"Plausible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "That seems a plausible enough reason," admitted Mr. Westlake, folding his fat hands across his equator and leaning back in his chair with a placidity which seemed far removed from any thought of gain. "How did you ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... had been done for greedy interests; that manufacturers who had bought immunity by their contributions to Quay's campaign fund had been rewarded with increased protection. The farmers believed these charges, plausible though unprovable, for they were disposed to believe that both the great parties were interested only in selfish exploitation of the Government to ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... build their tale on; because the truth acts like acid on untruth. They're going to lie in any case; but lies told without any reference to truth knit better than when invented at a moment's notice to explain away another's straightforward statement. There's a plausible theory that culprits taken in the act are best examined in secret, one by one, in ignorance of all ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... out in the usual manner, rendering the poor young man a dupe to vain imaginations of his own dignity and grandeur, which is perhaps the most ordinary effect of insanity, and inspiring the deepest aversion against his nearest relatives, and against myself in particular. He is a man extremely plausible, both in speech and manners; so much so, that many of my friends think there is more vice than insanity in the irregularities which he commits; but I may, I hope, be forgiven, if I have formed a milder judgment of one supposed to be my father's son. Indeed, I cannot ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... whole scheme popped into his head. There were the two men and two little girls of the same age, isolated far from civilization for a long winter. One child dies, the other departs with Gentleman Geoff. What more simple than to arrange for a plausible substitution of the children? Gentleman Geoff being dead, the only possible obstacle could be in the person of the other member of that lonely quartette, Frank Hillery, the trapper. We know now how Wiley traced him and ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... the government has summoned the Reichsrat, which the Czechs never recognised, and against which, as well as against the so-called constitution, they again make a formal protest. The great Russian Revolution forced the government to a plausible ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... that making the Bible a common school-book would detract from its sacredness in the eyes of the children, and thus blunt rather than quicken their moral susceptibilities, is plausible; but it will not, I am confident, bear the test of examination and experience. What were the Scriptures given us for, if not to be read by the old and the young, the high and the low? Is the common use of any good thing which a kind Providence intended for all, calculated to make men ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... had escaped, he always steadily refused; nor did a single unguarded word ever drop from him in conversation with any one by which the slightest clue could be obtained as to his identity. Even the police inspector, the most plausible and unscrupulous of his class, a perfect Machiavel among the Peelers, who could make a prisoner believe he was his only friend while he was doing his best to put the halter round his neck, even his practised ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... deplorable ignorance or unwarrantable misrepresentation of human nature, and in this case we are convinced it must be the latter. Edwards knew perfectly well—for he seems to have been sane—that nobody but the subjects of these biographies would seek them "with avidity," and he made these plausible, bombastic assertions to excuse himself for having sprung such a trap on an unsuspecting public. That he tries to palliate the offence is, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... letter writing if a man was not well. If his illness had become serious she would, of course, have heard from his doctor. She would not allow herself to contemplate that. But if he was languid and feverish, he might so easily put off writing from day to day. This was all the more plausible as a reason, since he had not been a profuse correspondent. He had only written when he had found he had leisure, with decent irregularity, ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... younger and more unthinking loiterers. Those who at once would have disbelieved the imputed guilt of Antagoras upon motives merely political, inclined to a suggestion that ascribed it to the jealousy of a lover. And his character, ardent and fiery, rendered the suspicion yet more plausible. Meanwhile the minds of the audience had been craftily drawn from the grave and main object of the meeting—the flight of the Persians—and a lighter and livelier curiosity had supplanted the eager and dark resentment which had hitherto ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... that, if we accept his premises, Mr. Johnson made in point of logic a pretty plausible case. His proposition was that a State, in the view of the Federal Constitution, is indestructible; that an ordinance of secession adopted by its inhabitants, or its political organs, did not take it out of the Union; that by declaring ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... like a true genius, makes himself superior to rules, and adds new beauties to his piece by forsaking them. His reasons for concealing from part of the personages of the Drama the principal incident of the plot, are so plausible and natural, that he could not have followed the beaten track without offending against manners and decency. This bold and uncommon turn is one of the ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... fanaticism of a single virtue is apt to make men suspicious of tyranny in all the rest. But the riot of emancipation could not last long, for the more tolerant society is of private vice, the more exacting will it be of public decorum, that excellent thing, so often the plausible substitute for things more excellent. By 1678 the public mind had so far recovered its tone that Dryden's comedy of "Limberham" was barely tolerated for three nights. I will let the man who looked at human ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... what to say. He did not believe that Martin was telling the truth, plausible as the villain tried to ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... growing darkness, where all rehearsed cold-hearted murder, Wilkes Booth grew great of stature. He had found a purpose consonant with his evil nature and bad influence over weak men; so he grew moodier, more vigilant, more plausible. By mien and temperament he was born to handle a stiletto. We have no face so markedly Italian; it would stand for Caesar Borgia any day in the year. All the rest were swayed or persuaded by Booth; his schemes were ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... timidity swept over me. I reflected that no one had seen me, that no one could accuse me. Nothing could be easier or safer than to deny, nothing more perplexing to the enemy, nothing less perilous for the culprit. A flood of plausible reasons invaded my brain; I seemed to see this to be a case in which to tell the truth would be not merely foolish, it would be wrong. Yet when the usher stood before me, holding the slate out in his white and shaking hand, I seized the pencil, and, ignoring ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... all, Tintoretto was but an inspired Gustave Dore. Between that quiet canvas of the 'Presentation,' so modest in its cool greys and subdued gold, and the tumult of flying, running? doesn't make much sense, but can't figure out a plausible alternative, ascending figures in the 'Judgment,' what an interval there is! How strangely the white lamb-like maiden, kneeling beside her lamb in the picture of S. Agnes, contrasts with the dusky gorgeousness of the Hebrew women despoiling themselves of jewels for the golden calf! Comparing ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... goods that were contraband of war. The list of contraband had been from time immemorial rigidly limited, and confined almost wholly to munitions of war, or to raw material used in their construction. But international law went by the board early in the war. Each belligerent was able to ascribe plausible reasons for its amendment out of recognizable form. Great Britain established blockades two hundred miles away from the blockaded ports because the submarines made the old practice of watching at the entrance of the port too perilous. The list of contraband of war was extended by both ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... so plausible to the minds of the strikers, prepared, as they were, by hardship and suffering, found many champions among the Mill men themselves. Not a few of those who had stood with Charlie in his opposition to the agitator and against their union joining the strike now spoke openly with bitter ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... the worse might be made to appear the better reason; and philosophy, so far as it continued its functions, {85} became a search, not for the real amidst the confusions of the seeming and unreal, but a search for the seeming and the plausible, to the detriment, or at least to the ignoring, of any ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... whose conscience the guns had laid their two hundred ton weight, felt greatly relieved. Their colossal scale had originally caught his imagination which loved big conceptions. Their working had seemed plausible to his inexpert eye. He had gone with confidence to his friend, the expert on naval gunnery, who had reported on them in breezy, sea-going terms of disrespect. Since then he had shrunk from destroying his poor ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... by taking a medley of examples embodying as many distinct rules, each with its plausible and seemingly sufficient ground ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... more'n half right, and I must look sharp." Gladly would he have abandoned the whole business, notwithstanding his cupidity was not a little excited by the fees, but he doubted whether the sheriff, his deputy, or any other constable would execute the warrant in his stead; nor did any plausible excuse present itself to account for transferring it to other hands. Thus musing, with fear and avarice contending in his breast, he walked up the street. But it may be necessary to tell how Basset got into the dilemma, and, in order to do so, we ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... vindication of the distinctive tariff policy of the Whigs,—and here advocates a good cause in a singularly illogical, bungling way. Most of his book, however, is given up to foolish invective against British machinations in the United States,—an idea which may have been plausible in Jefferson's time, but has long been abandoned to minds of our author's calibre,—and to arguments against the Republican party which show only that he is entirely ignorant of the doctrines of that party, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... breaking their way through the ice, when, all at once, it occurred to Norman, that, if they could not coax the fish to take a bait, they might succeed better with a net, and capture them against their will. This idea would have been plausible enough, had there been a net; but there was no net on that islet, nor perhaps within an hundred miles of it. The absence of a net might have been an obstacle to those who are ever ready to despair; but such an obstacle never occurred to our courageous ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... such a plausible and courtly tone of voice, that they might well have become any drawing-room ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... Hook or Albert Smith might have attempted. It is, in fact, a real speech, which might have been delivered to a dull-headed audience without much impairing credibility. Apart from this it is a most effective harangue and most plausible statement of the ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... letter of his word. He could not deceive this woman, as he had at first felicitated himself on doing, with a false appearance of fair dealing. She saw through that appearance. It was indeed irritating to so honest a gentleman. To gain time for a plausible answer, he moved slowly from the window to the centre of the chamber. At the same time, mademoiselle, to be further from Montignac, went towards the door by which she had entered the room on my arrival. The secretary, with wolf-like eyes, followed ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the midst of life, and that according to some rather brutal and bloody pattern. This might, of course, be judged the result of merest coincidence. Had he leisure and opportunity to search them out, he could find, no doubt, plausible explanation of the majority of cases. Only that fact of persistent violence, persistent accident, did remain. It stared him in the face, so to speak, defiant of denial. And the deduction, consequent upon it, stared him in the face likewise. He ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... itself without being able to justify itself. It is persistence without a plausible motive. It is the tenacity of self-love substituted for the tenacity ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... this story: "I should have been afraid of my subject." He did not explain himself, but I can easily understand that he felt the improbability of the physiological or pathological occurrence on which the story is founded to be so great that the narrative could hardly be rendered plausible. I felt the difficulty for myself as well as for my readers, and it was only by recalling for our consideration a series of extraordinary but well-authenticated facts of somewhat similar character that I could hope to gain any serious attention ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... spot in his plan being the fact, of which he was in complete ignorance, that Fenton already held stock and had nothing whatever with which to buy more. He was willing to let the widow's bribe pass to her under so plausible a disguise, and he said to himself with a chuckle that he had far rather sell Fenton the seven thousand ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... of at all,' observed Bazarov. 'There's a slight flavour of the French novel about it, something not very plausible.' ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... "She married a plausible villain who ruined her—spent every sou and left her with a mountain of debt and a month-old baby. Poor Grace died and he married again. I tried to get the baby, but he held it as a hostage. I could never trace the child after it was two years old. It ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... themselves become graziers, butchers, tanners, sheepmasters, woodmen, and denique quid non, thereby to enrich themselves, and bring all the wealth of the country into their own hands, leaving the communalty weak, or as an idol with broken or feeble arms, which may in a time of peace have a plausible shew, but when necessity shall enforce have ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... foundation: James V. of Scotland, who eventually married Madeleine, elder daughter of Francis I., having been previously betrothed 'by treaty' to Marie de Bourbon, daughter of the Duke of Vendome, returned to Scotland in 1537. The theory is neither probable nor plausible. ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... out but jasmine and pear. Both have wilted a little, and are not nearly such spirited trees as you can make out of fir trees, for instance. It is for these woods chiefly that we have our planks perforated with little holes. No tin trees can ever be so plausible and various and jolly as these. With a good garden to draw upon one can make terrific sombre woods, and then lie down and look through them at lonely horsemen or ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... would have made out a far more plausible case by pretending that I made use of such things instead of fish, if only you had possessed the slightest erudition. For the belief in the use of these things is so widespread that you might have been believed. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... "that we will risk the young lady outside. Your story, my dear, is ingenious, but scarcely plausible. If you are ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her meanings now? Ought you not rather to ignore them? She is fevered, dejected, overwrought. Why, sir, she is the very woman to say and mean things now which she would never say or mean at any other time!" But my tone must have shown that I was only groping in desperation after anything plausible, and he waved ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... in hand The arguments, so strong and grand, And draw from them a just conclusion Without a mixture of confusion; The negative got the decision Unanimous, without division. The speakers then took their position, Upon the doubtful proposition Of the repeal of gold resumption, Upon the plausible presumption, That those who pay must have the money, That laws of Congress, (that seems funny,) Are not above the laws of trade, And therefore cannot be obeyed. Here now my muse, poor worthless jade, Deserted, as I was afraid From the beginning she ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... rigid demands. The actual cause was undoubtedly a deeper one, that of Austria's long-cherished purpose of gaining a foothold on the Aegean Sea, for which the possession of Servia was necessary as a preliminary step. A plausible motive was needed, any pretext that would serve as a satisfactory excuse to Europe for hostile action and that could at the same time be utilized in developing Austrian indignation against the Servians. Such a motive came in the act of assassination and immediate ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... cum ratione sanire: the physicians have collected all he has said and done, that indicated an alienation of mind, and have laid it before him in writing; he has answered it in writing too, and justifies himself by the most plausible argument that can possibly be urged. I conclude this subject With pitying him, and poor human nature, which holds its reason by so precarious a tenure. The lady, who you tell me is set out, en sera pour la peine et les frais du voyage, for her note is worth no ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... and looked frightened, but the Head-nurse spoke up quite bravely, although her voice was so muffled, and said that she really did have some idea of the Princess's whereabouts. She propounded her views which were quite plausible. It was her opinion that only an enemy of the King would have caused the Princess to be stolen, and as the King had only one enemy of whom anybody knew, and he was the King across the river, she thought the Princess must ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... introduced to hurt that railway company, merely as a means of bringing pressure to bear upon it to correct the supposed shortcomings. It obviously then becomes only too easy for an unscrupulous member to bring forward a bill which will have plausible colour of public-spirited motive, and which if it became a law would cost the railway company untold inconvenience and many tens of thousands of pounds; and the railway company can have that bill withdrawn or "sidetracked" for a mere couple ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... the real object of Austro-German concentration active demonstrations were made on the Serb border in the form of bombardments of Belgrade, and occupation of Danube islands. These demonstrations made plausible the Teutonic assertion that the concentration of troops was being carried out with a view to an invasion of Serbia. So successful was the ruse, and so well had the secret been kept that on February 1, 1914, a Petrograd "official" gravely announced to an eagerly listening world: "The ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... appeals which had been made by former Christians to the Acts of Pilate; and Mr. Jones says, he thinks so more particularly as we have innumerable instances of forgeries by the faithful in the primitive ages, grounded on less plausible reasons. Whether it be canonical or not, it is of very great antiquity, and is appealed to by several of the ancient Christians. The present translation is made from the Gospel, published by Grynaeus in the Orthodoxographa, vol. i, tom, ii, ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... that Goldsmith, in combining a description of a probably Kentish village with a description of an Irish ejectment, "has produced something which never was, and never will be, seen in any part of the world." This criticism is ingenious and plausible, but it is unsound, for it happens to overlook one of the radical facts of human nature—the magnifying delight of the mind in what is long remembered and remote. What was it that the imagination of Goldsmith, in his ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... condition—as an expression of a dumb feeling that the promised land was at hand at last. Often it was just one single word that had fixed itself in their minds, and had to serve to express the whole position. Any one might approach them with plausible arguments and strike it from under them, and shatter the theory to which they had clung; but faith itself remained, and the far-reaching concord; deep in their hearts was the dim, immovable knowledge that they were chosen to enter into the time ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... have my easy escape. My wife knows people of this class very well, and when she is sure there is a bore here and sees them staying too long she manages to call me away on some plausible pretext." ...
— Good Stories from The Ladies Home Journal • Various
... not forget to say that, really, the details given in the "Sunday Mercury" were well calculated to lead captive a large class of minds prone to luxuriate in the marvelous when well mixed with plausible reasoning. The most circumstantial accounts were given of sundry "gifted young ladies," "grave and learned professors," "reliable gentlemen"—where are those not found?—"lonely watchers," and others, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... and that such changes in action as occur at other points are more or less indefinite and possibly even somewhat imaginary. Authorities differ as to just what the change in mechanism is in passing from the chest register to the middle one; but the most plausible explanation seems to be that in the lowest register, the change in pitch from a lower tone to the next higher one is accomplished at least partly by stretching the vocal bands more tightly, and that when the ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... gracious and plausible—and so subtly and exquisitely corrupting! Underneath his smoothly flowing sentences Montague could feel the presence of one fundamental thought; it was unuttered and even unhinted, but it pervaded the Judge's ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... being just as plausible as ours, we did not discuss it, hoping that something would happen to decide the matter in one ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... knees for the moment, and I explained the idea to her briefly, and some other things at greater length; and then we both laughed and prayed aloud for plausible weather. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... d'armee had remained out of reach of each other. Where were now the rapid movements of Marengo, Ulm, and Eckmuehl? Why so slow and drawling a march on such a critical occasion? Was it our artillery and baggage that had caused this tardiness? Such was at least the most plausible presumption. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... be that while war is nowadays less chronic than of old, less prolonged, and less easily provoked, it is a serious fallacy to suppose that it is also less barbarous. We imagine that it must be so simply because we believe, on more or less plausible grounds, that our life generally is growing less barbarous and more civilised. But war, by its very nature, always means a relapse from civilisation into barbarism, if not savagery.[4] We may sympathise with the endeavour of the European soldiers of old to civilise warfare, and we ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... 17th, 1832) how the excitement has subsided, but still he sees at hand a great crisis in the history of mankind. New principles, he says, prevail in morals, politics, education. Enlightened self-interest is made the substitute for the old bonds of unreasoned attachment, and under the plausible maxim that knowledge is power, one kind of ignorance is made to take the place of another kind. Christianity teaches that the head is to be exalted through the heart, but Benthamism maintains that the heart is to be amended through the ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... no Weight with the Doctor; he knew very well t'would sufficiently answer his End if by boldly and roundly asserting whatever he thought proper, and sticking at no Method of Defamation he should make the whole appear plausible and gain Adherents; and therefore with the utmost Assurance he affirms this Woman to be a Whore, that a Bawd, this Man a Pimp, that a Pathick tho' neither of them ever gave any Reason to be thought such, or were ever thought ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... that the influence of this impression might extend northward; but, however this might be, the actual conquest and possession of several states would, when negotiations for a general peace should take place, give a complexion to those negotiations, and afford plausible ground for insisting to retain territory already acquired. The most active and interesting operations therefore of the succeeding campaigns, were in ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... as immediate measures looking toward permanent Re-establishment are concerned, no consideration should tempt us to pervert the national victory into oppression for the vanquished. Should plausible promise of eventual good, or a deceptive or spurious sense of duty, lead us to essay this, count we must on serious consequences, not the least of which would be divisions among the Northern adherents of the Union. ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... in school and in college; you were Phi Beta Kappa, a convincing debater, a plausible speaker, an excellent writer of good English—by instinct a good newspaper man. Also you were a man adapted by nature to live regularly and beyond the coarser temptations. But you ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... to-night. Well, that can only lead to the most awful unhappiness for all of us. You must consider it finished. We won't have any disturbance; but, all the same, you can't see Arthur again. We'll invent some reason to explain your going away to-morrow ... something plausible ... to satisfy him. With your husband it will be more difficult. But I'm prepared to help you. It can be managed without any scandal if we work together... I'm sure you'll agree with me and be sensible about it. If you won't, I ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... Socinian or Arian views, sometimes with a visionary enthusiasm, sometimes with a weak and nerveless religion of sentiment. They could point also to the obvious fact that thorough scepticism, or even mere irreligion, often found a decent veil under plausible professions of a liberal Christianity. There were some, indeed, who, in the excitement of hostility or alarm, seemed to lose all power of ordinary discrimination. Much in the same way as every 'freethinker' was set ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... thought she must have been keeping young Mavering waiting a long time for his answer. "Why, of course, Alice. But I really don't know what to do about the Saintsburys." This was not in the least true, but it instantly seemed so to Mrs. Pasmer, as a plausible excuse ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... response to his ring and greeted him with such undisguised pleasure and surprise that his honest heart quickened a beat or two, and it was with difficulty that he voiced the plausible falsehood concerning his loss of position, and return ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... become a gay woman (I have seen his letters). She used to go out, sit down on a green close by, and cry all day. One day a middle-aged woman accosted her, she told a little of her grief to her, it was something to tell her grief, even to a stranger. The woman told some plausible story, and she went to see her (I had the address). There the woman asked to see her partly undressed, and told her that with such legs and breasts she might have silk dresses and jewelry galore, in fact incited her to be a gay woman. True to her lover, she did as he ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... of speech? The matter that most powerfully exercised me was the Dutchman's eager curiosity to discover the full extent of Billy's qualifications as a navigator. Yet, even as to this, there seemed little enough reason for uneasiness; the man had given a quite plausible reason for such curiosity, a reason that I could perfectly understand and appreciate; but I wondered whether it was the true, the actual reason; or was there another and more sinister one at the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... of superstition seemed more plausible, had Butler's mind been very accessible to them. Was this indeed the Roaring Lion, who goeth about seeking whom he may devour? This was a question which pressed itself on Butler's mind with an earnestness that cannot be conceived ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and foolish. It would allow the fleet of Weald to loot and then betray Dara. But it was Calhoun's idea. It seemed plausible to the admirals of Weald. They felt only contempt for blueskins. Contemptuously, they accepted ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... through the northern of which, pass all the magnetic meridians of the northern hemisphere, and through the southern, those of the southern hemisphere. He determines their present position and periodical revolution. It is said, his publication is plausible. I have not ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... should make some plausible excuse for visiting a certain house that we should agree upon, and I would call ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... the supreme folly of the monarchs, who thus vainly strove to erect monuments which should defy all time and perpetuate their fame. To-day not even the names of their founders are surely known. There are plausible suppositions enough about them, each writer upon the subject having plenty of arguments to support his special convictions; but their history rests, after all is said, amid a confusion of very thin speculation. There is little genius evinced in the design or execution of the Pyramids. Neither ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... come opportunely, since the sale of a portion afforded Plutina plausible excuse for her trip to Joines' store. There, a telephone had been recently installed, and it was the girl's intention to use this means of communication with the marshal. That the danger of detection was great, she was unhappily aware, but, she ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... about him—or a little about him, for he has done much which I would not care to talk of, nor you to listen to. He was always a villain, smooth-spoken and plausible, but a dangerous, subtle villain all the same. If I have some hard thoughts about mankind I can trace them back to the childhood which I spent with my brother. He is my only living relative, for my other brother, Charles's father, was killed in ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... them guns, and fight for them. Then he shrewdly added that he intended building a fort among them and a big wooden canoe in which he would descend to the sea and bring goods for them. All this looked very plausible and won their hearts. The next day La Salle and his companions were invited to a feast and, of course, went. The host seized the opportunity of warning them against descending the Great Water. He told them that its banks were infested by ferocious ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... of truth I may say of the way to this sin, it is, as was once the way to Jerusalem, strewed with boughs and branches, and by some there is cried a kind of Hosanna to them that are treading these steps to hell. Oh, the plausible pretences, the golden names, the feigned holiness, the demure behavior mixed with damnable hypocrisy, that attend the persons that have forsaken the Lord Jesus, that have despised his person, trampled upon him, and "counted the blood of the covenant ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... with which he was to perform the experiment, was then required, and in three or four weeks accomplished, so as to give a perfect idea of the principle upon which the scheme was to be executed, and, in time, a very plausible promise of success, not to Mr. Blake only, but many other gentlemen who were consulted upon the occasion. The consequence was, that Mr. Blake, agreeably to the man's desire, advanced money for the construction of a vessel fit for that purpose. Mr. ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... This plausible story found ready credence with the Syracusan generals, and they named a day on which they promised to appear in full force before the walls of Catana. When the time appointed drew near, they marched out with the whole Syracusan army, leaving ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... ship's crew—including my personal opinion of the decision." He looked up at Dal. "But be very careful, my young friend. Next time you may not have a technicality to back you up, and I'll be watching for the first plausible excuse to break you, and your Green Doctor friend as well. One misstep, and you're through. And I assure you that is not just an idle threat. I ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... more learned Fear and distrust invite and draw on offence Fortune will still be mistress of events Fox, who found fault with what he could not obtain Fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed Gave them new and more plausible names for their excuse Give me time to recover my strength and health Great presumption to be so fond of one's own opinions Gross impostures of religions Hoary head and rivelled face of ancient usage Hold a stiff rein upon suspicion I have a great aversion ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... to root them out. The mind must be strong that resolutely forms its own principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task, or only do it by halves. Yet the imperfect conclusions thus drawn, are frequently very plausible, because they are built on partial experience, on just, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... plausible; but it may, again, be a sign of chieftainship, and a chief I have no doubt he is. Maybe he was sent adrift by some rival faction; but that can scarcely be, for he would not have survived a long journey; and, again, the canoe ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... a difference of taste or of method, and in Philo's day, and in fact down to the time of the sixteenth-century Renaissance, Jew and Gentile alike preferred the other way. For thought, ancient and mediaeval, was pervaded with the craving for authority or a plausible show of it. The Bible was not only the great book of morality, but the standard of truth, that from which knowledge in all its branches started, and that by which it was to be judged. As all knowledge came from God, so all knowledge was in God's Book; and allegory ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... Ts'ao Kung's interpretation. Chang Yu adopts it, saying: "We must quickly bring up our rear, so that head and tail may both reach the goal." That is, they must not be allowed to straggle up a long way apart. Mei Yao-ch'en offers another equally plausible explanation: "Supposing the enemy has not yet reached the coveted position, and we are behind him, we should advance with all speed in order to dispute its possession." Ch'en Hao, on the other hand, assuming that the enemy has had time to select his own ground, quotes ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... the whole can't be evil: so practical pessimism may be combined with metaphysical optimism. And so forth—your ordinary philosophic layman never being a radical, never straightening out his system, but living vaguely in one plausible compartment of it or another to suit the ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... tried the sagacity of many skilful persons of the present day, to decipher the fac-simile; and I think the only plausible interpretation is, that since it must necessarily have been D'Oysel's signature, it may be the initials of his name, joined with his title as Locum tenens, or Lieutenant of Henry the Second, King of France, For this explanation I am indebted to John Riddell, Esq., Advocate; accompanied ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... the stocks had remained as it was before you touched it; but, as it is, if you could find a good plausible pretext—and there is an excellent one at hand,—the sternest kings open prisons, and grant favours, upon joyful occasions. Now a marriage in the royal family is of course a joyful occasion! and so it should be in that ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I, drinking devoutly, while Raffles lit the inevitable Egyptian. I gathered that this plausible exposition of Mr. Levy's tactics had some foundation in the disclosures of his hapless friends; but his ready grasp of an alien subject was highly characteristic of Raffles. I said I supposed Miss Belsize had not remained to hear the whole humiliating story, but Raffles replied briefly that ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... a known libertine. No scruples would restrain him if he thought the game was a safe quarry. And Steve knew with a sinking heart that he could offer to any official inquiry of the United States Government a plausible story of an abandoned woman who had come to camp to sell her charms to the highest bidder. It would be easy to show that she had ridden down with a man suspected of being a rustler and known to be a bad character, that she had jilted him for Pasquale who was already married ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... Field's paragraph engaging Bok to Miss Pinkham stimulated the poet to greater effort. Bok had gone to Europe; Field, having found out the date of his probable return, just about when the steamer was due, printed an interview with the editor "at quarantine" which sounded so plausible that even the men in Bok's office in Philadelphia were fooled and prepared for his arrival. The interview recounted, in detail, the changes in women's fashions in Paris, and so plausible had Field made it, based upon information ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... shabby gown and rumpled wig, but with a fair complexion and tolerable features—a stranger to that court, and better known at Hicks's Hall, and among city litigators, with whom he had already a certain repute for keen wits and a plausible tongue—about the youngest advocate at the English Bar, and by some people said to be no barrister at all, but to have put on wig and gown two years ago at Kingston Assizes and called himself to the Bar, and stayed there by sheer audacity. This young gentleman, Jeffreys ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... me like a thunderclap. I was in the enemy's country, sailing under false colours, with only the most meagre information about the man whose place I had taken and no plausible tale, such as I had fully intended to have ready, to carry me through the rigorous scrutiny of ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... matter. This was what the Administration was trying to do. As Madison afterwards put it to Rose, the President was desirous "of converting a particular incident into an occasion for removing another and more extensive source of danger to the harmony of the two countries." This plausible rendering was not likely to recommend to a resolute nation such a method of obtaining surrender of a claimed right. The exclusion proclamation Monroe represented to be "a mere measure of police indispensable for the preservation ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... plausible manner had dropped from him. Mary felt it difficult to be severe when his look of dejection was piercing her heart; still, she felt that she owed it to him as well as to herself, she must see a little more clearly into how he had ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... for this attempt. Who says "hypothesis" renounces the ambition to be coercive in his arguments. The most I can do is, accordingly, to offer something that may fit the facts so easily that your scientific logic will find no plausible pretext for vetoing your impulse to welcome it ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... way seemed plausible—even possible—that depending on Don Ignacio. If they could prevail on him to tell a falsehood, all might be well. Only to say the carriage had been made ready for a journey to his casa de campo, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... to the clinker-built canoe that occurs to me as at all plausible. This is, that the ridge-like projections of her clinker laps offer resistance to the water and retard her speed. Theoretically, this is correct. Practically, it is not proven. Her streaks are so nearly on her water line that the resistance, if any, must be infinitesimal. It is possible, however, ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... the Papacy. As soon as they learned the adherence of the American missionaries to the Bible, and their opposition to Papal innovations, they began to welcome them as friends. Having been duped by the plausible pretenses of the Papists, they were at first cautious in their advances; but a priest from the Syrian Christians in India, named Joseph Matthew, on his way to be ordained metropolitan by the Syrian Patriarch at ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... shelter, to nourish (the hope) acciones preferentes, preference shares agudo, sharp, keen aplazar, to postpone asistir, to assist, to attend atendible, plausible atrasado, overdue caldos, wines and oils (collectively) consabido, in question, aforesaid cuenta de venta, account sale dedicarse, to devote oneself dejar sin efecto, to cancel delicado de salud, in indifferent ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... Iglesias that learning, in as far as the consultant doctors could diagnose it, the exact conditions of his physical state, he should refuse all experiment, however humane in intention or plausible in theory. For he had no sympathy with the modern greediness and worship of physical life, which is willing to sacrifice the decencies and dignities of it to its possible prolongation. Courteously but plainly he bade his advisers depart. The body, though ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... tired of the quiet places, and the strands where she knew every pebble, resolved to explore Goyle Bay at last, and she chose the worst possible time for it. The weather had been very fine and gentle, and the sea delightfully plausible, without a wave—tide after tide—bigger than the furrow of a two-horse plough; and the maid began to believe at last that there never were any storms just here. She had heard of the pretty things in Goyle Bay, which was difficult of access from ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... dignified bow. She has years ago noticed in herself, that, though she has strength of will, she lacks clearness and promptness of decision. She is at a loss, now, to know what to do with Mr. Tarbox. Here he is for the seventh time. But there is always a plausible explanation of his presence, and a person of more tactful propriety, it seems to her, never put his name upon her tavern register or himself into her company. She sees nothing shallow or specious in his dazzling attainments; they rekindle the old ambitions in her that Bonaventure lighted; ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... its never-failing sources of income, proving more profitable even than the sale of indulgences, though the latter is all profit, whereas there is some trifling expense attendant upon getting up a lottery scheme. A few prizes must be distributed in order to make the cheat more plausible. As to the validity of indulgences, one cannot actually test that matter on this ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou |
