"Indefensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our own Indian policy.... Wounded and disabled in our Indian wars... I know all about them and how indefensible ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... would put himself to no expense in defending the seat. Of course he, Sir Thomas, could do the same. He believed that it might be practicable for him to acknowledge the justice of the petition, to declare his belief that his own agents had betrayed him, and to acknowledge that his seat was indefensible. But, as he thought of it, he found that he was actually ignorant of the law in the matter. That he would make no such bargain as that suggested to him by Mr. Trigger,—of so much he thought that he was sure. At any rate he would do nothing that he himself knew to be dishonourable. He must ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... will be admitted; but it will be urged that the hampering and limiting with which we have been dealing is not merely legitimate but inevitable, whereas the hampering and limiting—should such there be—on the part of the Church is wholly illegitimate and indefensible. ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... law, logic or demand of justice could change Judge Hunt's will. We were convicted before we had a hearing and the trial was a mere farce." Some time afterwards Judge Selden wrote her: "I regard the ruling of the judge, and also his refusal to submit the case to the jury, as utterly indefensible." Scarcely a newspaper in the country sustained Judge Hunt's action. The Canandaigua Times thus expressed the general sentiment in an editorial, soon after ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... arrangements. But we may perhaps take courage from history to hope that generations will come, to whom our system of distributing among a few the privileges and delights that are procured by the toil of the many, will seem just as wasteful, as morally hideous, and as scientifically indefensible, as that older system which impoverished and depopulated empires, in order that a despot or a caste might have no least wish ungratified, for which the lives or the hard-won ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... big manufacturers talk about control of production by the farmer as an indefensible "economy of scarcity." And yet these same manufacturers never hesitate to shut down their own huge plants, throw men out of work, and cut down the purchasing power of whole communities whenever they think that they must adjust their ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... from making any insurrectionary movement. Alvarado himself declared that he had information that the Mexicans intended to rise, but he gave no proofs, whatever, to justify his suspicions. The affair, indeed, seems to have been utterly indefensible, and must ever remain a foul ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... certain point, more particularly because the clergy generally were ready to be released from the financial exactions of the Holy See, as well as from its practical exercise of patronage. Parliament opened an anti-clerical campaign, but its measures at first were confined to dealing with almost indefensible and obvious abuses. Bishop Fisher recognised the familiar thin end of the wedge, and charged the Commons with desiring "the goods, not the good" of the Church; but the opposition was slender. In the six weeks of the first session, there were passed, the Probate and Mortuaries ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... alien people, and likely to be a menace in the future to the country south of the St. Lawrence. The capture of Chambly and St. John's—the keys of Canada, by way of Lake Champlain—was immediately followed by the surrender of Montreal, which was quite indefensible, and the flight of Carleton to Quebec, where he wisely decided to make a stand against the invaders. At this time there were not one thousand regular troops in the country, and Carleton's endeavour to obtain reinforcements from Boston had failed in consequence of the timidity of ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... ideal, that he had wounded her sorely. What did she expect of him? Not any of the things which the ignorant or vulgar bystander expected of him—that he was certain. But still her claim had wearied him; and he had brushed it aside. His sulkiness about the book had been odious, indefensible. And yet—perhaps from another point of view—it had not been a bad thing for either of them. It had broken through habits which had become, surely, an embarrassment ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Raphael's cartoons, one remarks that perhaps a third of those who stray through and look at all those fine efforts, titter. If one searches in the magazines of a little while ago, one finds in the angry and resentful reception of the Pre-Raphaelites another instance of the absolutely indefensible nature of many of the most beautiful propositions. And as a still more striking and remarkable case, take the onslaught made by Ruskin upon the works of Whistler. You will remember that a libel action ensued and that these pictures were gravely reasoned about by ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... where every progressive ought to take his stand, on the proposition that private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable. And there I will fight my battle. And I know how to fight it. Everybody who has even read the newspapers knows the means by which these men built up their power and created these monopolies. ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... its forces of the upper waters of the Mississippi on Island Number 10 near New Madrid. The work of putting this little Gibraltar in a state of perfect defense had been rushed with all possible haste. New Madrid had been found indefensible ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... much sorrow do we learn that the principle of the lawfulness of slavery has been defended by some who are ministers of Christ, that so large a proportion of that body in America, are exerting their influence in favor of the continuance of so indefensible and monstrous a system—and that these emotions of sorrow are especially occasioned with reference to our ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... was Lascelles, the other name in the case, to the best of my recollection. But had she any right to bear it? And even supposing they had married, what had happened to the second husband? Widow or no widow, second marriage or no second marriage, defensible or indefensible, was this the right friend for a lad still fresh from Eton, the only son of his mother, who had sent me in secret to ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... different origin, and cannot intrinsically be justified in the same way; and if all wealth consisted of such commodities as are due to the efforts of man, and to the man-made machinery which assists him, all interest would be really, as it is said to be by some, indefensible. But, he continues, since interest on capital such as machinery is not the whole of the interest paid in the modern world, but is only a minor part of it, and since in the modern world all forms of capital are interchangeable, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... and instinctively on the side of the woman. She had thrown herself, therefore, with ardour into the defence of Mrs. Verrier; and for her it was not the wife's desertion, but the husband's suicide which had been the cruel and indefensible thing. All these various traits and liberalisms had made her very dear ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it from drawings, is so like Byzantine sculpture, that I cannot help sometimes suspecting the original conjecture of the French antiquarians, that it was a work of the middle ages, to be not altogether indefensible. By far the best among the sculptures at Venice are those consisting of groups thus arranged; the first figure in Plate XI. is one of those used on St. Mark's, and, with its chain of wreathen work round it, is very characteristic ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Commoner." During his recess from office he occupied himself in literary labors and as a critical commentator upon the foreign policy of Disraeli, which plunged the country into a Zulu war which Gladstone denounced as "one of the most monstrous and indefensible in our history," and an Afghan war which he described as ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... support. On this point, too, therefore, the President found himself constrained to give way. And only did he abandon his humanitarian intentions and his strongest arguments to be lightly brushed aside, he actually recoiled so far into the camp of his opponents that he gave his approval to an indefensible clause in the Treaty which would have handed over to France the German population of the Saar as the equivalent of a certain sum in gold. Coming from the world-reformer who, a short time before, had hurled the thunderbolts of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... political events which affect the sources of power, by changing dynasties or revolutionizing governments. The claim of the supreme ruler de facto may be a bad one; he may owe his power to some act of great political injustice—to an iniquitous war—to an indefensible revolution—to a foul conspiracy; but the flaw in his title cannot be regarded as weakening in the least the claim of the people under him to the administration of justice among them as the ordinance of God. The right of the honest ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... this day. But that other man's name, inquire as you please, you shall not hear; for the Highlander values a secret for itself and for the congenial exercise of keeping it I might go on for long to justify one point and own another indefensible; it is more honest to confess at once how little I am touched by the desire of accuracy. This is no furniture for the scholar's library, but a book for the winter evening school-room when the tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honest Alan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the measure, was subsequently eaten up by himself in cross-examination towards the close of his evidence given before the Currency Committee. But it is of course the rule, to which there are few exceptions, that those who are engaged in the unfortunate business of bolstering up an indefensible case, invariably let out something which is absolutely destructive to the cause they are advocating; and we find another instance of this at p. 191, Appendix I. of the "Report of the Currency Committee." And if Mr. Mackay has ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... Parliamentary government possible. At present the majority of Parliament obey certain leaders; what those leaders propose they support, what those leaders reject they reject. An old Secretary of the Treasury used to say, "This is a bad case, an indefensible case. We must apply our majority to this question." That secretary lived fifty years ago, before the Reform Bill, when majorities were very blind, and very "applicable". Nowadays, the power of leaders over their followers is strictly and wisely limited: ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... results very discouraging. Nor need we wonder at this. We know, each of us, but too well, how little argument avails in theological discussion; how often it produces the very opposite result of what we expected; confirming rather than shaking opinions no less erroneous, no less indefensible, than many articles of the Mohammedan or ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... guardian or executor, or to inherit a legacy, and even liability to a pecuniary penalty of 500l.! Of course, such ridiculous penalties were in most cases suspended, but the law which imposed them still disgraced the statute-book, and was acknowledged by all unprejudiced persons to be indefensible. Besides, the most Holy Sacrament of the Christian Church was habitually reduced to a mere civil form imposed by Act of Parliament upon persons who either derided its solemn meaning or might be spiritually unfit ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... there, definitely raised the standard of revolt against the new Land Act. Nothing could be said against his action if he had come out from the Party and fulminated against its authority, but to remain a member of the Party and then to indict its conduct of the nation's business was, to put it mildly, indefensible. He denounced the new spirit of conciliation that had been so fast gaining ground, attacked the landlords, who had proved themselves friendly to a settlement, in rather ferocious language, and spoke in violent terms of those who would "in a moment of weakness mortgage ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... Yet it has been suggested, though unsuccessfully, that honesty is not a necessary ingredient in the defence of "fair comment." It was argued that a criticism, defensible if written by an honest critic, could not be indefensible because written by one whose motive was malicious—in other words, that the matter was objective, not subjective. Certainly, at first sight, it seems strange that A can say with impunity that Smith's book is dull ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... less respectfully of human nature. Unless, indeed, it be true, as I have heard it main- tained, that in the Middle Ages every one did go mad, - every one was mad. The theory that this was a period of general insanity is not altogether indefensible. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... substrate presents itself, owing to error, in the form of a knowing subject, just as mother o' pearl appears as silver; (consciousness itself being viewed as a real substrate of an erroneous imputation), because an erroneous imputation cannot take place apart from a substrate. But this theory is indefensible. If things were as you describe them, the conscious 'I' would be cognised as co-ordinate with the state of consciousness 'I am consciousness,' just as the shining thing presenting itself to our eyes is judged ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... the answer was still more artless. His brother lawyers replied that the charge was easily to be deduced from the sentence, because a man who breaks up the foundation of the State makes the country indefensible, and therefore invites the enemy to invade it. And this Barneveld had done, who had turned the Union, religion, alliances, and finances ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... strangers out of your bedroom he describes as Brotherhood; and the necessity for climbing twenty-three flights of cold stone stairs, I dare say he calls Effort. The net result of their philanthropic adventure is this: that one has come to defending indefensible slums and still more indefensible slum-landlords, while the other has come to treating as divine the sheds and pipes which he only meant as desperate. Gudge is now a corrupt and apoplectic old ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... the fort stands. It needs no technical knowledge to see, that to defend such a place, the rim of the cup must be held. But in the Malakand, the bottom of the cup is too small to contain the necessary garrison. The whole position is therefore, from the military point of view, bad and indefensible. In the revised and improved scheme of defence, arrangements have been made, to command the available approaches, and to block such as cannot be commanded with barbed wire entanglements and other obstructions; and by a judicious system of works much ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... wise man when he moved the capital of Israel from Shechem, an indefensible site, commanded by overhanging mountains and approached by two easy vales, to Shomron, the "watch-hill" which stands in the centre of the broad Vale ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... of the Transvaal Government, although (as will presently appear) it had some measure of legal strength, was, if regarded from the point of view of actual facts, logically indefensible and materially dangerous. It was not, indeed, the fault of that Government that the richest goldfield in the world had been discovered in its territory, nor would it have been possible for the Boers, whatever they might have ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... measure and in terms he could understand. If indeed the difference had been pushed further the girl would have kept the field, for she had the advantage of being able to motive her attitude, to which Mr. Dosson could have opposed but an indefensible, in fact an inarticulate, laxity. She had touched on her deepest conviction in saying to Francie that the correspondent of the Reverberator had played them that trick on purpose to get them into such trouble with the Proberts that he might see his own hopes bloom again in the heat of their disaster. ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... is not long since a great majority of our free population, servile to the opinions of those whose opinions they had been accustomed to follow, would have admitted slavery to be a great evil, unjust and indefensible in principle, and only to be vindicated by the stern necessity which was imposed upon us. Thus stimulated by every motive and passion which ordinarily actuate human beings—not as to a criminal enterprise, but as to something generous and heroic—what has been the result? A few imbecile and uncombined ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Lords, when I remember what race of men it was that created and defended Plevna, I must confess my confidence that, if the cause be a good one, they will not easily find that the frontier of the Balkans is indefensible. But it is said that although the Congress has furnished—and it pretended to furnish nothing more—a competent military frontier to Turkey, the disposition was so ill managed, that, at the same time, it failed to secure ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... think my action is almost indefensible. I'm admitting that. But I have very good reasons for what I am doing. (He turns to CROSBY.) Roscoe, I've been your close friend for a great many years. You've trusted me and believed in me. I'm going to ask you to wait. After all, twenty-four ...
— The Thirteenth Chair • Bayard Veiller
... even resort to blandishments of costume to give their parts a special emphasis. Our leading ladies are more richly clad than the minor members of their companies. Even the great Mansfield resorted in his performance of Brutus to the indefensible expedient of changing his costume act by act and dressing always in exquisite and subtle colors, while the other Romans, Cassius included, wore the same togas of unaffected white throughout the play. This was ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... nation to work through the inevitable phases that awaited it. In 1834, England, though frightened at the reality of Reform, still adhered to its phrases; it was inclined, as practical England, to maintain existing institutions; but, as theoretical England, it was suspicious that they were indefensible. ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... ignore 1912 but would avoid also the explosive conflicts of 1916. The speaker skilfully selected the spoils system in diplomatic appointments. "Deserving Democrats" was a discrediting phrase, and Mr. Hughes at once evokes it. The record being indefensible, there is no hesitation in the vigor of the attack. Logically it was an ideal introduction ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... should be recited as running on without pause, and the rhyme occurring in their midst should be like a phonetic accident, merely satisfying the prescribed form. But his phonetic rhymes are often indefensible on his own principle. The rhyme to communion in 'The Bugler' is hideous, and the suspicion that the poet thought it ingenious is appalling: eternal, in 'The Eurydice', does not correspond with burn all, and in 'Felix Randal' and some ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... mistake, Wolff," Seaman declared angrily. "I am your superior in the Service, and your attitude towards me is indefensible." ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Gloucester" schooner was taken, but the "Prince Regent" had gone to Kingston three days before; the weather which drove Chauncey back had enabled her to join her fleet as soon as released by the ice. By her escape the blow lost most of its effect; for York itself was indefensible, and was taken again without difficulty in the following July. A 30-gun vessel approaching completion was found on the stocks and burned, and a large quantity of military and naval stores were either destroyed or brought ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... of War Profits. We know, of course, what happens to those profits at present. Half is taken by the State: half passes to the firms who are getting "rich quick" out of its necessities. In theory, it is an anomalous arrangement, indefensible in logic, and opposed to every canon alike of justice and of taxation. In practice it works out in the way we have indicated: that certain privileged firms and individuals are amassing huge fortunes out of the gravest crisis through ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... shape, when he opened a communication, as appeared afterwards, with the heads of the Irish party, and announced the system on which he intended to govern the country. In any case, such a proceeding would have been inexpedient and indefensible, its inevitable effect being to commit the policy of the Administration beforehand, to deprive it at once of all dignity and independence, and to revive those heart-burnings and dissensions which had already so nearly endangered the connection ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... ripening or ripened harvest—whereas it is applied here to Autumn, as a figure who "comes jovial on." This is not obscurity—or indistinctness—which, as we have said before, is often a great beauty in Impersonation; but it is an inconsistency and a contradiction—and therefore indefensible on any ground ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... and gravely point out that the habit of striking bears as large as a horse with a school-slate was equally dangerous to the slate (which was also the property of Tuolumne County) and to the striker; and that the verb "to swot" and the noun substantive "snoot" were likewise indefensible, and not to be tolerated. Thus admonished Jimmy Snyder, albeit unshaken in his faith in his own ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... position to offer any effectual resistance. The fort was weak and indefensible. The English inhabitants consisted only of a hundred civilians, and two hundred soldiers. Governor Morse endeavoured to obtain, from the nawab, the protection which he had before granted to Dupleix, a demand which the nawab ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... in the House, he showed an irritation which would have carried him to gross lengths, if Fox and Sheridan had not by main force pulled him down into his seat by the tails of his coat. The restoration of the clerks was an indefensible error of judgment, and its indiscretion was heightened by the kind of defence which Burke tried to set up. When we wonder at Burke's exclusion from great offices, this case of Powell and ...
— Burke • John Morley
... and every point in the department where troops were stationed, were called into the field, and the concentration of all at Corinth, in Northern Mississippi, was arranged. Here he would have every thing massed and in hand, and in his rear would be no danger, nor indefensible line by which danger could menace him. His adversaries on the contrary would be separated from each other; rivers and all the perils of a hostile population would be between them and safety, if they were defeated or forced ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... admiration for the memory of their master, but also a recollection of their own wrongs, made these men eloquent eulogists. Had Socrates appeared to the Athenians as he appears to us, it is not consistent with human proceedings that they should have acted in so barbarous and totally indefensible ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... whether the verdict would not be hostile to the Church. No doubt need be entertained as to the result of such an appeal in the case of the House of Lords. The constitution of the House as an assembly of hereditary legislators is admitted to be indefensible. Its theoretic prerogatives are tolerated only on the understanding that they shall never be exerted. It exists by virtue of habit and indifference, aided by a conviction of its powerlessness. As a decorative institution there is no great eagerness to pull it down, but whenever the House forgets ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Major Anderson of the Third Maryland regiment, who had collected a number of fugitives not far from the field of battle, proceeded toward Charlotte by easy marches in order to give stragglers time to join him. But as Charlotte was utterly indefensible and as no barrier lay between it and the victorious enemy Gates retreated to Salisbury and sent Colonel Williams, accompanied by another officer, on the road leading to Camden to gain information of the movements of Cornwallis, and to direct such ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... born and bred in the United States ought to be ashamed to entertain such a notion for a moment. If we look back through the long and weary years of our civil war, we shall find that mistakes were made on the side of the arbitrary exercise of power, from which a few individuals suffered; but indefensible as some of these were, according to the strict letter of the law, we can now see their real harmlessness to the public as clearly as we see the error of those who committed them. At no time have our liberties been in less peril than when the President ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... of the independence of Cuba being, in my opinion, impracticable and indefensible, the question which next presents itself is that of the recognition of belligerent rights in the parties to the contest. In a former message to Congress I had occasion to consider this question, and reached the conclusion that the conflict in Cuba, dreadful and devastating ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 59, December 23, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... mobility the infallible means of circumventing points of resistance. This conception, which restricts the functions of Cavalry within their narrowest limits, seems to me entirely untenable. It is essentially indefensible when it is a matter of gaining time or of carrying a given position, such as a defensible post on the lines of communication, a convoy marching under escort, the destruction of a defended railway, or in any similar undertaking. It will be impossible ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... traffic in this article, and repudiated all sympathy and participation in it. The various foreign publications, whether they received their inspirations from Mr. Gutzlaff or not matters little, differed on most points, but were agreed on this, that the trade in opium was morally indefensible, and that we were bound, not only by our own interests, but in virtue of the common obligations of humanity, to cease to hold all connection with it. Those who had surrendered their stores of opium at the request of Captain Elliot held that their claim for compensation was valid, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... may be allowed indefensible, which such a patron defends so weakly. What can be more chimerical than to imagine that men would lay down their arms, and forsake their standards, because there are twenty more in a company than have formerly ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... journalist was perfect, and I firmly believe this, it must be confessed that occasionally he indulged in paradoxes which cannot be defended. I will not conceal the fact that these occasional kickings over the traces personally delighted me as a young man, and still delight me, but, all the same, they are indefensible from the point of view of the serious man—that dreadful person, the vir pietate gravis. For instance, it was always said by some of his friends, and I think with truth, for I have not dared to verify the point, that he began his leader recording the Austrian ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... department of this Government has hitherto uniformly held, as it now holds, that naturalization in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States absolves the recipient from his native allegiance. The courts of Great Britain hold that allegiance to the British Crown is indefensible, and is not absolved by our laws of naturalization. British judges cite courts and law authorities of the United States in support of that theory against the position held by the executive authority of the United States. This ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... at once in the guest-book of the Royal Garden Inn: 'Miss Celia Van Tyck, Beverly, Mass., U.S.A. Miss Katharine Schuyler, New York, U.S.A.' I concluded to stay over another train, ordered dinner, and took an altogether indefensible and inconsistent pleasure in writing 'John Quincy Copley, Cambridge, Mass.,' directly beneath ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... that we have but a slip-slop way of christening our public buildings. When a man tells us that he called on a friend at the Horse Guards, or looked in at the Navy Pay, or dropped a ticket at the Woods and Forests, we put up with the accustomed sounds, though they are in themselves, perhaps, indefensible. The 'Board of Commissioners for Regulating Weights and Measures', and the 'Office of the Board of Commissioners for Regulating Weights and Measures', are very long phrases; and as, in the course of this tale, frequent mention will ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... self-restraint, balance of judgement, and practical sagacity. The sole important issue was the encouraging of the peace party at Paris, with a view to the revocation of the aggressive decrees of the Convention. In private, Fox had admitted that they were wholly indefensible; and yet, in order to snatch an oratorical triumph, he fired off a diatribe which could not but stiffen the necks of the French Jacobins. At such a crisis the true statesman merges the partisan in the patriot and says not a word to weaken his ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... late posthumous Critical Notes upon all the other Hebrew books of the Old Testament, gives none upon the Canticles, or upon Esther, and seems thereby to give up this book, as well as he gives up the Canticles, as indefensible; I shall venture to say, that almost all the objections against this Book of Esther are gone at once, if, as we certainly ought to do, and as Dean Prideaux has justly done, we place this history under Artsxerxes Longimanus, as do both the Septuagint interpretation and Josephus. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... did not defend his conduct, supposing him guilty," said Juliet, with quiet dignity; "for if that be really the case such conduct is indefensible. I only hoped ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... solidarity of wholly distinct things, attacked and contested in the interest of religion, not only the anti-religious conclusions of Darwinian philosophers, but also Darwinism as a merely scientific theory, and rendered the contrast as strong as possible by adhering to that above censured, unmotived, indefensible, and ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... severity and bluntness, not hitherto used in American communications with the belligerents, marked this note of protest to Austria-Hungary. Demands were made for a denunciation of the submarine commander's act as "illegal and indefensible," for his punishment, and for reparation by the payment of indemnity for the loss of American lives. The United States left an avenue open through which Austria-Hungary could find an acceptable excuse. It preferred to believe that the submarine commander acted contrary to instructions ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... far from the Baron's house; but not to arrive at her grandmother's till breakfast-time next morning. Who would suspect an intercalated experience of twelve hours with the Baron at a ball? That this piece of deception was indefensible she afterwards owned readily enough; but she did not stop to ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... said the prophet Isaias. And if the Roman Empire had not existed by right, Tiberius Caesar, whose vicar was Pontius Pilate, would not have had jurisdiction over all mankind." To us both the argument and its conclusion are wholly indefensible. It seems indeed a mockery and a blasphemy to attribute to such a monster as Tiberius Caesar glory because Christ was crucified in his reign. Dante's words, however, as spoken by Justinian, leave no room for doubt that the poet was convinced that all the ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... of a joke led him into indefensible puns and suchlike fooleries (though Mgr. Ronald Knox tells me he is prepared to defend all of G.K.'s puns), I think nearly all his paradoxes were either the startling expression of an entirely neglected truth, or the startling ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... as any point can be fixed for the matter, he enters for the first time on the most valuable of all his labours—the defence of the indefensible. It may be noticed that Browning was not in the least content with the fact that certain human frailties had always lain more or less under an implied indulgence; that all human sentiment had agreed that a profligate might be generous, or that a ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... but the rights upon which he took his stand were those exercised by his predecessors. The uncompromising attitude of his opponents and their humiliation of him made it a life-long struggle between them. Henry was no saint; but his opponents' tactics were indefensible. Under less adverse circumstances he might have proved a successful ruler. But he was the victim of a party which deliberately subordinated means to ends in pursuit of an ideal which Henry could scarcely be expected to understand ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... wondering what charm Victory had found in such a man as Snider, and why I insisted upon finding excuses for her and trying to defend her indefensible act. She was nothing to me. Aside from the natural gratitude I felt for her since she had saved my life, I owed her nothing. She was a half-naked little savage—I, a gentleman, and an officer in the world's ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... all hearts must be filled by that uncontrollable and yet vague longing, so characteristic of the great period of fantasy. The suggestion that the wealth of the East, exciting the greed of the western nations, led to the Crusades, is an absolutely indefensible idea. Doubtless, rumours of the fabulous treasure of the Orient had stirred the imagination of Europe, appealing far less, however, to the cupidity of the individual than to his desire for something ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... existence of God, on the authority of my father; and defended my right to my atheism, on the authority of the Constitution. I considered myself absolutely, eternally, delightfully emancipated from the yoke of indefensible superstitions. I was wild with indignation and pity when I remembered how my poor brother had been cruelly tormented because he did not want to sit in heder and learn what was after all false or useless. I knew ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... drive over the brigadier's prostrate form. In the strict letter of the military law which, in so many cases, subordinates individual initiative and sound judgment, the action taken by the brigadier was indefensible. But as a matter of fact the mutiny was not so terrible as it at first appears. Setting aside the common-sense issue which ought to guide officers in senior commands when accepting orders from a superior, it should be remembered that the brigadier had only been ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... as he alleged, to all the laws of civilized warfare, and defying him to a combat in the open field. Marion replied, that the practice of the British in burning the houses of all who would not submit and join them, was more indefensible than that of shooting pickets, and that as long as they persisted in the one he would persevere in the other. That as to his defiance, he considered it that of a man in desperate circumstances; but ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... (in Mark Twain) the sense of contrast which is the mountain of humour or is said to be so." However that may be, Mark Twain was irresistibly driven to the conclusion, Southern born though he was, that slavery was unjust, inhuman, and indefensible. The advanced thinkers in the South had reached this conclusion long before the beginning of the Civil War, and many Southern men had actually devised freedom to their slaves in their wills. The slaves were treated humanely, their material wants were cared for ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... plays. Nor does the text of The Merchant of Venice demand any assembly of Venetian townsfolk, however picturesquely attired, sporting or chaffering with one another on the Rialto, when Shylock enters to ponder Antonio's request for a loan. An interpolated tableau is indefensible, and "though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve." In Antony and Cleopatra the pageant of Cleopatra's voyage up the river Cydnus to meet her lover Antony should have no ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... wounded Doyle as to force him into sacrificing lucrative employment, and condemning him in the result to a life of toil. But for once in his career Doyle was guilty of behaviour which, if not inexcusable in the circumstances, was certainly indefensible. He left the paper in the lurch. His letter of resignation was sent in on November 27th, he having allowed the Editor to think that the blocks for the Almanac, already overdue, had all been completed; and when it was ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... ignorant of Gaelic—it would have helped them if they had known; and he admits that "MacPherson's subsequent conduct, in postponing from time to time the publication, when urged to it by friends who had liberally furnished him with means for the purpose . . . is indefensible." In 1773 and 1775, e.g., Dr. Johnson was calling loudly for the production of the manuscripts. "The state of the question," he wrote to Boswell, February 7, 1775, "is this. He and Dr. Blair, whom I consider as deceived, say that he copied the poem from old manuscripts. His copies, if he had ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... defects of vision. When he deals with woman he is no longer scrupulously conscientious. We begin to have our suspicions of his uprightness when we find him in his Subjection of Women laying it down as a fundamental postulate that the subjection of woman to man is always morally indefensible. For no upright mind can fail to see that the woman who lives in a condition of financial dependence upon man has no moral claim to unrestricted liberty. The suspicion of Mill's honesty which is thus awakened is confirmed by further critical reading of his treatise. ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... maintain that indefensible claim she is driven to aggression and intrigue in every quarter of the globe; to setting otherwise friendly peoples by the ears; to forming "alliances" and ententes, to dissolving friendships, the aim always being the old ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... which has always seemed to me much to be condemned, and that is the habit of changing the end of a story, for fear of alarming the child. This is quite indefensible. In doing this we are tampering with folklore and confusing stages ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... Hippolito, that the same man shall be alternately governed by the meanest and most exalted motives: that he shall now appear an essence celestial and divine, and now debase himself by a conduct the most indefensible and unworthy? But such I am afraid is man. Mixed in all his qualities, and inconsistent in all his purposes. The most virtuous and most venerable of us all are too often guilty of things weak, sordid, and disgraceful. And it is to be hoped on the other hand, that there ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... scheme ended here he would not have exceeded the bounds of what is regarded as a fair method of deceiving an enemy, but his subsequent proceedings were absolutely indefensible, and are, indeed, almost incredible on the part of the man who in some respects carried the point of honor almost to an extreme. His notion, no doubt, was to paralyze the action of the enemy by exciting suspicions of treachery among their leaders, but the means which he took ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... miles east of Strasburg, was committed to the charge of Colonel Kenly, of the 1st Maryland Regiment in the Federal service, and 1000 rifles and 2 guns were placed at his disposal. The post itself was indefensible. To the west and south-west, about three miles distant, stand the green peaks of the Massanuttons, while to the east the lofty spurs of the Blue Ridge look down into the village streets. A mile and a half ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... Rembrandt. I bought the picture because, as you say, the situation was desperate, and I couldn't raise a thousand myself. What I did was of course indefensible; but the money shall be ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... to raise her blockade, which had been called illegal and indefensible even by President Wilson and Secretary Lansing," said the Chancellor. "Worse than that, she had intensified it. Worse than all, she had rejected Germany's 'peace' offers and proclaimed her war objects, which aimed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... would defend the practices which lately disgraced the veterinary schools of France, or in past years the theatre of Magendie.[1] Professor Sharpey, in his address to the British Medical Association, has accurately drawn the required limits, fully obtained and confirmed, ITS REPETITION IS INDEFENSIBLE; and 'as the art of operating may be learned equally on the dead as on the living body, operations on the latter for the purpose of surgical instruction are reprehensible ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... matters which concern the buyer of art and perplex the producer, he pours forth his jeremiads upon the age and its art, subjecting them to indefensible comparisons with the fifteenth century and deploring the materialism ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... of coldness could check Miss Joan's propensity for belittling her benefactress. And I remember that once she had been tittle-tattling as usual, and had said something more indefensible than usual of her benefactress, when looking up suddenly we found Miss Champion in ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... word in the sense of determined is not only inelegant but indefensible. "I am bound to have it," should be, "I am determined ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... improve his indefensible position. He reformed his centre by the simple expedient of suppressing it. Apia was evacuated. The two flanks, Mulinuu and Matautu, were still held and fortified, Mulinuu (as I have said) to the isthmus, Matautu on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sufficient check against the abuse of this power, it may be asked why is it not deemed a sufficient guard against the passage of an unconstitutional act by Congress. There is, however, a restraint in this last case, which makes the assumed power of a State more indefensible, and which does not exist in the other. There are two appeals from an unconstitutional act passed by Congress—one to the judiciary, the other to the people and the States. There is no appeal from the State decision in theory; and the practical ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... moderation that is remarkable in so young a non-commissioned officer. Sergeant Overton thereby demonstrated his fitness to command men. Private Hinkey's conduct, from start to finish, as testified to by the witnesses, was gross and indefensible. Such conduct in a soldier of the regular Army is nothing short ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... subject here is only by way of leit-motif for a thorough discussion hereafter. The juggling with the parole law, by the Department of Justice and the parole boards, is one of the most indefensible and cruel practical jokes that "the authorities" play upon prisoners. It caused two deaths by slow torture while I was at Atlanta, as shall be shown in the proper place; and there is no reason to suppose that the percentage at other prisons was not as large or larger. The sufferings short ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... My Lord Archbishop of York, in his 'Sermon before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts', thus indignantly describes the then state of parties: 'Parties once had a PRINCIPLE belonging to them, absurd perhaps, and indefensible, but still carrying a notion of DUTY, by which honest minds might ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... without a calm and orderly review of the conditions that underlie the latest exhibition of human folly, shortsightedness, or injustice. The public condemnation of Desroches for consequences that were entirely strange to his one offence, was indefensible on grounds of strict logic. But then men have imagination as well as reason. Imagination is stronger than reason with most of them. Their imagination was touched by the series of disasters that followed Madame Desroches's abandonment of her husband. They admit no plea of remoteness ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... thoroughly logical people in the world, and their excessive development of the logical faculty leads them at times into pitfalls. "Ils ont lesdefauts de leurs qualites." In this country we have found out that systems, absolutely indefensible in theory, at times work admirably well in practice, and give excellent results. No Frenchman would ever admit that anything unjustifiable in theory could possibly succeed in practice—"Ce n'est pas logique," he would object, and there would ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... endeavoured to sweeten advice he knew to be unpalatable, by assurances that the King need not fear his prerogative would be permanently impaired by deference to the representatives of the people. The language is, for the nineteenth century, indefensible. Taken in connexion with the general argument, it resolves itself into a courtly seventeenth century solace to the monarch for an obligatory return ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Congress can refuse in all cases of all sorts of contracts to make good the losses resulting from appreciation in the cost of labor and material. The expenditure that such a policy would entail is incalculable, and the policy itself is, in my judgment, indefensible. The bill at the last session for the relief of this claimant in the case of another vessel constructed by him was, as I have said, carefully put upon the lines I have indicated, and if this claim could have been maintained upon, those ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... imaginativeness to which his dramas more than those of any other composer make appeal. His first conception of the finale of "Tannhauser," for instance, was beautiful, poetical, and reasonable; for the sake of a spectacle he reconstructed it after the original production and plunged it into indefensible confusion and absurdity. ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... have given the impression that poets are beating the air against an abstraction when they are in reality delivering thumping blows upon the body of a personal enemy. And if these generalizations appear indefensible, still more misleading, it may be urged, is an attempt to represent that the poet, when he takes issue with this and that opponent, is answering a challenge hidden away from the unstudious in the tenth book of Plato's Republic. It is doubtful even ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... note in the scale of felicity. Some defects are to be acknowledged, but they sink into insignificance when measured by the magnitude of his achievement. Sudden transitions, elliptical expressions, mixed metaphors, indefensible verbal quibbles, and fantastic conceits at times create an atmosphere of obscurity. The student is perplexed, too, by obsolete words and by some hopelessly corrupt readings. But when the whole of Shakespeare's vast work is scrutinised with due attention, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... As old-fashioned believers in the Bible they had to admit to being thoroughly "strafed" in the argument, yet they had no way out, such as an intelligent understanding of the Bible affords. One at least of them maintained stoutly that nevertheless he was going to stick to the old view, however indefensible. Such men are not free intellectually to follow the movements of religious revival. They are immobilised by the ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... been wholly justifiable; and, conversely, the Northern States, in forcibly preventing secession and compelling the inhabitants of the States composing the Confederacy to remain under the authority of the Federal Government, would have perpetrated a great and indefensible wrong against the people of the South by depriving them of a right to which they were by nature entitled. This is the logic of the application of the principle of "self-determination" to the political rights at issue in the American ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... Great Powers, which provided Belgium with the strongest and most unequivocal guarantees respecting her territorial integrity. Provided these guarantees were observed faithfully, the closing of the Scheldt by Holland in time of war, the critical situation on the Eastern frontier created by the indefensible cul-de-sac of Dutch Limburg, and the supremacy in Luxemburg of a foreign Power, did not seriously jeopardize the country's security. The treaties of 1839 were considered as forming a whole, the moral safeguard of guaranteed neutrality ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... good judgment and the dramatic habit of things altogether excluded the simple physics of Democritus. Indeed, as things then stood, Democritus had no right to his simplicity, except that divine right which comes of inspiration. His was an indefensible faith in a single radical insight, which happened nevertheless to be true. To justify that insight forensically it would have been necessary to change the range of human vision, making it telescopic in one region and ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana |
