"Insuperable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was made clear to her that she had never been, and never would be, in such humour; that in just this circumstance resided all her insuperable dissociation from these people of light-hearted lives; that this was why she was and forever must remain, however long and intimate her life among them, an outsider; because what she needed and demanded, the blind and inarticulate impulse which had made her aspire to their society, was not ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... after all is something compound, comprising a cognitive, logical, or rational element together with an affective, biotic, sentimental, and strictly irrational element, is presented to us under the form of knowledge. And hence the insuperable difficulty of separating it from some dogma or other. Pure faith, free from dogmas, about which I wrote a great deal years ago, is a phantasm. Neither is the difficulty overcome by inventing the theory of faith in faith itself. Faith needs a ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... there were already the delicate relations of a girl who did not know that she was a woman and a man who knew she was beautiful and worthy. He was a man vigilant over himself, and the poverty and menial estate of Joyce Basil were already insuperable obstacles to marrying her, but still he was attracted by her insensibility that he could ever have regarded her in the light of marriage. "Who was her father, the Judge?" he used to reflect. The Judge was a favorite topic with Mrs. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... reader, who sometimes wants attention, and sometimes penetration; whose understanding is often obstructed by prejudice, and often dissipated by remissness; who comes sometimes to a new study, unfurnished with knowledge previously necessary; and finds difficulties insuperable, for want of ardour sufficient ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... creatures, self-denial, meekness, humility, obedience, and piety, in which it was founded. We find so little change in our souls by our devotions, because we neglect the practice of self-denial and mortification, live wedded to the world, and slaves to our senses and to self-love, which is an insuperable obstacle to this principal effect of holy prayer. Cuthman, after the death of his father, employed his whole fortune and all that he gained by the labor of his hands, in supporting his decrepit mother: and afterwards was not ashamed to beg for her subsistence. To furnish ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... their task to weld the assemblage of men, armed and maintained by the State, into an harmonious whole, skilled in technique and imbued with a psychological and mental attitude which will not admit that any obstacle is insuperable. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... old South flushed in every vein of both. They were of an old aristocracy, with but two ambitions, the military and the political, and while they prayed for complete success in the end, they wanted another great triumph on the field of battle. Gettysburg, that insuperable bar, was behind them, casting its gloomy memory over the year between; but this might take its place, atoning for it, wiping it out. But there was doubt and fear in the heart of each; this was a new general that the North had, of a different kind from the old—one who did not turn back ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... of a descent in a diving-bell—hinting, too, that the mystery as to results was only for local consumption. Nevertheless, the charm of Memmert as the place we had traced Grimm to, and as the only tangible clue we had obtained, was still very great. The really cogent objection was the insuperable difficulty, known and watched as we were, of learning its significance. If there was anything important to see there we should never be allowed to see it, while by trying and failing we risked everything. It was on this point that the last of all misunderstandings ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... of snowy alps, although it would appear to wind very much, has few interruptions, and, in most places, is said to be totally insuperable. Several rivers that arise in Thibet pass through among its peaks, but amidst such tremendous precipices, and by such narrow gaps, that these openings are in general totally impracticable. By far the widest is on the Arun, the chief branch of the Kosi, where Maingmo on the west, and Mirgu on the ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... distinction. When in the full tide of his success there was but one thing which preoccupied the mind of the corsair, which was to find a ready market for his spoils and a convenient place in which to rid himself of an embarrassing number of captives. This, however, did not present an insuperable difficulty, as we have already seen in the case of Curtogali, and a similar arrangement was carried out by ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... water, it shall be a good defence to prove that such admixture has not reduced the spirit more than twenty-five degrees under proof for brandy, whisky or rum, or thirty-five under proof for gin.'' Almost insuperable difficulties as to the meaning of "nature, substance and quality'' subsequently arose as regards every conceivable food material. its it was obviously impossible for parliament to define every article, to lay down limits of composition ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... advantage of being so frank and open. Just what I was about to add, upon my honour! I am amazingly attached to Ned—quite doat upon him, indeed—and even if we could afford to throw ourselves away, that very objection would be quite insuperable.—I wish you'd ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... his right rear. * * * We will all act together as one Army, until it is seen what can be done with the Enemy." The rain fell all that night in torrents. The face of the country, where forests, swamps, and quicksands alternated in presenting apparently insuperable obstacles to immediate advance, was very discouraging next morning, but Sheridan's heart was gladdened by orders to seize ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... was read for the first time in the English tongue, in Christ Church Cathedral. As a reward for his energy in introducing the reform in general, and the liturgy in particular, Edward VI. annexed the primacy of all Ireland to the see of Dublin by Act of Parliament. There was one insuperable obstacle, however, in the way of using the English tongue, which was simply that the people did not understand it. Even the descendants of the Anglo-Norman were more familiar with the Celtic dialect, and some attempt was made at this time ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... slaveholding spirit to ascend the tribunal of justice; and it is not difficult to discern, in this inflexible impartiality, the source of the obloquy which that same spirit has not been inactive in attempting to excite against the Supreme Court of the United States itself: and of the insuperable aversion of the votaries of nullification to encounter or abide by the decision of that tribunal, the true and legitimate umpire of constitutional, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... By what means is this self-liberation to be effected— this emancipation from affection and the bondage of being like other people? Is it open to us to choose to be genuine? I see nothing insuperable in the way, except for those who are hopelessly lacking in a sense of humor. It depends upon the range and scale of your observation whether you can strike the balance of genuineness or not. If you live in a small and petty world, ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... I don't know that I should have ever summoned up courage to speak to you, if you had not taken me by surprise. It would be different if I were now as I was ten years ago, but I feared you might think my health an insuperable objection." ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... he obtains a direct intuition of an originant, causative, and independent self-existence. He will have attained in short to the knowledge of a noumenon, and of the only knowable noumenon. The barrier, elsewhere insuperable between the subject and object, is broken down; that which knows becomes identified with that which is; and in the consciousness of will the consciousness also of a self, as something independent of and superior to its ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... to-day as an engineering masterwork and as a most suggestive illustration of man's ingenuity and power to overcome apparently insuperable natural obstacles. It has been in existence and successful operation, I think, since 1681. For a sixth part of its distance it is carried over mountains deeply excavated. It has, I think, ninety-nine locks and viaducts, and as one of its most wonderful features it has an octuple lock, or eight locks ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... the years spoken of by the sacred penman were not ordinary but lunar years. This, though it might bring the age of those venerable men within the recent term of life, introduced, however, another insuperable difficulty, since it made them have children when only ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... the same paper that during the past six years "every important step in connection with the Institute has been taken under the immediate direction of the Prince of Wales. By his energy men have been moved to action and difficulties apparently insuperable have been overcome. The result of years of devoted labour was ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... in consequence, long ago pronounced her to be a positive fright; and Lady Belstone had declared that such hair would prove an insuperable obstacle to her chances of getting ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... minute sack he will produce endless miles of cordage and web which he weaves into the most beautiful and mathematical harmonies. This is a self-contained utility which might be imitated by men with advantage, and that which is done with ease by a spider can scarcely offer insuperable difficulty to the chief of the vertebrates. Of course, each man's production will be more or less guided and limited by his capacity.—Thus, fat men will spin forth cathedrals, opera-houses and railway stations. ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long and heavy as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... eighteen months, which would be only at the rate of four or five miles per day. . . . The author of the present work" ("Universal Geography") "has discoursed this project in conversation with the enlightened and indefatigable traveller, M. Peron, who saw no insuperable obstacle to its probability, except the existence of an immense ocean of sand occupying the whole of the interior of the continent, which to him ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... of Vicksburg is raised, or supplies are thrown in, it will become necessary very shortly to evacuate the place. I see no prospect of the former, and there are many great, if not insuperable obstacles in the way of the latter. You are, therefore, requested to inform me with as little delay as possible, as to the condition of your troops and their ability to make the marches and undergo the fatigues necessary to accomplish ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... determine in individual cases whether manifestations of the sexual life occur during childhood, and if so, which manifestations. But even here we encounter difficulties, which in many instances are insuperable, but in others arise from the incompetence of adults. This is all the more deplorable because the effectiveness of sexual education is minimised through the lack of insight. Just as in the practice of ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... proposal of the Delegate of Great Britain, Mr. FLEMING, I would say that it would be attended with great inconvenience, because it departs from the usages and habits now existing. That, to my mind, is a very great and insuperable objection, and I do not ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... I am inclined to agree with you," said Denzil, and barrister and detective departed, each convinced that the Vrain case was ended, and that in the face of the insuperable obstacles presented by it there was not the slightest chance of avenging the murder of the unfortunate man. The reading of the mystery was beyond mortal powers ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... across it. "It can't be done," were the few words which Sir Raffle Buffle had written across the note from his private secretary. Here was a difficulty which Johnny had not anticipated, and which seemed to be insuperable. Sir Raffle would not have answered him in that strain if he had not been ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... you will, Bill. Now, tell me, son, weren't you tempted to quit when you discovered the almost insuperable obstacles ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne
... miles away. Garth was prompt with his permission. There was a possibility that it was merely a pretext to deprive them of the horse; but his heart leaped at the chance of getting Rina out of the way for an hour. It was all he needed to complete his plan; and it had seemed an insuperable bar. If she turned the horse out, he would come back anyway; for Cy was the town-bred horse, always waiting anxiously about camp for his vanished stable; and Garth had further trained him to stick to the outfit, with judicious ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... be cooled down to any thing like common sense, on one of the fields of ice encountered by Cook in his second voyage; but what a pity it is, that it should not be accompanied by as much of the inventive faculty, as might serve to point out how impossibilities can be performed, and insuperable obstructions removed! It is but justice to this gentleman to say, that his willingness to undertake such a task, was as enthusiastic as his idea of its magnitude and importance. His industry, besides, in acquiring information ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... (though I had driven there with no other thought in my head than to dance well), had replied that I never indulged in that pastime, that I began to blush, and, left solitary among a crowd of strangers, became plunged in my usual insuperable and ever-growing shyness. In fact, I remained silent on that spot almost ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... attraction or repulsion exercised by objects, in spite of the fact that the objects may not appear to be realizable, is not without significance. The hindrance to realization may be an accidental one; it may not be wholly insuperable. The presence of a persistent desire may result in persistent effort, which may ultimately be crowned by success. Or it may show itself as a permanent readiness for effort. Were every frustrated desire at once dismissed from consciousness, the result ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... certain sign of which is that, while her sisters are married and dowered handsomely, she is condemned to be a nun. She has, though quite real piety, no "vocation," and though she allows herself to be coaxed through her novitiate, she at last, in face of almost insuperable difficulties, summons up courage enough to refuse, at the very altar, the final profession. There is, of course, a terrible scandal; she has more black looks in the family than ever, and at last her mother confesses that she is an illegitimate child, and ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... called the forensic conception of the Atonement is often traced to St. Paul, and the greatest of all the ministers of grace is not infrequently spoken of as though he had deliberately laid the most insuperable of stumbling-blocks in the way to the gospel. Most people, of course, are conscious that they do not look well talking down to St. Paul, and occasionally one can detect a note of misgiving in the brave words in which his doctrine is ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... died in 1610, and who is the only foreigner mentioned by name in the dynastic histories of China, was inclined to regard worship of ancestors more as a civil than a religious rite. He probably foresaw, as indeed time has shown, that ancestral worship would prove to be an insuperable obstacle to many inquirers, if they were called upon to discard it once and for all; at the same time, he must have known that an invocation to spirits, coupled with the hope of obtaining some benefit therefrom, is worship pure ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... woman has practically been excluded from the requisite training, and the freedom to place herself in the positions in which they can be pursued, that yet, by force of innate genius and gifts in such directions, she has continually broken through the seemingly insuperable obstacles, and again and again taken her place beside man in those fields of labour; showing thereby not merely aptitude but passionate and determined inclination in those directions. With equal truth, it is often remarked that, when as an independent ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... door. The only obstacle, therefore, that can be imagined in Mr. Abbey's future career is a possible embarrassment as to what to choose. He has hitherto chosen so well, however, that this obstacle will probably not be insuperable. ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... of the fourth degree, in which the displacement and alterations in shape of the bones constitute an insuperable bar to correction, operative treatment may be considered, either resection of a wedge including the talo-navicular joint or forward displacement of the tuberosity ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... bisulphide this defect may be avoided. (2) Another defect is the evil odour of the solvent. This, however, is less with redistilled bisulphide than with the ordinary quality, and with suitable apparatus is not insuperable. (3) Another defect is the volatility and inflammability of carbon bisulphide. On the other hand, bisulphide possesses the very great advantage of being at once heavier than, and insoluble in, water, and it can be, therefore, stored under water very much more safely than can any ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... remainder of the day, felt, as may be imagined, but little at his ease; for—to say nothing of his insuperable repugnance to the discharge of any of his former duties—his uneasiness under the oppressive civilities of Mr. Tag-rag; and the evident disgust towards him entertained by his companions; many most important considerations arising out of recent and coming events—his altering ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... was now checked for long by a constitutional and insuperable aversion to angling with worm. If the gardener, or a pretty girl-cousin of the mature age of fourteen, would put the worm on, I did not "much mind" fishing with it. Dost thou remember, fair lady of the ringlets? Still, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... arguments in support of Home Rule were equally valid for treating Ulster as a unit. There were both economic and administrative difficulties in such a scheme which were sufficiently obvious, though by no means insuperable; but what weighed far more heavily in the minds of the Ulster members was the anticipation that their acceptance of the proposal would probably be represented by enemies as a desertion of all the Irish Loyalists outside the four counties ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... is the insuperable objection that, at the very time when this man was lying sick in Kennington Lane, Mr. Jeffrey was ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... not a large number of slaves, and if the Union is preserved, it would not be a very heavy burden on it to pay their ransom; and to paying it, no patriot or loyal citizen of the free States would raise the slightest objection. The objection therefore urged, though grave, need not be regarded as insuperable; and we think the advantages of the measure, in a military point of view, would be far greater than any disadvantage we have ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... witness that there were grave imperfections in our work. After a heroic battle, fought under insuperable difficulties, and when there was every promise of still more brilliant triumphs, the cause went into an eclipse, from which it emerged only after many ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... prosperous country like Canada, to steady and industrious men like the young Morrisons, the impediments were not insuperable, nor, indeed, did ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... his cowardice she would love her nephew better than ever she had loved him. Bernard also had considered it probable that he might be expected to horsewhip the man who had jilted his cousin, and, as regarded the absolute bodily risk, he would not have felt any insuperable objection to undertake the task. But such a piece of work was disagreeable to him in many ways. He hated the idea of a row at his club. He was most desirous that his cousin's name should not be made public. He ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... been the fashion to regard the language of the Priestly Code as an insuperable barrier to the destructive efforts of tendency criticism. But it is unfortunate that this veto of language is left as destitute of detailed proof, by Delitzsch, Riehm, and Dillmann, as the veto of critical analysis by ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... should put Russia strictly on the defensive, she would be less easily invaded than any large country of Europe. The very extent of her empire, protected by natural barriers at almost every side save where she touches Northeast Europe, would present almost insuperable difficulties to the invader. Napoleon paid dearly for his fortitude in pushing his columns into Moscow. The only conditions under which a repetition of such a feat is conceivable were not likely to be found ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... dozen train-ferries, carrying not only the railway traffic between Great Britain and Ireland, but enabling the true west coast of the United Kingdom to be used for transatlantic traffic, would obliterate that strip of sea which a British minister recently urged as an insuperable objection to a democratic union.[61] To construct them would not be doing as much, relatively, as little Denmark has long since done, by the same means, to unite her sea-divided territory. The creation of a tariff which shall assist not only manufactures, but agriculture ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... his Council, which then consisted of Sir John Clavering, Richard Barwell, and Philip Francis, Esquires, did, on the 18th of August, 1777, declare to the Presidency of Bombay, that "he could see no reason to doubt that the presence of Ragoba at Bombay would continue to be an insuperable bar to the completion of the treaty concluded with the Mahratta government; nor could any sincere cordiality and good understanding be established with them, as long as he should appear to derive encouragement and support from the English." That Sir ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the insuperable difficulty of accomplishing the manual tasks imposed upon me, especially that of sewing on my buttons—how every few seconds the needle would slip through my fingers, till the thread was tangled up in a veritable spider's web, while the button ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... Sherman could not consent to appear in competition with his brother John at Chicago, though he had a funny way of looking on John in West Point style as a "politician," and that was an insuperable difficulty; and that, Mr. Blaine did not seem to have thought of as a serious element in the case, but he realized the force of it. I was anxious to hear more about the correspondence between Blaine ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... fruit to the consumers of Europe, and especially of England and its metropolis. I did not see it, any more than the people to whom I talked. I still thought that for meat and all perishable commodities the distance was an insuperable obstacle, and that, except for live stock from America, or canned meat from Australia, the United Kingdom would continue ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... may be fitted with almost every kind of key-mechanism, including the Boehm, and the degree of perfection and ingenuity attained has removed the all but insuperable difficulties which stood in the way of the original inventors who, not understanding key-work, made many futile attempts to bridge the necessarily great distance between the finger-holes by making the bore serpentine, boring the holes ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... continuance of her quietness without a marriage, and therefore I remit the success to Almighty God."[827] The situation of Elizabeth's servants was, indeed, extremely embarrassing. Their mistress had laid an insuperable obstacle in the way. She did not, indeed, require Anjou to abjure his faith, but her demands virtually involved this. Not only did she refuse to grant the duke, by the articles of marriage, public or even ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... tests operated as a cause, we must allow. And let this be considered as an insuperable argument against those, who contend that there were Christian soldiers in these times, for no Christian could submit to such idolatrous homage; but, if so, no Christian could ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... was listening to the horse-thief's earnest relation of the hardships which he had suffered in the Shelbyville jail, and Joe and Alice were standing face to face, with less than a yard's space between them, but a barrier there as insuperable as ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... English courts, were obliged in many points, and particularly with regard to evidence, to relax very considerably, as the civil and politic government has been obliged to do in several other cases, on account of insuperable difficulties arising from a great diversity of manners, and from what may be considered as a diversity even in the very constitution of their minds,—instances of which your Committee will subjoin in a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in a stronghold which was strong in theory only. For the frozen river formed the easiest possible approach, instead of an insuperable barrier to the enemy. He had an army which was ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... nothing will tend to lift the whole subject of paternity in the popular mind to the plane where it belongs, as will this love and knowledge, when it is bred in the child from his early years. Many difficulties in handling this subject that become insuperable might never even exist if the knowledge of fatherhood, if love and respect for it and for the father as the giver of life, were bred into the boy at an early age. Moreover a certain shyness, which often makes it more difficult for fathers to talk to their ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... no one, least of all to him. But as Mazzini placed those sentiments on second rank to the grand end of Italian unity, so the King, to serve the same end, showed himself superior to prejudices which in most men would have proved insuperable. The fact that Victor Emmanuel opened negotiations with Mazzini, and maintained them, off and on, for years, proves amongst other things, that he knew the exiled patriot better than the world yet knew him. He may have understood ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... while we are on the subject, we may as well state a few facts connected with the foundation and superstructure, which cannot fail to interest all who take pleasure in contemplating man's efforts to overcome almost insuperable difficulties. ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... inconvenience caused by her frequent changes of times and plans was probably not realised by her. Later in life, when she lived so much alone, she did not always see that difficulties which appeared nothing to her might be almost insuperable to other people, and that in houses where there are several members of a family to be considered, no individual can be quite as free to carry out his own plans as a person who is independent of family ties. But when one remembered how splendidly she always responded to any claim ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... Waiter Scott that though many of them sought employment at his works, he could never get any of them to become first-rate workmen. They might be valuable as clerks and book-keepers, but they had an insuperable aversion to toiling long at any point of mechanism, so as to earn the highest wages paid to the workmen.[4] The reason no doubt was, that the working-people of Scotland were then only in course of education as practical mechanics; and now that they have ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... insuperable difficulty in speaking, in answering her. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, the words failed him. He had an instinctive desire to hide his face from those observant eyes, to avoid her questions at all cost. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... assigned lived in England not since, but before, the Glacial period, or in the intergalcial period, see ibid., p. 459. For a very candid statement by perhaps the foremost leader of the theological rear-guard, admitting the insuperable difficulties presented by the Old Testament chronology as regards the Creation and the Deluge, see the Duke of Argyll's Primeval Man, pp. 90-100, and especially pp. 93, 124. For a succinct statement on the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... grand idea of an all-governing independent mind involved difficulties which proved insuperable; because it gave to matter, in the form of chaos, an independent and eternal self-existence, and so introduced a dualism of mind and matter. In the Mind or Intelligence, Anaxagoras included not only life and motion, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... have reposed in us constrain me to remind those with whom I am to cooperate that we can succeed in doing the work which has been especially set before us only by the most sincere, harmonious, and disinterested effort. Even if insuperable obstacles and opposition prevent the consummation of our task, we shall hardly be excused; and if failure can be traced to our fault or neglect we may be sure the people will hold us to a ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... failed to realize her situation? Or was it that tragedy had put on its comic mask, and laughed at death? The truth is simple. Her faith had triumphed over what seemed to be insuperable obstacles; and she was with Philip, for better or for worse. A miracle had been wrought; and miracles are not meaningless, or idle, or without purpose. It was a feeling perhaps unknown to man, who is merely a ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... wealthy. That Leslie was especially so. That when she was of age she would have a vast inheritance. There had been no sign of great wealth or ostentation in their living but if that were so then there was an insuperable wall ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... this case was doubtless rude. He had an insuperable aversion to men of Mr. Baddeley's class,—men who could have no position but for their money, and who yet presumed upon it, as if it were gifts and graces, genius and learning, judgment and art, all in one. He was in the habit of saying that the plutocracy, as he called ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... after a fashion that seems to please no one but the author. But in truth the task of inventing an adequate system for notating the rhythm of prose, and securing a working agreement among prosodists as to a proper terminology, is almost insuperable. Those of us who sat in our youth at the feet of German masters were taught that the distinction between verse and prose was simple: verse was, as the Greeks had called it, "bound speech" and prose was "loosened speech." But a large proportion of the poetry ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... decorator who had got on so surprisingly. In James's younger days, Jordan was an obscure and illiterate nobody. And now he had a motor car, and looked at the tottering James with sardonic contempt, from under his heavy, heavy-lidded dark eyes. He was rather stout, frail in health, but silent and insuperable, was ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... they put forward at this time either inadmissible pretensions, or vague and ambiguous words. It therefore became an object of great importance to negotiate, if possible, a separate pacification with America. At first sight there appeared almost insuperable difficulties in the way of such a scheme. The treaty of alliance of February, 1778, between France and the United States, stipulated in the most positive terms that neither party should conclude a peace or truce with England, unless with the consent ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... who has had any scholastic experience, and has tried to follow the after-history of his pupils, knows that that is not easy, even in external and material affairs, and when the inquiry is concerned with internal convictions and religious influence that difficulty is insuperable. A few specially endowed and devoted educationalists could indeed tell the after-history of a considerable number of their pupils, and ideally all schools ought to have a record of the history of pupils for ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... capital. Now, even supposing that persons so fortunately placed as to be able to fulfill all these conditions should wish to engage in silk reeling, which is in the highest degree improbable, there exists an almost insuperable obstacle to the production of good silk except by an establishment large enough to use the cocoons ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... store in despair. He found himself engaged in what appeared to be an endless chase after a phantom Considine, and the difficulties in his way semed insuperable. Yet how could he go back and tell them all at home that he had failed? What would they think of him? The thought made him miserable; and he determined, if he failed, never to go back to ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... a farm which is just the very thing for me not more than twenty miles from this town, with a cottage on it and a view somewhat like the one you and Ailie described a few minutes ago, though not quite so grand. But there's one great and insuperable objection to my ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... the coast, both in valleys and at altitudes much greater even than 4000 feet, point to the same conclusion.[208] The difficulty, therefore, of altitude and distance from the coast cannot be regarded as insuperable. ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... surface guise of friendliness toward the man whom he believed to be successfully wrecking his home might have appeared insuperable. In point of the actual it was made easy—even a thing of zest—by virtue of a lapse into that moral degeneracy which was no longer sane. The growth of craftiness for the forwarding of a single idea became ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the eventual outcome will be, it is impossible to foresee. The practical difficulties which China has imposed on herself are enormous, and may prove insuperable, but it is evident that the gradual reduction and eventual extinction of the revenue that India has derived from the trade, has been brought a stage nearer, and it is necessary for us to be prepared for whatever ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... by which the Blue Mountains and the other sandstone platforms of this part of Australia are penetrated, and which long offered an insuperable obstacle to the attempts of the most enterprising colonist to reach the interior country, form the most striking feature in the geology of New South Wales. They are of grand dimensions, and are bordered by continuous links of lofty cliffs. It is not easy to conceive a more magnificent ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... live as if the opposite were true. Wealth possessed, and not trusted in, but used aright, may become a help towards eternal life; but wealth as commonly regarded and employed by its possessors, and as looked longingly after by others, is a real, and in many cases an insuperable, obstacle to entering the strait gate. As soon drive a camel, humps and load and all, through 'a needle's eye,' as get a man who trusts in the uncertainty of riches squeezed through that portal. No communities need this lesson ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... hypothetical combats by the proportion of strength at a given point on the game board, it is well to remember that the most overwhelming victories have been won by the skill and audacity of a great leader, which overcame odds that would be reckoned by the experts as insuperable. ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... collecting and collating the somewhat disjointed fragments of their country's history. The task would have been practically impossible for foreign historiographers alone, but now that the materials have been brought to light there is no insuperable difficulty in making them available for purposes of joint interpretation. That is all I have attempted to do in these pages, and I beg to solicit pardon for any defect they may be ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... remain fertile, others (approaching, as it were, the verge of separation) give rise to hybrids which are or not absolutely sterile,[2] according as they approach, or are more remote from, the designed barrier-line. And at that point the separation is insuperable. Certain forms of Carnivora and Ungulata seem to be for ever apart—not only the two great orders, but even subdivisions within them. Reptiles and birds, on the other hand, unlike as they at first sight seem, have no ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... measure of independence which they were capable of maintaining. If America's intentions be as the world understands them, she is endeavouring to break down the obstacles which the Filipinos, desiring a lasting independence, would have found insuperable. America claims (as other colonizing nations have done) to have a "mission" to perform, which, in the present case, includes teaching the Filipinos the art of self-government. Did one not reflect that America, from her birth ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... turned backwards towards Khartum, which he reached in June, 1862, where he made a stay of some duration. He now made up his mind to search for Speke, and went up the White Nile as far as Gondokoro, where the meeting with Speke took place. Baker left this place March 26, 1863, but met with almost insuperable obstacles in trying to make further advance. The porters deserted, the camels died, and the ammunition and the presents intended to ease the way through the territory of native princes had to be ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... But more than that, whilst I listened, an idea had of a sudden sprung up in my mind which did away with the necessity of gaining speech with Montresor—a contingency, moreover, that now presented insuperable difficulties. ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... neglected the important task of rendering all possible aid to China. Despite almost insuperable difficulties, we increased this aid during 1944. At present our aid to China must be accomplished by air transport—there is no other way. By the end of 1944, the Air Transport Command was carrying into China a tonnage of supplies ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... range, on the opposite side of which their explorations were to commence. As it rose in the distance it appeared to be no formidable barrier, but as they got near, lofty cliffs or precipices, and steep slopes covered with brushwood, seemed to rise out of the plain, such as must present an almost insuperable obstacle to the progress of the horses. Hector declared that no human being ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... she had opened her eyes and known him craven, unworthy of his name and race? Was it only that morning that she had sent into peril the man who lay wan and moribund before her; only that morning that she had felt her unhappiness greater than she could bear, her difficulties insuperable, her loneliness a misery? For if that were so why did she now feel so different? Why did she now feel inexplicably relieved, inconceivably at ease, almost happy? Why, with the man whom she had thrust into peril lying in extremis before her, and claiming all her gratitude, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... vegetarian soups we are chiefly dependent for flavour on the vegetables themselves, and consequently great care must be taken that these flavourings are properly blended. The great difficulty in giving directions in cookery-books, and in understanding them when given, is the insuperable one of avoiding vague expressions. For instance, suppose we read, "Take two onions, one carrot, one turnip, and one head of celery,"—what does this mean? It will be found practically that these directions vary considerably according to the neighbourhood or part of the country in which we ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne
... Murray insisted on a march by the western road, Lancashire being expected to rise and join the Prince. But this plan left Wade, with a superior force, on Charles's flank! The one difficulty, that of holding a bridge, say Kelso Bridge, over Tweed, was not insuperable. Rivers could not stop the Highlanders. Macdonald of Morar thought Charles the best general in the army, and to the layman, considering the necessity for an instant stroke, and the advantages of the east, as regards France, the Prince's strategy ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... to state, how strongly he objected to almost every part of it. The draft delivered by Adam he took a copy of himself, as Mr. Adam read it, affixing shortly, but warmly, his comments to each paragraph. Finding His Royal Highness's objections to the whole radical and insuperable, and seeing no means myself by which the Noble Lords could change their draft, so as to meet the Prince's ideas, I ventured to propose, as the only expedient of which the time allowed, that both ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... returned to his pavilion highly satisfied with the manner in which he had extricated himself from those difficulties which in the morning seemed almost insuperable; and when his officers assembled to disrobe him, (for great feudal lords had their levees and couchees, in imitation of sovereign princes,) he distributed gratuities amongst them, and jested and laughed in a much gayer humour than they ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of looking at the subject which partially removes a difficulty that appears at first sight insuperable, namely, that during the conversion of an hermaphrodite into a dioecious plant, the male organs must abort in some individuals and the female organs in others. Yet as all are exposed to the same conditions, it might have ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... recruiting; the newspapers still talk of its astounding realism, and it is generally admitted that the great kinematograph picture has done much to help the people of the British Empire to realise the wonderful spirit of our men in the face of almost insuperable difficulties; the splendid way in which our great citizen army has been organised; the vastness of the military machine we have created during the last two and a half years; and the immensity of the task which still ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... development of the people. These physical and psychical developments, however, are not the cause, but the product, of the social order. They are, furthermore, of no superlative import, since they offer no insuperable obstacle to the introduction of a social order radically different from that ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... the secret of the family conclave that took place, but learned simply that Nathalie pleaded with feverish energy the love that had grown up between Marie and Claude as an insuperable bar to the proposed marriage between Paul Boneau and her niece. Matters were arranged by means of large sacrifices on the part of the heroic maid. Paul's face ceased to beam over the garden-gate on a Sunday morning; and by degrees the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... matrimonial alliance would secure friendship. The matter was much talked of. The proud queen-mother, Anne of Austria, was very solicitous to secure that alliance, as it would gratify her highest ambition. Mazarin professed warmly to favor it. He probably saw insuperable obstacles in the way, but hoped, by co-operating cordially with the wishes of the queen, to be able finally to secure the marriage of ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... person in town would have seemed an insuperable obstacle to this undertaking, was no obstacle to me. I KNEW HOW TO GET IN. One day in my restless wanderings about a place which had something of the nature of a shrine to me, I had noticed that one of the windows (a swinging one) overlooking ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... without listening, in any circumstances, to any conditions of peace, they would still persevere in perpetual and implacable war against the enemy of the republic. This rash engagement opposed an insuperable bar to all future negotiation. The ministers of Honorius were heard to declare that if they had only invoked the name of the Deity they would consult the public safety, and trust their souls to the mercy of heaven; but they had sworn by the sacred head of the Emperor himself; they had touched, in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... day the turmoil subsided and Anthony began to exercise a measure of reason. He was in love—he cried it passionately to himself. The things that a week before would have seemed insuperable obstacles, his limited income, his desire to be irresponsible and independent, had in this forty hours become the merest chaff before the wind of his infatuation. If he did not marry her his life would be a feeble parody on his own adolescence. To ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... aside in chagrin and disappointment. "Such an event," may they say, "we were not prepared to expect.—After so many, and such various trials of heart; after innumerable difficulties surmounted; almost invincible objects overcome, and insuperable barriers removed—after attending the hero and heroine of your tale through the diversified scenes of anxiety, suspense, hope, disappointment, expectation, joy, sorrow, anticipated bliss, sudden and disastrous ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... an insuperable obstacle, as far as the majority of minds are concerned, to the discovery that the established principles of education are absolutely false. These principles will never be questioned. It is good enough ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... distance by land between the two cities, by such primitive means of travel as are now available, and (secondly) to minutely observe the natural characteristics of the countries passed through, in order to ascertain whether these offer any insuperable obstacle to the construction ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... works, to which was adjoined, an invitation to visit that newly discovered subterraneous city: an invitation that could not but be greatly pleasing to a genius so inquisitive after knowledge, and which he declared, he should very gladly have embraced, had not his advanced years been an insuperable impediment, to the gratification of his curiosity. In short, his character abroad was so well known and established, that a foreigner of any taste, would have thought it a reproach to him, to have been in England without seeing ...
— Medica Sacra - or a Commentary on on the Most Remarkable Diseases Mentioned - in the Holy Scriptures • Richard Mead
... Mother Cary's chickens in a gale of wind; and then there would be the story of the national debt, and a participation in imperial taxes to adjust, and so on; but none of these difficulties are insuperable. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... She had never before felt so seriously shaken in health, as since she had known of the attachment of Felix to Alice Pascal; an attachment which would have been quite to her mind, if there was no loss of honor in allowing it whilst she held a secret which, in all probability, would seem an insuperable barrier in the eyes of ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... there is no conclusive test of their discipline, nor proof that their training at arms is satisfying a legitimate military end. The old game of follow-the-leader has no point if the leader himself, like the little girl in a Thomas Hardy novel, is balked by insuperable obstacles one-quarter inch high. All military forces remain relatively undisciplined until physically toughened and mentally conditioned to unusual exertion. Consider the road march! No body of men could possibly ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... removes the all but insuperable barrier to an industrious and godly life. It means not only the leading of these lost multitudes out of the "City of Destruction" into the Canaan of plenty, but the lifting of them up to the same level of advantage with the more favoured of mankind ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... former insults and sincere promises of future honor, respect, and reverence, it is possible to imagine Shylock relenting in a hatred of which the reasons he assigned for it no longer existed. But from the moment he says he has no reason for his hatred other than the insuperable disgust and innate enmity of an antagonistic nature—the deadly, sickening, physical loathing that in rare instances affects certain human beings toward others of their species, and toward certain animals—then there ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... lad," he said, "I believe you can do it. How, I don't know; but you have shown so much resource already that you may be able to help us in this fix—for fix it is, and a bad one. 'Tis the will that counts; if one is only determined enough no difficulty is insuperable—a lesson that our friends from Calcutta might take to heart. But have ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... are of bronze, cast at one flow—and with insuperable, in some respects inimitable, ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... he fell once more to his hitherto futile scheming: How was he to get near his sister? To the whitest of lies he had insuperable objection, and if he appeared before her with no reason to give, would she not be far too offended with his presumption to retain him in her service? And except he could be near her as her servant, he did not see a chance of doing anything for her without disclosing facts which ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... kingdom; especially if we reckon into the account those who were the Trimmers of the times; I mean such, who privately were papists, though under her protestant predecessor they appeared otherwise; therefore her difficulties in persecuting her reformed subjects, were far from being so insuperable as ours now are, when the strength and number of the papists is so very inconsiderable. They, who cast in the church of England as ready to embrace popery, are either knaves enough to know they lie, or fools enough not to have considered the tenets of that church, which are diametrically ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... not an insuperable obstacle to the transfer of thought. My companion was in communication with our friends, and from time to time conveyed to me messages of anguish from my dear love; for, being well aware of the nature of the currents and the unapproachableness of the islands, ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... to lay great stress on racial differences. The insuperable barrier that divides England from Germany has grown out of circumstance and habit and thought. For many hundreds of years the German peoples have stood to arms in their own defence against the encroachments ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... about him, and to force his own dreams to come true, that caused him to cut this grim and fantastic legal caper off the coast of Cuba. He thought it at the time unlikely, seeing the difficulties of navigation that he had gone through, which he might be pardoned for regarding as insuperable to a less skilful mariner, that any one should ever come that way again; even he himself said that he would never risk his life again in such a place. He wished his journey, therefore, not to have been made in vain; and as he himself ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... very obtrusive part in the building up of theories. As a rule a multitude of such influences play a part consciously or unconsciously in shaping any belief. Hence the historian is faced with the difficulty, often quite insuperable, of ascertaining (among scores of factors that definitely played some part in the building up of a great generalization) the real foundation upon which the vast edifice has been erected. I refer to these ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... unexpected conditions, one can comprehend the object of this nocturnal walk and the long pause that Henri made beneath the windows of Zibeline's apartment. A small garden, protected by a light fence, was the only obstacle that separated them. But how much more insuperable was the barrier which his own principles had raised between this ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... interested in watching the changes of expression on her brother-in-law's face that she was quite reconciled to the insuperable difficulties that such a topic offered to her understanding. The sarcastic curve round Mr. Harcourt's mouth relaxed; he grew less dry and didactic in speech; each moment his manner showed more earnestness and interest. The silent young ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey |
