"Untenable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... houses in the kingdom, says in his examination—"I may state generally, that I never knew a case of a tenant inclined to improve, who declined making such improvements for want of a lease." But if the causes to which Mr O'Connell assigns the state of the disturbed counties be untenable as regards Tipperary, they are still more so as regards the others. It is admitted by all the witnesses who have been examined before the land commission touching the condition of Clare, Limerick, and Roscommon, that the tenant-right or "good-will" is recognized in these districts; that the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and those in which a State shall be party." These words, urged the Chief Justice, must be given an exclusive sense "or they have no operation at all." This position is quite untenable, for even when given only their affirmative value these words still place the cases enumerated beyond the reach of Congress, and this may have been their only purpose. However, granting the Chief Justice his view of Article III, still we are not forced to challenge the ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... God or Nature seems to the mythologist not an ideal, but a real and mutual society, as if collateral beings, endowed with the conceived characters, actually existed as men exist. But this opinion is untenable. As Hobbes said, in a phrase which ought to be inscribed in golden letters over the head of every talking philosopher: No discourse whatsoever can end in absolute knowledge of fact. Absolute knowledge of fact is immediate, it is experiential. We ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... protects him from the Federal batteries, and up a little branch coming from the rear of Fairview, takes in reverse the left of Williams's line, which has become somewhat separated from Geary, (whose position is thus fast becoming untenable,) moves up, and deploys upon the open ground at Chancellorsville. But he finds great difficulty in maintaining his footing, and would have at once been driven back, when Paxton's (old Stonewall) brigade comes up ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... Volunteers have sallied from some of their strongholds and entrenched themselves, and that in one place alone (the South Lotts) they have seven machine guns. That when the houses which they held became untenable they rushed out and seized other houses, and that, pursuing these tactics, there seemed no reason to believe that the Insurrection would ever come to an end. That the streets are filled with Volunteers in plain clothes, but having revolvers in their pockets. That the streets are ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... without a crown and without a constitution. For what kind of a constitution is it if it has not the necessary confirmation by oath and won the general approval of nations because it was found to be untenable? It is a state without patriots and without patriotism, it is a state which arose by the amalgamation of eight irredents—the German one included—it is a state which had no future and in which the dynasty ... (suppressed) ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... autobiography, says he went up to the top of St. Bride's steeple to see the awful spectacle of the conflagration of the Fleet Prison, but the flakes of fire, even at that great height, fell so thickly as to render the situation untenable. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... accounted for than the green luxuriance within. It was held by Pennant to be an effect of volcanic fire, and that the walls of this and all our other vitrified strongholds are simply the crater-rims of extinct volcanoes,—a hypothesis wholly as untenable in reference to the hill-forts as to the lime-kilns of the country: the vitrified forts are as little volcanic as the vitrified kilns. Williams, the author of the "Mineral Kingdom," and one of our earlier British geologists, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... came, where this question of the first blow must be settled, was at Fort Sumter, in the mid-throat of Charleston harbor. On December 27, 1860, by a skillful movement at night, Major Anderson, the commander at Fort Moultrie, had transferred his scanty force from that dilapidated and untenable post on the shore to the more defensible and more important position of Fort Sumter. Thereafter a precarious relationship betwixt peace and war had subsisted between him and the South Carolinians. It was distinctly ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... Kazuhito to be proclaimed sovereign under the name of Kogon. But this monarch was not destined to find a place among the recognized occupants of the throne. For a time, indeed, fortune smiled on the Hojo. Within a few days after Kogon's assumption of the sceptre, Go-Daigo's retreat at Kasagi became untenable, and he fled, still escorted by the faithful Fujiwara Fujifusa. It must be recognized that, whatever the Fujiwara family's usurpations in the past, their loyalty to the Throne throughout this era of cruel vicissitudes redeems a ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... argument, ever claimed for them [the MS. readings] a right of acceptance beyond the emendations of Theobald, Malone, Dyce, and Singer, (that is, a right not justified by their obvious utility or beauty,) such a claim must have been untenable, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... contents of the thorax by the expiratory contraction. The glottis-closing muscles are fully capable of withstanding this comparatively slight pressure. The doctrine of breath-control is therefore scientifically untenable. This doctrine has no ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... sometimes quoted it at the Seminary," he writes, "for the purpose of exposing the impropriety of it. I do not think any professor ever quoted the statement, without adding that it is untenable. The Andover argument was ——"[5] He adds the proper controversial language, which, it seems, went solidly out of my head. Tenable or untenable, my memory has clutched the ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... arrived, though he knew these American commanders might come at any moment, and though he also knew how important it was to save a new British vessel that was building at York, because the command of the lake might well depend upon her. He then made another mistake by standing to fight in an untenable position against overwhelming odds. He finally retreated with all the effective regulars left, less than two hundred, burning the ship and yard as he passed, and leaving behind three hundred militia to make their own terms ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... thought to have erred by giving undue prominence to the favourable side, as I had done in the case of Bentham to the unfavourable. In both cases, the impetus with which I had detached myself from what was untenable in the doctrines of Bentham and of the eighteenth century, may have carried me, though in appearance rather than in reality, too far on the contrary side. But as far as relates to the article on Coleridge, my ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... defect, and we shall mark the growth of its most precious fruits in the increased power of observation and the counterpoise it offered to hasty generalizations, as well as in the confidence which learnt to reject untenable fictions, whether produced by luxuriant imagination or by a priori speculations, on the ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... interest. In the succeeding works (Mariucha to Amor y ciencia), he strove to unite Spanish color with philosophic breadth, and to lay aside even the appearance of polemic. Such a classification is ingenious, but, we feel, untenable. Aside from the fact that M. Martinenche was not acquainted with Galds' third play, Gerona, which does not fit into his scheme, it seems apparent that there is no essential difference in localization between La de San Quintn of ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... westward adventure proceeded. So unexpected had been this attack that it was some time before the department could adjust its front. Tremont Street, moreover, which was now untenable, held much apparatus, and most of this was burned where it stood. Straight up the slope toward Beacon Street and toward the gold dome of the State House the fire errantly went. Blank walls between buildings seemed to make little difference to it; what ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... magic, the color had changed again, and I got only yellow silk. The hypothesis of individual peculiarity, adopted the previous year to explain why some spiders gave yellow, and others white silk, was now untenable; and, remembering that, beside these two positive colors there was also (and indeed more commonly) a light yellow, as if a combination of the other two, I saw that the real solution of the mystery must lie in the spinners ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... name of the fifteenth century, which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which probably no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made, it must be on an hypothesis not very untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not record." "Unpublished MSS. by Leonardo contain discoveries and anticipations of discoveries," says Mr. Hallam, "within the compass of a few pages, so as to strike us with ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... and fronted with brave effort. The fugitive's cave was a good preparation for the king's palace. The throne to which he was called was no soft seat for repose. The Philistine invasion had torn away all the northern territory. He took the helm in a tempest. What was he to do? Ziklag was untenable; where was he to take his men? He could not stop in the Philistine territory, and he ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... be more gloomy and drear. I turned inland and could see only a bed of rock, covered with drifting sand, on which grew a stunted vegetation, and former experience had taught me that we could not hope to find water in this island; our position here was therefore untenable, and but three plans presented themselves to me: first, to leave a notice of my intentions on the island, then to make for some known point on the main and there endeavour to subsist ourselves until we should be found and ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... regards Rindfleisch's doctrine as untenable, since the process which he observed is chiefly the result of a severe injury of the blood from the sodium chloride solution and the teasing. If a method of preparation be chosen which protects the blood as far as possible, and avoids every chemical and physical alteration, the ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... denounced baptismal regeneration as "a part of papistical superstition" and the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in, with, and under the bread and wine as "consubstantiation," and "just as untenable and absurd as transubstantiation." (L. u. W. 1860, 384.) Considering the Constitution of the General Synod together with the fact that the Platform synods had not been molested, the admission of the Melanchthon Synod, advocated by Krauth, cannot be ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... position there would be untenable. A man is known there as he is known in his own club." He ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... historians [607:1] have asserted that synods commenced about the middle of the second century. But the statement is unsupported by a single particle of evidence, and a number of facts may be adduced to prove that it is altogether untenable. There is no reason to doubt that synods, at least on a limited scale, met in the days of the apostles, and that the Church courts of a later age were simply the continuation and expansion of those primitive conventions. We know very ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... "signs and wonders," as proof of a divine mission, to teach doctrines novel and innovating, after such clear and unequivocal language as this, from such high authority? I am sure, that if you are a sincere lover of truth, you must certainly abandon that ground as untenable. For, from these direc-tions, the Jews were commanded these things. 1. That the Prophet who presumes to speak a word, as from God, which God hath not commanded him to speak, must be put to death. 2. That the test, or criterion by which they are to discern a ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... Armentieres. A small epidemic of suspected dysentery in that division took us through that town frequently, and we found it almost completely deserted. The Huns shelled it almost daily and had made the place almost untenable for civilians, though, as usual, a number of them hung on and ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... (in some relations) less respectfully of human nature. Unless indeed it be true, as I have heard it maintained, that in the Middle Ages every one did go mad—every one was mad. The theory that this was a period of general dementia is not altogether untenable. ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Colonel Bird, with about 500 men, under convoy of a frigate and some armed vessels, against that post. General M'Dougal, who commanded there, had then only about 250 men in the place. He had timely notice of Colonel Bird's approach, and, sensible that his post was untenable, he exerted himself to remove the stores to the strong grounds about two miles and a half in his rear; but before he had made much progress in the work the British appeared, when he set fire to the stores and buildings and retreated. Colonel ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... war-ships roll dizzily at their moorings, and along the fringing coral which follows the configuration of the beach, the surf breaks with a continuous uproar. In wild weather, as the world knows, the roads are untenable. Along the whole shore, which is everywhere green and level and overlooked by inland mountain-tops, the town lies drawn out in strings and clusters. The western horn is Mulinuu, the eastern, Matautu; and from one to the other of these extremes, I ask the reader to walk. He will find ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Arabians showed themselves to be practical and accurate geographers. They applied their mathematical and astronomical knowledge to the study of the earth, and thus gave an impulse to exploration. While their theories of the origin of the earth were crude and untenable, their practical writings on the subject derived from real knowledge, and the practical instruction in schools by the use of globes and maps, were of ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... Spanish sea power, and not upon territorial descents, although the latter may aggravate the situation." The American admiral from before Santiago, when urging the expedition of a land force to make the bay untenable, telegraphed, "The destruction of this squadron will end the war;" and ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... of M. Comte is untenable. If he intends that his two great modes of thought, the theologic and the positive, (between which the metaphysic performs the function of transition,) are not equally spontaneous, but that the one must in the order of nature precede the other; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... on the Bogan. The line of demarcation between the squatter and the savage had been once much lower down, at Muda, and even at Nyingan (see INFRA), but the incursions of the blacks had rendered these lower stations untenable, without more support than the Colonial government was able to afford. There, at least, the squatter is not only not the real discoverer of the country, but not even the occupier of what had been discovered. The map will ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... of error ought to have been granted, unless the matter was apparent on the record. Whose office was it to make it thus apparent. Of the attorney who managed the pleadings. If, therefore, he has failed to do so, we may presume that he considered the ground untenable, or was guilty of inattention. Either presumption would be fatal to a citizen of the United States; and the condition of a foreigner cannot create a new measure in the administration of justice. It is moreover certain, that those who have ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... they should bestow it upon a stranger. She could not forgive the governess who had taken her place in their hearts. She and her eldest daughter had on this account frequent quarrels. Mary's position was therefore untenable. Her surroundings were uncongenial, her duties distasteful, and she was disapproved of by her employer. Nothing was needed but a decent pretext for the latter to dismiss her. This she before long found when, Mary being temporarily separated from her ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... been damp and dreary, and he had suffered from neuralgia. Doubtless the pain had acted upon his nervous system, and was accountable for his present and perpetually increasing anxiety. A little later he was fain to dismiss this supposition as untenable. His sense of constraint was changing into a positive dread, and not at all of Julian, around whom he had believed that his thoughts were in flight. Something, he knew not at all what, interposed between him and Julian, and so definitely that Valentine felt as if he could ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... carried," said the captain. "They are taking us on the left flank. Madame," he added, "should go at once; this place will be untenable ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... with the British and the Turks against Russia, and sent an army to the Crimea, which played an effective part in the great struggle in that peninsula. The troops of France had the honor of rendering Sebastopol untenable, carrying by storm one of its two great fortresses and turning its ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... whole scheme, but was helpless, because she could neither tell James, who would have chuckled, nor Urquhart either. To have told Urquhart, whether she told him her reason or left him to guess it, would have precipitated a confession that her present position was untenable. In her heart she knew it, for the heart knows what the mind stores; but she had not the courage to summon it up, to table it, and declare, "This robe is outworn, stretched at the seams, ragged at the edges. Away with it." Just now she could ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... depending on an accurate knowledge of the latitude, but theoretical investigations show that the periods of this variation are incompatible with the assumption that the earth is an absolutely rigid body. Though this assumption has in other ways been found to be untenable, the confirmation of this view by the discovery of Dr. Chandler is ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... China, and about her ethnical development, where formerly we could only grope in the dark. The claim that "the Chinese race" produced the high Chinese civilization entirely by its own efforts, thanks to its special gifts, has become just as untenable as the other theory that immigrants from the West, some conceivably from Europe, carried civilization to the Far East. We know now that in early times there was no "Chinese race", there were not even "Chinese", just as there were no "French" ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... in particular Master of the Hospital of St. Katherine from 1368 till a few years before his death in 1412. The fact that he was in favour with the King and that he was allowed to exercise the office by deputy, makes untenable the supposition that Chaucer was dismissed because he was a friend to the King, or because he did not actually conduct the office himself. (Devon's Issues, p. 359, Cal. Pat. Roll 1379, p. 386. Full statement of ecclesiastical offices in ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert
... opponent's statement is the dilemma. In the dilemma the arguer shows that the statement he wishes to disprove can be true only through the truth of at least one of several possibilities. He then proves that these possibilities are untenable, and therefore the original statement is false. To represent the dilemma with letters: The truth of A rests upon the truth of either x or y; but as x and y are both false, A is false. Once when it was believed in certain quarters that Japan was about to undertake a ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... charge of a loafer, and the horse and the whip were adorned with white favours, and the back seat was confused but not untenable with hampers. "Up we go," said Mr. Voules, "old birds in front and young ones behind." An ominous group of ill-restrained rice-throwers followed them up as ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... successor, was even worse; indeed, it is not too much to say that he was the most "impossible" monarch whom Europe has known since the days of the Tsar Paul. His court was characterised by gross favouritism and arbitrary revisions of the constitution; and his position became finally untenable when he committed the fatal error of marrying Draga Mashin, a woman of no position and notorious private character. Two incidents in her tragic story remind us of similar scandals in English history—the fond delusion of Mary Tudor and ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... of the President to a committee of the whole house, was carried by a large majority. In committee, resolutions were moved by Mr. Blount of North Carolina, declaratory of the sense of the house respecting its own power on the subject of treaties. These resolutions take a position less untenable than had been maintained in argument, and rather inexplicit on an essential part of the question. Disclaiming a power to interfere in making treaties, they assert the right of the house of representatives, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... and the Christian. Only he states it so abstractly that to people familiar with Browning's concrete and humanised dialectic it seems cold and artificial. But it's really his sincerest and deepest thought, and he deliberately rejects the rebel position as intellectually and morally untenable: and adopts a position of aquiescent agnosticism on the problem of evil subject to an unshakeable faith in immortality and the Love of God. This is a red rag to your Swinburnes. That is why I asked you to send me Swinburne, as I want to get to the bottom ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... and the bivouacs of armies, and have rained down a hail of dynamite, melinite, fire-shells and cyanogen poison-grenades, which have at once put guns out of action, blown up magazines, rendered fortifications untenable, and rent masses of infantry and squadrons of cavalry into demoralised fragments, before they had the time or the opportunity to strike a blow in reply. Then upon these silenced batteries, these wrecked fortifications, and these demoralised brigades, ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... he held in defence of his supposed new doctrines with Eckius. For Martin was then but a linsey-wolsey reformer. He retained some dogmas, which, by natural consequence, made others, that he held, untenable. So that Eckius, in some points, had the better of him. But, from that time, he made clear work, renouncing all that stood in his way: and then his doctrines ran upon all fours. He was never puzzled afterwards; and could boldly declare that he would defend them in the face of angels ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... elaborate description of this fact in his New Pathways in Science. The above statement, like others of Eddington's, has been Contested from the side of professional philosophy as logically untenable. Our own further discussion will show that ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... cried Mark, "how ridiculous all this is. Mankind have forged chains for themselves, and make martyrs of themselves." Although he still justified himself in making no reply, he felt that his position was untenable. "I am leaving the place shortly," he said, "in about a week's time. Can I not see ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... for the Uppingham masters. Men looked at one another as those do who do not like to give a name to their fears. For what could be done? The school could not be dismissed again. How many would return to a site twice declared untenable? But neither could it be kept on the spot: for there came in unmistakable evidence that, in that case, the school would dissolve itself, and that, perhaps, irrevocably, through the withdrawal of its scholars by their parents ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... of their position. Its loss had made the city untenable. The failure of the attempt to recover it was followed by immediate preparations for evacuation. The gray light of the coming day showed a stream of soldiers marching across the bridge to the north side. The fleet had disappeared. It lay sunk in the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Rattazzi's genuine loyalty, and Cavour hesitated no longer to come to an agreement which every day proved to be more imperative. After the Coup d'etat, the Extreme Right, led by the Count de Revel and General Menabrea, adopted the tactics of professing to believe untenable the position of a free State wedged in between the old despotism of Austria and the new one of France. The argument was ingenious and was likely to make converts. It was urgently necessary to form a new political combination which ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... purely intellectual grounds would be awed into silence by its moral beauty, unless he were deficient in reverence, purity, and love. It must therefore be said, distinctly, although it cannot be argued at length, that this ground also appears to me to be utterly untenable. I deny that it is impossible to speak the truth without implying a falsehood; and I deny equally that it is impossible to speak the truth without drying up the sources of our holiest feelings. Those who maintain ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... testimony to the effect that the composition of the book was the employment of the queen's idle hours when travelling about in her litter, and that his grandmother, being one of Margaret's ladies of honor, was accustomed to take charge of her writing-case (Ed. Lalanne, viii. 126). Equally untenable is the view taken by the historian De Thou (liv. vi., vol. x. 508), who makes the fault more venial by representing the Heptameron to have been composed by the fair author in her youth. (So, too, Soldan, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... movements and vagaries for such an unwieldy thing as a turtle to indulge in, it returned to the sea, and was the only one that landed. The sleeper at last moved, and I roused her up. At first she declared she had not been asleep at all, but when time and circumstances made that assertion untenable, she fell back upon the excuse that it was so dull sitting there with no one to talk to, and nothing to do, and, besides, her thoughts ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... precipices are so steep and perpendicular as to render it almost impregnable. In spite of these advantages, the pusillanimity of Bartolomeo Orlandini rendered the men cowardly and the fortress untenable; for as soon as he heard of the enemy's approach he abandoned the place, fled with all his forces, and did not stop till he reached the town of San Lorenzo. Niccolo, entering the deserted fortress, wondered it had not ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... being brought into the world together: Adam feared God because he was naked. Melinaud ("Psychologie de la Pudeur," La Revue, Nov. 15, 1901) remarks that shame differs from modesty in being, not a fear, but a kind of grief; this position seems untenable. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... fort was pronounced by all to be untenable. It was originally constructed as a retreat from the savages, who could only assail it with arrows and hatchets and a few musket balls. It was surrounded by an earthen rampart, about ten feet high and three or four feet thick. In all, there were twenty-four cannons within ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... men. Toughly as they strove, after partial successes, they began to lose one Hill, and then another; and in the course of hours, nearly all their Hills. Landshut Town Loudon had taken from them, Landshut and its roads: in the end, the Prussian position is becoming permeable, plainly untenable;—Austrian force is moving to their rearward ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... centuries ago; it was the central principle of that great revolt that the establishment of particular opinions was no guarantee for their truth; and it becomes thus our duty as well as our right to examine periodically our intellectual defences, to abandon positions which the alteration of time makes untenable, and to admit and invite into the service of the sanctuary the fullest light of advancing knowledge. Of all positions the most fatally suicidal for Protestants to occupy is the assumption, which it is competent for Roman Catholics to hold, but not for them, that beliefs once sanctioned ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... famous isthmus. Mexico states that she looks towards Asia with equal favour as towards Europe, and geographically she may do so indeed. But this is a sentiment which—except in the mere matter of buying and selling—time will show to be untenable. Mexico is a "European" state, in character, tradition, and civilisation; and she, in common with all Latin America, must continue largely to draw her inspirations, and to augment her population from old Europe, not from Asia; nor, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... to a perception of this omission. Butler avowedly appeals to the conscience, and therefore at least recognises God as directly revealed in a moral character. That seemed to supply a gap in the ordinary theology. But in the purely empirical view Butler's argument was untenable. It appealed to one of the 'intuitions' which were incompatible with its fundamental assumptions. The compunctions of conscience were facts to be explained by 'association,' not to be regarded as intimations of wrath. Butler's view might be inverted. ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... doing me justice, Mr. Underwood. You know that my faith and hope are at the core the same as your own. All our question is what outworks are untenable.' Again he spoke hotly, but Mr. Underwood's gentleness seemed to ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... room known as the "Chickamauga room," being chiefly occupied by Chickamauga prisoners. The sentinel who had formerly been placed at this stairway at night, to prevent the prisoners from entering the kitchen, had been withdrawn when, in the fall of 1863, the horrible condition of the floor made it untenable for ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... Juvenal des Ursins, "considered this fool pretty wise." The Duke of Burgundy had good reason, however, for seeking this outward reconciliation; it put an end to a position too extended not to become pretty soon untenable; the peace was a cause of great joy at Paris; the king was not long coming back; and two hundred thousand persons, says the chronicle, went out to meet him, shouting, "Noel!" The Duke of Burgundy had gone out ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of the Germans equally lack a distant field of fire, but if lost they would be rendered untenable by us by the fact that they would be exposed to a fire from the German guns in the rear and to ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... comparatively new. As little as the myth of the Creation of the World—as taught us by the Bible—can be upheld in sight of the investigations of geographers and, scientists, grounded as these investigations are upon unquestionable and innumerable facts, just so untenable has its myth proved concerning the creation and evolution of man. True enough, as yet the veil is far from being lifted from all the sub-departments of this historical development of mankind; over many, on which already light has been shed, differences of ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... or the morning-star". Now all this panegyric is admissible only on the supposition of reciprocal justice. Plato, indeed, had the hardihood to say that the just man is happy in himself, and by reason of his justice, even although others are unjust to him; but the position is untenable. A man is happy in his justice if it procure for him justice in return; as a citizen is happy in his civil obedience, if it gain him protection in return. There are two parties in the case, and the moralist should obtain access to both; he should induce the one to fulfil his ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... Strafford. To attribute Mr. Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule to an infatuation such as that suggested above, would certainly have the air of implying that the writer thought the Home Rule doctrine a peculiar or untenable one. Similarly, Browning's choice of a motive for Strafford has very much the air of an assumption that there was nothing to be said on public grounds for Strafford's political ideal. Now this is certainly not the case. The Puritans in the great struggles of the reign ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... urging on and directing the erection of the stage. This stage was planned to be a substantial platform about thirty feet square, supported on posts firmly driven into the ground, so that the water might pass freely under it. In the event of the parsonage becoming untenable it would form a refuge ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... reached the top of Majuba Hill before sunrise. It was not until two hours later that the Boer videttes, advancing to occupy their usual look-out, found the English in position. The Boers at once perceived the danger, as their position was made untenable by the possession of Majuba Hill by the English. Had the force left in camp been sufficiently strong to threaten a direct attack at this moment, the Boers would doubtless have fled: but the paucity of numbers there prevented ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... respect of his fellows. The leadership of his party fell to him as of course. It was not grasped by him. He was never a partisan. He never waived his entire independence of judgment. His ingenuity and adroitness never tempted him to untenable positions. Hence his party followed him with implicit confidence. Yet while the debates of Congress, imperfectly reported as they seem to be in its annals, show the deference paid to him by the Republican leaders, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... respect explains the inability of Clinton, an able general, to support Cornwallis in his hour of need. The moment the French fleet appeared in the Chesapeake, Cornwallis's position became perfectly untenable, and he was obliged to surrender to the allied armies, who were vastly superior in number and equipment to his small force, which had not even the advantage of fighting behind well-constructed and perfect defences. No doubt, from the beginning to the ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... responsible for his son's bringing up. When the boy had learned it, and was willing to acknowledge the error of his ways, then, perhaps, he might kill the fatted calf—that is, of course, if the prodigal should return on all fours and with no stilted and untenable ideas about his rights—ideas that St. George, of course, was instilling into ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to—accept my sacrifice?" she asked so softly that he did not note the yearning in the tones—the beseeching of him to abdicate the position that, for her, was untenable. ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... gathering experience and developing will, to which every life is subordinated, renders the cruder conception of aristocracy, the idea of a select life going on amidst a majority of trivial and contemptible persons who "do not exist," untenable. It abolishes contempt. Indeed to believe at all in a comprehensive purpose in things is to abandon that attitude and all the habits and acts that imply it. But a belief in universal significance does not altogether preclude a belief in an aristocratic method of progress, in the ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... them to state that the alleged facts published by the 'Clarion' and copied by other journals are utterly unsupported by testimony, and the charges—although more or less vague—which were based upon them are equally untenable. We are now satisfied that one 'Elijah Curtis,' a former pioneer of Tasajara who disappeared five years ago, and was supposed to be drowned, has not only made no claim to the Tasajara property, as alleged, but has given no sign of ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... driver proceeded to drive out, were quietly reposing upon the floor. A few strokes of his whip, and a loud burst of gratuitous curses, soon effected an ejectment; and I dismounted, and took possession of this untenable tenement. Moodie was not yet in sight with the teams. I begged the man to stay until he arrived, as I felt terrified at being left alone in this wild, strange-looking place. He laughed, as well he might, at our fears, and said that he had a long way to go, and ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... was touched and gratified by the distinguished honour Varchi paid him. In an earlier chapter of this book I have already pointed out how this correspondence bears upon the question of his friendship with Tommaso dei Cavalieri, and also upon an untenable hypothesis advanced by recent Florentine students of his biography. The incident is notable in other ways because Buonarroti was now adopted as a poet by the Florentine Academy. With a width of sympathy rare in such bodies, they condoned ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Now Euclid would, with great right, demand of such a philosopher to make Life; in the same sense, I mean, in which Euclid makes an Icosahedron, or a figure of twenty sides, namely, in the understanding or by an intellectual construction. An argument which, of itself, is sufficient to prove the untenable nature ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... offensive and counter-offensive, during which the French have seized part of the hills and the German part of the plain, till the whole region is a madman's maze of barbed wire, earthy lines, trenches,—some of them untenable by either side and still full of the dead who fell in the last combat,—shell holes, and fortified craters. Such was something of the situation in that wind-swept plain at the edge of the Bois-le-Pretre. I leave for other chapters the account of an average day in the trenches and ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... the body. The company charged. Captain Styles was the first to reach the stone wall, and with Lieutenant Jackson cleared it of such of the enemy as remained. Five or six men were wounded in the charge, and others fell in the sungar. The advanced position of this company was soon seen to be untenable, and they were ordered to fall back to the edge of the village, where the whole regiment was ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... sir,' rejoined the old pupil in an argumentative manner, 'to find you taking a position so untenable. My schooling was paid for; it was a bargain; and when I came away, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... Lajeunie, the novelist," continued the host. But before he could present the rest of the company, Brochat was respectfully intimating to the widow that her position in the Weeping Alone apartment was now untenable. He was immediately commanded ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... of abuse in the way in which they used it, one after the other, with covert glances. If he was going to put up with this from the whole row, his position on the farm would be untenable. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... at Cape Helles, I may take it that the Peninsula is open to a landing on very easy terms. The cross fire from the Fleet lying part in the Aegean and part in the mouth of the Straits must sweep that flat and open stretch of country so as to render it untenable by the enemy. Lord K. demonstrated this cross fire upon the map. He toiled over the wording of his instructions. They were headed "Constantinople Expeditionary Force." I begged him to alter this to avert Fate's evil eye. He consented and both this corrected draft and the copy as finally approved ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... in fact impossible to make Germany pay the expenses of both sides, and that the unloading of their liabilities upon the enemy was not practicable, the position of the Ministers of Finance of France and Italy became untenable. ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... honest; so's my love Be not offended; for it hurts not him, That he is loved of me; I follow him not By any token of presumptuous suit; Nor would I have him till I do deserve him: Yet never know how that desert should be. I know I love in vain; strive against hope; Yet, in this captious and untenable sieve, I still pour in the waters of my love, And lack not to love still: thus, Indian-like, Religious in mine error, I adore The sun that looks upon his worshipper, But knows of him no more. My dearest madam, Let not your hate encounter with my ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... from the 10th Division on Tahta Ridge, to bring away his wounded who were very numerous. About 3 P.M. the last of them came out, having had a terrible day, only four or five officers remaining unwounded. They stuck to it well, but it was an untenable position. The Turk contented himself with driving them off the Foka Heights, and did not attempt to advance farther—if he had, it might have proved just as bad for him as Foka had been ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... such remarks as these could not sound; to have the expectancy of partnership with one of the largest-practising architects in London thrust upon him was cheering, however untenable he felt the idea to be. He saw that, whatever Mr. Hewby might think, Mr. Swancourt certainly thought much of him to entertain such an idea on such slender ground as to be absolutely no ground at all. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... campaign has brought him face to face with a strong position of the enemy. Shall it be carried by direct attack, and, until so subdued, arrest the progress of the army? or can it be rendered impotent or untenable by severing its communications and by operations directed against the district in its rear, which it protects, and upon which it also depends? The direct attack may be by assault, by investment, or by regular siege approaches; but whatever the method, the result is the same—the assailant ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... in the present state of industry, when everything is interdependent, when each branch of production is knit up with all the rest, the attempt to claim an Individualist origin for the products of industry is absolutely untenable. The astonishing perfection attained by the textile or mining industries in civilized countries is due to the simultaneous development of a thousand other industries, great and small, to the extension of the railroad system, ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... recruits, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Mercer, an officer of courage and experience; but the situation of the forts was very ill-chosen; the materials mostly timber or logs of wood; the defences wretchedly contrived and unfurnished; and, in a word, the place altogether untenable against any regular approach. Such were the forts which the enemy wisely resolved to reduce. They assembled a body of troops, consisting of 1,300 regulars, 1,700 Canadians, and a considerable number ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... frigate had nearly taken him; both which statements are perhaps also a little mythical. Certain only that he vanished at this point into Scandinavia; and general Europe never saw him more. Vanished into a cloud of untenable schemes, guided by Alberoni, Baron Gortz and others; wild schemes, financial, diplomatic, warlike, nothing not chimerical in them but his own unquenchable real energy;—and found his death (by assassination, as appears) in the trenches of Frederickshall, among ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... haughtily from the room and her untenable position, her answer trickling back to them ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... latest theory is altogether untenable and only entitled to consideration on account of the authority under ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... sickness or accidents.... You mention the employers' attitude towards the molders' application—a refusal to grant to molders any separate consideration because other classes of workers would also expect it. To me such an attitude is both unfair and untenable. If the molder can prove that his conditions of working are vile, dangerous and unhealthy, it is surely fair to ask for a proper recompense for such work...."[137] And consider this extract from one of the reports of the Coal Industry Commission, signed by six members of the Commission. "It ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... recovery we have avoided on the one hand the theory that business should and must be taken over into an all- embracing government. We have avoided on the other hand the equally untenable theory that it is an interference with liberty to offer reasonable help when private enterprise is in need of help. The course we have followed fits the American practice of government—a practice of taking action step by step, of regulating only to meet concrete needs—a practice ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... justify his undertaking an expedition into the Indian country with so small a force as he could command, he was at once to evacuate the place and fall back with his force on the settlement, as the position was quite untenable, and every man was needed for ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... which were proudly brought in by the remnants of the brigade. The situation now looked extremely serious, for the Turks, growing bolder, launched a most determined attack on Mansura, and in spite of numerous counter-attacks rapidly made the ridge untenable. The "Cameliers" again sacrificed themselves in a gallant effort to raise the siege and played sad havoc with the Turkish cavalry. Temporarily the advance was held, but as death from starvation and thirst was the only alternative to ultimate ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... eluded all their diligence and skill. At night, they took up their lodging close to the banks of the river, and made a fire, but the musquitos swarmed about them in such numbers, that their quarters were almost untenable: They followed them into the smoke, and almost into the fire, which, hot as the climate was, they could better endure than the stings of these insects, which were an intolerable torment. The fire, the flies, and the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... rendered her position in Gosnold House positively untenable, however firmly it might seem to have been re-established by the ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... a little contribute to leave him thus without an ally, was, that if there was any one post more untenable than the rest, he would be sure to throw himself into it; and to do him justice, when he was once there, he would defend it so gallantly, that 'twould have been a concern, either to a brave man or a good-natured one, to have seen him ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... not in the least share in his companion's view. But still he felt disturbed, perhaps unreasonably so considering how very little he still knew of the speaker. He was indeed almost as disturbed as he would have been had it been his own son who had suddenly put forward a wrong and indeed an untenable proposition. ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... you haven't. If you point with pride to that wild flight of fancy which identified 'Molly Lessing' with Marian Blessington, George, your position is (as you yourself would say) untenable. It wasn't ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... his position was absolutely untenable, Laborde did not wait the assault, but fell back, covered by his cavalry, to the far stronger position in his rear. A momentary pause ensued before the British continued their advance. The new position ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... those places God must have meant for a field from all time, lying very level at the foot of the slope that crowds up against Kearsarge, falling slightly toward the town. North and south it is fenced by low old glacial ridges, boulder strewn and untenable. Eastward it butts on orchard closes and the village gardens, brimming over into them by wild brier and creeping grass. The village street, with its double row of unlike houses, breaks off abruptly at the edge of the field in a footpath that goes up the streamside, ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... commanded the passes into Castile, became of vital importance to the latter kingdom. Its defense had accordingly been entrusted to the valiant order of the Templars, who, unable to keep their ground against the pertinacious assaults of the Moslems, abandoned it, at the expiration of eight years, as untenable. This occurred about the middle of the twelfth century; and the Castilian monarch, Sancho the Beloved, as the last resort, offered it to whatever good knights would ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... Cox and a British staff, should have held a month. But no sooner had the French appeared before it, on the 26th August, than a powder magazine traitorously fired exploded and breached the wall, rendering the place untenable. ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... deep, sheer-sided gash, down at the bottom of which the Jihun brawled and boiled. I did not envy any army faced with the task of crossing it, even supposing the bridge should not be destroyed. But they would not need to cross in order to make the town untenable. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... however, and the more quickly we set about it the sooner we shall get out of this broiling spot, and have our wounded men properly cared for on board ship," he said. "We have to make the place untenable for some time to come by the rascals you ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... the country is unfit for occupation, for, though in favourable seasons there might in some few localities be abundance of feed for stock, the uncertainty of rain and frequent recurrence of drought renders it untenable, the grasses and herbage being principally annuals, which not only die but are swept away by the hot summer winds, leaving the surface of the soil completely bare. On Cooper's Creek, near the boundary, there is a small tract of second-rate country, which, being abundantly ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... the carriers of which were obliged to pass through a tornado of shells and machine gun bullets while crossing the Valley of the Ailette, where their every movement could be observed by the French. Eventually the position became untenable and the Germans retired during the night to the Northern side of the Ailette Valley. The best elements of the Crown Prince's army had sustained severe losses and were compelled to go to the rear to reconstitute their diminished ranks. The evacuated territory North of the crest of ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... the burghers of the little city found their proud position quite untenable. They accordingly, on the 1st of December, despatched the burgomaster and a senator to Amersfoort, to make terms, if possible, with Don Frederic. When these envoys reached the place, they were refused admission to the general's presence. The army had already been ordered ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... support the contention. However, the story of the Huguenot immigration into England is clearly bound up with Norwich and the adjacent district. And so we may well take the name of 'Perfrement' as conclusive evidence of a French origin, and reject as utterly untenable the not unnatural suggestion of Nathaniel Hawthorne, that Borrow's mother was 'of gypsy descent.'[9] She was one of the eight children of Samuel and Mary Perfrement, all of whom seem to have devoted their lives to East Anglia.[10] We owe to Dr. Knapp's edition of Lavengro one exquisite glimpse ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... the husky musical voice smote upon Cairn's ears as the most hated sound in nature—"you have followed me. Not content with driving me from London, you would also render Cairo—my dear Cairo—untenable for me." ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... the purpose, and, before the little grotto had become so filled with smoke as to be absolutely untenable, its entrance was closed by a curtain of broadcloth, held so hermetically over the aperture that even the fumes of Assafoetida could not possibly have found ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... follow the path of historical research in order to study the subject, come to the conclusion: "If John possesses the genuine tradition about the life of Jesus, that of the first three Evangelists (the Synoptists) is untenable. If the Synoptists are right, the Fourth Gospel must be rejected as a historical source" (Otto Schmiedel, Die Hauptprobleme der Leben Jesu Forschung, p. 15). This is a statement made from the ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... an extra heavy nocturnal bombardment, we went out in search of a melon. A shell had shattered her impromptu showcase, dislocated a wall on one side of the archway, which menaced immediate collapse. In fact, the place had become untenable. ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... forgot that the bereaved creature was unable to behold the confusion with which defeat and exposure had covered me. At length I spoke imperfectly, loosely, and at random. The woman detected me in an untenable position—checked me—and in her artless manner, laid bare the fallacy of an inconsiderate assertion. In an instant I was aware of my conviction, I retracted my expression, and involved myself immediately in fresh dilemma. Again, and as gently as before, she made the unsoundness of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... is reason to believe that this unfriendly and vexatious treatment was designed to bear harshly upon the hardy fishermen of the United States, with a view to political effect upon this Government. The statutes of the Dominion of Canada assume a still broader and more untenable jurisdiction over the vessels of the United States. They authorize officers or persons to bring vessels hovering within 3 marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors of Canada into port, to search the cargo, to examine the master on oath touching the cargo and voyage, and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... of a blind man denying the existence of light," said that gentleman, "but never before of a sensible being like yourself urging the most untenable theories in face of such evidence as has been brought before us during this inquiry. If your wife committed suicide, or if the entrance of the point of a hat-pin into her spine was effected by accident, how comes the head of the pin ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... of a man move across the surface of the film. My first thought was that someone had entered the room without my knowledge, and his figure had been reflected on the surface of the film, which was highly glazed, but a glance around the room assured me that this explanation was untenable. Moreover, I found, upon further investigation, that the film was lying in such a position that it would be impossible to reflect any person in the room. I then examined the skylight, only to find that, owing to the sharp inclination of the roof, it would be an utter impossibility ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... seeing that the position of the Government was untenable, resorted to a method which since 1848 has been for decades practised by the capitalists in order to befog, divide, and finally overpower the working-class. This method is the so-called Coalition Ministry, composed of bourgeois and ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... filled with all these flaming masses, became so heated that it could no longer be breathed. The atmosphere itself was burning, the glass of the windows cracked,' and apartments became untenable. The Emperor stood for a moment immovable, his face crimson, and great drops of perspiration rolling from his brow, while the King of Naples, Prince Eugene, and the Prince de Neuchatel begged him to quit the palace, whose entreaties ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... Mississippi for a distance of sixty miles. The enemy therefore had the river in his front, and behind him a swamp, impassable to any great extent for either men or supplies in the then high state of the river. The only way of receiving help, or of escaping, in case the position became untenable, was by way of Tiptonville, to which a good road led. It will be remembered that between New Madrid and Point Pleasant there is a low ridge of land, rising from one to ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... Wild Man. It was natural that, having had his thoughts for so long a period filled with conjectures in reference to this wonderful creature, he should suppose the first tall, mysterious man he met must be he. But he dismissed the notion as untenable and absurd on second thoughts. That the blue-eyed, calm, dignified hunter who kneeled by his side, and held the refreshing water to his lips as if he were a trained sick nurse, should be the Wild Man, the man reported to be forty feet high, covered ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... must therefore take it for granted, my good M. Ratichon, that your man of all work is—of his own free will—keeping out of the way. The murder theory is untenable; we have had to abandon it. The total disappearance of the body is an unanswerable argument against it. Would you care to offer a reward for information leading to the recovery of your ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... made at one of its extremities. The tiles and rafters covering the room were green with damp, and, through various small apertures, allowed the wind and even the rain to enter with a facility which would have rendered the abode untenable for a human inhabitant during any but the summer season. In one of the slopes of the roof was an opening in the tiles, at about four feet from the floor, closed by a wooden door, and large enough to give egress to a man. To this opening ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... extinct mammals were washed out of the underlying Pampean deposit, and subsequently became embedded with the still existing shells; but I am not convinced by his remarks. M. Bravard believes that the whole enormous Pampean deposit is a sub-aerial formation, like sand-dunes: this seems to me to be an untenable doctrine.) Hence we have good evidence that the above enumerated gigantic quadrupeds, more different from those of the present day than the oldest of the tertiary quadrupeds of Europe, lived whilst the sea was peopled with most of its present ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... quickly from the shock, and opened so tremendous a fire from the walls, aided by the cross-fire from the ships, that no reinforcements could reach the party in the tower, and the next morning early they evacuated the place, which was rendered untenable by the fire of the Turks in ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... its specific gravity were low enough, by a combination of gravity and centrifugal force, somewhat in the same manner as the ring of Saturn is held in place. Of course, any idea that the layer rested on the air and was supported in place by it, would be untenable. As I said in my previous letter, I don't believe such a layer exists. If it does, I hope that no one proves it before I get some characters off on a space flyer for an interplanetary adventure or two.—S. P. Meek, Capt., Ord. Dept., ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... that these phials contained the blessed eucharist under the form of wine, if admitted, would form a new proof of the real and permanent presence of Christ's blood in the B. Sacrament; yet it is a novel, unsupported, and untenable conjecture. Some of the ancient Christian Fathers complain, it is true, of the abuse of burying the eucharist with the deceased under the form of bread; but the phials of blood have been found with ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... out at all," he concluded. "At first I thought he might be Tarzan of the Apes; but he neither speaks nor understands English, so that theory is untenable." ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Lyell, and most authors believe, that the constituent parts of each layer were separately deposited as sediment, and then metamorphosed. This view, in the majority of cases, I believe to be quite untenable. In those not uncommon instances, where a mass of clay-slate, in approaching granite, gradually passes into gneiss, we clearly see that folia of distinct minerals can originate through the metamorphosis of a homogeneous fissile ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... personality is reflected in that remarkable book. There you see his ideas in the process of becoming clear. There you see his sharp reactions; the reflection of his hopes, his disappointments, his shifts from untenable positions to positions possible after defeat. There you read his penetrating analysis of the figures on the Zionist stage upon whom he had to rely. There you are made to feel his doubts, his dread of death. In the midst of life he felt himself encircled by the Shadow of Death. There you ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... were on every side. For miles and miles it was one column on the other. We could hardly engage any of these columns successfully during the day, for no sooner had the fight begun than reinforcements would come from all directions, making our position quite untenable. ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... very unjust,—though it pleased the protectionists,—for Sir Robert Peel was great enough to listen to arguments and reason, and give up his old sentiments when he found them untenable, even if he broke up his party. His country was greater in his eyes than ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... hospital was due to business traffic between the hospital and the dwellers in the neighborhood, and Mr. Power admits that he started on his investigation with this belief, but with the prosecution of his work he found such a theory untenable. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles. He had access to much new material, and from the Stuart papers has drawn much of interest with reference to that unfortunate family. His view of the conduct of Washington towards Major Andre has been shown to be quite untenable. He also wrote a History of the War of ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... of the nature and conditions of a prize-fight; then counsel would venture to say confidently that the theory of the prosecution, ingenious as it was, and ably as it had been put forward, was absolutely and utterly untenable. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... she sped down the street. At first they thought she was in distress, but a glance at her shining face, its nobility accentuated by her elation, made that idea untenable. She was obviously the bearer of ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... regard a hasty transference of attention from another to herself. Besides, it would be neither courteous nor reasonable to break with Mrs. Falchion abruptly. The error was mine, not hers. She had not my knowledge of the immediate circumstances, which made my position morally untenable. She showed unembarrassed ignorance of the change. At the same time I caught a tone of voice and a manner which showed she was not actually oblivious, but was touched in that nerve called vanity; and from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... during which wave after wave came rolling out of the forest, each to deliver a heavy blow at our house, making the roof crack, but never yield, and with the last came so great an influx of water that our position rapidly began to grow untenable. ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... must dismiss that idea. It is untenable, at least for a long time. My wife and I are going to play at poverty." He smiled, and ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... had naturally selected the leeward side of the deck-house for his seat, and Miss Cahere had brought Cartoner round to the weather side, where a cold Atlantic breeze made the position untenable. Without explanation, and for her own good, he led the way to a warmer quarter. But at the corner of the deck-house a gust caught Miss Cahere, and held her there in a pretty attitude, with her two hands upraised to her hat, looking at him with frank and laughing eyes, and waiting for him ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... no garrison, because their insignificant works were untenable; but left an humbled people, and marched to ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... these points were of the gravest nature, and would, in their opinion, be fully established on argument before the judges; in which event the conviction would be legally quashed, independently of the substantial abandonment of it as false and untenable by the Crown in ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... which, according to our author, are hardly to be wasted any more, will not satisfy a philosopher, who requires to see no degree of wasting in a body which is to remain for ever, or continue without change. But, however untenable this supposition of a fixed state in the surface of this earth, the accuracy of the natural philosopher may still be observed in the absurdity of the proposition. "L'etat des montagnes sera fixe, partout ou les ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton |
