"Untenable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it possible that the phrase, "Young in years, but old in vice," had ever had a more appropriate application than in the present case! For the credit of human nature, he trusted not. The point upon which his learned friend had mainly relied having been thus proved wholly untenable—the fact of Richard's taking the money having been incontestably brought home to him—it only remained for him (Mr. Smoothbore) to notice what had been said with respect to motive. If the prisoner at the bar had even had the intention, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... that the perplexing changes of climate revealed by the geological record might be explained through certain slow fluctuations in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, produced by the disturbing action of the other planets. Shortly afterwards, however, he abandoned the position as untenable;[898] and it was left to the late Dr. James Croll, in 1864[899] and subsequent years, to reoccupy and fortify it. Within restricted limits (as Lagrange and, more certainly and definitely, Leverrier proved), the path pursued by our planet round the sun alternately contracts, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... most exact survey of this debate, I will boldly affirm, that I never heard in this house a question so untenable in itself, so obstinately or so warmly debated; but hope that the sophistries which have been used, however artful, and the declamations which have been pronounced, however pathetick, will have no effect upon your lordships. I hope, that as the other house has already agreed to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... untenable position—but I am nevertheless surprised he did not try "abusing plaintiff's attorney." The fact is he made a prodigious blunder in commencing the attack, and now his only chance is to be silent and let people ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... the traveller. There are many lakes under a more lustrous sky; but the healthy activities of life demand a scene brilliant without languor, and a beauty which can refresh and satisfy rather than lull or overpower. Without advancing any untenable claim to British pre-eminence in the matter of scenery, we may, perhaps, follow on both these points the judgment which Wordsworth has expressed in his Guide to the Lakes, a work which condenses the results of many years ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... Roman Church, and after the Council of Trent had held 22 out of its whole number of 25 sessions.' The quibbling, special-pleading, equivocating mind which is consciously or half-consciously endeavouring by subtle distinctions to maintain an untenable position, was of all things the most abhorrent to him, and while the Evangelicals denounced the Tractarians as leading men to Rome, Whately, perhaps alone among his contemporaries, steadily predicted that their teachings ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... distribution enjoined of the rest, does not meet with your Lordship's approbation. You do not question the right of the Nation over ecclesiastical wealth; you have voluntarily abandoned a ground which you were conscious was altogether untenable. Having allowed this right, can you question the propriety of exerting it at that particular period? The urgencies of the State were such as required the immediate application of a remedy. Even the clergy were ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... are all true; the most amazing thing about Greenwich Village is that the most unlikely things that you can find out about it are true. The obvious, every-day things that are easily believed are much the most likely to be untenable reports or the day dreams of imaginative chroniclers. You are safe if you believe all the quaint and romantic and inconsistent and impossible things that come to your knowledge concerning the Village. That is its special and sacred privilege: to be ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... defect, and we shall mark the growth of its most precious fruits in the increased power of observation and the counterpoise it offered to hasty generalizations, as well as in the confidence which learnt to reject untenable fictions, whether produced by luxuriant imagination or by a priori speculations, on the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... intellectual grounds would be awed into silence by its moral beauty, unless he were deficient in reverence, purity, and love. It must therefore be said, distinctly, although it cannot be argued at length, that this ground also appears to me to be utterly untenable. I deny that it is impossible to speak the truth without implying a falsehood; and I deny equally that it is impossible to speak the truth without drying up the sources of our holiest feelings. Those who maintain the affirmative of those propositions appear to me to ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... after an extra heavy nocturnal bombardment, we went out in search of a melon. A shell had shattered her impromptu showcase, dislocated a wall on one side of the archway, which menaced immediate collapse. In fact, the place had become untenable. ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... the leeward side of the deck-house for his seat, and Miss Cahere had brought Cartoner round to the weather side, where a cold Atlantic breeze made the position untenable. Without explanation, and for her own good, he led the way to a warmer quarter. But at the corner of the deck-house a gust caught Miss Cahere, and held her there in a pretty attitude, with her two hands upraised to her hat, looking at him with frank ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... had been clerk in the bank? Well, naturally, the moment suspicion began to fasten on his father his position in the business became untenable. I think every one was very kind to him. Mr. Sutherland French, who was made acting manager 'during Mr. Lewis Ireland's regrettable absence,' did everything in his power to show his goodwill and sympathy to the young man, but I don't think that he ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... forced, either from the weakness of our own garrison, or from any other cause, to relinquish the command of this natural barrier, the whole of the cantonment must have lain open to the enemy, and must forthwith have become untenable. ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... most satisfactory evidence of our senses or of testimony can hinder us from holding a seeming miracle to be merely the result of some unknown natural cause. The argument of Dr. Campbell and others against Hume, however, is untenable, viz. that, as we do not disbelieve an alleged fact (which may be something conforming to the uniform course of experience) merely because the chances are against it, therefore we need never disbelieve any fact supported by credible testimony (even if contrary to the uniform ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... wall-top, where he had been balancing, Chase had contrived to lie down at the gunshot—wagging his stern slightly to and fro, with his white forepaws hanging down, and his head couched between them, his haunches propped up on the coping stone, and his whole attitude apparently untenable for half ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... disadvantage on our retreat. As it is, even if General Bean is forced to circle around Newville, we can concentrate at Bremerton and fight on ground of our own choosing, though that would make this place untenable." ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... have an awful jag on today," was casually remarked when an extra fluffiness and imbecility was noticeable in the passing Bones. At first it was believed that he drank also, but when careful investigation proved this hypothesis untenable, he was freely called a "derned time-servin', yaller hypocrite." Not a few advanced the opinion that if Bones did not actually lead Uncle Billy astray, he at least "slavered him over and coddled him until the old man got conceited in his wickedness." This undoubtedly led to ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... wave after wave came rolling out of the forest, each to deliver a heavy blow at our house, making the roof crack, but never yield, and with the last came so great an influx of water that our position rapidly began to grow untenable. ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... his Majesty. In the same sense I conversed with the Minister of War, von Roon: we had got our slap in the face from France, and had been reduced, by our complaisance, to look like seekers of a quarrel if we entered upon war, the only way in which we could wipe away the stain. My position was now untenable, solely because, during his course at the baths, the King, under pressure of threats, had given audience to the French ambassador for four consecutive days, and had exposed his royal person to insolent treatment from this foreign agent without ministerial assistance. Through ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... written by Vasco de Lobeira in the time of king Ferdinand of Portugal who died in 1383: as Vasco de Lobeira was knighted in 1385, it would follow that he wrote the elaborate romance in his earliest youth. This conclusion is untenable, and the suggestion that the author was Pedro de Loboira (who flourished in the 15th century) involves a glaring anachronism. A further step was taken by the historian Joao de Barros, who maintained in an unpublished work dating between 1540 and 1550 that Vasco de Lobeira wrote ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... hypotheses, living beings, such as now exist, have existed from all eternity upon this earth. We tested that hypothesis by the circumstantial evidence, as I called it, which is furnished by the fossil remains contained in the earth's crust, and we found that it was obviously untenable. I then proceeded to consider the second hypothesis, which I termed the Miltonic hypothesis, not because it is of any particular consequence whether John Milton seriously entertained it or not, but because it is stated in a clear and unmistakable manner ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Heng-cho this one will now proceed across the street and, committing suicide within his door, will henceforth enjoy the honourable satisfaction of haunting his footsteps and rending his bakehouses and ovens untenable." With this assurance Chou-hu seized one of his most formidable business weapons and caused it to revolve around his head with great rapidity, but at the same time with ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... the views of the younger school, who seek to banish the Exodus of the Jews from the province of history and represent it as a later production of the myth-making popular mind; a theory we both believed untenable. One of his remarks on this subject has lingered in my memory and ran ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... with his "Inquiry into the Literary and Political Character of James the First." He wrote to his publisher as follows: "I am sorry to say every one, to whom I have mentioned the subject, revolts from it as a thing quite untenable, and cares nothing about 'James.' This does not stop me ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... the air itself, filled with all these flaming masses, became so heated that it could no longer be breathed. The atmosphere itself was burning, the glass of the windows cracked,' and apartments became untenable. The Emperor stood for a moment immovable, his face crimson, and great drops of perspiration rolling from his brow, while the King of Naples, Prince Eugene, and the Prince de Neuchatel begged him to quit the palace, whose entreaties he ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Gardner with forty men and a Vickers gun was occupying the old Bolo dugouts. One verst further back in the big clearing was Kodish village, a place which by all the rules of field strategy was absolutely untenable. Here with four Vickers guns were the remainder of "K" Company along with the sick and the lame and the halt, scarce forty men really able to do active duty, but obliged to stay on to support their comrades. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... were the first objects that met the eye on entering the Great Port). In this he was overruled ruled by Piali, who declared that he had not sufficient men to spare, and the Knights of II Borgo would soon render the battery untenable even if they should succeed in erecting it, which the Turkish admiral now considered extremely doubtful. The siege of St. Elmo, which Mustafa had said would last at the outside for five or six days, had now been in progress for four weeks; and, although the ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... Busaco, when blockaded in the lines of Torres Vedras, their situation was far from agreeable. The wet season set in, and their huts, roofed with heather—a pleasant shelter when the sun shone, but very ineffectual to resist autumnal rains—became untenable. Every device was resorted to for the exclusion of the deluge, but in vain. Fortunately, the French were in a still worse plight. In miserable cantonments, short of provisions and attacked by disease, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... season of the year he would readily have accounted for the phenomenon that now fell under his observation, on the hypothesis that the woman was somebody's sister or cousin or aunt. But at present that explanation was untenable; Maitland happened to know that not one of the other men was in New York, barring himself; and his own presence there was a ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... the whole system of private capitalism had broken down and fallen to pieces, and not as a means of throwing it down. To recur to the military illustration, the revolutionary army did not directly attack the fortress of capitalism at all, but so manoeuvred as to make it untenable, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... is Truth?" "What is the Reality?" goes to the very root of the Riddle of the Universe. We are all trying in one direction or another to answer this question. As knowledge increases, old theories become untenable and have to be discarded, and, in their place, fresh ones are formulated to account for new phases of phenomena. There seems a general impression, among even thinking people, that scientists are wedded to, and always trying to find ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... again in his mind every reason, tenable and untenable, that he could frame to account for Agnes' sudden and unexplained trip. He thought she probably had gone for her mail, or to send a telegram and receive a reply, or for money, or something which she ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... competent to pass a law for taxing the colonies. He therefore considered the Stamp Act as a nullity, as a document of no more validity than Charles's writ of ship-money, or James's proclamation dispensing with the penal laws. This doctrine seems to us, we must own, to be altogether untenable. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in such cases the movements are imitative merely is untenable, for young animals which have never had any opportunity of watching the physical manifestations of love in older ones, will nevertheless themselves exhibit such manifestations. At most it remains open to dispute whether in these cases it is still permissible ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... seldom the doctrine of the Buddha with these absurdities, and thought it impious to abandon them. Kaiseki,[FN121] for instance, was at a loss to distinguish Buddhism from the Indian astronomy, which is utterly untenable in the face of the fact. He taxed his reason to the utmost to demonstrate the Indian theory and at the same time to refute the Copernican theory. One day he called on Yeki-do[FN122] a contemporary Zen master, and explained the construction of the Three Worlds as described in the Scriptures, ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... in a boiling pot rises to the top, and makes itself seen, concealing the pure liquid beneath, until it is skimmed off. And so we have political demagogues shouting the untenable fallacy that all men are equal, together with other flamboyant nonsense; and hooligan suffragists smashing windows. But all these are only the scum upon the outside of a great upward movement in mankind, and are not to be taken as the incontestable ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... rendered her position in Gosnold House positively untenable, however firmly it might seem to have been re-established by the ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Bible which Scherer's exegesis presents to us? Faith in it rests on two bases; first, the inspiration and canon of Scripture; and second, the subjects or organs of inspiration. The first is untenable and false, for the stand-point of authority has already spoiled everything in our theology. Authority determines beforehand what we must believe, whereas reason alone should perform that office. There is a communicated revelation to our ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... for the purpose, and, before the little grotto had become so filled with smoke as to be absolutely untenable, its entrance was closed by a curtain of broadcloth, held so hermetically over the aperture that even the fumes of Assafoetida could not possibly have ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... looking, do you?" Why on earth do people look over the shoulders of persons painting, when they would never dream of looking over the shoulder of any one writing? Notwithstanding the crowd and polite requests to be "allowed to look," and the untenable effort required to give soft answers, I did manage to make a sketch or two at Aden—one of stony hills and government houses in the background, and in the front green water and the vendors of fans ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... of things would have continued, if these immediate consequences had formed the only objection to it, is uncertain. But the Revolution of 1905-6 rendered it wholly untenable. The peasantry, on whom the Tsar and the Government counted for support, readily followed the lead of every anarchist and revolutionary who dangled the promise of free land before their eyes, and gutted or burned the manors ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... to be enjoyed. You may have made up your mind that the besiegers were an advance guard of the rebels; but they were not. They were nothing less than an army of fierce musquitoes, who made such a persistent attack on the general and his staff as to make his position almost untenable. In truth, they so harassed the corpulent engineer, in rear and flank, that he mounted his horse and returned to the city, where he spent a comfortable night at Willard's Hotel, and went back in the morning refreshed. My authority for this is ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... now twenty years since I read Chillingworth's book[1]; but certainly it seemed to me that his main position, that the mere text of the Bible is the sole and exclusive ground of Christian faith and practice, is quite untenable against the Romanists. It entirely destroys the conditions of a church, of an authority residing in a religious community, and all that holy sense of brotherhood which is so sublime and consolatory to a meditative Christian. Had I been a Papist, I should not ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Madame bade, but it was all in ruins, crumbling away, and, moreover, M. le Chevalier had put a forester there—a grim, bad subject, who had been in the Italian wars, and cared neither for saint nor devil, except Chevalier Narcisse. Indeed, even if he had not been there, the place was untenable, it would only be getting ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the view that the Sonnets were addressed to Southampton as entirely untenable, it nevertheless has this basis,—two of the Shakespearean poems were dedicated to Southampton. At least we may say that, if they were addressed to any person of that class, there is a strong probability in his favor. And in order to consider that claim I would ask the reader ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... days that followed the scene with Levi, Esther's resolution had gradually formed. The position had become untenable. She could no longer remain a Schnorrer; abusing the bounty of her benefactors into the bargain. She must leave the Goldsmiths, and at once. That was imperative; the second step could be thought over ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... internal." "If anybody, in the heat of argument, ever claimed for them [the MS. readings] a right of acceptance beyond the emendations of Theobald, Malone, Dyce, and Singer, (that is, a right not justified by their obvious utility or beauty,) such a claim must have been untenable, by whomsoever urged."] ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... Mercer, an officer of courage and experience; but the situation of the forts was very ill-chosen; the materials mostly timber or logs of wood; the defences wretchedly contrived and unfurnished; and, in a word, the place altogether untenable against any regular approach. Such were the forts which the enemy wisely resolved to reduce. They assembled a body of troops, consisting of 1,300 regulars, 1,700 Canadians, and a considerable number of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... into the world together: Adam feared God because he was naked. Melinaud ("Psychologie de la Pudeur," La Revue, Nov. 15, 1901) remarks that shame differs from modesty in being, not a fear, but a kind of grief; this position seems untenable. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of the Allies to preserve what they could of their forces as a nucleus for future resistance, and thus to stand only so long as retreat remained open. Threatened on three sides by superior numbers, they were in an untenable position and had a well-nigh impossible task; and only skill, endurance, and courage brought the remnants out of the death-trap laid by collusion between the Central Empires and Bulgaria. The campaign was for the Serbians simply a series ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... their claims against the Government for this necessary destruction. No houses will be burned, and officers in charge of this delicate but necessary duty must inform the people that the object is to make this valley untenable for the raiding parties of ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... established, and conclusions recognized, instead of becoming multiplied they will become fewer and fewer, and at last will entirely disappear. We cannot afford to go on disputing for ever; and what is declared by common consent to be untenable ought to be no longer reckoned. That only in short, as I venture to think, deserves the name of a Various Reading which comes to us so respectably recommended as to be entitled to our sincere consideration and respect; or, better still, which ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... (as we say), starve for relaxation, until she became a woman of much suffering and many inadequacies of physical life." A year or two later Harriet herself writes, "This inner world of mine has become worn out and untenable," and again, "About half my time I am scarcely alive.... I have everything but good health.... Thought, intense emotional ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... strongly urged by some scientists that a religion based on faith was untenable. Man, it was contended, should accept only what could be proved by reasoning from observed facts. Once again there emerged, particularly in scientific and literary circles, the belief that there could be a code of morals entirely ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... semicircle faced by a wide, open V. Imagine such a situation complicated by offensive and counter-offensive, during which the French have seized part of the hills and the German part of the plain, till the whole region is a madman's maze of barbed wire, earthy lines, trenches,—some of them untenable by either side and still full of the dead who fell in the last combat,—shell holes, and fortified craters. Such was something of the situation in that wind-swept plain at the edge of the Bois-le-Pretre. I leave for other chapters the account of an average day in the trenches and the story of ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... quite time indeed that this was done, for D'Urville's situation was untenable, and in a conversation with his boatswain he ascertained that not more than half a dozen of the sailors could be relied on; all the others were ready to go over to the side ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... would seem as if Hume were boldly pressing his principles to the very uttermost—that is, were challenging a miracle as untenable, though attested by a multitude. But, in fact, he is not. He only seems to do so; for, if no number of witnesses could avail anything in proof of a miracle, why does he timidly confine himself to the hypothesis ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... supporter at Court, who replaced the loss of Gerlach. Roon and he had known one another in the old Pomeranian days. There was a link in Moritz Blankenburg, who was a "Dutz" friend of Bismarck's and Roon's cousin. We can understand how untenable Roon's position was when we find the Minister of War choosing as his political confidants two of the leaders of the party opposed to the Ministry ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... if it should be held that this view is untenable, and that women are disfranchised by the several State constitutions, directly or by implication, then I say that such prohibitions are clearly in conflict with the Constitution of the United ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... means is some bodily ailment or other. The hypothesis that the 'thorn in the flesh' was the sting of the animal nature inciting him to evil is altogether untenable, because such a thorn could never have been left when the prayer for its removal was earnestly presented; nor could it ever have been, when left, an occasion for glorifying. Manifestly it was no weakness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... "Medical Record" for July 27, 1895, p. 141, this gentleman writes in defence of craniotomy: "The question is a legal one per se against which any conflicting view is untenable. The subdivisions under which the common law takes consideration of craniotomy are answers in themselves to the conclusions quoted above, under the unfortunate necessity which demands the operation." Next he quotes the Ohio statute law, which, he remarks, was enacted in protection of ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... the scriptures are regarded as more authoritative, and those is which direct perception is regarded as more authoritative. In 5, the speaker refers to the atomic and other theories of the creation derived from Reason. Bhishma declares it as his opinion that all such theories are untenable or groundless. In the first line of 6, the word Ekam implies Brahma. The sense is, if thou thinkest that Brahma alone is the cause of the universe and in thinking so becomest landed on doubt. The reply to this is that Yoga for a long course of years will enable thee to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... theory is untenable, the Arabic or Islamic theory is equally, if not more, unacceptable. In the first place, as has already been pointed out, Arabic or Islamic art shows absolutely nothing in art approaching objects of the Benin type. Furthermore, Islam itself did not appear in Central ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... the plainest teachings of the gospel before them, is it not strange that there are so many virulent enemies to infant baptism? Their rejection of it seems to rest mainly upon the untenable position that baptism has meaning and force only when it is the fruit of an antecedent, self-conscious faith on the part of the subject, and that it is but the outward demonstration of a separate and prior participation ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... directing the erection of the stage. This stage was planned to be a substantial platform about thirty feet square, supported on posts firmly driven into the ground, so that the water might pass freely under it. In the event of the parsonage becoming untenable it would form ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... manner the combination with the cotton fibre is brought about. The affinity of cellulose for dyes appears to be so small and its chemical activities so weak, that to assume the existence of a reaction between the dye-stuff and the fibre, tending to the formation of a colour lake, seems to be untenable. Then, again, the chemical composition and constitution of the dyes of this group are so varied that an explanation which would hold good for one might not do so for another. The relative fastness of the dyes against washing and soaping precludes the idea of a merely mechanical ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... the authors of the books which are classed among the prophets having the Spirit of prophecy, and those of the books belonging to the Hagiographa simply the Holy Spirit (the Holy Spirit, but not in the degree necessary for prophetic revelation). But this distinction is untenable. Who had the spirit of prophecy if not Daniel? In the opinion of some modern scholars, they reckoned to the Prophets only books written by men who were prophets in the stricter sense of the term; that is, men trained to the prophetical office, and exercising it as their profession; while the writings ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... signal from Fort Wood to charge the lower line of works at the foot of Missionary Ridge. This we did easily, but the cross-fire from the second line midway up the Ridge was so galling that the position was untenable. One of two things must be done: retreat or carry the Ridge. The first alternative I do not think occurred to anyone, for they leaped the breastworks, and in spite of the enemy's utmost endeavors ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... the use of the chest or thick voice upon the higher tones is injurious to a child of six years, or ten years, or of any other age. The theory that in the child-voice the breaks occur at higher fixed pitches than in the adult is shown to be untenable. The fact would seem to be that comparisons between the registers of the child and the adult voice are misleading, since the adult voice has fixed points of change in the vocal mechanism, which can be transcended only ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... we may have every confidence in the care and accuracy of Sarmiento as regards his collection and statement of historical facts, provided that we always keep in mind the bias, and the orders he was under, to seek support for the Viceroy's untenable argument. ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... belief in a collective being gathering experience and developing will, to which every life is subordinated, renders the cruder conception of aristocracy, the idea of a select life going on amidst a majority of trivial and contemptible persons who "do not exist," untenable. It abolishes contempt. Indeed to believe at all in a comprehensive purpose in things is to abandon that attitude and all the habits and acts that imply it. But a belief in universal significance does not altogether preclude a belief in an aristocratic method of progress, in the ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... probably ten for every one that was fired in the Civil War. The only time the soldiers exposed themselves on the army frontiers were when they were storming trenches, and this was not attempted until the trench had suffered bombardment so it was made untenable. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... first consequence attending a depreciated currency is, that the good precious metal money is withdrawn from circulation and even from the country; for the reason that it cannot maintain its true value side by side with the paper money; the usual effect in all untenable mixed standards or currencies.(923) A second, and worse consequence is the unrightful revolution produced in so many income and property relations, based on old contracts, to the advantage of the debtor, to the disadvantage of the creditor, and of those who ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... cried Mark, "how ridiculous all this is. Mankind have forged chains for themselves, and make martyrs of themselves." Although he still justified himself in making no reply, he felt that his position was untenable. "I am leaving the place shortly," he said, "in about a week's time. Can I not see Vera—Vassilievna ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... General Alexeieff, who was continually falling back before the Austrians. Furious counterattacks were delivered by the Russians at Halicz and Jezupol, the bridgeheads of the southern bank of the Dniester. If the Austrians could not force a victory at these points, their position in Stanislawow would be untenable, since the Russians still had a clear road to pour reenforcements into the fighting area between the Dniester and the Carpathians. On March 1, 1915, the Austrians were defeated at Halicz in a pitched battle, and on ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... their naval supremacy? Moreover, if they made a gallant fight, might not Persia be expected to second their efforts? Would she not attack Alexander from the flanks of Lebanon, intercept his supplies, cut off his foragers, and make his position untenable; the Tyrians could scarcely anticipate that Persia would sit with folded hands, a calm spectator of a seven months' ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... as those which I can, at this moment, recall, are to my mind hardly sufficiently conclusive. Rejecting the supposed allusion to Heywood's Woman Kill'd with Kindness, which I see, by a note, Mr. Collier gives up as untenable ground, the facts, I believe, ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... in the present state of industry, when everything is interdependent, when each branch of production is knit up with all the rest, the attempt to claim an Individualist origin for the products of industry is absolutely untenable. The astonishing perfection attained by the textile or mining industries in civilized countries is due to the simultaneous development of a thousand other industries, great and small, to the extension ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... truce, and acknowledged twelve dead and thirteen wounded, though not one of the Vaudois was the least hurt. Their victory did not, however, relieve them for long. Although their refuge was secure, the extreme cold made it untenable, and they were compelled to seek a milder climate. Saddened by suffering, and resolved to protect themselves, they met on their way an armed band. Assuming that they were enemies, they fired and killed one of the party, when, to their great grief, blended ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... received some intelligence which would, in his opinion, justify his undertaking an expedition into the Indian country with so small a force as he could command, he was at once to evacuate the place and fall back with his force on the settlement, as the position was quite untenable, and every man was needed for the ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... nations' glory, and to whose sublimity it was impossible to be altogether blind, were at best but tolerated as rude and wild natural geniuses. But the unqualified separation of genius and taste on which such a judgment proceeds, is altogether untenable. Genius is the almost unconscious choice of the highest degree of excellence, and, consequently, it is ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... unconsciously taken," and that it "dissembled the obligation, and made a boast of the splendour as though it were originally her own, or were sufficient in her hands for the moral illumination of the world;" is to make an assertion wholly untenable.[71] Seneca, Epictetus, Aurelius, are among the truest and loftiest of Pagan moralists, yet Seneca ignored the Christians, Epictetus despised, and Aurelius persecuted them. All three, so far as they knew anything about the Christians at all, had unhappily ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and those in which a State shall be party." These words, urged the Chief Justice, must be given an exclusive sense "or they have no operation at all." This position is quite untenable, for even when given only their affirmative value these words still place the cases enumerated beyond the reach of Congress, and this may have been their only purpose. However, granting the Chief Justice his view of Article III, ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... indicates the Steinmetzen of the fifteenth century as the real progenitors of the Order: "All attempts to trace the history of Freemasonry farther back than the Middle Ages have been ... failures, and placing the origin of the Fraternity in the mysteries of Egypt ... must be rejected as a wild and untenable hypothesis."—History of Freemasonry (Eng. trans.), ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... at least, had a natural tendency to deflect downward; and there is no shadow of any thing objectionable in the supposition, except that it is not true. The pretended proof of the law of motion is even more manifestly untenable than that of the law of inertia, for it is flagrantly inconsistent; it assumes that the continuance of motion in the direction first taken is more natural than deviation either to the right or to the left, but denies that one of these can possibly ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... to find a place among the recognized occupants of the throne. For a time, indeed, fortune smiled on the Hojo. Within a few days after Kogon's assumption of the sceptre, Go-Daigo's retreat at Kasagi became untenable, and he fled, still escorted by the faithful Fujiwara Fujifusa. It must be recognized that, whatever the Fujiwara family's usurpations in the past, their loyalty to the Throne throughout this era of cruel vicissitudes redeems a ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... discussed in Part II; but I may as well give here what seems to me to be an irresistable proof that this view (that A and I are Contradictories), though adopted in the ordinary text-books, is untenable. The ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... lesson. They attempt, too, in like fashion, to give the weight of morality to their doctrines. Unfortunately for them, inasmuch as everyone likes to be moral at some one's else expense, their position is untenable. Adam Smith's distinction was a broad and sound one; and deeply important as political economy and questions of tariff are, they are in no sense matters of morals. They are purely questions of self-interest, of profit and loss, and can be decided ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... opponent did not take part in the revision of Vatable's Bible, which (such was the prisoner's impression) was finished in 1569. The discovery of Medina's signature in the Sancho copy of Vatable (Documentos ineditos, vol. X, p. 522) rendered this position untenable. The fact appears to be that the Old Testament was revised in 1569; owing to the absence of Sancho and Luis de Leon, the revision of the New Testament was suspended; it was not finished till 1571, and thus Medina ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... found that Arara was itself commanded from a height called Sheikh Silbih, a thousand or two yards beyond, while the reserve fire from the machine guns on The Pimple soon made their position on Arara untenable. They fell back upon, and firmly established themselves in, their positions at Rafat. One lad, who was left behind in this retirement, had a terrible experience. Wounded in three or four places, he was unable to withdraw with the remainder of his company. He lay out on Arara for three days, ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... in London and elsewhere. He was in particular Master of the Hospital of St. Katherine from 1368 till a few years before his death in 1412. The fact that he was in favour with the King and that he was allowed to exercise the office by deputy, makes untenable the supposition that Chaucer was dismissed because he was a friend to the King, or because he did not actually conduct the office himself. (Devon's Issues, p. 359, Cal. Pat. Roll 1379, p. 386. Full statement of ecclesiastical ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert
... he said. "It required a man with the fullest legal equipment to have written them. When you have read Greenwood's book you will see how untenable is ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... dark and silent. Balconies were bracketed against the wall at the second and third stories, and the slight iron ladder leading thither terminated a foot above his head. John Armitage was fully aware that his position, if discovered, was, to say the least, untenable; but he was secure from observation by police, and he assumed that the occupants of the house were probably too deeply engrossed with their affairs to waste much time on what might happen without. Armitage sprang up and caught the lowest round of ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... by making a reconnaissance in force, and, if possible, drawing their fire. If the Boers fall into this trap they invariably pay dearly for the slight advantage they gain over the investigating force, for our guns soon make any known position untenable. The Boer leaders know this, however, and are very loth to allow temptation to overcome discretion; but at times, either through the impetuosity of their troops or through errors in generalship, they give themselves away entirely, and that is precisely ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... pursuing the enemy, whom he might have overtaken at an untenable position, Francis, against the almost unanimous advice of his generals, laid siege to the strongly fortified city of Pavia, only to meet before it the crushing defeat which for centuries settled the fate of Italy. Pavia was held by a strong ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... He had definitely excited the jealousy and opposition of the leading men of his nation. Even such popular enthusiasm as had followed his mighty works was of a sort that Jesus could not encourage. The situation in Judea had at length become so nearly untenable that he decided to withdraw into seclusion in Galilee, where, as a prophet, he could be "without honor." He had gone to Jerusalem eager to begin there, where God should have had readiest service, the ministry of the kingdom of God. ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... or sacrifice. I blushed and grew ashamed, and for a moment forgot that the bereaved creature was unable to behold the confusion with which defeat and exposure had covered me. At length I spoke imperfectly, loosely, and at random. The woman detected me in an untenable position—checked me—and in her artless manner, laid bare the fallacy of an inconsiderate assertion. In an instant I was aware of my conviction, I retracted my expression, and involved myself immediately in fresh dilemma. Again, and as gently as before, she made the unsoundness of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... dispute which he held in defence of his supposed new doctrines with Eckius. For Martin was then but a linsey-wolsey reformer. He retained some dogmas, which, by natural consequence, made others, that he held, untenable. So that Eckius, in some points, had the better of him. But, from that time, he made clear work, renouncing all that stood in his way: and then his doctrines ran upon all fours. He was never puzzled afterwards; and could boldly declare that he would defend them ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... more fiercely. It was an impossible situation—it was untenable. That he could play his role in the underworld with only the underworld to reckon with—yes; but with the police as well, watching him in his character of a poor, drug-wrecked artist, constantly in touch with him, likely ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... stronghold, but, dominated on three sides by hills which look down into its quadrangle, it would be untenable to rifle fire. It was founded by Stefan Nemanides, son of Bolkan, Prince of the Zeta (a term which comprised all Montenegro and the Berdas), and eldest son of Stefan, Emperor of Servia. The Romanesque church, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... the 23rd the boat lay snugly under the shelter of the rocks, where Bass intended to remain until the weather moderated. But at about one o'clock in the morning the wind shifted to the south, blowing "stronger than before," and made the place untenable. At daybreak, therefore, another resting place was sought, and later in the morning the boat was beached on the west side of a sheltered cove, "having passed through a sea that for the very few hours it has been blowing ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... graze on this delectable spot, while I climbed the oolitic's back. There was not sufficient water in the garden for all my horses, and it was actually necessary for me to find more, or else the region would be untenable. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... St. Paul's, who stood forth to remonstrate, dropped dead of sheer terror at his feet. "If any oppose the King's demand," said a royal envoy in the midst of the Convocation, "let him stand up that he may be noted as an enemy to the King's peace." The outraged Churchmen fell back on an untenable plea that their aid was due solely to Rome, and alleged the bull of "Clericis Laicos," issued by Boniface the Eighth at this moment, a bull which forbade the clergy to pay secular taxes from their ecclesiastical revenues, as a ground for refusing to comply with further taxation. ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... not in the least share in his companion's view. But still he felt disturbed, perhaps unreasonably so considering how very little he still knew of the speaker. He was indeed almost as disturbed as he would have been had it been his own son who had suddenly put forward a wrong and indeed an untenable proposition. ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... British occupancy of United States soil at the end of the year was such that the Duke of Wellington advised that no claim for territorial cession could be considered to exist, and that the basis of uti possidetis, upon which it was proposed to treat, was untenable.[397] The earnestness of the Government, however, in seeking the changes specified, is indicated by the proposition seriously made to the Duke to take the command ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... dissatisfied with the profits of his factory or with its products does not get better workers, but gets a better manager or better machinery, keeping his workers. This fact proves that labour is the least important factor in modern production. The doctrine "Labour is the only source of wealth" is untenable and absurd. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... political greatness, of Strafford. To attribute Mr. Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule to an infatuation such as that suggested above, would certainly have the air of implying that the writer thought the Home Rule doctrine a peculiar or untenable one. Similarly, Browning's choice of a motive for Strafford has very much the air of an assumption that there was nothing to be said on public grounds for Strafford's political ideal. Now this is certainly not the case. ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... had now reached a serious point, at once apparent to Sir Neville Chamberlain; for the possession of the Crag picquet by the enemy made untenable the whole British position. He therefore immediately ordered to the assault the 101st Royal Bengal Fusiliers.[16] This gallant regiment aided by three companies of the Guides, and the line swelled by Major Ross's mixed detachments, ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... number of chiefs of the Kohistan and the Nijrao country assembled to discuss with him the terms on which they would reopen the communications with Cabul. Those chiefs proved treacherous, slew Rattray, Pottinger's assistant, and besieged Pottinger in Lughmanee. Finding his position untenable, he withdrew to Charikar under cover of night. On the morning of the 5th the Afghans assailed the cantonments. Pottinger was wounded, Codrington was killed, and the Goorkhas were driven into the barracks. Haughton, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... Invariable. It is not true that imitative art is an easy thing. It is not true that the faithful rendering of nature is an employment in which "the slowest intellect is likely to succeed best." All these successive assertions are utterly false and untenable, while the plain truth, a truth lying at the very door, has all the while escaped him,—that which was incidentally stated in the preceding chapter,—namely, that the difference between great and mean art lies, not in definable methods of handling, or styles of ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... now current, Canaan is said to mean "lowland," and to be transferred from the land to the people, and from the people to the pretended ancestor. But this opinion is shown to be untenable by the considerations, that, according to historical tradition, Canaan appears first as [Pg 33] the name of the ancestor;—that the verb [Hebrew: kne] is never used of natural lowness, but always of humiliation;—that ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... unlike herself," returned the Baron. "She has forgotten where the peril lies. True, we have received encouragement on every hand; but my Princess knows too well on what untenable conditions; and she knows besides how, in the publicity of the diet, these whispered conferences are forgotten and disowned. The danger is very real"—he raged inwardly at having to blow the very coal he had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... now arrived at the lowest station on the Bogan. The line of demarcation between the squatter and the savage had been once much lower down, at Muda, and even at Nyingan (see INFRA), but the incursions of the blacks had rendered these lower stations untenable, without more support than the Colonial government was able to afford. There, at least, the squatter is not only not the real discoverer of the country, but not even the occupier of what had been discovered. The map will illustrate how it happens that the ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... world at large—but then the world was not responsible for his son's bringing up. When the boy had learned it, and was willing to acknowledge the error of his ways, then, perhaps, he might kill the fatted calf—that is, of course, if the prodigal should return on all fours and with no stilted and untenable ideas about his rights—ideas that St. George, of course, was instilling into him every chance ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... come to an agreement which every day proved to be more imperative. After the Coup d'etat, the Extreme Right, led by the Count de Revel and General Menabrea, adopted the tactics of professing to believe untenable the position of a free State wedged in between the old despotism of Austria and the new one of France. The argument was ingenious and was likely to make converts. It was urgently necessary to form a new political combination which should reduce this ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... and come back later. You will do the same, I presume?" And he looked directly at Kresney, who had wit enough to perceive that the situation was untenable. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... be some sea monster surging steadily at the tow line of the Vulcan. That theory was untenable. A monster might attack; ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... the little city found their proud position quite untenable. They accordingly, on the 1st of December, despatched the burgomaster and a senator to Amersfoort, to make terms, if possible, with Don Frederic. When these envoys reached the place, they were refused admission to the general's presence. The army ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... 1644. If there were such theorists, however, they were, I should say, among those wiser and younger sons of the Episcopal Church of England who would fain have preserved that Episcopal Church, but had privately made up their minds that Laud's basis for that Church was untenable, and that a very different basis must be substituted. One thinks of Chillingworth, Hales, and the rest of that "Latitudinarian" brotherhood; one thinks of Jeremy Taylor; one thinks of the candid Fuller; one thinks even of the Calvinistic Usher. Chillingworth ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... it was for the purpose of showing, by means of a passage not generally referred to, what the ancients conceived the "black broth" to be, and that consequently, all idea of coffee entering into its composition was untenable. How far this has been accomplished the reader must decide: but I cannot quit the subject without expressing my sincere persuasion, founded upon a view of the authorities referred to, that the account ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... regard it as consisting of mucous flakes, mixed with a large proportion of altered blood. That such is the true nature of this substance, on which so much has been said and written, I have had sufficient reason to be convinced. The opinion that it consists of altered bile, I deem totally untenable, for the following reasons: The matter is occasionally voided in large quantities, in cases in which the liver is not at all affected, and in which, after death, the gall bladder is discovered to be more ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... brilliant silver-white color; while on the third occasion, as if by magic, the color had changed again, and I got only yellow silk. The hypothesis of individual peculiarity, adopted the previous year to explain why some spiders gave yellow, and others white silk, was now untenable; and, remembering that, beside these two positive colors there was also (and indeed more commonly) a light yellow, as if a combination of the other two, I saw that the real solution of the mystery must lie in the spinners themselves. Examining carefully the thread ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... Mushet's position untenable on the very grounds he was pleading—that patents should not be issued to different men at different times for the same thing; and showed that Bessemer in his patents of January 4, 1856, and later, had clearly anticipated Mushet. In a subsequent article, The Engineer disposed ...
— The Beginnings of Cheap Steel • Philip W. Bishop
... blind man denying the existence of light," said that gentleman, "but never before of a sensible being like yourself urging the most untenable theories in face of such evidence as has been brought before us during this inquiry. If your wife committed suicide, or if the entrance of the point of a hat-pin into her spine was effected by accident, how comes ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... show yourself to me again," she answered, with sudden tears twinkling on her eyelashes. She seemed more tenderly human and approachable to-day than heretofore. Had she found her mountain-height of unmated solitude untenable?—found in herself a yielding woman, and in Balder the strength that is a man? This descent, which was a sweet ascent, made her endlessly ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... attitude towards the molders' application—a refusal to grant to molders any separate consideration because other classes of workers would also expect it. To me such an attitude is both unfair and untenable. If the molder can prove that his conditions of working are vile, dangerous and unhealthy, it is surely fair to ask for a proper recompense for such work...."[137] And consider this extract from one of the reports of the Coal Industry Commission, signed ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... and the causes which were assigned for it, Henry pre-occupied the ground of the conflict; he entrenched himself in the "debateable land" of legal uncertainty; and until his position had been pronounced untenable by the general voice of Christendom, any sentence which the pope could issue would have but a doubtful validity. It was, perhaps, but a slight advantage; and the niceties of technical fencing might soon resolve themselves into a question of mere strength; ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... remain in a situation so unworthy of him, I confess I had rather he was totally incapable of making any defence. I love him enough not to murmur at his exposing himself where his country and his honour demand him; but I would not have him measure himself in a place untenable against very superior force. My present comfort is, as to him, that France at this moment has a far vaster object. I have good reason to believe the government knows that a great army is ready to embark ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... that in a few matters of importance Hindu sentiment is slowly moving in the right direction. As a Social Reformer, the Hindu is a poor success; but he is not a fool; he can see that the situation, so far as woman is concerned, is becoming increasingly untenable and flagrantly inconsistent with the growing light of today. The hope is that he will yield, with increasing readiness, to the pressure brought to bear upon ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... few selected characteristics, such as the above, summarize the entire tendency of a century of teeming human life, and stand alone among the signs that are chiefly to be considered in looking to the future, would be to take an untenable position. It may be said safely, however, that these factors, because the future to which they point is more remote, are less regarded than others which are less important; and further, that those among them which mark our own day are also the ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... profoundly studied than ever Browning's was, might stand as a motto for the poem. But the pregnant sentence of Bacon which follows these words should be added—"All this is true if time stood still." Browning's pleading is not a merely ingenious defence of the untenable, either with reference to the general thesis or its application to the French Empire. He did not, like his wife, think of the Emperor as if he were a paladin of modern romance; but he honestly believed that he had for a time done genuine service—though not the highest—to France ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... brilliant generalization after another. Sometimes he reveals the mind of a seer or poet, throwing out conclusions which are highly suggestive, on the face of them convincing, but which on examination prove untenable, or at best must be set down as unproven or needing qualification. But these were just the slag from the great furnace of his mind, slag not always worthless. Brilliant and far-reaching as were his conclusions, he did not execute a well-ordered ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... when any mention was made of the Nonconformist Conscience: they said it was no more to be taken seriously than the Spector on the Brocken or the Athanasian Creed. It was only the trick of an electioneering agent desirous of escaping from an untenable position. ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... the school of the greatest generals, accustomed, during many years, to scientific war, to be baffled by a mob of country gentlemen, farmers, shopkeepers, who were protected only by a wall which any good engineer would at once have pronounced untenable! He raved, he blasphemed, in a language of his own, made up of all the dialects spoken from the Baltic to the Atlantic. He would raze the city to the ground: he would spare no living thing; no, not the young girls; not the babies at the breast. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... waiting to pass through. In despair he gave up his untenable place, and once more was swallowed in the maelstrom of humanity that eddied ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... were originally used to express the motions or changes of things which produced obvious actions, and, by an easy transition, were afterward applied, in the same way, to things whose actions were not apparent. This assumption is untenable, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... great intellectual battle had been set on foot, in the course of which conflicting opinions which had never yet been advanced in express terms should be made manifest and wrestle with one another, until it became clear which standpoints were untenable and which could be maintained. Although he cherished warm feelings of affection for both R. Nielsen and Broechner the two professors of Philosophy, he could not help hoping for a discussion between them of the fundamental questions which were engaging his mind. As Broechner's pupil, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... plain dealing had become necessary. "It would make quite untenable your position as leader of a party," he ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... minister to Chili, Mr. Pendleton, has returned to the United States without having effected an adjustment in the second claim of the Macedonian, which is delayed on grounds altogether frivolous and untenable. Mr. Pendleton's successor has been directed to urge the claim in the strongest terms, and, in the event of a failure to obtain a prompt adjustment, to report the fact to the Executive at as early a day as possible, so that the whole matter ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler
... the present. He endeavoured to follow out what he supposed to be the chiseller's train of thought to its inevitable conclusion, and the more he reflected on the situation the more certain he became that Lucia's hypothesis was untenable. It was not conceivable, under any circumstances whatever, that Marzio should suddenly turn into a gentle, forgiving creature, anxious only for the welfare of others, and willing to sacrifice his own inclinations and schemes ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... gravest nature, and would, in their opinion, be fully established on argument before the judges; in which event the conviction would be legally quashed, independently of the substantial abandonment of it as false and untenable by ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... that I am. And yet, the fitter a man is, and the higher his tide of life, the more must he shrink from death. How wise and how merciful is that provision of nature by which his earthly anchor is usually loosened by many little imperceptible tugs, until his consciousness has drifted out of its untenable earthly harbor ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the matter blew over; but I very much fear, Bertie, that this is the first row of a series. I have a presentiment that sooner or later my position here will become untenable. Still, I shall give it a fair trial as long as he will let me. Cullingworth is a fellow who likes to have nothing but inferiors and dependants round him. Now, I like to stand on my own legs, and think with my own mind. If he'll let ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... the Germans still gained ground, but they gained ground because the French withdrew from positions made untenable through the original German advance at other points. They consolidated their line, organized their new front. Ten days after the attack had begun it had ceased to be a question of Verdun, just as in a shorter time the French had realized last September that they could not break the German ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... fifteenth century, which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which probably no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made, it must be on an hypothesis not very untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not record." "Unpublished MSS. by Leonardo contain discoveries and anticipations of discoveries," says Mr. Hallam, "within the compass of a few pages, so as to strike us with ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Withers. This was thirteen miles south of Chillicothe (now Westfall). Here they were met, early on the 24th, by a messenger from his lordship, ordering them to halt, as a treaty was nearly concluded at Camp Charlotte. But Lewis's army had been fired on that morning, and the place was untenable for a camp in a hostile country, so he concluded to seek better ground. A few hours later another messenger came, again peremptorily ordering a halt, as the Shawnees had practically come to terms. Lewis now concluded to join the northern division in force, at Camp Charlotte, not liking to have ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... religion, at least of such religions as promise salvation, and the explanation of evil is the chief problem of all religions and philosophies, and the problem which they all alike are conspicuously unsuccessful in solving. I can assign no reason for rejecting as untenable the idea that the ultimate reality may be a duality—a good and an evil spirit—or even a plurality[73], but still it is unthinkable for me and I believe for most minds. If there are two ultimate beings, either they must be complementary and necessary one to the other, in which ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot |
