"Unanswerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of resistance is weakened—when the consciousness is strongly borne in upon us of the unanswerable wisdom of Solomon, who wrote—'I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it to the man that should be after me. And who knows whether he shall be a ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... bankers, and had immediately dispatched his reply. Morgan was glad that it had arrived at this opportune moment. With Murphy to testify that Marsh had claimed Ames as a friend, and with this cablegram to prove the falsity of the claim, he had at least one unanswerable piece of evidence of a suspicious nature to warrant his ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... was championed by the leaders among the men and women of their generation. Such quotations from their speeches as space has permitted show that in eloquence, logic and strength they were unsurpassed and that their arguments were unanswerable. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... The little boot and shoe dealers, clothiers, hatters, and furriers, the small merchants in carpets, crockery, and furniture, the venders of hardware and household utensils, of leathern goods and picture-frames, of wall-paper, musical instruments, and even toys—all had the same pathetically unanswerable question to propound. But mostly they put it to themselves, because the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... the public prosecutor. Lord James Rait died in Dartmoor Prison—a common felon. I shall not! But believe me—I am certain as I sit here that they only wait for my return to British East! To have me murdered here might start inconvenient rumors that would lead to unanswerable questions! It was proposed to me to-day that I should return to ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... would interrupt him fiercely, would even rise from his chair and pace the room, arguing, stating a point of view, combating some suggestion that underlay the trend of that pitiless wisdom which in the end bore him down with its unanswerable insistence. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... seemed very good. The man at her side could see all that and more beyond. He had come within the hour from the din of the city, where the wealth that flowered here was made. And there was a primitive, eternal, unanswerable ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... did work miracles; and they were all for others, never for His own ends; and they were all for saving, never for destroying. Then, too, by this very taunt His claim to be the 'Saviour' is presupposed. And so, 'Physician, heal Thyself,' seemed to them an unanswerable missile to fling. If they had only known what made the 'cannot,' and seen that it was a 'will not,' they would have stood full in front of the great miracle of love which was before them unsuspected, and would have learned that the not saving Himself, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... deck and smoked, garbed in oilskins and sou'westers. They talked, too, by signaling to each other with their hands. Merry, Hodge, and Inza sat up until a late hour, going over and over again all the points of the day's experience, with the many conjectures and unanswerable questions which grew ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... must have courage to hear things, else there is hardly anything we can talk about." Mab felt herself unanswerable here, inclining to the opinion of Socrates: "What motive has a man to live, if not for ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... knows the resources of the human heart, who counts on the effect of such a reply. It matters not that it is itself unanswerable; it cannot keep other questions from arising. The sum of our pretexts for evading duty is equal to the sum of the sands of the sea or ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... do, is to renovate Liberalism, and though Liberalism (like every other party) is often conducted by claptrap, it has never been renovated by claptrap, but by great command of temper and the persistent exposition of persuasive and unanswerable truths. It is while we are in the desert that we have the vision: we being a minority, must be all philosophers: we must think for both parties in the State. It is no good our devoting ourselves to the flowers of mob oratory with no mob to address them to. We must, like the Free Traders, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... came down to the House of Commons, however, a very different fate awaited it. Walpole assailed it with powerful eloquence and with unanswerable argument. The true nature of the scheme now came out. It would have simply rendered the representative chamber powerless against a majority of the chamber which did not represent. This will be readily apparent to any one who considers the subject for a moment by the light of our ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... if Mr. Beurthonne had not received any instructions to deliver up the colony, it was certainly, useless to alledge that he was in want of vessels. To the desires of the French governor, he had only to make the plain and unanswerable objection, that his government had not given him any orders. It is therefore, by the kind of vacillation which appears in his answers, that himself, leads us to the opinion which we have formed. But it will be said, what advantage ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... presented to, and evidently accepted by, the court-martial, as presenting the true merits of the case. General Logan accepted that theory as unquestionably correct, and bent all his energies to the construction of unanswerable arguments in support of ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... steam marine which would proportionally cheapen the service, and accommodate more persons and a much larger class of interests. Our experiences of the benefits of existing lines, limited as those lines are, present an unanswerable argument for the desirableness and necessity of a liberal steam postal system, and a large and judicious extension of the present service. (See views of Senate Committee, ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... me here if he wants his acquaintance with this man kept secret?" she asked herself; and the question seemed unanswerable. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... merely a bulldog fighter—that he can win only as long as thousands are poured into his ranks to take the place of the dead—They tell me that he has no genius, no strategy, no skill. My reply to this is simple but unanswerable. We must fight to win. Grant is the ablest general we have developed. His losses are appalling—but the struggle is on now to the bitter end! Our resources are exhaustless. The South cannot replace her fallen soldiers—and therefore her losses are ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... dulled, but rapturously attentive ear. But, on this occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips to the old woman's ear, Mr. Dimmesdale, as the great enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul. The instilment thereof into her mind would probably have caused this aged sister to drop down dead, at once, as by the effect of an intensely poisonous infusion. What he really did whisper, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... laugh. "Your argument, Jack," he said when he was able to control his speech, "is absolutely unanswerable. There is no answer possible on any count; but did ever man hear of such a ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... vice and profligacy was drawn by one whose love of truth rendered him incapable of deceit or of exaggeration. It was published at the time, and was unanswered, because unanswerable. It was not painted from imagination by an ascetic; but from life by an enlightened observer—not by the poor preaching mechanic when incarcerated in a jail for his godliness; but when his painful sufferings were past—when his Pilgrim, produced by the folly of persecutors, had rendered him famous ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... unrighted. When before our own households and with those who know us best, and by whose side we toil, in shop, or store, or office, or with those whom we employ, we keep ourselves unspotted from the world, we have an unanswerable argument for Christ and a testimony as regards the value of following Him ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman
... precaution, he, that very same evening, took Juliette to the theatre, and afterwards to the masked ball at the opera. In case things went against him, he thus secured an unanswerable alibi. ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... the heavens created first or was the earth?" "The heavens," they replied, "for it is said, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.'" He then asked, "Was light created first or was darkness?" They replied, "This is an unanswerable question." They should have answered darkness was created first, for it is said, "And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep," and after this, "And God said, Let there be ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... speculation, and the utter impossibility of training men with no personal hopes to labor for the benefit of distant generations, there was one political argument against that course, which Mr. Gordon justly considers unanswerable. It is this: Turkey in Europe has been long tottering on its basis. Now, were the attempt delayed until Russia had displaced her and occupied her seat, Greece would then have received her liberty as a boon from the conqueror; and the construction would have been that she held it ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... course, unanswerable. Cole Bishop was a lad quite fond of mechanics, and was usually engaged in making some new kind of machinery. His force pump was his latest effort, and he was quite proud ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... together one starlight evening, in the small vine-draperied porch of his simple dwelling. Mrs. Germaine was occupied with household duties, and Theresa, after having asked us both a thousand unanswerable questions, had reluctantly obeyed her mother's summons ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... and write tolerably well, and knew something of arithmetic. This was a proof that their education had not been neglected. And why should it? Were they not the descendants of the great Maguires of Fermanagh? Why, the very consciousness of their blood was felt as a proud and unanswerable argument against ignorance. The best education, therefore, that could be procured by persons in their humble sphere of life, they received. The eldest brother, whose name was Brian, did not, as is too frequently the case with ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... it, we should do so grossly and notably, or in some conventional disguise: are questions of plastic style continually re-arising. And the sphinx that patrols the highways of executive art has no more unanswerable riddle ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... about to advance will meet with a certain amount of dissent, if not of incredulity, and some one will probably point at recent events as furnishing an unanswerable contradiction to much that I affirm. I will only pray my readers to believe that I have tried hard to cast prejudice aside in listening, in marking, and in recording; my opportunities of forming a deliberate judgment on the sympathies of all classes in this especial State were such as have fallen ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... see how you can combine the work to which you have already consecrated so much time, with the possibility of self-support. It appears from your letter to your brother that you see no one in Paris; the reason seems to me a sad one, but it is unanswerable, and since you cannot change it, you must change your place of abode and return to your own country. You have already seen in Paris all those persons whom you thought it essential to see; unless you are strangely mistaken in their good-will, you will be no less sure ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... experiences, come together according to a combination that is unlike anything else on this earth. It is a combination that does combine. It cannot be sorted out again, even on the Day of Judgment. Two totally different people have become in the sense most sacred, frightful, and unanswerable, one flesh. If a golden-haired Scandinavian girl has married a very swarthy Jew, the Scandinavian side of the family may say till they are blue in the face that the baby has his mother's nose or his mother's eyes. They can never be certain the black-haired Bedouin ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... to seek by any unlawful means to possess so conspicuous a jewel. For he, better than any one else, would know the impossibility of disposing of a gem of this distinction in any market short of the Orient. To which the unanswerable reply was made that no one attributed to him any such folly; that if he had planned to possess himself of this great diamond, it was for the purpose of eliminating it from competition with the one he had procured for Mr. Smythe; an argument, certainly, which drove us back on the only ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... brutal declaration of authority, and so cut the knot. Monica's unanswerable argument merely angered him. But he made an effort ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... himself against the Northern Jingoes, and though his motives may have been sectional, his arguments were really unanswerable. He pointed out that to fight England for Oregon at that moment would be to fight her under every conceivable disadvantage. An English army from India could be landed in Oregon in a few weeks. An American army sent to meet it must either round Cape Horn and traverse ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... turn," writes Teufelsdrockh, "there come seasons, meditative, sweet, yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear you ask yourself that unanswerable question: Who am I; the thing that can say 'I' (das Wesen das sich ICH nennt)? The world, with its loud trafficking, retires into the distance; and, through the paper-hangings, and stonewalls, and thick-plied tissues of Commerce and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... "Unanswerable logic, Walky," said Nelson, with some scorn. "I've used the same myself. And it serves all right if one is utterly selfish. I thought that out after ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... following account of the negotiations (p. 736): "Mr. Evelyn gave him [Col. Morley] some visits to attemper his affection by degrees to a confidence in him, & then by consequence to ingage him in his designes; and to induce him the more powerfully thereunto, he put into his hands an excellent and unanswerable hardy treatise by him written and severall times reprinted, intituled An Apology for the Royall Party, which he backed with so good Argument and dextrous Addresses in the prosecution of them, that, after some private discourse, the Colonel was ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... swayed by impulses that can enter into no calculation—drawn hither and thither by powers that can never be represented in your algebra. In one generation Christianity reduced Plato's republic to an absurdity. The printing-press has upset the unanswerable conclusions ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... will be answered. And the political parties and the men who in his life opposed him are now adopting his opinions, quoting his reasons, and in time will bring about the changes he advocated. Of all modern prophets and reformers, Henry George is the only one whose arguments are absolutely unanswerable and whose forecast ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... spring the words unconsciously released, conjuring up before her unwilling mental vision a picture of the years gone by? Who shall explain the apprehensiveness which came unbidden, causing known certainties to be forgotten because of the disquieting questionings which demanded an unanswerable reply. ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... that Matthew Arnold urged with great effect in his paper on that crank of a Tolstoy. He asked what would become of the people who need the work if we served and waited on ourselves, as Tolstoy preached. The question is unanswerable." ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... was very embarrassing. Here was a person who was asked to submit her case to the Church, and who frankly consents—offers to submit it to the very head of it. What more could any one require? How was one to answer such a formidably unanswerable ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... morrow, he lifted up his voice, loud, shrill, and clear, as when singing in his native marsh. I hurried, in triumph, to the learned disputants about his identity, and in their presence, he furnished unanswerable evidence that the peeper was a frog, and not a newt. I was complimented by both the learned pundits, as though I had added a great item to ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... at his own audacious confidence. Juliet attempted no reply to this very unanswerable statement. She studied the photograph in silence, and he lay watching her. In her blue-and-white boating suit she was a pleasant object to ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... the irresistible nature of the forces which he desired to arrest failed to discourage his eagerness to strike a blow for his own primitive ideas. He did not understand us, and replied by arguments that almost drove one to desperation by their childish shrewdness. He was absurd and unanswerable. Sometimes we caught glimpses of a sombre, glowing fury within him—a brooding and vague sense of wrong, and a concentrated lust of violence which is dangerous in a native. He raved like one inspired. On one occasion, after we had been talking to him ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... is the unanswerable problem of all religions; all philosophies; all science. If we return to a void, such as some interpreters of the Vedas declare, then surely this urge within mankind toward this annihilatory state would hardly be expected. It would be inconsistent with that instinct ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... logic is unanswerable—So I had better accept the shadow of Suzette falling upon my relation with Alathea, and try to gain my end in spite of it—And what ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... had taken the opinion of the judges frequently, and had followed it in deciding on the admissibility of evidence, a great deal of which was important to the prosecution. The report maintained, and with apparently unanswerable force, that when a legislature sits on offenses against the State, it constitutes a grand inquest which makes its own rules of evidence; and is not and ought not to be tied up by the rules administered in the ordinary law courts, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... as a man, was hardly so much to the taste of the tutor. He became a member of a vigorous debating society, and rendered himself remarkable there for humorous energy. Though always in earnest, yet his earnestness was always droll. To be true in his ideas, unanswerable in his syllogisms, and just in his aspirations was not enough for him. He had failed, failed in his own opinion as well as that of others when others came to know him, if he could not reduce the arguments of his opponents to an absurdity and conquer ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... This was unanswerable, and no one spoke, the Indians going off to bury their dead companions, which they did simply by finding a suitable crevice in the depths of the ravine near which they had been slain, laying them in side by side, with ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... Louis Philippe's long letter of the 14th of September, printed in the Life of the Prince Consort, vol. i. Appendix B. Queen Victoria's complete and unanswerable reply ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... would as soon have the Pope at once in his fallible infallibility,—as ten or twenty, little or big, anti-slavery Doctor-of-Divinity priests, each claiming to give his infallible rendering, however differing from his peer. (Laughter.) I never yet produced this Bible, in its plain unanswerable authority, for the relation of master and slave, but the anti-slavery man ran away into the fog of his Hebrew or Greek, (laughter,) or he jabbered the nonsense that God permitted the sin of slaveholding among the Jews, but that he don't do it now! Sir, ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.
... plainly enough, and he felt it to be unanswerable. But if he obeyed conscience and published the mistake—good Heavens! what would happen to him? Already, three years ago, the Lord Proprietor had resumed the shipping dues which had made so welcome an addition to his income. On the strength of them he had made ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... yet always assuming that to a respectable man it can have only one meaning. The pious citizen, suspecting the Socialist (for example) of unmentionable things, and asking him heatedly whether he wishes to abolish marriage, is infuriated by a sense of unanswerable quibbling when the Socialist asks him what particular variety of marriage he means: English civil marriage, sacramental marriage, indissoluble Roman Catholic marriage, marriage of divorced persons, Scotch marriage, Irish marriage, French, German, Turkish, or South ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... The argument was unanswerable; and the next day they started without the Indians, while John Brimblecombe heaved many an honest sigh at leaving them to darkness, the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... The opinion was unanswerable, and we tramped on along the dusty road, wearied out, but kept going by the excitement; till, coming upon a group of people, whose appearance suggested that they had journeyed from the city, Brace stopped them to question them about the state ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... much shaken in his resolution, and seemed in doubt: but at length it occurred to him that a barrel of his gunpowder was in a bad state, and that it would not keep much longer. This was brought forward as an unanswerable argument for the necessity of immediately declaring war: the idea of allowing so much good gunpowder to spoil was not to be thought of; and this settled the point. I was told by the missionaries that in the life of Shongi, the chief who visited England, the love of war was the one and lasting spring ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... man does not transgress philosophy by permitting the acrimony of pains and human frailty to prevail so much above measure; for they constrain her to go back to her unanswerable replies: "If it be ill to live in necessity, at least there is no necessity upon a man to live in necessity": "No man continues ill long but by his own fault." He who has neither the courage to die nor the heart to live, who will neither resist nor fly, what ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... thought, Billy answered: "Frederick the Great used to say, 'In default of unanswerable arguments it is better to express one's self laconically and not go beating about ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... respectable than the appearance of this ancient magistrate, in long black robe with fur edgings, high ruff around his thin, pointed face, and decent skull-cap covering his bald old head, quavering forth to unsympathetic ears a temperate and unanswerable defence of things which in all ages the noblest minds have ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... response. The question was unanswerable, and after a while Vane abruptly began to talk about their business in British Columbia. It passed the time; and he had resumed his usual manner when he pulled up where a stile path led across a ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... followed, to which he listened so attentively that his anxious grandmother said, "My dear, do you think it wise to talk about such things to that baby? He's getting great bumps over his eyes, and learning to ask the most unanswerable questions." ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... our World would have been unanswerable, but when they came to be brought to the Test of Lunar Reasoning, alas they signify'd nothing; they distinguisht and distinguisht till they brought the Prestarian War to be meer Rebellion, King-killing, Bloody and Unnatural; and the Solunarian ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... Geoffroy and the transcendentalists, of Lamarck and the believers in the Echelle des etres, evolutionary or ideal. Von Baer also, though influenced greatly by Naturphilosophie, turned against the exaggerations of the transcendental school, and by his unanswerable criticism of the theory of parallelism took away the ground from those who too easily believed in an ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... unanswerable indictment of our system of protecting inventors. No inventor had ever a clearer title than Bell. The Patent Office itself, in 1884, made an eighteen-months' investigation of all telephone patents, and reported: "It is to Bell that the world owes the possession of the ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... moon now appeared, as in a frame. And, watching in silence, Mr. Blagdon's guests saw the amazing luminary emerge, as it were, from the earth like a bright and blameless soul from the grave, and sail clear, presently, and upward into untroubled space; a glory, serene, smiling, and unanswerable. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... to come—it was observed in reply, that the house had no just right to load posterity with a weighty debt for what could in no degree operate to their advantage. Sir Boyle, eager to defend the measures of government, immediately rose, and in a very few words, put forward the most unanswerable argument which human ingenuity could possibly devise. "What, Mr. Speaker!" said he, "and so we are to beggar ourselves for fear of vexing posterity! Now, I would ask the honorable gentleman, and this still ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye," was the unanswerable rejoinder. "I am telling you, more or less, what she ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... who had suffered, who had conquered; but the air of one whose victory was barren, who was looking into the void for the things unconquerable yet essential to salvation. Paul made a little gesture of attention. He could find no words to reply. A man's deep profession of faith is unanswerable. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... in his room all the next morning when the awkward questions were being asked. Not well; oh, no! But he was down for lunch and conducting for a glee-party in the drawing-room afterwards, as perky and active as a professional. Besides, the really unanswerable problem is, who could have dared to make the Barkers' apple-pie beds? And the answer is, nobody—except ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... was clear that she had been rejected. Had she been an acceptable sacrifice, after the fire had touched her, the river would have received her'. This satisfied the whole crowd. The father said that, after this unanswerable argument, he would receive his daughter; and the whole ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... inactivity is now disgraceful; and even my pretty Constance would despise me, if she saw me loitering about, idling away my best days, when all the kingdom is in arms." "I never can despise a dutiful son," answered she; and Eustace found in that avowal such an unanswerable argument on the side of filial obedience, that he was able, not only to see the Colonel depart without impatience, but also to support his ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... and Aimee had strong hopes that he was prepared with some wise, unanswerable reason for remaining where he was. Meanwhile, his ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... I directed suspicion to my American friend here. I was waiting. I knew that at last Von der Herts realized the danger he was in. I felt that if opportunity were offered he would attempt to escape from England; and then our proofs of his guilt would be unanswerable, despite his cleverness. True enough, in the afternoon he secured the release of the countess, and together they started for the Continent. I was lucky enough to get him at Dover—and glad to let the ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... Ever stand bound to that most Christian King Whose favours, with all thancks, we must acknowledge As with all care preserve. Onely we hope His Maiestie will give us leave to say We greive that he is misinformd of us And our proceedings, of which we hereafter Will give him certaine and unanswerable proofes To iustefie our Actions, which we will Make knowne to all the world; till when we wish He will be pleasd to give way to the States To finish what they have begon, with Justice Temperd with mercy; and that your good Lordships Will give his Grace to understand thus much, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... his diagnosis of the case by an expressive gesture: Another poor fellow who was soon to answer the great roll-call! while on his perspiring face was again seen that expression of weariness and utter dejection, that hopeless, unanswerable: "What is the use?" since out of every ten cases that they assumed the terrible responsibility of operating on they did not succeed in saving four. He wiped his forehead, and set to work to draw down the flap of skin and put in the three sutures ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... direct proof of independent origination is attainable from the nature of the case, the overthrow of particular schemes of derivation has not established the opposite proposition. The futility of each hypothesis thus far proposed to account for derivation may be made apparent, or unanswerable objections may be urged against it; and each victory of the kind may render derivation more improbable, and therefore specific creation more probable, without settling the question either way. New facts, or new arguments and a new mode of viewing the question, may some day change ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... for Gallic affairs, had the mission previously entrusted to Metellus given to himself and took up both Metellus's office and his plan. Here you see at the beginning of this story the first accident,—the death of Metellus. An historian curious of nice and unanswerable questions might ask himself what would have been the history of the world if Metellus had not died. Certainly Rome would have been occupied with Gallic concerns a year sooner and by a different man; Caesar would probably have had to seek elsewhere ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... I knew delivered the letters only once every three days, alleging, as unanswerable argument in his defence, that his ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... confused earnestness.] Then, lord, if thou must go, I pray thee speak,— I know not how,—but so that all must hear. With magic of unanswerable words ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... shows what victories it may achieve. And in relation to the latter I must repeat what I said about the young lady with the flower, that this is the sort of work which, when produced in youth, leads the attentive spectator to ask unanswerable questions. He finds himself murmuring, "Yes, but what is left?" and even wondering whether it be an advantage to an artist to obtain early in life such possession of his means that the struggle with them, discipline, tatonnement, cease to exist for him. May not this breed an irresponsibility of ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... Holbach has no perception nor sense of the necessity of an explanation how the mental world came to be what it is, nor how men came to think and believe what they do think and believe. He gives them what he deems unanswerable reasons for changing their convictions, but he never dreams of asking himself in what elements of human character the older convictions had their root, and from what fitness for the conduct of life they drew ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... never been mended in our time," was the reply; and it was said in a tone which showed that the fact so announced was an unanswerable argument against the proposition of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... who signed himself Mentor. A war of pamphlets ensued between Mentor and Phocion. It was genius pitted against dulness, reason against passion; and reason wielded by genius won the day. The more intelligent and respectable citizens reluctantly admitted that Hamilton's arguments were unanswerable. A club of boon companions, to which Ledyard belonged, made the same admission by the peculiar manner in which it proposed to silence him. It was gravely proposed that the members of the club should pledge themselves one after another to challenge Hamilton to mortal combat, until some one ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... close attention and consideration. The General has treated his subject and marshalled his arguments and statements in so logical and intelligent a manner, and the principles he deduces seem so sound and appropriate, that the conclusions he arrives at appear to me unanswerable. ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... acknowledged that upon the surface this all appears to be very sound and almost unanswerable, but I hope to be able to show that there is in reality not the slightest real foundation for the conclusion to which ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... been of a life in which his fellow-men might find encouragement to endure their burdens, and of walking before them an example of love and forbearance, submissive and meek that he might with the more unanswerable grace preach obedience and fraternity to them—Merciful Heaven! And he shuddered and drew the veil hastily over his face, as if, in a bloody tumult, the ideal life, so the ultimate happiness, were vanishing before his eyes. Taking ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... were no desirable pickings to be had such as the philanthropic crew had fattened on these four years past. So there came to them, one and all, urgent telegrams or insistent letters or some equally unanswerable demand for their presence elsewhere, such as are usually prevalent among our guests in very dull or ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... Smith, Peter Ricker, Jonathan Lawrence, Anthony Rutgers, Peter T. Curtenius, Thomas Tucker, Daniel Shaw, Adam Gilchrist, Junr., and John Wiley. Of this committee Melancton Smith was the life and soul. He was the author of the address—a clear, able, and unanswerable exposition of the case. It states the determination of Mrs. Rutgers to carry it up to the Supreme Court, and, if defeated there, to the Senate, which, with the judges of the Supreme Court, constituted the Court for the Correction of Errors. Having reference to the contemplated proceedings, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... asked themselves, in some form or other, the same unanswered, unanswerable question. Helen had done so already, young as she was; when her mother died, and her father seemed slowly breaking down, and the whole world appeared to her full of darkness and woe. How then must it have appeared to this poor boy? But, strange to say, that bitter doubt, ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... such an unanswerable question that Grace only turned away impatiently; and Kate, who was in the room, fancying the brother and sister might wish to be alone, arose and departed. As the door closed after her, Captain Danton's wife faced round and ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... Papa Sherwood, with your perfectly unanswerable logic," said his wife lightly. "We'll remember all these strictures, and more. We can at least put the matter to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... of an argument is to be unanswerable, the place of honour certainly belongs to the religious argument. Any one who really believes that an international language is an impious attempt to reverse the judgment of Babel will continue firm in his faith, though one ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... your contention would be unanswerable, but the moral tone and thought of the world is changing. You take it for granted that man must have in sight some material reward in order to bring forth the best there is within him. I believe that mankind is awakening to the fact that material compensation is far less to be desired than ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... there. Doubtless the change from second-class to first was responsible for the omission, and yet, at the back of his mind was a vague feeling of uneasiness which he was wholly unable to explain. Chevrial had impressed him, and yet one objection to that gentleman's misgivings seemed to him unanswerable: if the Vards had been changed from second-class to first with any ulterior object, the authorities in charge of the ship must be in the plot, and ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... have real weight, and would be altogether unanswerable, if there were no test by which, when we employ the Deductive Method, we might judge whether an error of any of the above descriptions had been committed or not. Such a test, however, there is: and its application forms, under the name of Verification, the third essential ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... order; a bunch of fresh flowers upon the table; others, in pots, upon the window-sill. Their fragrance gave a delicate tone to the atmosphere of the room, and perhaps penetrated more nearly to Bressant's heart than an hour full of unanswerable arguments and exhortations. He turned to the fat servant, who stood smiling, and wiping her hands on ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... 445 Set all men's ears upon the rack. No sooner cou'd a hint appear, But up he started to picqueer, And made the stoutest yield to mercy, When he engag'd in controversy. 450 Not by the force of carnal reason, But indefatigable teazing; With vollies of eternal babble, And clamour, more unanswerable. For though his topics, frail and weak, 455 Cou'd ne'er amount above a freak, He still maintain'd 'em, like his faults, Against the desp'ratest assaults; And back'd their feeble lack of sense, With greater heat and confidence? 460 As bones of Hectors, when they differ, The more they're ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... first did not believe us; and when she was given to understand that we were in earnest, she brought to bear upon us the one argument that could have force, and sent to our harbour her 250-ton steam-swiveller. The 250-ton swiveller, no doubt, was unanswerable—unless we were prepared to die for our system. I was prepared, but I could not carry the people of my country ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... exasperating narrative, because the affair ended—or, rather, Vera caused it to end—on a note of interrogation. The reader may, however, draw consolation from the fact that, if he is tormented by an unanswerable query, Vera herself was much more tormented by precisely the ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... from Bahia de Los Angeles pose, at the present time, an unanswerable question of origin and ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey
... document in the possession of the Government which seems to me to be unanswerable proof, both of the settled policy of the Richmond Government towards the Union prisoners, and of the relative merits of Northern and Southern treatment of captives. The document is a letter ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... eyes met hers, could not resent her hostility. This monument of the shame of two races—this poisonous blossom of crime growing out of crime—this final, unanswerable white man's accuser—this would-be murderess—what ranks and companies would have to stand up in the Great Day with her and answer as accessory before the fact! He looked ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... and influence is at the bottom of this evil; and till that influence is traced and rooted out, there is, in my view, no chance of safety. The tampering with the soldiers by conversation and handbills is another unanswerable proof of the system by which all this mischief moves forward; and the activity of Brest in the last accounts, seems to confirm, as far as such preparation can, their knowledge of, if not their participation in, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... is not the first person who has dilated of late years upon the "decay of conversation," nor the only one who has sometimes felt the heaviness of silence descend upon her at a modern dinner. No doubt this same great and unanswerable question has been asked by many a traveller who, for the first time, has sat next an Englishman of good family (perhaps even with a handle to his name), who has answered all remarks by the proverbial but unsympathetic "Oh!" Indeed, it is to be feared ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... addendum to the garnishing of home. For a moment he thought of selling a few score of volumes. Would he ever really want those monumental tomes—the six folios of Muratori, for instance, which he liked to possess, but had never used? Thereby hung the great, the unanswerable question: How was he going to spend his life as a married man? Was it probable that he would become a serious student, or even that he would study as much as heretofore? No foreseeing; the future must shape ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... "That last question was unanswerable, my dear, for duty said 'Yes,' while my heart said 'No.' The young dogs! What a knocking about they've got; but I expect that their opponents are in a worse position still. I've been thinking of taking ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... infinite is probably the greatest achievement of which our own age has to boast. Since the beginnings of Greek thought these difficulties have been known; in every age the finest intellects have vainly endeavoured to answer the apparently unanswerable questions that had been asked by Zeno the Eleatic. At last Georg Cantor has found the answer, and has conquered for the intellect a new and vast province which had been given over to Chaos and old Night. It was assumed ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... arranged before the joint committees for the District of Columbia, and a number of the ladies made short addresses. Mrs. Stanton based her remarks on the unanswerable argument of Francis Minor at the St. Louis convention a few months before, the first assertion of woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... invulnerable to Cupid, but certainly not to any other kind of love," remarked Lady St. Eval, as she smilingly pointed out to Mrs. Percy's notice Miss Fortescue, surrounded by a group of children, and bearing on her expressive countenance unanswerable evidences of her interest in the ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... consented to die—thanks to several successive attacks of extremely persuasive apoplexy—the last of which proved unanswerable. I had been very little acquainted with him during his lifetime; but it seems that I became his friend the moment he was dead, for our colleagues assured me in a most serious manner, with deeply sympathetic countenances, that ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... proposed his committee of thirteen to report some "scheme of compromise". Parting company with Calhoun, March 5, on the thesis that the South could not safely remain without new "constitutional guarantees", Foote regarded Webster's speech as "unanswerable", and in April came to an understanding with him as to Foote's committee and their common desire for prompt consideration of California. The importance of Foote's influence in turning the tide in Mississippi, through his ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster
... the death-scene has been made, that at first sight seems unanswerable. It is said that no such full, swift recognition between the brother and sister, in those last moments of their long-severed lives, is possible; because there is no true point of contact through which such recognition, on the brother's part, could ensue. We think, however, there ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... this category had begun to come before the Supreme Court of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment, Mr. Justice Harlan swept Mr. Justice Comstock aside by quietly ignoring an argument which was unanswerable.[24] The same series of phenomena have appeared in regard to laws confiscating property invested in lotteries, when opinion turned against lotteries, or in occupations supposed to be unsanitary, as in ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... Mr. Jefferson, I am delighted with your production. Your statements relative to the inalienable rights of men are unanswerable and to secure these rights, governments must be instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. This paragraph concerning negro slavery meets with my ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various |
