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More "Improbability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seizes on the attention, by shewing us the effect they produce on his feelings; and his poetry accordingly gives the same thrilling and overwhelming sensation, which is caught by gazing on the face of a person who has seen some object of horror. The improbability of the events, the abruptness and monotony in the Inferno, are excessive: but the interest never flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power is in combining internal feelings with external objects. Thus the gate ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... semblance of truth and reality in all these tales which added greatly to the interest of them; while there were no means of ascertaining the real truth, and thus spoiling the story by making the falsehood or improbability of it evident ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... is admirably sustained through the whole tale; and as it is more natural, because less overstrained, so perhaps it is even more touching than that of Griselda, over which, however, Chaucer has thrown a charm that leads us to forget the improbability of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... than any characters in Strafford; and Polyxena is a great advance on Lady Carlisle. But this piece is not a drama; it is a study of soul-situations, and none of them are of any vital importance. There is far too great an improbability in the conception of Charles. A weak man in private becomes a strong man in public life. To represent him, having known and felt his strength, as relapsing into his previous weakness when it endangers all his work, is quite too foolish. He did ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... have a good hand at the turn-up, and are very strong at next, it is better to order, since the stronger you are at next, the greater the improbability that your partner will be ...
— The Laws of Euchre - As adopted by the Somerset Club of Boston, March 1, 1888 • H. C. Leeds
... thousand times ten thousand years, before the chances would be equal that the voting papers should come out of the urn in the order required to form the basis of this problem. Although, therefore, the supposed combination is, mathematically speaking, only an enormous improbability, yet, practically ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... I had gone, I suppose, and my brain had been very active the while, when something occurred to me which placed a new complexion upon this second summons. I thought of the falsity of the first, of the improbability of even the most hardened practical joker practising his wiles at one o'clock in the morning. I thought of our recent conversation; above all I thought of the girl who had delivered the message to Eltham, the girl whom he had described as a French maid—whose personal charm had so completely enlisted ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... excursion into a new field, strikes the average scholar of the Tesman type. He is, in fact, "trying it on the dog"—neither an unreasonable nor an unusual proceeding. There is, no doubt, a certain improbability in the way in which Lovborg is represented as carrying his manuscript around, and especially in Mrs. Elvsted's production of his rough draft from her pocket; but these are mechanical trifles, on which only a niggling criticism would dream ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... juncture (October 11, 1763), Louis XV. sent him the extraordinary private autograph letter, speaking of his previous services in female attire, and bidding him remain with his papers in England disguised as a woman. The improbability of this action by the King has already been exposed. (Pp. 242, ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Marphisas and Bradamantes, whom the writers of romance delighted to paint, assigning them sometimes the advantage of invulnerable armour, or a spear whose thrust did not admit of being resisted, in order to soften the improbability of the weaker sex being frequently victorious over the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... creatures lifting with his trunk the axle of a field-piece as the wheel was about to pass over a fallen gunner, which he declares to be a physical impossibility. Certainly the story has many elements of improbability about it, and his comments on it are caustic and amusing: par exemple, when he asks: "How did the elephant know that a wheel going over the man would not be agreeable to him?" That is the weak point in the story—but, however intelligent the animal might be, Mr. Sanderson ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... contradicted by those most likely to be acquainted with the facts of the ease, is the one result so far which is forcing itself into unwilling recognition. I have seen nothing, in the various hypotheses brought forward, which did not to me involve a greater improbability than the presumption of guilt. Take that, for witness, that Byron accused himself, through a spirit of perverse vanity, of crimes he had not committed. How preposterous! He would stain the name of a sister, whom, on the supposition of his innocence, he loved with angelic ardor ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... perhaps not superfluous to point out that in this, as in other cases of the marvellous, he did not merely pooh-pooh a story on the ground of its antecedent improbability, but rested his acceptance or rejection of it upon the strength of the evidence adduced. On the other hand, the weakness of such evidence as was brought forward time after time, was a justification for refusing to spend his time in listening ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... became a little more communicative, expatiated upon the dangers and discomforts of the road, the incapacity of Youth's horse, and the improbability that his father would ratify the bargain, concluding by offering to "do the job himself in good shape for four dollars," which offer was held in abeyance until we should learn the result of Youth's interview ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... the Resurrection, was a fact establishing the principle that the laws of nature had sometimes been suspended by their Divine Author; and since what had happened once might happen again, a certain probability, at least no kind of improbability, was attached to the idea, taken in itself, of miraculous intervention in later times, and miraculous accounts were to be regarded in connection with the verisimilitude, scope, instrument, character, testimony, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... account for his fall on that occasion. But it is inconcievable that a person of established piety should remain for a whole year stupid and unconcerned under the guilt of such transgressions; and the utter improbability of such an event will be further apparent, if ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... been urged against "Wacousta" as a consistent tale—the one as involving an improbability, the other a geographical error. It has been assumed that the startling feat accomplished by that man of deep revenge, who is not alone in his bitter hatred and contempt for the base among those who, like spaniels, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the stage has seen. He is the most pathetic figure of the play. One touch of verisimilitude is lacking; none of the guests gives him a tip, yet he maintains his urbanity. As Mr. Shaw has not yet visited America he may be unaware of the improbability of this situation. ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... consider further, whether it be just or seemly, to attribute to the Omniscient, Omnipotent Deity, a degree of weakness and folly, which was never yet imputed to any of his creatures? for unless men are hardy enough to pass so gross an affront upon the tremendous Majesty of Heaven, the improbability that God should delegate the Mediator of a most important covenant to be proposed to all mankind, without enabling him to give them clear and, in reason, indisputable proof of the divine authority of his mission, must ever infinitely ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... only way to convince you: it was your own test. If a gentleman of a distinguished name and an honorable ancestry, with all the restraining forces of social position surrounding him, to hold him in check, can stoop to dishonor, what is the improbability of an illiterate negro's being ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... MR. GATTY takes the phrase "mythic accompaniments" as an imputation on himself. I did not intend it for one, having no doubt that he repeated the story as he heard it. In it were two statements of the highest decree of improbability. One I showed (Vol. v., p. 434.) to be contrary to penal, the other to forensic practice. One MR. GATTY found to have been only a report, the other to have occurred at a different place and under different circumstances. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... the boy's hand, helped him to his feet, and turned angrily to the door. In the failing light outside the improbability of the attack struck through him strongly. He turned to the boy, his face dark. "David," he said evenly, "you wouldn't be making up stories about feeling that gun in ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... and with more violence still, "how the child came there, wherefore her affection for it, and whose it was," she felt the improbability of the truth still more forcibly than before, and dreaded some immediate peril from her father's rage, should she dare to relate an apparent lie. She paused to think upon a more probable tale than the real one; and ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... admitted. The German officers were convinced that only the report of the loss of the two battleships deserved credit, since the English would hardly have invented such bad news. Everything else, from the position of things, bore the stamp of improbability on ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... destroyed the thing himself if she had asked him, but she should have asked him. And even in his engrossing indignation he could experience a kind of spiritual blush as he recognized how safe his concession was behind the improbability of its condition. Finally he wrote a line to Janet, informing her that the portrait had sustained an injury, and postponing her and her father's visit to the studio. He would come, in the morning to ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... heavenly manifestation, at length displayed a faith which shines with peculiar brightness, when brought into comparison with the sentiments of the aged priest Zacharias, when the same angel appeared to him a few months before, to communicate a prediction of far less apparent improbability. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... temper very much soured against me, I thought it necessary to hasten my Project to a Conclusion. To this end I had several private conferences with my Mistress; wherein I observed to her the visible decay of her Father's Affections to me, and the Improbability of his ever giving his consent to our marriage, and therefore that other measures must be taken to accomplish our Happiness, which otherwise would be very precarious. I told her I was possessed of a Drug, produced no where but in Scotland, of such rare Qualities, that by a proper ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... of philosophy and history with the most learned of the Egyptian priests. He was a man of extraordinary force and penetration of mind, as his laws and his sayings, which have been preserved to us, testify. There is no improbability in the statement that he commenced in verse a history and description of Atlantis, which he left unfinished at his death; and it requires no great stretch of the imagination to believe that this manuscript ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... more warmth than necessary, her aversion to both propositions, and the extreme improbability of the Princess ever acquiring any knowledge of Greek by ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... Ferguson 'Illustrated Series of Rare and Prize Poultry' 1834 page 6 Preface.) as follows: "The fact that poultry have until lately received but little attention at the hands of the fancier, and been entirely confined to the domains of the producer for the market, would alone suggest the improbability of that constant and unremitting attention having been observed in breeding, which is requisite to the consummating in the offspring of any two birds transmittable forms not exhibited by the parents." This at first sight appears true. But in a future chapter on Selection, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... so many, themselves. I think I understood them clearly, that this youth was killed there; and not brought away prisoner, and afterwards killed. Nor could I learn that they had brought away any more than this one; which increased the improbability of their having killed so many. We had also reason to think that they did not come off without loss; for a young woman was seen, more than once, to cut herself, as is the custom when they lose a friend ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... double character, as constituent parts, and yet at the same time as spectators, of the drama, the chorus could not but tend to enforce the unity of place;—not on the score of any supposed improbability, which the understanding or common sense might detect in a change of place;—but because the senses themselves put it out of the power of any imagination to conceive a place coming to, and going away from the persons, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... dispensation of appointments. Is it here that suspicion rests her charge? Sometimes we are told that this fund of corruption is to be exhausted by the President in subduing the virtue of the Senate. Now, the fidelity of the other House is to be the victim. The improbability of such a mercenary and perfidious combination of the several members of government, standing on as different foundations as republican principles will well admit, and at the same time accountable to ...
— The Federalist Papers
... Age, been rapidly giving way to Candour, Reason, Common-Sense, and the Evidence of Fact. We have long known that a Scotch Plough-Boy and a Milk-Woman[7] could still be Poets of high and almost singular Excellence. And if Improbability were any thing against Fact, it would be far more improbable, that two Brothers should be such Poets as ROBERT and NATHANIEL BLOOMFIELD are, than that a Taylor should be a Poet. It remains then for Prejudice to vanish like Mists ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... replied in his usual style: "Sir, if it were told as shortly, and with as little preparation for introducing the different events, as the history of the Jewish kings, it would be equally liable to objections of improbability." Dr. Johnson went on to illustrate what he meant, by specific allusion to the concessions to Parliament made by Charles I. "If," he said, "these had been related nakedly, without any detail of the circumstances which generally led to them, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... unscientific and most unphilosophically credulous, is to treat the supposition as a certainty, notwithstanding that the chances against its representing real facts are as infinity to infinitesimality; for not less is the preponderance of improbability that the laws of nature were not intentionally prescribed, and that the wondrously complex and wondrously useful harmony that has been established between organic structure and natural law was not ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... centuries during which the history of the transmission of his orders is buried in utter darkness. And whether he be a priest by succession from the Apostles depends on the question, whether during that long period, some thousands of events took place, any one of which may, without any gross improbability, be supposed not to have taken place. We have not a tittle of evidence for any one of these events. We do not even know the names or countries of the men to whom it is taken for granted that these events happened. We do not know whether the spiritual ancestors of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... unprofytable Stody," above mentioned, which contains proof how well he at least had profited by study, he cites certain continental seats of university learning at each of which, there is indeed no improbability in supposing he may have remained for some time, as was the custom in ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... this improbability Mr. Darwin brings forward the supposed advantages which these variations give to their possessors. But here again a new element is introduced into the calculation. It is assumed, in the very statement of the question, that the process of adaptation has already taken place; the ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... the shore, and the launch proving unable to cross the shallow bay, the landing of passengers can only be accomplished by two crossed oars, carried and steadied by four of the crew. The mode of progression is wobbling and risky, but the improbability of revisiting Senana supplied a mental argument of unfailing force in balancing pros and cons. The secluded island, so slightly influenced by the outside world, changes but little with the lapse of time, and the triple-tiered roofs of numerous ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... neighborhood because subscribers were rewarded with a premium of a diamond ring, warranted I don't know how many karats, occupied me for hours. The stories in this paper resembled, in breathlessness of plot, abundance of horrors, and improbability of characters, the things I used to read in Vitebsk. The text was illustrated by frequent pictures, in which the villain generally had his hands on the heroine's throat, while the hero was bursting ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... are merely an instance of Papal cynicism. It is possible that the protest of the Bishop of Orleans is as hollow-hearted as the protests of censors nearer home. But such a world-wide outbreak of cynicism without a cause is a somewhat improbable event, and the improbability is increased when we remark the silent acquiescence of the women of America and the Continent in ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Kilcarney is a guardian of his wife's honour. A very ingenious story, no doubt, and if, as the young man's ascendant—the critics of 1915 are pleased to speak of me as ascendant from the author of Muslin—I may be permitted to remark upon it, I would urge the very grave improbability that three people ever lived contemporaneously who were wise enough to prefer, and so consistently, happiness ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... objection which I felt to the story, which is told twice concerning Abraham and once concerning Isaac, of passing off a wife as a sister. Allowing that such a thing was barely not impossible, the improbability was so intense, as to demand the strictest and most cogent proof: yet when we asked, Who testifies it? no proof appeared that it was Moses; or, supposing it to be he, what his sources of knowledge were. And this led to the far wider remark, ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... on the subject between Mr. Lang and myself, carried through the transactions of the Folk-Lore Congress of 1891, the introduction to Miss Roalfe Cox's "Cinderella," and in various numbers of "Folk-Lore," I urged the improbability of this explanation as applied to the plots of fairy tales. Similar states of mind might account for similar incidents arising in different areas independently, but not for whole series of incidents artistically woven together to form a definite plot which must, I contended, arise in a single artist ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... those whom he accompanied thither, and the ten by whom they were ransomed; and he understood from the Moors themselves, that they were not allowed to go in large bodies to Timbuctoo. This statement bears on the face of it a certain degree of improbability; but it loses that character when it is considered that Timbuctoo, although it is become, in consequence of its frontier situation, the port, as it were, of the caravans from the north, which could not return ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... university should conceive an attachment for a lady-student of Girtham College (of course a very improbable supposition!), and the infatuated savant became somewhat jealous of another learned lecturer of the same college (another improbability!), the fact of his jealousy would be imparted to the latter by a wave of thought, and might cause considerable confusion in the serene course of love or science. The fact of the existence of the wave is indisputable. What do all the stories of impressions ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... poetical charm over the quiet narrow circle of domestic life. She is almost invariably successful in her female characters, but when she attempts to draw those of men, her creations are mere caricatures, full of emptiness and improbability. Her habit of indulging in a sort of aimless and objectless philosophizing vein, a propos of nothing at all, is also found highly wearisome. For my part, it has often given me an attack of nausea. She labours, however, diligently to improve herself; and, when I saw her, she ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... checked. Close to the falling water, seated on the edge, his back supported by the rock, and his legs hanging over the precipice, I now beheld the savage who left the cave before me. The noise of the cascade and the improbability of interruption, at least from this quarter, had made him ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... happens in the present instance. The degree of certainty of any generalization which rests on no other evidence than the agreement, so far as it goes, of all past observation, is but another phrase for the degree of improbability that an exception, if any existed, could have hitherto remained unobserved. The reason for believing that all crows are black, is measured by the improbability that crows of any other color should have existed to the present time without our being ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the improbability, already hard enough to manage. But Spenser had fortunately almost as little sense of humor as Wordsworth,[295] or he could never have carried his poem on with enthusiastic good faith so far as he did. It is evident that to ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... curia, is written at the foot of this deposition, but evidently by a much later hand; and this leads me to mention the improbability that any testimony in favor of the accused ever reached the Court at the trials. They had no counsel: the attorney-general had prejudged all the cases; and his mind and those of the judges repudiated utterly any thing like an investigation. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... tragedy was made complete in Caspar's own death. All this points to Stanhope. And yet Daumer has not taken the trouble to inquire whether it agrees with the family history. It is possible that he may be right; but his story carries with it so much the air of improbability, that we cannot give ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... restless under the urge of his spirit to continue his journey westward in quest of the girl who had left her favor in his hand. The romance of it, the improbability of ever finding her along the thousand miles between him and the sea, among the multitudes of women in the cities and hamlets along the way, appealed to him with ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... embarrassed pain, and then dropped his eyes to the carpet. "There must have been some misunderstanding," he stammered. "The invitation was delayed—or it miscarried. Perhaps it went to the store and got mixed up with the mail there," he ventured; any improbability would do to ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... certainly would not thrust so prominently and constantly before me faults of character which she well knows I cannot tolerate. Moreover, my dear sister, consider the disparity in our years, the incompatibility of our tastes and habits, and the improbability that a handsome young girl should cherish any feeling stronger than esteem or friendship for a staid man of my age! No, no; it is too incredible to be entertained, and I am sorry you ever suggested such an annoying chimera ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... American soldiers, I returned to my friend and again urged him to charge. But there was an infatuation upon him that night for which I have ever been unable to account: he insisted that I must be mistaken; he spoke of the improbability which existed that any part of the enemy's army should have succeeded in taking up a position in rear of the station of one of our outposts, and he could not be persuaded that the troops now before him were not the 95th Rifle corps. At last it was agreed between us that we should separate; ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... been to many good judges of poetry—but he does not appear to have possessed any musical ear or much power of imagination. It is not going too far to say that of the highest possibilities of poetry he had no conception. He imagines he has disposed of Lycidas by exhibiting its "inherent improbability" in the eyes of a crude common sense: a triumph which is as easy and as futile as his refutation of Berkeley's metaphysics by striking his foot upon the ground. The truth is of course that in each case he is beating ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... socially expatriate himself from many things, which might have rendered his situation more tolerable. Still more, several events that took place must have horrified him, at times, with the thought that, however he might isolate and entomb himself, yet for all this, the improbability of his being overtaken by what he most dreaded never advanced to the infallibility of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... and expression that had occurred. My senses assured me of the truth of them, and yet their abruptness and improbability made me, in my turn, somewhat incredulous. The adventure had made a deep impression on my fancy, and it was not till after a week's abode at my brother's, that I resolved to resume the possession of my own dwelling. There was another circumstance that enhanced the mysteriousness of this event. After ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... Government naturally regards such action as the primary and, indeed, the most essential element in the disposal of the Tallulah incident, I advise that, in accordance with precedent, and in view of the improbability of that particular case being reached by the bill now pending, Congress make gracious provision for indemnity to the Italian sufferers in the same form and proportion ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... a long confab one night on the expediency of getting rid of Mr. Sponge. Mrs. Jog wanted to keep him on till after the christening; while Jog combated her reasons by representing the improbability of its doing Gustavus James any good having him for a godpapa, seeing Sponge's age, and the probability of his marrying himself. Mrs. Jog, however, was very determined; rather too much so, indeed, for she awakened Jog's jealousy, who lay tossing and tumbling ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... surrounding it must participate in that movement. Ptolemy did not know this, and consequently he came to the conclusion that the earth did not rotate, and that, therefore, notwithstanding the tremendous improbability of so mighty an object as the celestial sphere spinning round once in every twenty-four hours, there was no course open except to believe that this very improbable thing did really happen. Thus it came to pass that Ptolemy adopted as ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... they have any hope for the future, men bear their present sufferings with a much lighter heart; but when they are outraged by the established government, they are naturally much more hurt by the evil which befalls them, and the improbability of redress drives them to despair. Justinian's fault was, not only that he turned a deaf ear to the complaints of the injured, but did not even disdain to behave himself as the avowed chief of this party; that he gave great sums of money to these youths, and kept ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... that I considered the narrative of Mrs. Stowe untrue; it now devolves on me to show the improbability of some of her statements. An old negro man, whom she calls Uncle Tom, is the hero of her tale. Uncle Tom was the servant of a gentlemen, by name Shelby, who resided in Kentucky. She represents this old negro, Uncle Tom, as a very remarkable character. She tells us that Tom was pious and honest; ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... dramatic arrangement, especially when the truth is so kind as to be in itself romantic. Social nature, particularly in Paris, allows of such freaks of chance, such complications of whimsical entanglements, that it constantly outdoes the most inventive imagination. The audacity of facts, by sheer improbability or indecorum, rises to heights of "situation" forbidden to art, unless they are softened, cleansed, and purified ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... about to allude to his real self, to point out the improbability of a man so mental, so known, so travelled as he was, falling like a school-boy publicly into a sordid adventure. But he stopped, realizing the uselessness of such an explanation. And he could not tell the Marchesino the truth of his shadowy colloquy in a by-street with the ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... with set lips and glittering eyes. He well knew the improbability of hitting a vulnerable spot in a swimming alligator; his marksmanship was scarcely equal to the certainty of finding one of those wicked, armor-lidded eyes. It was with a hard gulp of fear in his throat that he pressed the trigger ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... resolvability, and smaller scattered stars innumerable of every inferior magnitude, from the tenth to such as by their multitude and minuteness constitute irresolvable nebulosity, extending over tracts of many square degrees. Were there but one such object, it might be maintained without utter improbability that its apparent sphericity is only an effect of foreshortening, and that in reality a much greater proportional difference of distance between its nearer and more remote parts exists. But such an adjustment, improbable enough in one case, must be rejected as too much so for fair argument in ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... the many negotiations he had conducted between his people and theirs, and his many dealings with them in years gone by, and challenged them to prove that he had ever deceived them, ever had spoken with a forked tongue. He drew a map of the country on the ground, and showed them the improbability of his having been a participant ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... observable in this romance are obviously the glaring improbability of many of the incidents, and the want of connexion and necessary dependence between the several parts of the story. Of the former—the device of the false stomach and theatrical dagger, by means of which Menelaus and Satyrus (after gaining, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... waylay him, but they could not tell beforehand where he would rest that night. If any had seen the movements of his canoe, if any lighted upon his bivouac by chance, his fate was certain. He knew this, but trusted to the extreme improbability of Bushmen frequenting a place where there was nothing to plunder. Besides, he had no choice, as he could not reach the islands. If there was risk, it was forgotten in ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... not," tranquilly replied Caillette, "in view of the improbability of your tale and the undoubted credentials held by this pretender. For my part, to look at the fellow was almost enough. But to the ladies, his brutality signifieth strength and power; and his uncouthness, originality and genius. Marguerite, even, is prepossessed ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... improbability of a deaf and dumb female discovering an amour so carefully concealed; but to assure myself more fully on that head, I desired Margaretha to describe the Lady Nisida. This she readily did, and I learnt ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... in the arrangement of my facts—now become considerable enough to stand in need of those threads of theory without which large accumulations of fact refuse to hang together in the memory. There was one special hypothesis which he had heard broached, and the utter improbability of which I was not yet geologist enough to detect, which for a time filled my whole imagination. It had been said, he told me, that the ancient world, in which my fossils, animal and vegetable, had flourished and decayed—a world greatly older than that before the Flood—had ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... pictures or text of which would debar them from any respectable English-speaking community. Over the door opening into the Rue du Pot de Fer and below a lamp of that exquisite iron-work which is now one of the lost arts was displayed a small bush, intimating that, in spite of the strong improbability, good wine ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... and very distinguished physician who is as much at home in literature as he is in science and the practice of medicine, wrote to me in referring to this story: "I should have been afraid of my subject." He did not explain himself, but I can easily understand that he felt the improbability of the physiological or pathological occurrence on which the story is founded to be so great that the narrative could hardly be rendered plausible. I felt the difficulty for myself as well as for ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... we had not thought of Wa-ka-ra: surely he could have given us effective aid. With his mounted warriors, he could soon have overtaken the Mormon train, surrounded it, and dealt out the law to its leader? But we had already learnt the improbability of our appeal being acted upon. Marian had interpreted to us the views of the Utah chief in relation to the Mormons. These wily diplomatists had, from their first settlement in the Utah territory, courted the alliance of Wa-ka-ra and his band. They had made much of the ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... practical age considers possible, is universally rejected; but it is of vast importance to the historical student; for it is to be borne in mind that it finds a place in the pages of those same Diarii upon the authority of which are accepted many defamatory stories without regard to their extreme improbability so long as they are within the bounds ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... frequently shouting his name. His voice, muffled by the thickly falling flakes, had an odd, deadened ring in his own ears; and he doubted if he could be heard very far. When he considered the vast width of the prairie, and the extreme improbability of two figures, shaping opposite courses, meeting point-blank in the middle of it, he was ready to despair of finding the boy. It maddened him to think how close they might ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... assistance gratefully but consistently. No Mussulman ever equaled his contented reliance on the resources of futurity, and his implicit belief in the same. He would anchor his hopes on some such improbability as "a long shot coming off," or "his Aunt Agnes coming down" (a proverbially awful widow, who had forgiven him seven times already; and, after each fresh offense, had sworn unrelenting enmity to him and his heirs forever). Strong in this faith, ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... character of Jesus will meet with the ridicule it deserves unless substantiated by documentary evidence. The mere improbability of events contrary to natural laws does not destroy the ethical value of the teachings of the Nazarene. Anything might have happened in the eerie days of old; the critic must do more than deny the historicity of Jesus and the inspiration ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... She was paler than usual, and with the sun shining upon her I could read the transparent features as an open book. I was certain she was thinking of her own death. To me it seemed simply monstrous, a horrible improbability, that this face so full of expression, so full of life and charming individuality, should at some time be stony white and remain ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... in substance, old Simon's account of the rescue, giving to it, however, an air of lightness and improbability that ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... the room, shutting out Cobb and the cook and the housemaid. He repeated the story Cobb had told him, and quietly urged the improbability of his wife's explanation. Miss Derrick, he pointed out, was lying prostrate from severe burns; the fire must have been accidental, but the accident, to be sure, was extraordinary enough. Thereupon Mrs. Mumford's wrath turned against Cobb. What business had ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... settled animus which Nashe, in conjunction with Greene, between 1589-92, displays against Shakespeare is better understood, the utter improbability of his referring to Shakespeare's work in a laudatory manner in the latter year shall readily be seen. When, also, the high praise which Nashe bestows upon Peele in the same publications in which ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... Now you must pardon the expression, but you've always evaded my questions as to your whereabouts prior to June of that year. You've never flatly denied Corkery's story, but if it weren't for the inherent improbability of it, I'd have given up the fight long ago, for you have not helped as a client should. You ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... Hertford, who engaged in his support with all the tenderness that is excited by pity, and all the zeal which is kindled by generosity, and, demanding an audience of the queen, laid before her the whole series of his mother's cruelty, exposed the improbability of an accusation by which he was charged with an intent to commit a murder that could produce no advantage, and soon convinced her how little his former conduct could deserve to be mentioned as a reason ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... yours, Jervis, does great credit to your ingenuity. We may disregard the improbability, seeing that the alternative theories are almost equally improbable, and the fact that emerges, and that gratifies me more than I can tell you, is that you are gifted with enough scientific imagination to ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... be a military man. Now he had never seen his uncle the retired officer, but it struck him that this might be he; and under the tyranny of his passion for concealment, he fancied that, if it were he, he might recognise him by some family likeness—not considering the improbability of his looking at him. This fancy, with the painful effect which the sight of an officer, even in plain clothes, had upon him, recalling the torture of that frightful day, so overcame him, that he found ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... communication of the speedy arrival of the troops, was not without effect. The criminals trembled at the idea; Don Silvio was mad with rage he pointed out to the men the necessity of immediate attack—the improbability of the troops arriving so soon, and the wealth which he expected was locked up by Don Rebiera in his mansion. This rallied them, and they advanced to the doors, which they attempted to force without success, losing several men by the occasional ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... Reform upon the banner of the party, he had even still less made up his mind as to the practicability or expediency of the measure. Looking upon it as a question, the agitation of which was useful to Liberty, and at the same time counting upon the improbability of its objects being ever accomplished, he adopted at once, as we have seen, the most speculative of all the plans that had been proposed, and flattered himself that he thus secured the benefit of the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... way.... Travis' mind fastened on that more attractive idea, worrying it as Naginlta worried a prey, tearing out and devouring the more delicate portions. Every bit of sense and prudence argued against such an approach, whose success could rest only between improbability and impossibility; yet that was the direction in ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... whose literary flavour, when read, makes us overlook their inherent improbability in the mouth of the character that utters them, take on, when spoken, an air of artifice. Such are the lines in which Miriam describes her old sister-in-law, to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... used to support those inventions. All the world knows the history of the celebrated saints Perpetua and Felicity, whose beatifications have no other foundation than the words perpetua felicitas, so very common on the monuments of that nation. The improbability of some of the fictions has been such, that in Spain itself, in the face of that respect there shown to the things pertaining to religion, there have not been wanting pious men who have dared to doubt the authenticity ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... said to be the demonstration that there is no criterion of truth in this world. Persuaded thus of the impossibility of philosophy, Carneades was led to recommend his theory of the probable. "That which has been most perfectly analyzed and examined, and found to be devoid of improbability, is the most probable idea." The degeneration of philosophy now became truly complete, the labours of so many great men being degraded to rhetorical and artistic purposes. It was seen by all that Plato had destroyed all trust in the indications of the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... by D'Avenant to Betterton; but Rowe, to whom Betterton communicated it, made no use of it. The two regular theatres of the time were both reached on horseback by men of fashion, and the owner of The Theatre, James Burbage, kept a livery stable at Smithfield. There is no inherent improbability in the tale. Dr. Johnson's amplified version, in which Shakespeare was represented as organising a service of boys for the purpose of tending ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... It is their interest to amuse, in order to lengthen out their protection. They study to keep you amongst them for that very purpose; and in proportion as you disregard their advice, and grow callous to their complaints, they will stretch into improbability, and season their flattery the higher. Characters like these are to be found in every country, and every country ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... balancing and chasseeing and waltzing of the cumbersome old boat to make a landing. It seemed to be always attended with the difficulty and the improbability of a new enterprise; and the relief when it did sidle up anywhere within rope's-throw of the spot aimed at! And the roustabout throwing the rope from the perilous end of the dangling gang-plank! And the dangling ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... impossibility, no improbability even, in the statement made by the newspaper correspondent; yet as Richard thought it over in the night, he could not but regard it as singular that Mr. Keene should be the man to make public such a piece of information so very opportunely. ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... has faults of improbability and of plot construction; in fact, the plot is so poorly constructed that the novel would have been almost a failure, had other qualities not insured success. The story lives because Dr. Primrose and his ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... get a locum if there was a chance of mother." And then the conversation supports itself on the possible impossibility of finding a lodging at St. Sennans-on-Sea, and consoles itself with its intense improbability till the doctor finds it necessary to depart with the promptitude of ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... softened the hard opinion that I had formed of some of his actions. But that I should marry Mr. Cashel Byron is simply the most improbable thing in the world. All questions of personal inclination apart, the mere improbability is enough in itself to appal an ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... not possibly have as strong an assurance of his honesty, clear-sightedness, and penetration, as of the great improbability of the fact, I should not ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... his, an absolute terror came over me, the dread was something so terrible, that the recollection of it is now painful. "Oh don't, pray don't, Fred," I said, "oh if Papa should hear!" He kept on saying he would. I was too young to see the improbability of his doing anything of the sort. "If you do, I'll tell him what we did when the pedler woman piddled." He did not care. "Now, it's a lie, isn't it, you did not feel her cunt?" In fear, I confessed it was a lie. "I know it was," said ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... to represent to her the improbability of Wilford's intentions being as honourable as she fondly imagined them, when a gig drove up to the door, containing Wentworth and a fellow whom I recognised as one of the billiard-markers in —— Street, dressed in a seedy suit ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... at the idea, expatiating on the distance from Reate and the improbability of such a town harboring a competent physician, on the number of excellent surgeons in Rome, on the advisability of getting me out of the locality afflicted with our Vedian-Satronian feud, and ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the little bar, and expressed our opinion regarding what Hercus supposed it to be. It was heavy enough, certainly, to be silver; but the improbability of such a piece of the precious metal being left there presented itself, and none of us was quite satisfied until Hercus, taking out his knife, cut and scraped the surface of the ingot and revealed the shining white metal underlying the grit and tarnish that had gathered upon it during the ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... of the Bride of Lammermuir, Ivanhoe, the Monastery, the Abbot, Kenilworth, and the Pirate.[167] The marks of broken health on all these are essentially twofold—prevailing melancholy, and fantastic improbability. Three of the tales are agonizingly tragic, the Abbot scarcely less so in its main event, and Ivanhoe deeply wounded through all its bright panoply; while even in that most powerful of the series, the impossible archeries and axestrokes, the incredibly opportune appearances of Locksley, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... frequently remarked the unpleasant air and countenance of this man. She now hesitated, whether to speak with him, doubting even, that this request was only a pretext to draw her into some danger; but a little reflection shewed her the improbability of this, and she blushed at ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... got it, would be a poor return for the loss to which you would have been put in the process. That loss might, and probably would, leave you at a great disadvantage as regards enemies more nearly on an equality with yourself. It would, therefore, not be the improbability of breaking down the local naval defence of a minor maritime state, but the pressure of qualifying and only indirectly belligerent considerations, that would prevent ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... the English ambassador Carleton. According to him the Queen then took to her bed, dressed as she was, sprang from it a hundred times during the night, and starved herself to death. Who does not, in reading this, feel himself in a sphere of wild romance? Lady Spelman has tried to clear away the improbability involved in it, that Essex should have applied to the wife of one of his enemies, by making Essex give the ring to a boy passing by, who was to give it, not to the Countess of Nottingham, but to her sister, and then mistook the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... season-ticket holders; the children of the Great Western do not rise up and call it blessed. (Except, indeed, in the most uncomplimentary sense of blessing.) But the P.L.M. goes much further than these; and I have always held that the one solid argument for eternal punishment consists in the improbability that its Board of Directors will be permitted to go scot-free for ever after all ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... being dictated to. All the same, she felt much interested in what he had said, and she found herself thinking of him again and again. There was something romantic, too, in his story which, in spite of its improbability, she could not help believing, and although she felt very angry with him, she sympathised with the feelings he had expressed. Months before she had been annoyed at the thought that her father should have been opposed ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... repentance came before the night fell. As the sound of the priest's voice and the sight of his wasted face faded from the painter's sense, he began to see everything in the old light again. Then what Don Ippolito had said took a character of ludicrous, of insolent improbability. ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... in her mind, and his reflections led to no very definite result. Even if the idea of her loving him had presented itself to his intelligence he would have scouted it, partly on the ground of its apparent improbability, and partly, perhaps, because he had of late grown really indolent, and would have resented any occurrence which threatened to disturb the peaceful, objectless course of his days. He put down her quick changes of mood to sudden caprice, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... gilded pasteboard. Painfully did the ideal light fade away, and the well-remembered scene stand revealed in disenchanting day. With incredulous surprise, with a constant struggle between past images and present revelations, were we forced to acknowledge the improbability of the story, the clumsiness of the style, the awkwardness of the dialogue, the want of Nature in many of the characters, the absurdity of many of the incidents, and the painfulness of some of the scenes. But with all this, a candid, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... 23. Improbability.—Up to this point we have been concerned with relating events that could exist, though we knew that they did not. We may, however, imagine a series of events that are manifestly impossible. There is a pleasure in inventing improbable stories, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... to say that it is a function of matter alone, any more than the wind is a function of the leaves which dance under its influence; there is nothing even to contradict the notion that it sprang into existence suddenly at a literal word of command. The improbability or absurdity of such a conception as this last, except in the symbolism of poetry, is extreme, and it is unthinkable by any educated person; but its improbability depends upon other considerations than biologic ones, and it is as repugnant to an enlightened ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... is, and will be eternally. And it cannot be otherwise, just as it cannot happen that, in a load of chick-peas, two peas marked with a special sign should fall side by side. Further, this is not only an improbability, but it is certain that a feeling of satiety will come to Helen or to Menelaus. The whole difference is that to one it comes sooner, to the other later. It is only in stupid novels that it is written that 'they loved each other all their lives.' And none ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... reason Roye was not considered in need of a serious defensive effort by Earth's strategists—the vast distances between it and any troubled area, and so the utter improbability that a Geest ship might come close enough to discover that here was another world as well suited for its race as for human beings. And then a final factor: the instrument attached to the lining of Phil's ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... the country, though, with one or two exceptions, not materially for example, they are styled in Russia, Zigani; in Turkey and Persia, Zingarri; and in Germany, Zigeuner; all which words apparently spring from the same etymon, which there is no improbability in supposing to be 'Zincali,' a term by which these people, especially those of Spain, sometimes designate themselves, and the meaning of which is believed to be, THE BLACK MEN OF ZEND OR IND. In England and Spain they are commonly known as Gypsies and Gitanos, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... from the feed box at the time of the sharp lieutenant's investigation should terrify the girl more than it should joy her. That for which she had prayed had come to pass. Apparently the escape of these men in the face of every improbability had been granted her, but her dominating emotion was fright. The feed box was a mystic and terrible machine, like some dark magician's trap. She felt it almost possible that she should see the three weird men floating spectrally away through the air. She glanced ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... just attached personnel with no space-flight tradition. In practical terms, one highly trained crew member had punched a wrong pattern of holes on the tape. Another equally skilled had failed to notice this when reading back. A childish error, highly improbable; twice repeated, thus squaring the improbability. ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily
... participation in the causes which occasioned the original estrangement between Herbert and herself. Desirous too, as all mothers are, that her daughter should be suitably married, Lady Annabel could not shut her eyes to the great improbability of such an event occurring, now that Venetia had, as it were, resigned all connection with her native country. As to her daughter marrying a foreigner, the very idea was intolerable to her; and Venetia appeared therefore to have resumed that singular and delicate position which she occupied ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the grounds for such a belief. It was too probably produced by the misrepresentations of the unprincipled adventurers who infested the province. Ovando should have paused and reflected before he acted upon it. He should have considered the improbability of such an attempt by naked Indians against so large a force of steel-clad troops, armed with European weapons: and he should have reflected upon the general character and conduct of Anacaona. At any rate, the example ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... should discover, and guard as its secret, some diabolically horrible means of destroying human life and property by wholesale and over materially unbridged distances, can armaments even temporarily put an end to war. In such event—and it is by no means an improbability—the whole world might suddenly be made to bow in terror before the will of the all-powerful nation. Before this approaching crisis, can we do less than earnestly pray that the translation of physical progress into armament may be halted until the brotherhood of man has been further advanced? ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... turn handled the little bar, and expressed our opinion regarding what Hercus supposed it to be. It was heavy enough, certainly, to be silver; but the improbability of such a piece of the precious metal being left there presented itself, and none of us was quite satisfied until Hercus, taking out his knife, cut and scraped the surface of the ingot and revealed the shining white metal ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... it appears that the civil population of Aerschot has in no wise participated in the hostilities, that no shot was fired by them; that all the witnesses agree in pointing out the improbability of the German version, according to which the Burgomaster's son, a youth of 151/2 years, and of extremely gentle disposition, is said to have fired upon a superior German officer during the night of Aug. 19. Still more improbable ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... to this theme, "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in Me." The word here, it will be observed again, is cannot. It is the imperative of natural law. Fruit-bearing without Christ is not an improbability, but an impossibility. As well expect the natural fruit to flourish without air and heat, without soil and sunshine. How thoroughly also Paul grasped this truth is apparent from a hundred pregnant passages in which he echoes his ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... "I now perceived the improbability of a deaf and dumb female discovering an amour so carefully concealed; but to assure myself more fully on that head, I desired Margaretha to describe the Lady Nisida. This she readily did, and I learnt from her that the count's daughter was of a beauty quite different from ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... practice should have prevailed to any thing like the extent here set down, in a British army in active service and under Wellington's command, and the artfully prepared quaker-cartridges increase the improbability of the statement. Lieutenant Grattan scouts the tale as a base fabrication, lashes out in fine style at its propagator, and claims great merit for the officers who taught their men to beat the best troops in the world with timber ammunition. He puts forward a more serious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... preposterous assumptions with such coolness and apparent unconsciousness of their utter improbability to his readers, and with such an entire ignoring of the necessity of any further attestation than his own ipse dixit, as to warrant serious suspicions of his sanity. Take, for instance, his bear and whale story. Hearne reports having seen in the Arctic regions a bear swimming ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... he did harm not once only. But, as it stands, the book no doubt exhibits the usual faults, that languishing of the middle action, for instance, which injures The Bride of Lammermoor and The Monastery, together with the much more common huddling and improbability of the conclusion. But we know that this last was put on hurriedly, against the grain, and after the author, disgusted by the grumblings of others, had relinquished his work; so that ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... embarking of French prisoners on board a vessel in which the plague existed, the improbability of the circumstance alone, but especially the notorious facts of the case, repel this odious accusation. I observed the conduct of Sir Sidney Smith closely at the time, and I remarked in him a chivalric ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of evil augury tormented us by their melancholy forebodings. At one time they conjectured that the whole party had fallen through{1} the ice; at another, that they had been way-laid and cut off by the Dog-ribs. In vain did we urge the improbability of the former accident, or the peaceable character of the Dog-ribs, so little in conformity with the latter. "The ice at this season was deceitful," they said, "and the Dog-ribs, though unwarlike, were treacherous." These assertions, so often repeated, had some effect upon the spirits ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... particularly in Paris, allows of such freaks of chance, such complications of whimsical entanglements, that it constantly outdoes the most inventive imagination. The audacity of facts, by sheer improbability or indecorum, rises to heights of "situation" forbidden to art, unless they are softened, cleansed, and ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... though very vulgar, but the execution. The drift tends to no moral, no edification of any kind—the situations, however, are well imagined, and make one laugh in spite of the grossness of the dialogue, the forced witticisms, and total improbability of the whole plan and conduct. But what disgusts me most is, that though the characters are very low, and aim at low humour, not one of them says a sentence that is natural, or marks any character at all." Horace Walpole ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... usual, perhaps, he sat in his place until the whole school was down with it, and had to be closed in consequence. Then and not till then did he feel that he had saved the situation." I care nothing for the outrageous improbability of any youthful son of a shipowner being able to talk in the brilliant fashion in which Mr. Jacobs makes Vyner talk. Success excuses it. "Salthaven" is bathed ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... object to the extreme and monstrous improbability of almost all the incidents which go to the composition of this fable. We know very well that poetry does not describe what is ordinary; but the marvellous, in which it is privileged to indulge, is the marvellous of performance, and not of accident. One extraordinary ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... could, so far as that went, but insisted on an inherent improbability. A millionaire, a member of one of the oldest families in the city—a social swell, the brother of that Mrs. Martin Whitney whose pictures the papers were always publishing on the slightest excuse—wasn't likely to be found riding in street-cars, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... may suppose, several of my friends well know, that I have been anxious to trace some loose reports that I had heard, which your residence in Maryland, and the improbability of your saying such things, had induced me ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... in Heaven: we cannot think of His being moved by our mere importunity, or by the mechanical repetition of set phrases; but that the fulfilment of some wish of ours may be conditioned by our humility and confidence in expressing it, presents no improbability. In any case, what is necessary on our part is that we should have faith, not only in God's power to grant our petitions, but in His wisdom in granting or refusing them as may be most expedient for us. We ourselves can, within limits, fulfil most of our children's requests; ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... his cigar and stood up. "Now," he said, "I generally talk straight, and you have held out a hand to me. Can you believe in the apparent improbability of such a man as I am in the opinion of the folks at Silverdale getting tired of a wasted life and trying to walk straight again? I want your answer, yes or no, before I head across the ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... arrival. And, as we were travelling slowly all the time, you may take it as certain that Seketulo—if the fellow happens to be still alive—was informed of the fact some time before we actually reached this spot. And even if we admit, for a moment, such an improbability as that the news failed to reach him, these fellows who are now lurking all round us are, every one of them, painfully aware of the presence of the ship—as we can clearly see by the trouble that they are taking to keep ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... our terrestrial faculties are sufficiently limited, but this reason and these faculties suffice none the less to make us feel the improbability, the absurdity, of this hypothesis, and we reject it as incompatible with the sublime grandeur of the spectacle ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... so or not, 'tis not doubted the Devil wrought with Cain in the horrid Murther, or he had never done it; whether it was directly or by Agents is not material, nor is the Latter unlikely; and if the Latter, then there is no Improbability in the Story, for why might not he that made Use of the Serpent to tempt Eve, be as well supposed to make a Tool of some of Cain's Sons or Grandsons to prompt him in the wicked Attempt of murthering his Brother? and why must we be oblig'd to bring ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... of his, an absolute terror came over me, the dread was something so terrible, that the recollection of it is now painful. "Oh don't, pray don't, Fred," I said, "oh if Papa should hear!" He kept on saying he would. I was too young to see the improbability of his doing anything of the sort. "If you do, I'll tell him what we did when the pedler woman piddled." He did not care. "Now, it's a lie, isn't it, you did not feel her cunt?" In fear, I confessed ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... stories were related by several others concerning the doings of different employers they had worked for, but after a time the conversation reverted to the subject that was uppermost in their thoughts—the impending slaughter, and the improbability of being able to obtain another job, considering the large number of men who were already out ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... manifestation, at length displayed a faith which shines with peculiar brightness, when brought into comparison with the sentiments of the aged priest Zacharias, when the same angel appeared to him a few months before, to communicate a prediction of far less apparent improbability. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... Helen's life had made her in most things, she was still young enough to build high hopes on a romantic improbability. And nothing was more improbable than that "Slim" Naudain, even if he had lived, ever would have returned to ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... composed of American soldiers, I returned to my friend and again urged him to charge. But there was an infatuation upon him that night for which I have ever been unable to account: he insisted that I must be mistaken; he spoke of the improbability which existed that any part of the enemy's army should have succeeded in taking up a position in rear of the station of one of our outposts, and he could not be persuaded that the troops now before him ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... to explain the foregoing laws of geographical distribution, on the theory of allied species having a common descent Improbability of finding fossil forms intermediate ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... some cases of reversion of a special character. I have not as yet put all my facts on this subject in mass, so can come to no definite conclusion. But as single characters may revert, I must say that I see no improbability in several reverting. As I do not believe any well-founded experiments or facts are known, each must form his opinion from vague generalities. I think you confound two rather distinct considerations; a variation arises ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... where the one that loses the race that way, turns back to tell the father that he is come; with the nice gradation of incredulity in the little boy who is got into Guy of Warwick, and the Seven Champions, and who shakes his head at the improbability of AEsop's Fables, is Steele's or Addison's, though I believe it belongs to the former. The account of the two sisters, one of whom held up her head higher than ordinary, from having on a pair of flowered garters, and that of the married lady who complained to the Tatler of the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... The truth of the account became a subject of controversy. It was disbelieved, not only by Catholics but by Protestants. Dr. Douglas, the present bishop of Salisbury, wrote an excellent pamphlet to expose its falsehood and absurdity. It carried great improbability on the face of it. Mr. Bower was a lively writer, and defended himself with adroitness; but he was not equal to the composition of the history which he undertook to write. He was of the numerous list of authors who, when they sit down to write, have to learn ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... returns for elevated and unexacting admiration I was still left with such privilege of access as is granted to the family-gossip, or to an innocuous uncle, and it is of such a passion, rashly nurtured under this protection of an improbability, that I propose to tell ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... nothing. The only assurance I can give you is that you have softened the hard opinion that I had formed of some of his actions. But that I should marry Mr. Cashel Byron is simply the most improbable thing in the world. All questions of personal inclination apart, the mere improbability is enough in itself to ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Errors was an experiment of an exactly opposite kind. It was a play, purely of incident; a farce, in which the main improbability being granted, namely, that the twin Antipholi and twin Dromios are so alike that they cannot be distinguished, all the amusing complications follow naturally enough. There is little character-drawing in the play. Any two pairs of twins, in the same predicament, would be equally droll. ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... candidature was originally started Bismarck is judiciously silent, we may be morally certain that the instigation came from Berlin. The maxim Fecit cui prodest affords fair ground for this inference, particularly when we remember the obvious improbability that the Spanish ministry would have gratuitously set up a candidature which must infallibly have brought their country into collision with ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... these reports the case for the Crown was neat, clear, cogent, straight-forward, and supported by evidence. The defense was chiefly argument of counsel to prove the improbability of a clergyman and a man of good character passing a forged note. One of the reports stated that Mr. Arthur Wardlaw, a son of the principal witness, had taken the accusation so much to heart that he was ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... was the simplification that had come about. There had been so many confusing and bewildering complications in the affair; improbability piled on the impossible; the ridiculous ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... looked at his wife with an embarrassed pain, and then dropped his eyes to the carpet. "There must have been some misunderstanding," he stammered. "The invitation was delayed—or it miscarried. Perhaps it went to the store and got mixed up with the mail there," he ventured; any improbability would ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... spiral in Canes Venatici; and, as a general rule, the emissions of all such nebulae as present the appearance of star-clusters grown misty through excessive distance are of the same kind. It would, however, be eminently rash to conclude thence that they are really aggregations of sun-like bodies. The improbability of such an inference has been greatly enhanced by the occurrence, at an interval of a quarter of a century, of stellar outbursts in the midst of two of them. For it is practically certain that the temporary stars were ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... affair of such improbability. A determined man with a long knife in his grasp—one who will yield only to death—is a difficult thing to secure under any circumstances. Such an one will often effect his freedom, even when hemmed in by a host of enemies. With Carlos, however, the probabilities of escape were much greater. ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... "Furnished rooms to let," showed it to be an ordinary boarding-house. Chip had fully decided within himself, during the ride, that the men who had left the parcel had also left St. Louis. While it was not so much an improbability that the men would still be in the city, it was far more probable that they would put some distance between themselves and the scene of their exploit. For this reason, Chip decided that a plain course would result in no unfortunate ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... hissed unmercifully. Rich, the manager, asked the old man, as he stood in the wings, "if he heard what they were doing?" "No, sir," said Southerne calmly, "I'm very deaf." On the first representation of "She Stoops to Conquer," a solitary hiss was heard during the fifth act at the improbability of Mrs. Hardcastle, in her own garden, supposing herself forty miles off on Crackskull Common. "What's that?" cried Goldsmith, not a little alarmed at the sound. "Psha! doctor," replied Colman, "don't be afraid of a squib when we have been sitting these two hours on ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... is one of the great sculptor's early works. It is badly placed. It is dwarfed by the heavy architecture above and around it. It is insulted by a pair of hideous bronze cherubs. There is a manifest improbability in the relative size of the figure of Christ and that of the Blessed Virgin. Yet in spite of all, it is one of the most beautiful and touching groups in the whole world, and by many degrees the best work of art in the great church. Michelangelo ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... to shake my resolution, but I was obdurately silent. While he canvassed the whole position, bringing to bear his really profound knowledge of naval equipment and routine—and incidentally helping me greatly to realise the improbability of my own guesswork solution—I was able to maintain an air of lofty superiority. I must have aggravated him intensely, unpardonably, for I was his guest. He ought to have kicked me out. Yet he bore with me like the sweet-blooded kindly ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... expiring son. After Sohrab's death, he burnt his tents and all his goods, and carried the corpse to Seistan, where it was interred; the army of Turan was, agreeably to the last request of Sohrab, permitted to cross the Oxus unmolested. To reconcile us to the improbability of this tale, we are informed that Rustum could have no idea his son was in existence. The mother of Sohrab had written to him her child was a daughter, fearing to lose her darling infant if she revealed the truth; and Rustum, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... elaborate controversy on the subject between Mr. Lang and myself, carried through the transactions of the Folk-Lore Congress of 1891, the introduction to Miss Roalfe Cox's "Cinderella," and in various numbers of "Folk-Lore," I urged the improbability of this explanation as applied to the plots of fairy tales. Similar states of mind might account for similar incidents arising in different areas independently, but not for whole series of incidents artistically ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... magnetizer certainly says the most improbable thing in the world, when he affirms that a given individual in the state of somnambulism can see every thing in the most profound darkness, that he can read through a wall, and even without the help of his eyes. But the improbability of these announcements does not result from the celebrated report, for Bailly does not mention such marvels, neither in praise nor dispraise; he does not say one word about them. The physicist, ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... at home in literature as he is in science and the practice of medicine, wrote to me in referring to this story: "I should have been afraid of my subject." He did not explain himself, but I can easily understand that he felt the improbability of the physiological or pathological occurrence on which the story is founded to be so great that the narrative could hardly be rendered plausible. I felt the difficulty for myself as well as for my readers, and it was only by recalling for our consideration a series of extraordinary ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... The improbability of any ancient remains being interred under or near the house, precludes the idea of barrowvians, whilst the thickly populated nature of the neighbourhood and the entire absence of loneliness, renders the possibility of vagrarians equally unlikely. That being so, one only has to consider the possibility ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... mused, in silence, near a minute. During this interval, he was thinking of the improbability of any but a bona-fide Englishman's dreaming of giving a vessel an appellation so thoroughly idiomatic, and was fast mystifying himself, as so often happens by tyros in any particular branch of knowledge, by his own critical acumen. Then he half whispered ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... commenced with a prejudice in favour of the authenticity of the Epistles in the Shorter Recension, but on reading them through, he says that an impression unfavourable to their authenticity was produced upon him which he had not been able to shake off. He proceeds to point out their internal improbability, and other difficulties connected with the supposed journey, which make it "still more improbable that Ignatius himself can really have written these Epistles in this situation." Lechler does not consider that the Curetonian Epistles strengthen the ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... that "when we hear things, which to our understanding are improbable, the improbability of the facts raises a doubt in our minds; and certainly there can be no harm in suspending our judgment, nor yet in withholding our belief until we are fully satisfied." This first subject regards the degrees of evidences which are required in different cases, and the moral propriety ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... wild-eyed Koordish women waylaying and capturing them on the roads through Koordistan, and subjecting them to barbarous treatment. I have smiled, and thought them merely "travellers' tales;" but I can see plain enough, this morning, that there is no improbability in the stories, for, from a dozen pairs of female eyes, behold, there gleams not one single ray of tenderness: these women are capable of anything that tigresses are capable of, beyond a doubt. Almost the first question asked by the men of these camps is whether the English ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... bound to state that, in spite of initial improbability, the experiences which I myself have had, as partly narrated in this book, especially those briefly summarized in Part I, have convinced me that the telepathic faculty does exist, and that its detection is a genuine extension of ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... emergency, we had not thought of Wa-ka-ra: surely he could have given us effective aid. With his mounted warriors, he could soon have overtaken the Mormon train, surrounded it, and dealt out the law to its leader? But we had already learnt the improbability of our appeal being acted upon. Marian had interpreted to us the views of the Utah chief in relation to the Mormons. These wily diplomatists had, from their first settlement in the Utah territory, courted the alliance of Wa-ka-ra and his band. They had made much of the warlike ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... up an advantageous position. If he had begun narrating the extraordinary romance he had invented, the least penetrating eye must have perceived its improbability, and one would have felt it required some support at every turn. But since he had resisted being forced to tell it, and apparently only ceded to Monsieur de Lamotte's violent persistency, the situation was changed; and this refusal to speak, coming from a man who thereby ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... unphilosophically credulous, is to treat the supposition as a certainty, notwithstanding that the chances against its representing real facts are as infinity to infinitesimality; for not less is the preponderance of improbability that the laws of nature were not intentionally prescribed, and that the wondrously complex and wondrously useful harmony that has been established between organic structure and natural law was not designedly established. In considering this point, it will be convenient ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... about the improbability of war between Japan and the United States in the near future would, if known to the German people, cause still another keen disappointment, since one of their solaces has been the thought that they would soon have an opportunity of reaping a ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... accomplishment, for with all Marcia's flighty romance she shrinks from encountering actual poverty, but it might be this man's admiration is sufficiently strong to lead him beyond the debatable land. She hesitates just a little, then solaces herself with the improbability. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... in a mass of material out of which I could only flounder to my own conclusion. Some of the stories told me are singularly tempting to a novelist. But, though I believe them myself, I cannot risk their improbability to those who have no idea of the wildness of wild men at a wild time. There really was a terrible and bloody feud, perhaps the most deadly and least known in all the annals of the West. I saw the ground, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... the family's ruin, "for that Mr Champernowne taking it on the Thames in the time of Queen Elizabeth, her Majesty was so delighted with the music, that she requested the loan of it for a month; to which Mr Champernowne, aware of the improbability of its ever returning, would not consent, saying that he 'hoped her Majesty would allow him to keep his fancy.' The Queen was so highly exasperated at this refusal, that she found some pretence to sue him at law, and ruin him, by obliging him, in ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... from ambiguity. Perhaps all that we are warranted in inferring from it is that the annual procession was, that year, of unusual splendour. Whether, as has been conjectured, it was the first time Lady Godiva had ever made her appearance, there seems more doubt. Apart from any evidence, there is no improbability in supposing that she may have formed part of earlier processions; though it may be that during the period of Puritan ascendency the show had been neglected and the lady in particular had been discountenanced. If this be so, however, it is difficult to ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... that, despite its seeming improbability, it might be important for him to see this queer creature who came to ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... knew,' Lord Oldborough answered. Temple, who of all men is least like Commissioner Falconer in circumlocutory address, at once blurted out, 'Is Count Altenberg going to be married?' Lord Oldborough turned and looked upon him with surprise—whether surprise at his curiosity, or at the improbability of the Count's making his lordship the confidant of his love-affairs, Temple declares he was in too much confusion to be able to decide. Lord Oldborough made no reply, but took up an answer to a memorial, which he ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... have been to many good judges of poetry—but he does not appear to have possessed any musical ear or much power of imagination. It is not going too far to say that of the highest possibilities of poetry he had no conception. He imagines he has disposed of Lycidas by exhibiting its "inherent improbability" in the eyes of a crude common sense: a triumph which is as easy and as futile as his refutation of Berkeley's metaphysics by striking his foot upon the ground. The truth is of course that in each case he is beating the air. The stamp upon the ground ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... the antagonism of poor nobility and wealthy upstarts, which Monsieur Legouve treated neither better nor worse than any other has done, as by the details of roads, bridges, marsh-draining, canals, railways, coal, coke, and the like, which were dead-weights on Thalia's light robe; and the improbability of the plot was not so much the marriage of a noble girl to the son of an apple-dealer as was the perfection given to the young engineer: every virtue and every grace were showered on him. The piece was unanimously pronounced successful. The aristocratic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... lips and glittering eyes. He well knew the improbability of hitting a vulnerable spot in a swimming alligator; his marksmanship was scarcely equal to the certainty of finding one of those wicked, armor-lidded eyes. It was with a hard gulp of fear in his throat that he pressed the trigger for a ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... big case now being tried before him," Deborah would say, when Reuther's eyes grew wide and misty in her sympathetic trouble. And there was no improbability in the plea, for it was a case of much moment, and of great local interest. A man was on trial for his life and the circumstances of the case were such that the feeling called forth was unusually bitter; so much so, indeed, that every word uttered by the counsel and every ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... on, met, and passed Tom, who remarked upon the improbability of the copperskin showing up again; and then I continued my patrol slowly round the house, past the court-yard, where all was still, and at last found Tom where we had parted from ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... that into account," calmly replied the Frenchman, "because of its improbability. If there were an accident; if, for instance, the poison was in the sugar, or in some of the viands served, then others than Mr. Brenton would have been poisoned. The fact that one man out of twenty-six was poisoned, and the ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... accustomed to being dictated to. All the same, she felt much interested in what he had said, and she found herself thinking of him again and again. There was something romantic, too, in his story which, in spite of its improbability, she could not help believing, and although she felt very angry with him, she sympathised with the feelings he had expressed. Months before she had been annoyed at the thought that her father should have been opposed by ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... subject. Lovborg may quite naturally wish to see how his new method, or his excursion into a new field, strikes the average scholar of the Tesman type. He is, in fact, "trying it on the dog"—neither an unreasonable nor an unusual proceeding. There is, no doubt, a certain improbability in the way in which Lovborg is represented as carrying his manuscript around, and especially in Mrs. Elvsted's production of his rough draft from her pocket; but these are mechanical trifles, on which only a niggling criticism would ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... million. He would soon repair the damage. Once they got the casks filled, they could return to Africa, and King Dingo was the man to find them a fresh cargo. Perhaps he would let them have it on credit, if they couldn't do better (at this improbability several laughed); but the skipper need not go a begging for credit. He was not so easily broken up as that came to. If he himself was short, he had friends in Brazil—ay, and in Portsmouth, too—who would soon find him ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... on account of indisposition, and also of the improbability of his having any success by his ministry among that people though he ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... Claudius, during all his reign, is represented as emperor on the medals of Alexandria, which are very numerous. If Zenobia possessed any power in Egypt, it could only have been at the beginning of the reign of Aurelian. The same circumstance throws great improbability on her conquests in Galatia. Perhaps Zenobia administered Egypt in the name of Claudius, and emboldened by the death of that prince, subjected it to her ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... man steals it and a nice woman smacks her baby for holding it, so you can see how really baleful its influence must have been when you consider that they were both Miss COLE'S characters. A very little of the occult will excuse a good deal of improbability, and the small amount that has crept into The Cypress Tree does not spoil the effect of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... duplicity, it may be said to be the demonstration that there is no criterion of truth in this world. Persuaded thus of the impossibility of philosophy, Carneades was led to recommend his theory of the probable. "That which has been most perfectly analyzed and examined, and found to be devoid of improbability, is the most probable idea." The degeneration of philosophy now became truly complete, the labours of so many great men being degraded to rhetorical and artistic purposes. It was seen by all that Plato had ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... these miracles has been considered at some length by Dr. Arnold,[10] in a very liberal spirit; but few readers will agree with him in concluding that with regard to some miracles, "there is no strong a priori improbability in their occurrence, but rather the contrary." One of the most striking of the historical lessons contained in this work, is the credulity and superstition which mark the age; and we reason justly ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... those of Scripture, as the Resurrection, was a fact establishing the principle that the laws of nature had sometimes been suspended by their Divine Author; and since what had happened once might happen again, a certain probability, at least no kind of improbability, was attached to the idea, taken in itself, of miraculous intervention in later times, and miraculous accounts were to be regarded in connection with the verisimilitude, scope, instrument, character, testimony, and circumstances, with which they presented ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Nashe, in conjunction with Greene, between 1589-92, displays against Shakespeare is better understood, the utter improbability of his referring to Shakespeare's work in a laudatory manner in the latter year shall readily be seen. When, also, the high praise which Nashe bestows upon Peele in the same publications in which ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... was so thoroughly displeased and annoyed that she durst not discuss the subject with him, lest she should rouse him to take some strong authoritative measures against it. He had always trusted to the improbability of her meeting with a situation before his departure, when, between entreaty and command, he had reckoned on inducing her to go home; and this engagement came as a fresh blow, making him realize what he had brought on those nearest and dearest to ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time being, allows the arousing in his mind of images of extreme intensity which would quickly be dissipated could they be submitted to the action of reflection. Crowds, being incapable both of reflection and of reasoning, are devoid of the notion of improbability; and it is to be noted that in a general way it is the most improbable things that ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... who engaged in his support with all the tenderness that is excited by pity, and all the zeal which is kindled by generosity, and, demanding an audience of the queen, laid before her the whole series of his mother's cruelty, exposed the improbability of an accusation by which he was charged with an intent to commit a murder that could produce no advantage, and soon convinced her how little his former conduct could deserve to be mentioned as a reason for ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... who was always vaunting, under the title of the "good old times," some undiscoverable past which he perpetually lamented as his deceased Millennium. And finally—as large as life, and as real—Alderman Cute. As in the original Christmas book, so also in the Reading, the one flagrant improbability was the consumption by Alderman Cute of the last lukewarm tid-bit of tripe left by Trotty Veck down at the bottom of the basin—its consumption, indeed, by any alderman, however prying or gluttonous. Barring that, the whole of the first scene of the "Chimes" was alive with reality, and ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... and the authorities will avenge them. If they have any hope for the future, men bear their present sufferings with a much lighter heart; but when they are outraged by the established government, they are naturally much more hurt by the evil which befalls them, and the improbability of redress drives them to despair. Justinian's fault was, not only that he turned a deaf ear to the complaints of the injured, but did not even disdain to behave himself as the avowed chief of this party; that he gave great sums of money to these youths, ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... many a critic to stamp it as fabricated to enhance the glory of the great prophet who had been a pillar of the throne. Yet nothing is more likely than that tradition has here preserved a bit of history, extraordinary, but real. There is not the least improbability in regarding the case as one of the many revivals from the deathlike trance that have been noted by writers ancient and modern. It is entirely reasonable to suppose that the trance in which the seemingly dead man ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... worth seeing—the balancing and chasseeing and waltzing of the cumbersome old boat to make a landing. It seemed to be always attended with the difficulty and the improbability of a new enterprise; and the relief when it did sidle up anywhere within rope's-throw of the spot aimed at! And the roustabout throwing the rope from the perilous end of the dangling gang-plank! And the dangling ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... problem of the stigmata has, perhaps, never been absolutely solved. Canon Knox Little says that as to the miracles of St. Francis generally speaking, there is no intrinsic improbability; that "his holy life, his constant communion with God, the abundant blessings with which it pleased God to mark his ministry, all point in the same direction." Latter-day revelations of psychic science disclose contemporary facts of the power of mental influence on the physical form ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... her business to go back to Germany and eat humble pie. Whatever the audience may have felt about these reflections on the conduct of England, they must at least have been irritated by the fantastic improbability of the girl's motive. Very fortunately at this juncture the voice of the paper-boy is heard in the street conveying the thrilling news of our tardy entry into the quarrel; and a glad Margaret, having recovered her respect for her native ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... and it was young John who explained that he did this not on the ground of the prisoner's merits, but because of the merits of another, of one who loved the prisoner. Clennam tried to argue to himself the improbability of Little Dorrit loving him, but he wasn't ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... did not strike me as painfully at the time as they have since done; in fact, all that had happened (with the exception of the story of the diamond, which certainly did wear an air of improbability), appeared natural enough, and called for neither apprehension nor mistrust; but, worn out as I was with fatigue, and fully purposing to proceed onwards directly the tempest abated, I determined to obtain a few hours' sleep. Overhead I could accurately distinguish ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... monks, which it was necessary to work through and sift for my strictly limited object, I came upon a narrative (in Cotelerius Ecclesiae Grecae Monumenta) which seemed to me peculiar and touching notwithstanding its improbability. Sinai and the oasis of Pharan which lies at its foot were the scene ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is rather what is an improbability?" answered her companion. "It is only a matter of the capacity of the age to receive what is new. A few years ago electricity was improbable, yet look at the telegraph and the telephone. Still further back, who would ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... parents of the Princess and the Princess herself, the only persons to whom such a question can properly be referred. The Queen thinks it right to add that being fully persuaded of the strong religious persuasion of the Princess, of the extreme improbability of any change of opinion on her part, and of the evils inseparable from a difference of opinion on such a subject between the Emperor and his intended Consort, she wishes Lord Malmesbury to place this ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... his purpose, the indecent haste with which he overwhelms the just man with a torrent of calamities in the course of one short day, the apparition of Jahveh in a storm-cloud, and many other equally improbable details. Improbability, however, is the main feature of all miracles; and faith need not be dismayed even by the seemingly impossible. In any case where it is hopeless to convince, it is needless to discuss, and if there still be readers to whose appreciation of the poem belief in its historical truth ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... Bradamantes, whom the writers of romance delighted to paint, assigning them sometimes the advantage of invulnerable armour, or a spear whose thrust did not admit of being resisted, in order to soften the improbability of the weaker sex being frequently victorious over the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of the room, shutting out Cobb and the cook and the housemaid. He repeated the story Cobb had told him, and quietly urged the improbability of his wife's explanation. Miss Derrick, he pointed out, was lying prostrate from severe burns; the fire must have been accidental, but the accident, to be sure, was extraordinary enough. Thereupon Mrs. Mumford's wrath turned against Cobb. What business ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... of Balzac equals the triumphant imagination of Shakespeare; and by different roads they reach the same height of tragic awe, but when improbability, which in these days does duty for imagination, is mixed with the familiar aspects of life, the result is inchoate and rhythmless folly, I mean the regular and inevitable alternation and combination of pa and ma, and dear Annie who lives ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... and even the travelled English, except the few who live in France among the French, knew nothing of all this. Your press tells nothing. The nine millions of votes given to Louis Napoleon seemed to prove his popularity, and therefore the improbability of the tyranny of which he was accused by his enemies. I knew that those nine millions of votes were extorted, or stolen by violence or fraud. But the English people did not know it. They accepted his election as the will ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... than otherwise. The previous stores were counted over, and it was found that the men could not be served with three rounds apiece out of them. When this was announced, nobody thought of doubting the wisdom of the Maharajah's decision to shut up the gates of the city, and trust to the improbability of the English venturing to attack him in such small numbers, not knowing his resources. So that very night, lest any word should go abroad of the strait of the warriors of Chita, the gates were shut. But all the city knew. Moti ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... applied to any type of prose fiction in contrast with the short story or tale. But here, at an early date, the severance is plainly indicated between the study of contemporary society and the elder romance of heroism, supernaturalism, and improbability. It is a difference not so much of theme as of view-point, ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... fair trial, bowed before the storm. An attempted alibi was feebly supported, although Oates was so indefinite in regard to time that to attempt to convict him of falsehood was of little avail. The chief points of his defence were the improbability of the whole story, and the fact that Oates on his examination before the council had said that he did not know him. Oates thus excused himself: 'My lord, when Mr. Coleman was upon his examination before the council board, he saith I said that I never saw him before in my life; I then said ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... widely in our neighborhood because subscribers were rewarded with a premium of a diamond ring, warranted I don't know how many karats, occupied me for hours. The stories in this paper resembled, in breathlessness of plot, abundance of horrors, and improbability of characters, the things I used to read in Vitebsk. The text was illustrated by frequent pictures, in which the villain generally had his hands on the heroine's throat, while the hero was bursting in through a graceful drapery to the rescue of his beloved. If a bundle came ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Everard Duncombe, Misunderstood's father, we have a skill in portraying a type that cannot have failed in impressing readers with the reality of the character. The delicacy of du Maurier's psychology in this portrait of a middle-aged man of the period is in marked contrast with the improbability of so many of his renderings of elderly people wherever he went outside of his stock types. It justifies his realism and mistrust of memory drawing. Through his failure to sustain his interest in ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... pictures; the efficacy of the remains of martyrs and relics; stupendous miracles wrought at the shrines of saints; the perpetual interventions of angels and devils in sublunary affairs; the truth of legends far surpassing in romantic improbability the stories of Greek mythology; the localization of heaven a few miles above the air, and of hell in the bowels of the earth, with its portal in the crater of Lipari. Gregory himself was a sincere believer in miracles, ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... in the purely passive processes of association some ground for that degree of natural coherence and rational order which our more mature dreams commonly possess. These processes go far to explain, too, that odd mixture of rationality with improbability, of natural order and incongruity, ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... I have treated Ch. XXXVIII as the account of a fresh arrest of Jeremiah and a fresh interview between him and Sedekiah. I see, however, that Dr. Skinner takes the whole chapter to be "a duplication."(602) He considers it a general improbability that two such interviews, as XXXVII. 17-21 and XXXVIII. 14-27 relate, "should have taken place in similar circumstances within so short a time." Yet the king was just the man to appeal to the Prophet time after time during the siege. ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... traditional story, accepted by able historians, may be believed, William C. Rives, of the Confederate Congress, carried in January, 1865, to Lee from a congressional cabal an invitation to accept the role of Cromwell. The greatest difficulty in the way of accepting the tradition is the extreme improbability that any one who knew anything of Lee would have been so foolish as to make such a proposal. Needless to add, the tradition includes Lee's refusal to overturn the Government. There can be no doubt, however, that all the enemies of Davis ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... chaotic state in which France was then plunged, the utmost uncertainty prevailed as to the course events might take, and rumors of all descriptions were current, the wildest scarcely exceeding in improbability the fantastic horrors that actually prevailed throughout the land during these opening days of the Reign of Terror. The expectation that found most favor in the fleet was that Provence would separate from the rest of France, and proclaim itself an independent republic under ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Rumour has been busy upon this theme, but here again I must refer to the lady of the store, and say, that if many of the sister Shakers resemble her, I treat all such slander as bearing on its face the strongest marks of wild improbability. But that they take as proselytes, persons so young that they cannot know their own minds, and cannot possess much strength of resolution in this or any other respect, I can assert from my own observation of the extreme juvenility of certain youthful ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... as much at home in literature as he is in science and the practice of medicine, wrote to me in referring to this story: "I should have been afraid of my subject." He did not explain himself, but I can easily understand that he felt the improbability of the, physiological or pathological occurrence on which the story is founded to be so great that the narrative could hardly be rendered plausible. I felt the difficulty for myself as well as for my readers, and it was only by recalling for our consideration a series of extraordinary but ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the friction of the hand that for seven years passed the prisoner his food through the small opening. The young custodian pointed to this memento of suffering, without effusion, and he drew my attention to other remarkable things in the cell, without troubling himself to palliate their improbability in the least. They were his stock in trade; you paid your money, and took your choice of believing in them or not. On the other hand, my portier, an ex-valet de place, pumped a softly murmuring stream of enthusiasm; ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... For how could she ever regard me as the same after the killing was done? This was more than slavery and abasement; it was sufficient to bring a man back to his right senses. Yet, despite the outrageous improbability of our conversation, my ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... lords, a long debate arose upon the number of troops voted for the ensuing year. Lord Carteret explained the situation of affairs, in almost every nation of Europe, with great conciseness and precision. He demonstrated the improbability of a rupture between Great Britain and any power against which a land army could be of any service. He examined the domestic circumstances of the nation; and proved that whatever discontents there might be in the kingdom, there was little ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... found in many actions of the higher machines)—Or (assuming the theory of evolution but at the same time denying the consciousness of vegetable and crystalline action) the race of man has descended from things which had no consciousness at all. In this case there is no a priori improbability in the descent of conscious (and more than conscious) machines from those which now exist, except that which is suggested by the apparent absence of anything like a reproductive system in the mechanical kingdom. This absence however is only apparent, ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... on the attention, by shewing us the effect they produce on his feelings; and his poetry accordingly gives the same thrilling and overwhelming sensation, which is caught by gazing on the face of a person who has seen some object of horror. The improbability of the events, the abruptness and monotony in the Inferno, are excessive: but the interest never flags, from the continued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power is in combining ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... from quoting M. Du Chaillu's work, then, it is not because I discern any inherent improbability in his assertions respecting the man-like Apes; nor from any wish to throw suspicion on his veracity; but because, in my opinion, so long as his narrative remains in its present state of unexplained ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... announced; since it is the privilege of the Gods to know everything. There should be nothing improbable among the actual incidents. If it be unavoidable, however, it should be outside the tragedy, like the improbability in the Oedipus of Sophocles. But to return to the Characters. As Tragedy is an imitation of personages better than the ordinary man, we in our way should follow the example of good portrait-painters, who reproduce the distinctive features of a man, and at the same time, without losing the ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... Fauncey Court, and then substituted for the Duchess's maid, is at no point actually improbable; and yet we feel that a vast effort has been made to attain an end which, owing to the very length of the sequence of chances, at last assumes an air of improbability. There is little doubt that the substructure of the great scene might have been very much simpler. I imagine that Sir Arthur Pinero was betrayed into complexity and over-elaboration by his desire to use, as a background for his action, a study of that "curious phase of modern life," ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... a sort of improbability with which we are shocked in dramatic representation, not less than in a narrative of real life. Consequently, there must be rules respecting it; and as rules are nothing but means to an end previously ascertained—(inattention to which simple truth has been the occasion ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... which Johnson replied in his usual style: "Sir, if it were told as shortly, and with as little preparation for introducing the different events, as the history of the Jewish kings, it would be equally liable to objections of improbability." Dr. Johnson went on to illustrate what he meant, by specific allusion to the concessions to Parliament made by Charles I. "If," he said, "these had been related nakedly, without any detail of the circumstances ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... of the prosecution and verdict, qualified as it is, there is a difficulty in perceiving any foundation, except the improbability that a Government should have conspired to obtain the capital condemnation of an illustrious Englishman on no better testimony than that which it vouchsafed or dared to offer. That even Cobham had engaged in plots for the deposition ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... After the example of G. B. Niebuhr, Gutschmid admitted here, as Oppert did, 45 Assyrians; he based his view on Herodotus, in which it is said that the Assyrians held sway in Asia for 520 years, until its conquest by the Medes. Upon the improbability of this opinion, see ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... office short of the Premiership. Lady Russell adds 'this never for one moment weighed with him, so that he did not require Lord Macaulay or Lord Lansdowne to argue him out of the objection.' Lord John's difficulty was based upon the 'improbability of agreement in a Cabinet so composed, and therefore the probable evil to the country.' Letters written by Lady Russell at the moment to a relative, of too private a character to quote, give additional weight to this ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... and bred there, introduces us to all the principal inhabitants in a thoroughly "neighborly" way, and contrives to impress us with a sense of the substantial reality of what she makes us mentally see, even when an occasional improbability in the story almost wakes us up to a perception that the whole ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... were really interested in me, as you imagine, she certainly would not thrust so prominently and constantly before me faults of character which she well knows I cannot tolerate. Moreover, my dear sister, consider the disparity in our years, the incompatibility of our tastes and habits, and the improbability that a handsome young girl should cherish any feeling stronger than esteem or friendship for a staid man of my age! No, no; it is too incredible to be entertained, and I am sorry you ever suggested such an annoying chimera to me. Salome is rather a singular compound, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... logic and research, that the old idea of the Peninsular cycle being borrowed direct from any French original is hopelessly absurd. There is, notoriously, no external evidence of any such original ever having existed, and there is an immense improbability against any such original ever having existed. Further, the internal characteristics of the Spanish romances, though, undoubtedly, they might never have come into existence at all but for the French, and though there is a very ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... box at the time of the sharp lieutenant's investigation should terrify the girl more than it should joy her. That for which she had prayed had come to pass. Apparently the escape of these men in the face of every improbability had been granted her, but her dominating emotion was fright. The feed box was a mystic and terrible machine, like some dark magician's trap. She felt it almost possible that she should see the three weird men floating spectrally away through the air. She glanced with swift apprehension behind her, ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... 2. The improbability of finding any living gossip who was present at the birth, must be obvious: but I have conversed with old women who had heard their mothers describe the occurrence from ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... certain kind, is the inexplicable nature of the phenomena which these readings exhibit. 'How will you possibly account for such a reading as the present,' (say they,) 'if it be not authentic?' Or they say nothing, but leave it to be inferred that the reading they adopt,—in spite of its intrinsic improbability, in spite also of the slender amount of evidence on which it rests,—must needs be accepted as true. They lose sight of the correlative difficulty:—How comes it to pass that the rest of the copies read the place otherwise? On all such occasions it is impossible to ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... they had raked up into couches, and thus, every man with a blanket beneath and another above him, they did not care how the wind blew. They were as snug as bears in their lairs, but despite the darkness of the night and the exceeding improbability of anyone finding them both Henry and Tom Ross lay awake and watched. The others slept peacefully, and the two sentinels could hear their easy breathing only a ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... short preamble, in which he apologised to the bench for interfering, he begged to be informed of the state of the case, whereupon the matter was laid before him in all its details. He was not slow in taking a fair view of it, and spoke well and eloquently in my behalf—insisting on the improbability that a person of my habits and position would be wilfully mixed up with a transaction like that of which it appeared I was suspected—adding, that as he was fully convinced of my innocence, he was ready to enter into any ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... eight probable causes of these holes, which has been since reprinted in the Roman Thesaurus of Sallengre. Montfaucon (Diarium, p. 233) pronounces the rapine of the Barbarians to be the unam germanamque causam foraminum. * Note: The improbability of this theory is shown by Bunsen, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... insects, the fossil pterodactyls, birds and bats. That an organ so highly specialized as any one of these wings could be evolved seems improbable; while the evolution of the four different kinds, independently of each other, only increases the improbability. The difficulty, however, is to account for the evolution of any known kind of wing. In each case there exists the insuperable difficulty of preserving the organ through the rudimentary stages. The wings of an insect in the first generation of its evolution would ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... was founded on the communications of the President, representing the improbability of being able to negotiate a peace with the dey of Algiers; and on undoubted information that the corsairs of that regency had, during their first short cruise in the Atlantic, captured eleven American merchantmen, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the scene, they must ascribe this act either to him or to me; and when they came to dwell upon this point more particularly—when they came to study the exact character of the relations which had always subsisted between Adelaide and her brother—they must see the improbability of her drinking with him under any circumstances. Then their thoughts would recur to me, and I should find myself again a suspect. The monstrous suggestion that Arthur had brought the liquor there himself, had ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... the same conditions, it might have been expected that those which varied would tend to vary in the same manner. As a general rule only a few individuals of a species vary simultaneously in the same manner; and there is no improbability in the assumption that some few individuals might produce larger seeds than the average, better stocked with nourishment. If the production of such seeds were highly beneficial to a species, and on this ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... the present instance. The degree of certainty of any generalization which rests on no other evidence than the agreement, so far as it goes, of all past observation, is but another phrase for the degree of improbability that an exception, if any existed, could have hitherto remained unobserved. The reason for believing that all crows are black, is measured by the improbability that crows of any other color should have existed to the present time without ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... appearance of our heroes, and their communication of the speedy arrival of the troops, was not without effect. The criminals trembled at the idea; Don Silvio was mad with rage he pointed out to the men the necessity of immediate attack—the improbability of the troops arriving so soon, and the wealth which he expected was locked up by Don Rebiera in his mansion. This rallied them, and they advanced to the doors, which they attempted to force without success, losing several men by the occasional fire from those within the house. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... of Errors.—Mistaken identity (which the Elizabethans called "Error") is nearly always amusing, whether on the stage or in actual life. The Comedy of Errors is a play in which this situation is developed to the extreme of improbability; but we lose sight of this in the roaring fun which results. Nowadays we should call a play of this type a farce, since most of the fun comes in this way from situations which are improbable, and since the play depends on these for success rather ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... was indeed the "flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." There is less improbability in the suggestion made by several writers that, when the pestilence wasted Jerusalem, and David offered up the sacrifice of intercession in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, the king may have seen, in the scimitar-like ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... other creatures of his own, and conceals himself on board. His plan is, so soon as the vessel is a short distance out at sea, to escape in a boat with his confederates, after firing a train communicating with some barrels of powder in the hold. There is some improbability in this part of the story; but gunpowder plots have special privilege of absurdity. The guardsmen, however, discover the mischief that is brewing against them, just in time to escape through the cabin windows, and swim off to the boat, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... just remark, that my observation respecting the improbability of Tradescant's stuffed specimen having been a fabrication could hardly be considered superfluous, seeing that some naturalists, Dr. Gray, I believe, among others, had suggested that it ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 30. Saturday, May 25, 1850 • Various
... accounts, and embezzled corporation money—and he'd no doubt have gone on doing it for many a year longer if he hadn't had a stroke of apoplexy. And that wasn't in a novel!" concluded Miss Penkridge triumphantly. "Novels—Improbability—pooh! Judged by what some people can tell of life, the novel that's improbable hasn't ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... clearly that if the earth were endowed with a movement of rotation, the atmosphere surrounding it must participate in that movement. Ptolemy did not know this, and consequently he came to the conclusion that the earth did not rotate, and that, therefore, notwithstanding the tremendous improbability of so mighty an object as the celestial sphere spinning round once in every twenty-four hours, there was no course open except to believe that this very improbable thing did really happen. Thus ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... the two races: for changes in language to so great an extent are not effected in a short space of time any more than the nearly complete fusion of two different races which has evidently taken place at the Prince of Wales Islands. Scarcely opposible to this supposition is the extreme improbability that the Papuans, who had nothing to gain from so comparatively inferior a race as the Australian, should be indebted to the latter for the words common to both found to exist in ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... sarcasm that is rich in the extreme, it will all be found in this charming little book. The air of perfect sincerity with which they are told, the diction, reminding one of 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' and the ludicrous improbability of the tales, give them a power rarely met with in 'short stories.' There is many a lesson to be learned from the ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... rich uncle in a farce dies to oblige a starving author in a garret; when, two rivals duellise with toasting-forks; when such things are plotted and acted in the theatre, hypercritics murmur at their improbability; but compare them with the haps of the drama off the stage, and they become the veriest of commonplaces. This is a world of change: the French have invaded Algiers, British arms are doing mortal damage in the Celestial Empire, Poulett Thomson has gone over to Canada, and oh! wonder of wonders! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... heaviness the discourse began. The inspirational claims seemed to lie in the manifest improbability of a man of Clifton's cultivation being so dull and diffuse in a natural condition. Yet, as the message wore on, it cannot be denied that a strange influence was at work. The words followed each other with greater fluency and in richer abundance. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... reflecting that two and a half cents for one way would have an air of improbability about it, answered promptly, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... enter it, as if it had been so many rocks. I took particular notice, that it was all pure transparent ice, except the upper surface, which was a little porous. It appeared to be entirely composed of frozen snow, and to have been all formed at sea. For setting aside the improbability, or rather impossibility, of such huge masses floating out of rivers, in which there is hardly water for a boat, none of the productions of the land were found incorporated, or fixed in it, which must have unavoidably been the case, had it been ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... of this undeniable improbability, however, we not only have a right to demand, but are morally bound to require, strong evidence in its favour before we even take it into serious consideration. But what is the evidence in this case? ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
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