaps of brushwood. In a few seconds the whole was in a blaze. The woodwork of the building soon caught fire, and it became evident to the besieged that the house would not long be tenable. Still, as long as any could remain on the front side, they continued to fire at ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... by means of which he was enabled to make observations of the heavenly bodies, and from these observations and discoveries he was led to the conclusion that the heliocentric system as advocated by Copernicus was the only one scientifically tenable. He came to Rome, where he was welcomed by the Pope and the cardinals, and set up his telescope in the Vatican gardens (1611). At first Galileo's views excited no great opposition, but owing to the imprudent propaganda carried on by some of ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... select the arena upon which the decisive contest must be waged. If Cemetery Ridge had been taken, instead of hurrying his other corps to that position to form a junction with the First and Eleventh, he would have retired behind Pipe Creek, or chosen some other ground as easily tenable as Cemetery Ridge. The state of things was such that Lee could not retreat without a general engagement, and he could not enter upon it except upon disadvantageous conditions. The tables were turned: as the Yankees ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... could they? Compared with this question, the riddle of the Sphinx was simple, the supposition that they were going to batter coast-walls in the S. Pacific being hardly now tenable. The Boodah finally came to rest some miles North of lat. 50 deg. and East of long. 20 deg.: and there—just on the northern rim of the Gulf Stream where it divides, part toward Ireland, and part toward Africa—she remained, precisely in the middle of the trade- route ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... refine him, women are so naturally susceptible of everything beautiful in sentiment and generous in purpose that she who is a true woman is a fit peer for a king. Odd and preposterous notions, no doubt, and capable of much controversy, so far as the doctrine of race (if that be any way tenable) is concerned; but then the plain fact is that my Uncle Roland was as eccentric and contradictory a gentleman—as—as—why, as you and I are, if we once venture ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the best skill of Washington was likely only to qualify defeat. He was advised to destroy New York and retire to positions more tenable. But even if he had so desired, Congress, his master, would not permit him to burn the city, and he had to make plans to defend it. Brooklyn Heights so commanded New York that enemy cannon planted there would ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... family found a safe asylum when the manor house on the Croton was no longer tenable. In March, 1777, General McDougal posted his advance guard here when the British took possession of Peekskill. Eighty of his men, under Lieutenant-Colonel Willet, receiving permission to attack some two hundred of the British that had taken possession of a ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... likely to be called a Socialist by anybody. Yet I find him writing in his magazine, at the end of November, 1907: "The tradition which many hold that the condition of poverty is ordinarily and as a matter of course to be explained by personal faults of the poor themselves is no longer tenable. Strong drink and vice are abnormal, unnatural and essentially unattractive ways of spending surplus income." Dr. Devine very frankly and bravely admits that poverty is an unnecessary evil, "a shocking, loathsome excrescence on the body politic, an intolerable ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... since then increased considerably through the accumulation of funds, which the commercial character of that great city had caused to be neglected. At that time, I believe each exhibition yielded about forty guineas a- year, and was legally tenable for seven successive years. Now, to me this would have offered a most seasonable advantage, had it been resorted to some two years earlier. My small patrimonial inheritance gave to me, as it did to each of my four brothers, exactly one hundred and fifty ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... purposes of our own navigation: and the open force by which the scheme was ultimately carried into effect, imparts to this act of usurpation a character of violence still more to be regretted. The originally-alleged provocation, the affair of the Derya-Dowlut, is not for a moment tenable as warranting such extreme measures:—since not only was the participation of the parties on whom the whole responsibility was thrown, at all events extremely venial; but satisfaction had been given, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... AS TO LANGUAGE TENABLE.—Again, whether there can be or be not external things, it is agreed on all hands that the proper use of words is the marking our conceptions, or things only as they are known and perceived by us; whence it plainly follows that in the tenets we have laid down there is nothing ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... these facts, the Guevara theory is no longer tenable; and in consequence the whole situation is reversed, and we approach the problem from the natural side, the side from which it should have been approached from the first—that is from the English and not the Spanish side. I say the ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... Deerfoot seemed to believe that his position was no longer tenable, for, instead of staying where he was, he began descending, apparently in panic of fear, lest he should share the fate of the other red man. So far as he could, he kept the trunk of the tree between him and the youthful marksmen until beyond ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... for Christianity will overbear the difficulty which we cannot separate from the truths. If it will not, we must reject it wholly; and if it will, we must receive it wholly. There is plainly no tenable position between absolute infidelity and absolute belief. And this is proved by the infinitely various and Protean character of Rationalism, and the perfectly indeterminate, but always arbitrary, limits it imposes on itself. It exists in all forms and degrees, from a moderation which accepts ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... to the fortress of Tillietudlem and its inhabitants. The morning, being the first after the battle of Loudon-hill, had dawned upon its battlements, and the defenders had already resumed the labours by which they proposed to render the place tenable, when the watchman, who was placed in a high turret, called the Warder's Tower, gave the signal that a horseman was approaching. As he came nearer, his dress indicated an officer of the Life-Guards; and the slowness of his horse's pace, as well as the manner in which the rider ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and again through the whole working of language. But however that may be, the sharp line of distinction which Curtius draws between the First Period, represented by simple, and the Second Period represented by derivative roots, seems certainly no longer tenable, least of all as dividing chronologically two distinct periods in the ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Rocks had hitherto been considered tenable only by frigates during the winter; on which service three or four were annually employed; but which, like the Channel fleet, occasionally took refuge in Torbay. It had been, however, resolved upon by Earl St. Vincent to form an advanced ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... a still more furious manner; and was tumbled out of Deggendorf amid whirlwinds of fire, in very flamy condition indeed. The Austrians, playing on us from the uplands with their heavy artillery, made a breach in our outmost battery: 'Not tenable!' exclaimed the Captain there: 'This way, my men!'—and withdrew, like a shot, he and party; sliding down the steep face of the mountain [feet foremost, I hope], home to Deggendorf in this peculiar manner; leaving the AUSTRIANS to manage his guns. Our two lower batteries, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... theory of verbal inspiration, nor the theory of plenary inspiration, can be made to fit the facts, which a careful study of the writings themselves brings before us. These writings are not inspired in the sense which we have commonly given that word. The verbal theory of inspiration was only tenable while they were supposed to be the work of a single author. To such a composite literature no such theory will apply. "To make this claim," says Professor Ladd, "and yet accept the best ascertained results of criticism, would compel us to take such ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... expected of him. When he does not do so, it is usually because his instructions have been so doubtful as to befog him or give him a reasonable excuse for noncompliance. This view of things is the only tenable attitude an officer or enlisted leader can take toward his subordinates. He will recognize the exceptions, and if he does not then take appropriate action, it is only because he is himself shiftless and is compassionate toward ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... noble father's person, I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight, Let it be tenable in your silence still; And whatsoever else shall hap to-night, Give it an understanding, but no tongue: I will requite your loves. So, fare you well: Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, I'll ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the system itself for the selection of worth and capacity to exercise its functions. The clergy, as I have already said, claimed the privileges of saints, while their conduct fell below the standard of that of ordinary men; and the position taken in this answer was tenable only on the hypothesis which it, in fact, deliberately asserted, that the judicial authority of the church had been committed to it by God Himself; and that no misconduct of its ministers in detail could forfeit their claims or justify resistance ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... his flock, till one day he rose in the midst of the surviving dyspeptics and consumptives and, following the example of Mr. Emerson, renounced his calling for ever. By that time even the pale Unitarianism thinning out into paler doubt was no longer tenable with him. He confessed that while he felt the Divine goodness more and more, he believed that it was a mistake to preach any specific creed or doctrine, and he begged them to release him from their service. A young man came to fill his place in their pulpit, but he kept his place in ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... I may remark, looks extremely liberal as it appears in the Act; for the scholarships are to be tenable at any University. The Irish Unionist members, knowing quite well how it would be worked, opposed the clause; and as usual were denounced as bigots and fanatics. It is needless to add that as soon as the Act came into force, County Councils and Corporations at once passed resolutions that ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... members of this class the second explanation is the only tenable one,—namely, that there are certain extraordinary powers resident in the nervous organism which are capable of acting in opposition to the ordinary energies of nature; that an intangible material exists ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... one, while its left flank and lines of communication with Havre were seriously menaced by a huge body of Uhlan cavalry. In a word, the positions taken up by the whole of the Allied centre and left were no longer tenable. To hang on would have been to court disaster. There was nothing for it but ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... vulgar or pretend to gather fruit in so scrubby an orchard; but the view of a creature of the stage, the view of the "histrionic temperament," as suggestive much less, verily, in respect to the poor stage per se than in respect to "art" at large, affected me in spite of that as justly tenable. An objection of a more pointed order was forced upon me by an acute friend later on and in another connexion: the challenge of one's right, in any pretended show of social realities, to attach to the image ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... are commonly drawn in such a form as would fit the circumstances of the handicraft industry and the petty trade, and such as can be extended to any other economic situation by shrewd interpretation. These theories, as they run from Adam Smith down through the nineteenth century and later, appear tenable, on the whole, when taken to apply to the economic situation of that earlier time, in virtually all that they have to say on questions of wages, capital, savings, and the economy and efficiency of management and production by the methods ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... theories to explain it Is a Theology of Redemption possible which shall not be mainly metaphor or simile? THE PROBLEM OF THE INCARNATION The approach is to be "a posterioria" In fact, God and man are only known to us in and by Jesus Only in Christ is the love of God as taught in N.T. tenable To know Jesus in what he can do, is antecedent to ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... both in friend and enemy alike, there has been a reluctance to see Spinoza as he really was. The Herder and Schleiermacher school have claimed him as a Christian—a position which no little disguise was necessary to make tenable; the orthodox Protestants and Catholics have called him an Atheist—which is still more extravagant; and even a man like Novalis, who, it might have been expected, would have had something reasonable to say, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Henry VIII., a handsome building in the Vines. The tuition fee commences at L15 per annum for boys under 12, and there is a reduction made when there are brothers. There are two or three annual competitive Scholarships tenable for a period of years, and there are also two Exhibitions of L60 a year to University College, Oxford. There is also Sir J. Williamson's Mathematical School in the High Street, founded in 1701, having an income of L1500 a year from endowments, and the teaching, which has a wide range, includes ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... to ask why he regarded the latter view as so much more tenable than the former. "There are several reasons," he replied, "which render the view I prefer to take all but certain. First, the impression was made by the left hand. Second, it is the impression of a closed hand, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... this is scarcely tenable even as Greek. Had this been St. John's meaning, surely he would have said, [Greek: en theo], not [Greek: pros ton theon], in the nearest proximity that is not confusion. But it is strange, that Sherlock should not have seen that Grotius had a hankering toward Socinianism, but, like a ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... is it not your duty, by securing a republican form of government to every State, to see that these "respective numbers" are made up of enfranchised citizens? Thus bringing your legislation up to the Constitution—not the Constitution down to your party possibilities!! The only tenable ground of representation is UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, as it is only through Universal Suffrage that the principle of "Equal Rights to All" can be realized. All prohibitions based on race, color, sex, property, or education, are violations of the republican idea; and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Chrysotom, and Eusebius, to have in a manner suspected rather than believed, the immortality of the soul; yet we have no evidence of their ever having, by the finest process of ratiocination, so thoroughly convinced themselves as to introduce it generally as a tenable thesis on the portico. A beautiful thread of implicit belief and fervent hope, of after life, assimilating to the hunting-ground of our own American Indians, and though sensuous still, a step far in advance of the black void of ancient philosophy, has always run through the higher mythologies ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various |
