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More "Untenable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... determined men may surrender to overwhelming force; when one yields, his spirit is at least somewhat subdued. A monarch or a state cedes territory perhaps for a consideration; surrenders an army, a navy, or a fortified place to a conqueror; a military commander abandons an untenable position or unavailable stores. We sacrifice something precious through error, friendship, or duty, yield to convincing reasons, a stronger will, winsome persuasion, or ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... must dismiss that idea. It is untenable, at least for a long time. My wife and I are going to play at poverty." He smiled, and drew her nearer ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Pilgrims in their Three Homes," p. 158) seems to give ear to Professor Arber's untenable allegations as to the Pilgrim leaders' responsibility for any error made in the "overmasting" of the SPEEDWELL, although he destroys his case by saying of the "overmasting:" "Whether it was done in England or Holland is not certain." He says, unhappily chiming in with Arber's indictment: ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... of his followers, left behind implacable hostility, and turned all friendship into bitterness. At last he entered Naples, and seemed to have asserted to the full the French claim to be supreme in Italy, whereas at that very time his position had become completely untenable. A league of Italian States was formed behind his back; Lodovico il Moro, Ferdinand of Naples, the Emperor, Pope Alexander VI., Ferdinand and Isabella, who were now welding Spain into a great and united monarchy, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... longitude 147 degrees, nearly to the boundary of South Australia, in 141 degrees, the country is unfit for occupation, for, though in favourable seasons there might in some few localities be abundance of feed for stock, the uncertainty of rain and frequent recurrence of drought renders it untenable, the grasses and herbage being principally annuals, which not only die but are swept away by the hot summer winds, leaving the surface of the soil completely bare. On Cooper's Creek, near the boundary, ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... continent of America. Under the liberal laws which accord freedom of speech to every man who touches the shores of the Republic, these men had, we know, a right to express, publicly or otherwise, their sentiments in this connection, how treacherous and untenable soever; but what we could never fathom, was the daring of any journal professing to be true to the interests of freedom or those of the Union, in endorsing those sentiments and setting them forth ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... bear much rigid scrutiny or candid comparison with the exact statements of the Word of God. There is nothing in the Bible more inspired than the tabernacle, and if the Destructive Critics would study it more, they would give up their ingenious but untenable theories as to the ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... be inviolable. If the professor were prisoner, held somewhere in secret, and it got noised about that he was the true prophet returned—it would not only give Holcomb immense prestige, but at the same time render the position of his captors untenable. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... spreading more and more widely throughout Asia, and some day it will be a force to be reckoned with. Also, these Pan-Asians will tell you the contention that the Orientals cannot manage their own affairs is untenable. Japan is an example to the contrary. If the smallest and least of the countries of Asia has been able to do this, it is because she has been let alone,—not conquered, exploited, ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... following in the capital. He had definitely excited the jealousy and opposition of the leading men of his nation. Even such popular enthusiasm as had followed his mighty works was of a sort that Jesus could not encourage. The situation in Judea had at length become so nearly untenable that he decided to withdraw into seclusion in Galilee, where, as a prophet, he could be "without honor." He had gone to Jerusalem eager to begin there, where God should have had readiest service, the ministry of the kingdom of God. ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... set in the light of this theory of a spiritual progression. Are we reminded that there prevailed, in those earlier days, views of the nature of God and man, of human life and Divine Providence, which we now find to be untenable? That, we answer, is precisely what the theory of development presupposes. If early views of religion and morality had not been imperfect, where had been the development? If symbolical visions and mythical ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... quite time indeed that this was done, for D'Urville's situation was untenable, and in a conversation with his boatswain he ascertained that not more than half a dozen of the sailors could be relied on; all the others were ready to go over to the side of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... copse of horn-beam saplings. An attempt had been made by the enemy during the morning to capture and entrench this, thus advancing their lines, but the movement had been seen, and the artillery fire, which had been so incessant all the morning, denoted the searching of this and the rendering of it untenable. How thorough that searching had been was clear, for that which had been an acre of wood was now but a heap of timber fit only for faggots. Scarcely a tree was left standing, and Michael, looking out of one of the peep-holes by the light of a star-shell saw that the wire ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... implying as it does, that a system of complete laissez-faire is the logical outcome of the doctrines set forth, it seems to furnish a disproof of them by reductio ad absurdum. In truth, however, they do not, when rightly understood, commit us to any such untenable position. A glance at the physical analogies will clearly show this. It is a general law of life that the more complex the organism to be produced, the longer the period during which it is dependent on a parent organism for food and protection. The difference between the minute, rapidly-formed, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... every general officer when the course of a campaign has brought him face to face with a strong position of the enemy. Shall it be carried by direct attack, and, until so subdued, arrest the progress of the army? or can it be rendered impotent or untenable by severing its communications and by operations directed against the district in its rear, which it protects, and upon which it also depends? The direct attack may be by assault, by investment, or by regular siege approaches; ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... pirates made no more pretense of firing muskets or defying the crew to dig them out. Their fort was an untenable position. At this sport of playing bowls with round shot they were bound to lose. Captain Wellsby sighted the last gun himself. It was a bronze culverin of large bore, taken as a trophy from the stranded wreck of a Spanish galleon. With a tremendous blast ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Noah had no tact and was a blazing idiot beside, and a well-intentioned remark of his sent old Sandy out of the community. Noah was not a man of war and was so anxious that his old friend should give up his untenable position peaceably that he had very kindly and generously explained to Sandy that it would be far better for him to come and live on a neighbor that wanted him than on a man like Jake ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... destined to find a place among the recognized occupants of the throne. For a time, indeed, fortune smiled on the Hojo. Within a few days after Kogon's assumption of the sceptre, Go-Daigo's retreat at Kasagi became untenable, and he fled, still escorted by the faithful Fujiwara Fujifusa. It must be recognized that, whatever the Fujiwara family's usurpations in the past, their loyalty to the Throne throughout this era of cruel vicissitudes ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the appellation, though it was far from being as massively built as an average English country seat of like importance. It belonged to one of the oldest families in France. Wide noble staircases led to vast rooms made untenable by shell fire. Fragments of rare stained glass littered the vacant private chapel. The most valuable paintings, the best of the Louis XV. furniture, and the choicest tapestry had been removed to safety. In one room ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... recovery we have avoided on the one hand the theory that business should and must be taken over into an all- embracing government. We have avoided on the other hand the equally untenable theory that it is an interference with liberty to offer reasonable help when private enterprise is in need of help. The course we have followed fits the American practice of government—a practice of taking action step by step, of regulating ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... become of this assertion, if, assuming in my turn the offensive, I should demonstrate that belief in the existence of bodies, or, in other words, in the reality of a purely corporeal nature, is untenable? Matter, they say, is impenetrable.—Impenetrable by what? I ask. Itself, undoubtedly; for they would not dare to say spirit, since they would therein admit what they wish to set aside. Whereupon I raise this double ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... an excellent prospect of being attacked and forced to fight at a great disadvantage on our retreat. As it is, even if General Bean is forced to circle around Newville, we can concentrate at Bremerton and fight on ground of our own choosing, though that would make this place untenable." ...
— The Boy Scout Automobilists - or, Jack Danby in the Woods • Robert Maitland
... kindness, or by the discovery of a system of generation whereby women only will be procreated, is not foretold by these seers of the future; accordingly, while one might not be warranted in dismissing the theory as untenable, its fulfilment may fairly be regarded as a remote expectancy, and consigned to ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... laws and forces which are described by theory. Consequently the presence of God or Nature seems to the mythologist not an ideal, but a real and mutual society, as if collateral beings, endowed with the conceived characters, actually existed as men exist. But this opinion is untenable. As Hobbes said, in a phrase which ought to be inscribed in golden letters over the head of every talking philosopher: No discourse whatsoever can end in absolute knowledge of fact. Absolute knowledge of fact is immediate, it is experiential. We ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... gravitational force to enable it to be the abode of intelligent life, whereas elsewhere, such conditions do not prevail, and that on no other sphere can such physical habitudes be found as will enable life to originate or to exist. It can be easily shown that such reasoning is based on untenable foundations. Other worlds have to go through processes of evolution, and there can be no doubt that many are in a state similar to our own. It required hundreds of thousands, perhaps hundreds of millions of years, before this ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... semen was secreted wholly by the testes; that the testes were secreting continuously and that the seminal vesicles were receptacles for the gradually accumulating semen from the testes. The researches of Steinach and others have made the old theory untenable and demonstrate that the semen is a mixture from three distinct sources; that the testicles secrete their contribution to the semen only during sexual stimulation; while the seminal vesicles secreting their products continuously become ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... dark colour of the spots was due to the fact that the photosphere was broken through in those spaces, and that we looked down through them upon the surface of the slightly illuminated central part of the sphere. This view is untenable, and in its place we have to assume that for the eight hundred and sixty thousand miles of its diameter the sun is composed of matter such as is found in our earth, but throughout in a state of heat which vastly exceeds that known on or in our planet. Owing to its heat, this matter is possibly ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... bringing up. When the boy had learned it, and was willing to acknowledge the error of his ways, then, perhaps, he might kill the fatted calf—that is, of course, if the prodigal should return on all fours and with no stilted and untenable ideas about his rights—ideas that St. George, of course, was instilling into ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Devil's-Ditch, in Cambridgeshire, whose agger is of about the same elevation, but of whose modern origin nobody ever yet dreamed;—that the ramparts opposite Dieppe could only be of use against cannon, another position equally untenable;—that, were the camp Roman, there would be platforms on the agger for the reception of wooden towers, as if time would not wear away vestiges of this nature;—that the disposition is not in regular order like that of a Roman encampment, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... watching the elephants, now and then uttering a low angry sound, yet never breaking into a roar. I stood rivetted to the spot, thankful that we had chosen the island for our encampment; for had we been on the mainland, we must have found our post untenable. They were, however, not the only visitors to the water. A huge rhinoceros, which I recognised by the horn on his nose, advanced with a heavy tread; and several buffaloes, and other animals which I took to be wild boars, joined the assemblage. ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... longer equally culpable. The sincerity of his anguish, the depth of his despair, I remembered with some tendencies to gratitude. Yet was he not precipitate? Was the conjecture that my part was played by some mimic so utterly untenable? Instances of this faculty are common. The wickedness of Carwin must, in his opinion, have been adequate to such contrivances, and yet the supposition of my guilt was adopted in preference ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... a terrible day: Givenchy was bombarded heavily by the Germans for hours, and rendered absolutely untenable. The Bedfords held out there gallantly, and stuck to one end of the village whilst the enemy was in possession of the other; but the heavy artillery was too much for them, and after losing about sixty casualties, many of them killed by falling houses, they gradually fell back to trenches ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... attempt the impossible task of defining what was undenominational; and its author even contended, if we understood him correctly, that it would in no way, even indirectly, interfere with the substantial teaching of any master in any school. This assertion we always believed to be untenable; we could not see how, in the face of this clause, a distinctly denominational tone could be honestly given to schools nominally general. But beyond this mere suggestion of an attempt at a general tone of comprehensiveness ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... under Captain Richard Mageoghegan, and Taylor, an Englishman, connected by marriage with Tyrrell. Another party of the same troops took possession of Clear Island, but were obliged to abandon it as untenable. The entire strength of the Dunboy garrison amounted to 143 men; towards the end of April —the last of the Spaniards having sailed in March— Carew left Cork at the head of 3,000 men to besiege Dunboy. Sir Charles Wilmot moved on the same point ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... perfection of its legislative duties in a manner destructive of the rights and interests of the governed, and ought to be sternly resisted by the people. The proposed measures, he contended, violated these admitted truths, asserted the untenable principle that governments should protect a portion of the people, in violation of the rights of the remainder, from the calamities consequent on ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... company of good and bad; and an inner and invisible Church which is known to God alone, and which consists of the good only? A moment's consideration of what has been pointed out in previous chapters to be the teaching of Holy Scripture, about "The Kingdom of Heaven," will show that the idea is untenable; because it is "The Kingdom of Heaven" which is distinctly described as imperfect in its present state here on earth; and we cannot conceive the idea of two universal Kingdoms of Messiah. What then is the teaching of Holy Scripture respecting the position of the "Saints," who really ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... received some intelligence which would, in his opinion, justify his undertaking an expedition into the Indian country with so small a force as he could command, he was at once to evacuate the place and fall back with his force on the settlement, as the position was quite untenable, and every man was needed for ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... would have purchased at any cost or sacrifice. I blushed and grew ashamed, and for a moment forgot that the bereaved creature was unable to behold the confusion with which defeat and exposure had covered me. At length I spoke imperfectly, loosely, and at random. The woman detected me in an untenable position—checked me—and in her artless manner, laid bare the fallacy of an inconsiderate assertion. In an instant I was aware of my conviction, I retracted my expression, and involved myself immediately in fresh dilemma. Again, and as gently as before, she ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... are all true; the most amazing thing about Greenwich Village is that the most unlikely things that you can find out about it are true. The obvious, every-day things that are easily believed are much the most likely to be untenable reports or the day dreams of imaginative chroniclers. You are safe if you believe all the quaint and romantic and inconsistent and impossible things that come to your knowledge concerning the Village. That is its special and sacred privilege: to be unexpected and always—yes, ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... force of the hurricane had struck the ship, every part of her deck became untenable; and the sailors, dazed and dismayed, took shelter in the port alleyway under the bridge. It had a door aft, which they shut; it was very black, cold, and dismal. At each heavy fling of the ship they ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... believe that this unfriendly and vexatious treatment was designed to bear harshly upon the hardy fishermen of the United States, with a view to political effect upon this Government. The statutes of the Dominion of Canada assume a still broader and more untenable jurisdiction over the vessels of the United States. They authorize officers or persons to bring vessels hovering within 3 marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbors of Canada into port, to search the cargo, to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... untenable position—but I am nevertheless surprised he did not try "abusing plaintiff's attorney." The fact is he made a prodigious blunder in commencing the attack, and now his only chance is to be silent and let people forget the exposure. I do not believe that in the whole history ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... native troops rose in mutiny, sacked the paymaster's office and burned several of the public buildings. The frightened foreigners fled into one of the larger buildings of the government, where they hastily threw up fortifications and resisted a siege for three weeks. Their position having become untenable, they arranged terms of capitulation with Nana Sahib, the leader of the mutiny, who had been refused the throne and the allowance paid by the British government to the late maharaja, although the latter had adopted him in legal form and had proclaimed him his heir. This was one of the ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... later, in advancing up to the point from which to make his designed assault upon Five Forks itself. He was very impatient to make the assault and have it all over before night, because the ground he occupied would be untenable for him in bivouac during the night. Unless the assault was made and was successful, he would be obliged to return to Dinwiddie Court-House, or even further ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... condemn the authoritative teaching of the Roman Church, and after the Council of Trent had held 22 out of its whole number of 25 sessions.' The quibbling, special-pleading, equivocating mind which is consciously or half-consciously endeavouring by subtle distinctions to maintain an untenable position, was of all things the most abhorrent to him, and while the Evangelicals denounced the Tractarians as leading men to Rome, Whately, perhaps alone among his contemporaries, steadily predicted that their teachings would be followed by a great period of religious scepticism. ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... war, and though by instinct, training, and association a Royalist and a personal friend of the Orleans family, he was one of a small group of liberal-patriotic deputies who might have supported loyally a moderate Republic had the other Republicans not made their position untenable. There was an instinctive, unreasonable distrust of any of the old families whose names and antecedents had kept them apart from ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... knowledge of the latitude, but theoretical investigations show that the periods of this variation are incompatible with the assumption that the earth is an absolutely rigid body. Though this assumption has in other ways been found to be untenable, the confirmation of this view by the discovery of Dr. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... autobiography, says he went up to the top of St. Bride's steeple to see the awful spectacle of the conflagration of the Fleet Prison, but the flakes of fire, even at that great height, fell so thickly as to render the situation untenable. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... They occupied an utterly untenable position. Their villages lay mid-way between the white settlements southeast of the Ohio, and the towns of the Indians round Sandusky, the bitterest foes of the Americans, and those most completely under British influence. They were on the trail that the war-parties followed ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... primitive promiscuity gradually modified in the direction of monogamy; others argue that man began where the anthropoid apes left off, and that monogamy has prevailed, on the whole, throughout. Both these opposed views, in an extreme form, seem untenable, and the truth appears to lie midway. It has been shown by various writers, and notably Westermarck (History of Human Marriage, Chs. IV-VI), that there is no sound evidence in favor of primitive promiscuity, and ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... occasion, as if by magic, the color had changed again, and I got only yellow silk. The hypothesis of individual peculiarity, adopted the previous year to explain why some spiders gave yellow, and others white silk, was now untenable; and, remembering that, beside these two positive colors there was also (and indeed more commonly) a light yellow, as if a combination of the other two, I saw that the real solution of the mystery must lie in the spinners themselves. Examining carefully the thread as it came from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... perception as taking only the thing in its pure being apart from qualities, etc, (sanmatra-vi@sayam pratyak@sa@m) is made untenable by Prabhakara, as according to him the thing is perceived direct with all its qualities. According to Kumarila however jati is not something different from the individuals comprehended by it and it is directly perceived. Kumarila's view of jati is thus similar to that ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... counterfeit, sham, supposititious, unauthentic, bogus, feigned, fallacious, make believe, hypocritical, assumed, pseudo, sophistical, untenable; unveracious, dishonest, erroneous, untruthful; disloyal, perfidious, traitorous, disingenuous, insincere, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Hastings desired; but Scotland was pronounced indivisible, and he retired from the field. Bruce contended that, as son of one sister, he was nearer the throne than the grandson of the other, although the elder; but this was completely untenable, and Balliol, having been adjudged the rightful heir, was declared King of Scotland, was crowned, and paid ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Dudevant, whose position at Nohant was that of a visitor merely, and becoming untenable, felt her hold on her cherished home and her children becoming more ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... that could be given them. After Busaco, when blockaded in the lines of Torres Vedras, their situation was far from agreeable. The wet season set in, and their huts, roofed with heather—a pleasant shelter when the sun shone, but very ineffectual to resist autumnal rains—became untenable. Every device was resorted to for the exclusion of the deluge, but in vain. Fortunately, the French were in a still worse plight. In miserable cantonments, short of provisions and attacked by disease, the horses died, and the men deserted; until, on the 14th November, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... century, which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which probably no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made, it must be on an hypothesis not very untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not record." "Unpublished MSS. by Leonardo contain discoveries and anticipations of discoveries," says Mr. Hallam, "within the compass of a few ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Withers. This was thirteen miles south of Chillicothe (now Westfall). Here they were met, early on the 24th, by a messenger from his lordship, ordering them to halt, as a treaty was nearly concluded at Camp Charlotte. But Lewis's army had been fired on that morning, and the place was untenable for a camp in a hostile country, so he concluded to seek better ground. A few hours later another messenger came, again peremptorily ordering a halt, as the Shawnees had practically come to terms. Lewis now concluded to join ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... The Turks, however, rallied very quickly from the shock, and opened so tremendous a fire from the walls, aided by the cross-fire from the ships, that no reinforcements could reach the party in the tower, and the next morning early they evacuated the place, which was rendered untenable by the fire of the Turks ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... very happy, and full of faith in our ability to fight our way through, come what might. Nor did it require the gift of a prophet to make out that trying days were coming; for my position, again as the paid editor of my once "owners," the politicians, was rapidly becoming untenable. It was an agreement entered into temporarily. When it should lapse, what then? I had pledged myself when I sold the paper not to start another for ten years in South Brooklyn. So I would have to begin life over again in a new place. I gave the matter but little thought. I suppose the old folks, ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... volunteers during the night. The thirst in the sultry trenches was terrible, but the garrison still, with black lips and parched tongues, held on to their lines. On the 22nd the attack had made such progress that the post had by the Highlanders became untenable, and had to be withdrawn. It was occupied next morning by the Boers, and the whole ridge was at their mercy. Out of eighteen men who served one of the British guns sixteen were killed or wounded, and the last rounds were fired by the sergeant-farrier, who carried, loaded, and fired all by himself. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wind) moved," &c. Here there is nothing in the context to assist us in determining the sense to be chosen; but, as will be seen in the sequel, modern science indicates that the Jewish interpretation is untenable, and that our translation is, consequently, the correct one. As an instance of confusion of time, we may refer to ii. 19. In our translation this verse seems to place the creation of animals after that of man; but in xii. 1, the very same form is translated by the pluperfect, "Now ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... Mr. Burchard, "have you not admitted so much as to make untenable your position, namely, that you approve the law which requires an attorney to be faithful to his client, the law which assigns counsel to the accused, the law which compels the attendance of the witnesses for the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... mother's injured her naturally healthy and vigorous mind by leading her to indulge in all manner of dreamy and fanciful interpretations of Scripture, which any but the most narrow literalist would feel at once to be untenable. Thus several times she expressed to us her conviction that my brother and myself were to be the two witnesses mentioned in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation, and dilated upon the gratification she should experience upon ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... collective being gathering experience and developing will, to which every life is subordinated, renders the cruder conception of aristocracy, the idea of a select life going on amidst a majority of trivial and contemptible persons who "do not exist," untenable. It abolishes contempt. Indeed to believe at all in a comprehensive purpose in things is to abandon that attitude and all the habits and acts that imply it. But a belief in universal significance does not altogether preclude a belief in an aristocratic ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... down such an effective volley that their assailants sought a truce, and acknowledged twelve dead and thirteen wounded, though not one of the Vaudois was the least hurt. Their victory did not, however, relieve them for long. Although their refuge was secure, the extreme cold made it untenable, and they were compelled to seek a milder climate. Saddened by suffering, and resolved to protect themselves, they met on their way an armed band. Assuming that they were enemies, they fired and killed one of the party, when, to their great grief, ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... fire of the forts at the entrance to Cienfuegos was rapidly making the "Yankee's" position untenable, and it soon became apparent that we would have to give way before overwhelming odds. Fifteen minutes after the battle began between the Spanish gunboat and the "Yankee," the former beat a hasty retreat, steaming back into ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... men from "K" Company. Four versts behind him on the densely wooded road Lieut. Gardner with forty men and a Vickers gun was occupying the old Bolo dugouts. One verst further back in the big clearing was Kodish village, a place which by all the rules of field strategy was absolutely untenable. Here with four Vickers guns were the remainder of "K" Company along with the sick and the lame and the halt, scarce forty men really able to do active duty, but obliged to stay on to support their comrades. The nearest friendly troops, including their artillery, were ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... however, the enemy, who it turned out was only making a strong demonstration to learn the object of our movement on Dandridge, seemed satisfied with the results of his reconnoissance, and began falling back toward Bull's Gap. Meanwhile Parke and Granger concluded that Dandridge was an untenable point, and hence decided to withdraw a part of the army to Strawberry Plains; and the question of supplies again coming up, it was determined to send the Fourth Corps to the south side of the French ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... Carlyle was a passionate old man, dominated by two or three extravagant ideas, to which he was for ever giving utterance in language of equal extravagance. The thirty-four volumes octavo render this opinion untenable by those who can read. Carlyle cannot be killed by an epigram, nor can the many influences that moulded him be referred to any single source. The rich banquet his genius has spread for us is of many ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... mystic; and since the materialistic world looks with suspicion on mysticism, it is probable that even Anstice, who knew and respected him, would have heard his last speech with a passing wonder that a man should hold so unpractical and untenable a view of existence as the ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the Supreme Court original jurisdiction "in all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers, and consuls, and those in which a State shall be party." These words, urged the Chief Justice, must be given an exclusive sense "or they have no operation at all." This position is quite untenable, for even when given only their affirmative value these words still place the cases enumerated beyond the reach of Congress, and this may have been their only purpose. However, granting the Chief Justice his view ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... of the most important incidents in this protracted controversy will shew how utterly untenable are the grounds upon which this course ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... under a more lustrous sky; but the healthy activities of life demand a scene brilliant without languor, and a beauty which can refresh and satisfy rather than lull or overpower. Without advancing any untenable claim to British pre-eminence in the matter of scenery, we may, perhaps, follow on both these points the judgment which Wordsworth has expressed in his Guide to the Lakes, a work which condenses the results of many years of ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... realized that she might be compelled to resort to the storming process in a degree thitherto uncalled for, she believed that the storm she would raise would blow her father entirely out of his absurd and utterly untenable position. On the other hand, while Sir George anticipated trouble with Dorothy, he had never been able to believe that she would absolutely refuse to obey him. In those olden times—now nearly half ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... private interests, and being impersonal only in the use of the imperial pronoun. The representative, too, in America, is privileged to teach, in virtue of his collective character, by the very men who hold the extreme and untenable doctrine of instruction! It is the fashion to say in America, that the people will rule! it would be nearer the truth, however, to say, the people will seem ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... clearly older ideas in conflict with the Osiris belief. The primitive race was not, I believe, a race of Osiris followers. Professor Erman has stated that the Osiris belief is as early as 4200 B.C. That I am certain is absolutely untenable. It is a question of Egyptian chronology in which I beg to differ radically both from Eduard Meyer and Professor Erman. In the formal calendar year of three hundred and sixty-five days, there are twelve months of thirty days and five intercalary days. These intercalary days are called ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner
... being, for obvious reasons, untenable during the outward passage, these ten individuals, when below deck, were stowed away in the cabin and steerage, amid boxes, bales, chests, barrels, and water casks, in a manner somewhat miscellaneous, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... world, as to be content with nothing short of the absolute deprivation of its power. He avowed himself no lover of names, and that he only contended for good government, from whatever quarter it might come. But the idea of good government coming from the Company he declared to be desperate and untenable. This intense animosity, which, considering his long and close familiarity with the infamies of the rule of the Company's servants, was not unnatural, must be allowed, however, to have blinded him to the grave objections which really existed to his scheme. In the ...
— Burke • John Morley
... an objective necessity of supposing such a connection in the objects themselves; and thus the notion of a cause has been acquired surreptitiously and not legitimately; nay, it can never be so acquired or authenticated, since it demands a connection in itself vain, chimerical, and untenable in presence of reason, and to which no object can ever correspond. In this way was empiricism first introduced as the sole source of principles, as far as all knowledge of the existence of things is concerned (mathematics therefore remaining excepted); and with empiricism ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... son-in-law, he assumed his official place during the celebration in S. Peter's, and, standing near Caesar and Gandia, received the Easter palm from the Pope's hand. His position in the Vatican had, however, become untenable; Alexander was anxious to dissolve his marriage with Lucretia. Sforza was asked to give her up of his own free will, and, when he refused, was ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... the North American Review in an article entitled "Mark Twain and Paul Bourget," by Max O'Rell. The following little note is a Rejoinder to that article. It is possible that the position assumed here—that M. Bourget dictated the O'Rell article himself—is untenable.] ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... national interest. In the succeeding works (Mariucha to Amor y ciencia), he strove to unite Spanish color with philosophic breadth, and to lay aside even the appearance of polemic. Such a classification is ingenious, but, we feel, untenable. Aside from the fact that M. Martinenche was not acquainted with Galds' third play, Gerona, which does not fit into his scheme, it seems apparent that there is no essential difference in localization between La de San Quintn ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... you haven't. If you point with pride to that wild flight of fancy which identified 'Molly Lessing' with Marian Blessington, George, your position is (as you yourself would say) untenable. It wasn't imagination: it ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... caused Villeneuve not to make for the Mediterranean, it certainly cannot be ascribed to lubberly navigation, and Nelson should never have tried to sustain his perfectly sound belief by seeking refuge in that untenable direction. God ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... any State or any combination of States, less than world-wide, could be substantially self-sufficient in respect of all raw materials is untenable. Even the United States lacks (mentioning minerals only) nickel, cobalt, platinum, tin, diamonds. Its supplies of the following are inadequate: antimony, asbestos, kaolin, chromate, corundum, garnet, manganese, emery, nitrates, potash, pumice, tungsten, vanadium, zirconium. ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... truth of what is here stated. At Cold Harbor, especially, the Federal works are veritable forts. In face of them, the theory that General Grant uniformly acted upon the offensive, without fear of offensive operations in turn on the part of Lee, will be found untenable. Nor is this statement made with the view of representing General Grant as over-cautious, or of detracting from his merit as a commander. It was, on the contrary, highly honorable to him, that, opposed to an adversary of such ability, he should have ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... they then realize that their great effort was to be barren, their gallant charge in vain. Unsupported, their position grew fast untenable. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... against the victorious Saxon or English heathen. But from the very beginning the Church of England has retained the traces of her early origin, when Gregory the Great was Pope, when the claim to be universal bishop was deemed untenable, when even the ritual of the Mass was still in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... artillery. An Army Corps was in his front. Colonel Archer held the enemy off seven hours, fighting from his rifle-pits and block-house. At last the Confederate commander placed several batteries in position, and opened upon the devoted garrison. In a short time the block-house was rendered untenable, and Colonel Archer was forced to surrender. This was the first and only success against our block-house system. On December 4, 1814, Bates's division of Cheatham's Corps attacked the block-house at the ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
... account of this theory. The data in the possession of the modern theorist is a thousand-fold that to be derived from HERSCHEL'S observations, and, while the subject of the internal construction of the sun is to-day unsettled, we know that many important, even fundamental, portions of his theory are untenable. A remark of his should be recorded, however, as it has played a great part ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... of this debate, I will boldly affirm, that I never heard in this house a question so untenable in itself, so obstinately or so warmly debated; but hope that the sophistries which have been used, however artful, and the declamations which have been pronounced, however pathetick, will have no effect upon your ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... to more than fifteen thousand pounds, and extraordinary military expenditures of one hundred and seventy thousand pounds. Once more the ministry found no financial advantage and great practical difficulties in the way of colonial taxation. Once more they determined to withdraw from an untenable position, and once more, under the active influence of the king and his "friends," they resolved to maintain the principle. In April, 1770, all the duties were repealed except that upon tea. Either the ministry should have applied ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... supporter at Court, who replaced the loss of Gerlach. Roon and he had known one another in the old Pomeranian days. There was a link in Moritz Blankenburg, who was a "Dutz" friend of Bismarck's and Roon's cousin. We can understand how untenable Roon's position was when we find the Minister of War choosing as his political confidants two of the leaders of the party opposed to the Ministry to which ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... swept haughtily from the room and her untenable position, her answer trickling back to them until she ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Jerry was the person who had maintained all along that Riverboro people would not make a story; and Lancelot or The Parted Lovers was intended to refute that assertion at once and forever; an assertion which Rebecca regarded (quite truly) as untenable, though why she certainly never could have explained. Unfortunately Lancelot was a poor missionary, quite unfitted for the high achievements to which he was destined by the youthful novelist, and Uncle Jerry, though ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... formerly supposed that the central portions of the earth consisted of an immense magnet directed north and south. Although this view is found, for reasons which need not be set forth in detail, to be untenable, it gives us a good general idea of the nature of terrestrial magnetism. One result that follows from the law of poles already mentioned is that the magnetism which seems to belong to the north pole of the earth is what we call south on the magnet, ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... tends to negative the continued operation of the Creator, the theory of evolution is untenable. Like that of Laplace, it fails to give an adequate cause for existing phenomena. But it seems probable, as will be seen in the next chapter, that both theories have in them much of truth. They cannot point out the ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... edited with precise accuracy), we are indebted to Mr. T. Carlyle. But the view which he takes of his 'hero,' whether in regard of many particular facts alleged or neglected, or of the general estimate of Cromwell as a man,—as it appears to the author plainly untenable in face of proved historical facts, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... asserts that some of Brown's lieutenants began to comprehend that they were in a trap, and advised him to retreat. Nearly all his eulogists have assumed that such was his original plan, and his own subsequent excuses hint at this intention. But the claim is clearly untenable. He had no means of defensive retreat—no provisions, no transportation for his arms and equipage, no supply of ammunition. The suggestion ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... an attitude of supplication. "Number One, consider the awful consequences of your act before it's too late. Consider what it means. If you make the wardroom untenable, I shall have to sit in the office all the morning. I might even have to ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... traffic between the hospital and the dwellers in the neighborhood, and Mr. Power admits that he started on his investigation with this belief, but with the prosecution of his work he found such a theory untenable. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... properties, as its foundation. Whether such matter was created a few thousand years ago, or whether it has existed through an eternal series of metamorphoses of which our present universe is only the last stage, are alternatives, neither of which is scientifically untenable, and neither scientifically demonstrable. But science knows nothing of any stage in which the universe could be said, in other than a metaphorical and popular sense, to be formless or empty; or in any respect ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... herbs, etc., might, under the heat of the body, give off such effluvia, but the theory on the whole is manifestly absurd. The Doctrine of Signatures, which we have already encountered in our excursions,(1) may also be mentioned in this connection as a complementary and equally untenable hypothesis. ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... event known to have happened in 1358, by later critics another which occurred in 1364. Clearly, the assumption that the period from 1340 to 1345 includes the date of Chaucer's birth, suffices of itself to stamp the one of these conjectures as untenable, and the other as improbable, and (when the style of the poem and treatment of its subject are taken into account) adds weight to the other reasons in favour of the date 1381 for the poem in question. Thus, backwards and forwards, the disputed ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... adopted as a standing order unless there had been some previous practice in the service to justify it or unless the idea was borrowed from abroad. But, as we shall see, the oft-repeated assertion that it was imitated from the Dutch is contrary to all the evidence and quite untenable. The only experience the framers of the order of 1653 can have had of a line ahead formation must have ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... truths. The first class I will deal with are the indifferent. To them, Theosophy presents the widest possible field of, and reasons for, activity that can be desired. It shows that no action is without its direct permanent result, and that consequently the position of the indifferent is absolutely untenable. No one who has studied Theosophical literature can ever find there a justification for mere laissez-faire. It points out the enormous value of what we call trifles, and the comparatively trifling value of what the indifferent would take most note. Theosophy ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... ensued, during which wave after wave came rolling out of the forest, each to deliver a heavy blow at our house, making the roof crack, but never yield, and with the last came so great an influx of water that our position rapidly began to grow untenable. ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... of such a philosopher to make Life; in the same sense, I mean, in which Euclid makes an Icosahedron, or a figure of twenty sides, namely, in the understanding or by an intellectual construction. An argument which, of itself, is sufficient to prove the untenable nature ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... particular Master of the Hospital of St. Katherine from 1368 till a few years before his death in 1412. The fact that he was in favour with the King and that he was allowed to exercise the office by deputy, makes untenable the supposition that Chaucer was dismissed because he was a friend to the King, or because he did not actually conduct the office himself. (Devon's Issues, p. 359, Cal. Pat. Roll 1379, p. 386. Full statement of ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert
... quit, and he had a hard job, even with some assistance from the 10th Division on Tahta Ridge, to bring away his wounded who were very numerous. About 3 P.M. the last of them came out, having had a terrible day, only four or five officers remaining unwounded. They stuck to it well, but it was an untenable position. The Turk contented himself with driving them off the Foka Heights, and did not attempt to advance farther—if he had, it might have proved just as bad for him as Foka had been ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... had placed the army in an altogether untenable and dangerous position. All his officers were extremely uneasy, and Keith declared to the king that the Austrians deserved to be hanged if they did not attack; to ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... had so desired, Congress, his master, would not permit him to burn the city, and he had to make plans to defend it. Brooklyn Heights so commanded New York that enemy cannon planted there would make the city untenable. Accordingly Washington placed half his force on Long Island to defend Brooklyn Heights and in doing so made the fundamental error of cutting his army in two and dividing it by an arm of the sea in presence ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... had been absolutely that of a woman surprised by insinuations she was too innocent to rate at their real importance. And yet, if she did not take away that letter, who did? Mrs. Couldock? Impossible. Miss Dawes? The thought was untenable, even for an instant. I waited in great depression of spirits for the call I knew Taylor would not fail to make ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... heaped on the Himalayan-ward face of the Khasia range, having been transported hither by ice at some former period; especially as the Mont Blanc granite, in crossing the lake of Geneva to the Jura, must have performed a hardly less wonderful ice journey: but this hypothesis is clearly untenable; and unparalleled in our experience as the results appear, if attributed to denudation and weathering alone, we are yet compelled to refer them to these causes. The further we travel, and the longer we study, the more positive becomes the conviction that the part ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... starvation, or of being robbed of whatever miserable pittance may have been served out to him. For these reasons it is maintained that the starting-point for any further discussion on this question is that the plea that slavery no longer exists in the West African dominions of Portugal is altogether untenable. It still exists, though under another name. There remains the question of how its existence can ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... each about 12 feet long. As this opening might well have been that of discharge of a stream, now choked, for the Baumes Chauds and its adjoining fissures, one is led at first to suppose that water had brought down these logs that had fallen into some pot-hole. But this hypothesis is untenable, for it can be seen that these poles have been artificially pointed at each end, and that they have been made firm by cross pieces of metal, either bronze or iron. This may be the remains of a roof ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... perception of this omission. Butler avowedly appeals to the conscience, and therefore at least recognises God as directly revealed in a moral character. That seemed to supply a gap in the ordinary theology. But in the purely empirical view Butler's argument was untenable. It appealed to one of the 'intuitions' which were incompatible with its fundamental assumptions. The compunctions of conscience were facts to be explained by 'association,' not to be regarded as intimations of wrath. Butler's view might be inverted. The ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... Mark, "how ridiculous all this is. Mankind have forged chains for themselves, and make martyrs of themselves." Although he still justified himself in making no reply, he felt that his position was untenable. "I am leaving the place shortly," he said, "in about a week's time. Can I not see ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... secrecy was observed. But though they must have realised that it was imminent, they did nothing. There was, indeed, no course open to them but retreat. Once the army was concentrated with sufficient supplies at Akasha, their position was utterly untenable. The Emir-in-Chief, Hammuda, then had scarcely 3,000 men around his flag. Their rifles and ammunition were bad; their supplies scanty. Nor could the valour of fifty-seven notable Emirs sustain the odds against them. There was still time to fall back on Kosheh, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... nothing could be more gloomy and drear. I turned inland and could see only a bed of rock, covered with drifting sand, on which grew a stunted vegetation, and former experience had taught me that we could not hope to find water in this island; our position here was therefore untenable, and but three plans presented themselves to me: first, to leave a notice of my intentions on the island, then to make for some known point on the main and there endeavour to subsist ourselves until we should be found and taken off by the Colonial schooner; secondly, to ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... such an important discovery were, of course, not to be accepted without controversy, but the feeble arguments of the opponents showed how untenable the old theory had become. In 1648 Pascal suggested that if the theory of the pressure of air upon the mercury was correct, it could be demonstrated by ascending a mountain with the mercury tube. As the air was known to get progressively lighter from base to summit, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... two points, the evacuation of Kisoona as untenable, and the necessity of despatching a summons to Ibrahim immediately. The latter decision was acted upon that instant, and runners were despatched with a letter to Shooa. Kamrasi decided to wait until the next morning for reports ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... places God must have meant for a field from all time, lying very level at the foot of the slope that crowds up against Kearsarge, falling slightly toward the town. North and south it is fenced by low old glacial ridges, boulder strewn and untenable. Eastward it butts on orchard closes and the village gardens, brimming over into them by wild brier and creeping grass. The village street, with its double row of unlike houses, breaks off abruptly at the edge of the field in a footpath that goes up the streamside, ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... of the language, all men have been as much in error in this matter, as in their notion of the nominative absolute. If Wright's theory of the verb is correct, the only just form of the foregoing expression is, "all virtue is being lost." If this central position is untenable, his management of the nominative absolute falls of course. To me, the inserting of the word being into all our passive verbs, seems the most monstrous absurdity ever broached in the name of grammar. The threescore certifiers to the accuracy ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... enemy when you get a chance," remarked the Sergeant, as he opened fire with his repeating rifle upon other Fung who by now were clustering upon the back of the idol. This position, however, they soon abandoned as untenable, except one or two of them who remained ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... This was news which the colonel must learn at once. Snipers were bad enough, but if the two German 77-millimetre field-pieces were got into position, the trench would be untenable. He waited only long enough to get the lie of the land around the rifle pit, then crept ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... currency is, that the good precious metal money is withdrawn from circulation and even from the country; for the reason that it cannot maintain its true value side by side with the paper money; the usual effect in all untenable mixed standards or currencies.(923) A second, and worse consequence is the unrightful revolution produced in so many income and property relations, based on old contracts, to the advantage of the debtor, to the disadvantage ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... analysis. Others supposed that the resinous character of the leaves made them susceptible to magnetic influence; but as rosin is a non-conductor of electricity, of course this hypothesis likewise proved untenable. At last Dr. Asa Gray brought forward the only sensible explanation: inasmuch as both surfaces of the rosin-weed leaf are essentially alike, there being very nearly as many stomata on the upper side ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... discovered the leading spirit of the great gang of which I could only suppose he had been an unimportant member? If so, then for my own safety I ought to warn Rayne of his peril. Yet it was all hateful to me. I had been inveigled into that untenable position which I held, and now escape was impossible. I felt, however, in honor bound to protect Lola, even though that Italian crook had made those airy ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... of a man move across the surface of the film. My first thought was that someone had entered the room without my knowledge, and his figure had been reflected on the surface of the film, which was highly glazed, but a glance around the room assured me that this explanation was untenable. Moreover, I found, upon further investigation, that the film was lying in such a position that it would be impossible to reflect any person in the room. I then examined the skylight, only to find that, owing to the sharp inclination of the roof, it would be an utter impossibility for anyone to ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... is unfathomable by the finite mind, both as to intensity and cause. The thought that He suffered through fear of death is untenable. Death to Him was preliminary to resurrection and triumphal return to the Father from whom He had come, and to a state of glory even beyond what He had before possessed; and, moreover, it was within His power to lay down His life ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... old ground and took another. I deliberately quitted the old Anglican ground as untenable; but I did not do so all at once, but as I became more and more convinced of the state of the case. The Jerusalem bishopric was the ultimate condemnation of the old theory of the Via Media; from that time the Anglican Church was, in my mind, either not a normal portion ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... it has proved a curse, alike to those who have made it and those who have accepted it; and its most baneful shape is book infallibility. For sacerdotal corporations and schools of philosophy are able, under due compulsion of opinion, to retreat from positions that have become untenable; while the dead hand of a book sets and stiffens, amidst texts and formulae, until it becomes a mere petrifaction, fit only for that function of stumbling-block, which it so admirably performs. Wherever bibliolatry ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... as a principal actor altogether omitted, but throughout the Gospel there is the total absence of anything which is specially characteristic of Petrine influence and teaching. The argument that these omissions are due to the modesty of Peter is quite untenable, for not only does Irenaeus, the most ancient authority on the point, state that this Gospel was only written after the death of Peter, but also there is no modesty in omitting passages of importance in the history of Jesus, simply because Peter himself was in some ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... rest, does not meet with your Lordship's approbation. You do not question the right of the Nation over ecclesiastical wealth; you have voluntarily abandoned a ground which you were conscious was altogether untenable. Having allowed this right, can you question the propriety of exerting it at that particular period? The urgencies of the State were such as required the immediate application of a remedy. Even the clergy were conscious of such necessity; and aware, from the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... should be attacked at the Cataract and find the home untenable; this place would be a safe retreat, and we should, in any event, have our treasure here in safety. It has been secure for the last century or so. I think it will keep ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... charge of a loafer, and the horse and the whip were adorned with white favours, and the back seat was confused but not untenable with hampers. "Up we go," said Mr. Voules, "old birds in front and young ones behind." An ominous group of ill-restrained rice-throwers followed them up ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... accumulation of hydrogen in the higher regions of the atmosphere, because of its inferior density, giving rise by ignition to the meteoric exhibitions. While these theories of the older philosophers have been shown to be untenable, there is still great obscurity resting upon the question, though we have reason to refer the phenomena to a cause exterior to the bounds of our atmosphere. Upon this ground, the subject assumes a strictly astronomical aspect, and claims a place ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... government introduced this Coercion Bill before Easter, then that Lord George Bentinck would deem it wise, proper, and expedient; but if after Easter, then the complexion and character of the bill were, in the noble lord's judgment, utterly transformed, and it was declared to be quite untenable and unconstitutional. Was that the kind of support on which the government calculated for passing ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... opinion I hear a student deliver I feel a certain lowering of my regard. He who studies, he who is yet employed in groping for his premises, should keep his mind fluent and sensitive, keen to mark flaws, and willing to surrender untenable positions. He should keep himself teachable, or cease the expensive farce of being taught. It is to further this docile spirit that we desire to press the claims of debating societies. It is as a means of melting down this museum of premature petrifactions into living and impressionable soul that ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the door," I said, "could be removed without the whole door being necessarily opened, the problem would be solved. But, unfortunately, that last hypothesis is untenable after an examination of the door—it's of oak, solid and massive. You can see that quite plainly, in spite of the injury done in the ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... more change in five or six years than Europe in five or six hundred. Many opinions and beliefs which have been cherished among ourselves quite as strongly as the sacredness of property have passed away; and the most untenable propositions respecting the right of bequests or entail have been maintained with as much fervour as the most moderate. Some one will be heard to ask whether a state of society can be final in which the interests of thousands are perilled on the life or character of a single person. And ...
— The Republic • Plato
... and a knowledge of Italy, I thought his remark worth sending to a publication intended, like "N. & Q.," as "A Medium of Intercommunication for Literary Men, Antiquaries," &c., who are well able to examine a Note of the kind; and either to accept it as valid, or to reject it as untenable. On referring now to some standard works, in order to discover the opinions of learned men respecting Mr. Brydone's Tour, the first work I looked into was the Biographie Universelle (in eighty-three volumes, and not yet completed, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various
... securing the reformation. We advise all leaders of public sentiment who do not desire twenty-five or thirty years hence to be found eating their words of to-day, or explaining how it was that they came to be on ground so untenable, to heed the lessons of this Exposition, and range themselves with those who look at facts, and who recognize the prophetic power of facts, and heartily accept the prophecy, even if this prophecy run counter to what ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 07, July, 1885 • Various
... mention the employers' attitude towards the molders' application—a refusal to grant to molders any separate consideration because other classes of workers would also expect it. To me such an attitude is both unfair and untenable. If the molder can prove that his conditions of working are vile, dangerous and unhealthy, it is surely fair to ask for a proper recompense for such work...."[137] And consider this extract from one of the reports of the Coal Industry Commission, signed by six members of the Commission. ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... where formerly we could only grope in the dark. The claim that "the Chinese race" produced the high Chinese civilization entirely by its own efforts, thanks to its special gifts, has become just as untenable as the other theory that immigrants from the West, some conceivably from Europe, carried civilization to the Far East. We know now that in early times there was no "Chinese race", there were not even "Chinese", just as there were no "French" and no "Swiss" two thousand ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... which have been taken in opposition to the plan of the convention, there is none that was so little to have been expected, or is so untenable in itself, as the one from which this particular provision has been attacked. If a well-regulated militia be the most natural defense of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... from the north, it enters almost without diminution; and the war-ships roll dizzily at their moorings, and along the fringing coral which follows the configuration of the beach, the surf breaks with a continuous uproar. In wild weather, as the world knows, the roads are untenable. Along the whole shore, which is everywhere green and level and overlooked by inland mountain-tops, the town lies drawn out in strings and clusters. The western horn is Mulinuu, the eastern, Matautu; and from one to the other of these extremes, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... animal remains in a manner strictly analogous to that of the formation of ordinary coal from wood and other vegetable debris. For geological as well as chemical reasons, the author holds that Mendeleeff's theory of their igneous origin is untenable, pointing out that the hydrocarbons could not have been formed by the action of water percolating through clefts in the gradually solidifying crust until it reached the molten metallic carbides, as these clefts could only occur where complete ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... of events; and he has made a study of Napoleon in which, for the first and only time in all his work, he appears as an intemperate advocate. But when all is said in blame so much remains to praise that one scarce knows where to begin. Tolstoi's theory of war is mystical and untenable, no doubt; but his pictures of warfare are incomparably good. None has felt and reproduced as he has done what may be called the intimacy of battle—the feeling of the individual soldier, the passion and excitement, the terror and the fury, that taken ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... but soon found that his situation was untenable. He was between the devil and the deep sea— between the unscrupulous cunning of the ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... taste, color, hardness, etc., that he perceives directly, or as ideas, have corresponding to them real external odor, taste, color, hardness, etc. It is not easy for a man to hold to this position, for a very little reflection seems to make it untenable; but it is theoretically possible for one to take it, and probably many persons have inclined to the view when they have first been tempted to believe that the mind perceives directly ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... Chickamauga prisoners. The sentinel who had formerly been placed at this stairway at night, to prevent the prisoners from entering the kitchen, had been withdrawn when, in the fall of 1863, the horrible condition of the floor made it untenable for sleeping purposes. ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... The bombers lobbed their missiles over into the traverse ahead of them in showers, and immediately the explosions crashed out, swung round the corner with a rush to be met in turn with bullets or bursting bombs. Sometimes a space of two or three traverses was blasted bare of life and rendered untenable for long minutes on end by a constant succession of grenades and bombs. In places, the men of one side or the other leaped up out of the trench, risking the bullets that sleeted across the level ground, and emptied a clip of cartridges or hurled half a dozen grenades down into the ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... her children's affection, but she was unwilling that they should bestow it upon a stranger. She could not forgive the governess who had taken her place in their hearts. She and her eldest daughter had on this account frequent quarrels. Mary's position was therefore untenable. Her surroundings were uncongenial, her duties distasteful, and she was disapproved of by her employer. Nothing was needed but a decent pretext for the latter to dismiss her. This she before long found ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... natural that, having had his thoughts for so long a period filled with conjectures in reference to this wonderful creature, he should suppose the first tall, mysterious man he met must be he. But he dismissed the notion as untenable and absurd on second thoughts. That the blue-eyed, calm, dignified hunter who kneeled by his side, and held the refreshing water to his lips as if he were a trained sick nurse, should be the Wild Man, the man reported to be forty feet high, covered with ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... as to the right of Leonardo da Vinci to stand as 'the first name of the fifteenth century, which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which probably no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made, it must be on an hypothesis not very untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not record." "Unpublished MSS. by Leonardo contain discoveries and anticipations of discoveries," says Mr. Hallam, "within the compass of a few pages, so as to ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... authoritative teaching of the Roman Church, and after the Council of Trent had held 22 out of its whole number of 25 sessions.' The quibbling, special-pleading, equivocating mind which is consciously or half-consciously endeavouring by subtle distinctions to maintain an untenable position, was of all things the most abhorrent to him, and while the Evangelicals denounced the Tractarians as leading men to Rome, Whately, perhaps alone among his contemporaries, steadily predicted that their teachings would be followed by a great period ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... H. Major, the author of "Early Voyages to. Australia," having thoroughly considered the possibility of a French claim, came to the conclusion that such a claim was untenable. Being somewhat shaken, however, in his first belief of a Portuguese discovery, he was led to adopt a Provencal theory to explain certain words which on these old Gallicized charts, were neither Portuguese nor French. The whole subject was ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... night of December 26, 1860, Major Robert Anderson, in command of the land forces, forts, and defences at Charleston, South Carolina, being threatened by armed secession troops, and regarding his position at Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan's Island, untenable if attacked from the land side, as a matter of precaution, without order from his superiors, but possessing complete authority within the limits of his command, removed his small force, consisting of ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... He introduces philosophic principles, Aristotelian or Kalamistic, only with a view to their relation to Jewish theology. And he either accepts them, provisionally or absolutely, if he regards them as proven, as true and useful; or he refutes and rejects them if untenable. In the former case he shows by proper interpretation that similar principles are taught in Bible and Talmud; in the latter he contents himself by proving that Aristotle or the Mutakallimun, as the case may be, ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... pontoon bridge, and Heideck joined it. A Russian shell, which burst right in the middle of the troop, without, however, despite the severe losses it had caused, interrupting the formation, was a clear proof that the situation was here also quite untenable. ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... said; it were hard if a poor man could not criticise another without having so much ink shed against him. But I shall still regret you should have written on an hypothesis you knew to be untenable, and that you should thus have made your paper, for those who do not know me, essentially unfair. The rich, fox- hunting squire speaks with one voice; the sick man of letters with another. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dull, sullen glow, give you the idea that it entertained its own private opinions on the subject? And if those opinions seemed contrary to yours, did you not endeavour to betray the sparks into an untenable position, by submitting them to the gentle sophistry of a poker nicely insinuated between the bars? or did you not quench with a sudden retort of small coal its impertinent congratulation at an unfortunate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... cart was in charge of a loafer, and the horse and the whip were adorned with white favours, and the back seat was confused but not untenable with hampers. "Up we go," said Mr. Voules, "old birds in front and young ones behind." An ominous group of ill-restrained rice-throwers followed them ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Smithian theory it cannot; and therefore it is that I make a great distinction between the error of Adam Smith and of other later writers. He, though wrong, was consistent. That the value of labor is invariable, is a principle so utterly untenable, that many times Adam Smith abandoned it himself implicitly, though not explicitly. The demonstration of its variable value indeed follows naturally from the laws which govern wages; and, therefore, I will not here anticipate it. Meantime, having once adopted that ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... of Saturday, the 23rd, before the meeting of my Commission at the City Hall, I had had a long talk with Spencer, and I felt, more strongly than I ever had before, that his position in Dublin was untenable, and that he ought to be allowed to go. On Whit Sunday I attended church with Spencer, and in the afternoon took him for the only walk which he had enjoyed for a long time. We passed the spot where Lord Frederick Cavendish was killed, and ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Philip, had proved unattainable. It was destined for his brother, Ferdinand of Austria, and afterward for the latter's son, Maximilian. To lead the defeated German Protestants back to the bosom of the Holy Church appeared more and more untenable. Here in the Netherlands the heretics, in consequence of the Draconian severity of the regulations which he himself had issued, had been hung and burned by hundreds, and hitherto he had gained nothing but the hatred of the nation which he preferred to all others. His bodily ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men. It was very strange for me to discover this, and very dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. The common notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished together I found to be utterly untenable. We talk of peace and learning, of peace and plenty, of peace and civilisation; but I found that these are not the words that the Muse of History coupled together; that on her lips the words were peace and sensuality, peace and selfishness, peace and death. I found in brief ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... awful jag on today," was casually remarked when an extra fluffiness and imbecility was noticeable in the passing Bones. At first it was believed that he drank also, but when careful investigation proved this hypothesis untenable, he was freely called a "derned time-servin', yaller hypocrite." Not a few advanced the opinion that if Bones did not actually lead Uncle Billy astray, he at least "slavered him over and coddled him until the old man got conceited in his wickedness." ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... more tenable. But even if he had so desired, Congress, his master, would not permit him to burn the city, and he had to make plans to defend it. Brooklyn Heights so commanded New York that enemy cannon planted there would make the city untenable. Accordingly Washington placed half his force on Long Island to defend Brooklyn Heights and in doing so made the fundamental error of cutting his army in two and dividing it by an arm of the sea in presence of overwhelming hostile ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... water, and have visited it at midnight. I have considered the upheaval theories, subsidence theories, volcanic theories, and tidal wave theories which the provincial savants have suggested. They are all untenable. There is only one scoffer in the district, an Orangeman; and he admits the removal of the cemetery, but says it was dug up and transplanted in the night by a body of men under the command of Father Tom. This is also out of the question. The interment of Brimstone Billy ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... this document, and untenable as were its assertions, it had great weight with many of the members of the legislature coming as the opinion did from the attorney-general of the State. The friends of the bill resolved to call for the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Monarchy much longer, the consequence must have been the gradual disruption of Austria and the subjection of the whole Slav world to the Russian sceptre, with the result that the position of the German race in Central Europe would have become untenable"; but it is obvious that this plea is itself untenable, since it makes a quite distant and problematic danger the excuse for a sudden and insulting blow—for a blow, in fact, almost certain to precipitate ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... insisting that words cannot really mean what, according to all ordinary rules of construction, they must mean." It really must be said that the "outrage," if so it is to be called, is not on the side of the popular belief. And why does this belief seem untenable to Mr. Maurice? Because it seems inconsistent to him with a truth which he states and enforces with no less earnestness than reason, that Christ is every moment judging us—that His tribunal is one before which we in our inmost "being are standing now—and that the time will come when we ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... for Madrid was thereby rendered untenable. The Emperor gave orders to retreat behind the Duero, and directed Bessieres to keep open the connection with Junot by way of Valladolid. In fact, he began to appreciate his task, for he warned his generals against any system of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... gratified by the distinguished honour Varchi paid him. In an earlier chapter of this book I have already pointed out how this correspondence bears upon the question of his friendship with Tommaso dei Cavalieri, and also upon an untenable hypothesis advanced by recent Florentine students of his biography. The incident is notable in other ways because Buonarroti was now adopted as a poet by the Florentine Academy. With a width of sympathy rare in such bodies, they condoned ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... without diminution; and the war-ships roll dizzily at their moorings, and along the fringing coral which follows the configuration of the beach, the surf breaks with a continuous uproar. In wild weather, as the world knows, the roads are untenable. Along the whole shore, which is everywhere green and level and overlooked by inland mountain-tops, the town lies drawn out in strings and clusters. The western horn is Mulinuu, the eastern, Matautu; and from one to the other of these extremes, I ask the reader to walk. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... therefore, it would seem as if Hume were boldly pressing his principles to the very uttermost—that is, were challenging a miracle as untenable, though attested by a multitude. But, in fact, he is not. He only seems to do so; for, if no number of witnesses could avail anything in proof of a miracle, why does he timidly confine himself to the hypothesis of the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... declared the proposition, as reported by the committee, to be "wholly untenable, is monstrous, absurd, damnable in its provisions, a greater wrong and outrage on the black race than any thing that has ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... a term of abuse in the way in which they used it, one after the other, with covert glances. If he was going to put up with this from the whole row, his position on the farm would be untenable. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... spirit, and fronted with brave effort. The fugitive's cave was a good preparation for the king's palace. The throne to which he was called was no soft seat for repose. The Philistine invasion had torn away all the northern territory. He took the helm in a tempest. What was he to do? Ziklag was untenable; where was he to take his men? He could not stop in the Philistine territory, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to above, by Withers. This was thirteen miles south of Chillicothe (now Westfall). Here they were met, early on the 24th, by a messenger from his lordship, ordering them to halt, as a treaty was nearly concluded at Camp Charlotte. But Lewis's army had been fired on that morning, and the place was untenable for a camp in a hostile country, so he concluded to seek better ground. A few hours later another messenger came, again peremptorily ordering a halt, as the Shawnees had practically come to terms. Lewis now concluded ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... Whether such matter was created a few thousand years ago, or whether it has existed through an eternal series of metamorphoses of which our present universe is only the last stage, are alternatives, neither of which is scientifically untenable, and neither scientifically demonstrable. But science knows nothing of any stage in which the universe could be said, in other than a metaphorical and popular sense, to be formless or empty; or in any respect less the seat of law and order ...
— Mr. Gladstone and Genesis - Essay #5 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... in modifying species, but he assigns by far the most important role in the whole scheme to natural selection, which, as I have already shown, must, with him, be regarded as a synonym for luck pure and simple. This, for reasons well shown by Mr. Spencer in the articles under consideration, is so untenable that it seems only possible to account for its having been advanced at all by supposing Mr. Darwin's judgment to have been perverted by some one or more of the many causes that might tend to warp them. What the chief of those causes may have been ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... surface of the film. My first thought was that someone had entered the room without my knowledge, and his figure had been reflected on the surface of the film, which was highly glazed, but a glance around the room assured me that this explanation was untenable. Moreover, I found, upon further investigation, that the film was lying in such a position that it would be impossible to reflect any person in the room. I then examined the skylight, only to find that, owing to the sharp ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... attacked at the Cataract and find the home untenable; this place would be a safe retreat, and we should, in any event, have our treasure here in safety. It has been secure for the last century or so. I think it will keep ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... disregarded. But the biographer of Brunellesco is explicit on the point, giving many details about their sojourn; and this book was written during the lifetime of both Donatello and Brunellesco. The argument against the visit is, in fact, untenable. Artists were influenced by classical motives without going to Rome. Brunellesco himself placed in his competition design a figure inspired by the bronze boy drawing a thorn out of his foot—the Spinario of the Capitol. ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... of the little city found their proud position quite untenable. They accordingly, on the 1st of December, despatched the burgomaster and a senator to Amersfoort, to make terms, if possible, with Don Frederic. When these envoys reached the place, they were refused admission to the general's presence. The army had already been ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... growing once more into an agricultural country. Minster, untenable by its nuns, had been made over after the Danish invasions to the monks of St. Augustine at Canterbury, and it was they who built the great barn and manor house which were the outer symbol of its new agricultural importance. Monkton, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... unwillingly obeyed, but we had not gone far before a succession of reports showed that the enemy had already got several guns into position, and had not the fort been strengthened, it would soon have been rendered untenable. Numerous successive attacks were made, but were repulsed ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... itself, Can it be done to order? Has the verb to love really an imperative mood? Certainly, to say that we can love at pleasure, and by a mere effort of will summon up a passion which does not arise of itself, is to take up a paradoxical and novel position. Yet if this position be really untenable, how is it ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Australia, in 141 degrees, the country is unfit for occupation, for, though in favourable seasons there might in some few localities be abundance of feed for stock, the uncertainty of rain and frequent recurrence of drought renders it untenable, the grasses and herbage being principally annuals, which not only die but are swept away by the hot summer winds, leaving the surface of the soil completely bare. On Cooper's Creek, near the boundary, ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... undertaking an expedition into the Indian country with so small a force as he could command, he was at once to evacuate the place and fall back with his force on the settlement, as the position was quite untenable, and every man was needed for the ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... the theatric sky. This alludes to Leigh Hunt, who, in The Examiner, at this time kept the actors in hot water. Dr. Johnson's argument is, like many of his other arguments, specious, but untenable; that which it defends has since been abandoned as impracticable. Mr. Whitbread contended that the actor was like a portrait in a picture, and accordingly placed the green curtain in a gilded frame remote from the foot-lights; ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... be more troublesome, if not impossible, to an unintelligent agent. Even putting aside the question whether Nature, acting as she does according to definite and invariable laws, can be rightly called an unintelligent agent, such a position as this is wholly untenable. Mix salt and sand, and it shall puzzle the wisest of men, with his mere natural appliances, to separate all the grains of sand from all the grains of salt; but a shower of rain will effect the same object in ten minutes. And so, while man may find ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... recalled the warning given by the trapper, and looked furtively about, to make sure that he was not already in their hands. His great anxiety now was to reach the steam man and leave the neighborhood, which was rapidly becoming untenable. ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... hands of God, as the Jew said) and I may lose less strength than usual, ... having more than usual to lose ... and altogether it may not be so bad an alternative. As to being the cause of any anger against my sister, you would not advise me into such a position, I am sure—it would be untenable for one moment. ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... always those of excommunicated persons, and that it is a privilege of the schismatic Greek church to preserve from decay those who incurred excommunication, and have died under censure of their church, is an untenable assumption; since it is certain that the bodies of the excommunicated decay like others, and there are some which have died in communion with the church, whether the Greek or the Latin, who remain uncorrupted. Such are found even among the Pagans, and amongst animals, of ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... latitude, but theoretical investigations show that the periods of this variation are incompatible with the assumption that the earth is an absolutely rigid body. Though this assumption has in other ways been found to be untenable, the confirmation of this view by the discovery of Dr. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... same day came fresh envoys to treat for peace. They were now required to furnish twice as many hostages as before; but Caesar could not wait to receive them. They must be sent after him to the Continent. His position had become utterly untenable; the equinoctial gales might any day begin; and he was only too glad to find wind and weather serve that very night for his re-embarkation. Under cover of the darkness he huddled his troops on board; and next morning the triumphant Britons beheld the invaders' ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... position" (which should not exceed one-half the available force) then the position is too extensive and should be narrowed. On the other hand, too narrow a front may enable the enemy to develop, early in the engagement, strong flank attacks, which may make the position untenable before the time is ripe for the assumption of the offensive. The Conde-Mons-Binche line held on August 22-23, 1914, by Sir J. French's army (I. Corps, General Sir D. Haig; II. Corps, General Sir H. L. Smith-Dorrien) ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... appropriate exercise of the power of Congress to legislate for the District of Columbia without reference to article III.[1353] Six members of the Court rejected this theory, but two of the six joined in upholding the act on another ground which seven of their brethren considered untenable,—namely, that Hepburn v. Ellzey was erroneously decided and that the District of Columbia should be deemed to be a "State" within the meaning of article ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Eastern Star, and the possibility of her hanging about the coast in the hope of picking them up; but as there was no certainty upon that point, and a return to the coast would be like rushing into the very jaws of the lion, from which they were fleeing, they soon dismissed the idea as untenable. ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... 7). Napoleon won the battle, but his army was reduced to something over one hundred thousand men when he entered Moscow a week later. The town had been set on fire by the Russians before his arrival; he found his position untenable, and had to retreat as winter came on. The cold, the want of food, and the harassing attacks of the people along the route made that retreat the most signal military tragedy on record. Napoleon regained Poland early in ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... demonstrating this, he attempts to make it part of a theory that all men of genius are more or less given over to this same "veiled epilepsy." And here he goes beyond the necessities of the case, and takes up an untenable position. There is a morbid and shattering susceptibility connected with some genius; but that tremulous, constantly readjusted sensitiveness which indicates the perfect equilibrium of health in other minds must not be confounded with it. Such is the condition of the highest genius alone; of ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... particular would mean for him, in any case, serious inconvenience. Two things were possible. Either he would be charged with falsely accusing others, or else his position as commander would receive such a blow as to make it perhaps untenable, once his superiors should obtain knowledge of the actual state of affairs within the regiment. Neither of these contingencies was to ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... under, very much by the efforts of the Englishmen, who had to hint to the French that if they did not exert themselves they would be left to perish, as it would be impossible to get them all on board the corvette before the frigate would become untenable. The corvette and her prize having been put somewhat to rights, made sail for Jamaica. They had a long passage up, and the greatest vigilance was necessary to keep the prisoners in order. A plot was discovered for retaking the frigate, and Bonham had to threaten the French officers ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... was all in ruins, crumbling away, and, moreover, M. le Chevalier had put a forester there—a grim, bad subject, who had been in the Italian wars, and cared neither for saint nor devil, except Chevalier Narcisse. Indeed, even if he had not been there, the place was untenable, it would only be ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... day, after an extra heavy nocturnal bombardment, we went out in search of a melon. A shell had shattered her impromptu showcase, dislocated a wall on one side of the archway, which menaced immediate collapse. In fact, the place had become untenable. ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... lost guns, which were proudly brought in by the remnants of the brigade. The situation now looked extremely serious, for the Turks, growing bolder, launched a most determined attack on Mansura, and in spite of numerous counter-attacks rapidly made the ridge untenable. The "Cameliers" again sacrificed themselves in a gallant effort to raise the siege and played sad havoc with the Turkish cavalry. Temporarily the advance was held, but as death from starvation and thirst was the only alternative to ultimate capture by the Turks, the garrison ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... side-stepped north and were housed in a chateau that really deserved the appellation, though it was far from being as massively built as an average English country seat of like importance. It belonged to one of the oldest families in France. Wide noble staircases led to vast rooms made untenable by shell fire. Fragments of rare stained glass littered the vacant private chapel. The most valuable paintings, the best of the Louis XV. furniture, and the choicest tapestry had been removed to safety. In one ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... day: Givenchy was bombarded heavily by the Germans for hours, and rendered absolutely untenable. The Bedfords held out there gallantly, and stuck to one end of the village whilst the enemy was in possession of the other; but the heavy artillery was too much for them, and after losing about sixty casualties, many of them killed by falling houses, they ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... magnetic - a theory promptly exploded by chemical analysis. Others supposed that the resinous character of the leaves made them susceptible to magnetic influence; but as rosin is a non-conductor of electricity, of course this hypothesis likewise proved untenable. At last Dr. Asa Gray brought forward the only sensible explanation: inasmuch as both surfaces of the rosin-weed leaf are essentially alike, there being very nearly as many stomata on the upper side as on the under, both surfaces are equally sensitive to sunlight; ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... season of the year he would readily have accounted for the phenomenon that now fell under his observation, on the hypothesis that the woman was somebody's sister or cousin or aunt. But at present that explanation was untenable; Maitland happened to know that not one of the other men was in New York, barring himself; and his own presence there ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... unity of human taste within the range of conventional history helps the pretension. But in principle it is untenable. Nothing has less to do with the real merit of a work of imagination than the capacity of all men to appreciate it; the true test is the degree and kind of satisfaction it can give to him who appreciates it most. The symphony would lose nothing if half mankind had always been deaf, as nine-tenths ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... criticism. He had taken a firm stand against the views of the younger school, who seek to banish the Exodus of the Jews from the province of history and represent it as a later production of the myth-making popular mind; a theory we both believed untenable. One of his remarks on this subject has lingered in my memory and ran ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... expected from them. And yet, it must be said that in a few matters of importance Hindu sentiment is slowly moving in the right direction. As a Social Reformer, the Hindu is a poor success; but he is not a fool; he can see that the situation, so far as woman is concerned, is becoming increasingly untenable and flagrantly inconsistent with the growing light of today. The hope is that he will yield, with increasing readiness, to the pressure brought to bear upon him by ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... minutes ensued, during which wave after wave came rolling out of the forest, each to deliver a heavy blow at our house, making the roof crack, but never yield, and with the last came so great an influx of water that our position rapidly began to grow untenable. ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... the first blow must be settled, was at Fort Sumter, in the mid-throat of Charleston harbor. On December 27, 1860, by a skillful movement at night, Major Anderson, the commander at Fort Moultrie, had transferred his scanty force from that dilapidated and untenable post on the shore to the more defensible and more important position of Fort Sumter. Thereafter a precarious relationship betwixt peace and war had subsisted between him and the South Carolinians. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... December was detestable. We were en pleine crise for ten days. Every day W. went to the Chamber of Deputies expecting to be beaten, and every evening came home discouraged and disgusted. The Chamber was making the position of the ministers perfectly untenable—all sorts of violent and useless propositions were discussed, and there was an undercurrent of jealousy and intrigue everywhere. One day, just before Christmas, about the 20th, W. and his chef de cabinet, Comte de P., started for the house, ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... under the title of enterocoela, and were contrasted with the other groups of the pseudocoela (with false body-cavity) and the coelenterata (with no body-cavity). However, this radical distinction and the views as to classification which it occasioned have been shown to be untenable. Further, the absolute differences in tissue-formation which the Hertwigs set up between the enterocoela and pseudocoela cannot be sustained in this connection. For these and other reasons their coelom-theory has been much criticised ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... selected characteristics, such as the above, summarize the entire tendency of a century of teeming human life, and stand alone among the signs that are chiefly to be considered in looking to the future, would be to take an untenable position. It may be said safely, however, that these factors, because the future to which they point is more remote, are less regarded than others which are less important; and further, that those among them which ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... into sacred personages; that houses would then build themselves, and corn grow of itself; and that everybody would be able to live, without doing any work for his living. This theory would also be found highly untenable ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... might not show yourself to me again," she answered, with sudden tears twinkling on her eyelashes. She seemed more tenderly human and approachable to-day than heretofore. Had she found her mountain-height of unmated solitude untenable?—found in herself a yielding woman, and in Balder the strength that is a man? This descent, which was a sweet ascent, made her endlessly ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... market, the control of which is the foundation of her world sovereignty. The knowledge, therefore, that war depends on biological laws leads to the conclusion that every attempt to exclude it from international relations must be demonstrably untenable. But it is not only a biological law, but a moral obligation, and, as such, an indispensable ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... as untenable, since the process which he observed is chiefly the result of a severe injury of the blood from the sodium chloride solution and the teasing. If a method of preparation be chosen which protects the blood as far as ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... position of Prevost's army wholly untenable. With the control of Lake Champlain in Macdonough's hands, the British line of communication would be continually menaced. For the ten thousand veterans of Wellington's campaigns there was nothing to do but retreat, nor did they linger until they had marched across ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... the causes which were assigned for it, Henry pre-occupied the ground of the conflict; he entrenched himself in the "debateable land" of legal uncertainty; and until his position had been pronounced untenable by the general voice of Christendom, any sentence which the pope could issue would have but a doubtful validity. It was, perhaps, but a slight advantage; and the niceties of technical fencing might soon resolve themselves into a question of mere strength; yet, in the opening of great conflicts, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... country and abroad, and who had then stated boldly his conviction of the practicability of the subdivision of the electrical current. The above extracts are good illustrations, however, of scientific opinions up to the end of 1879, when Mr. Edison's epoch-making invention rendered them entirely untenable. The eminent scientist, John Tyndall, while not sharing these precise views, at least as late as January 17, 1879, delivered a lecture before the Royal Institution on "The Electric Light," when, after ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... show clearly older ideas in conflict with the Osiris belief. The primitive race was not, I believe, a race of Osiris followers. Professor Erman has stated that the Osiris belief is as early as 4200 B.C. That I am certain is absolutely untenable. It is a question of Egyptian chronology in which I beg to differ radically both from Eduard Meyer and Professor Erman. In the formal calendar year of three hundred and sixty-five days, there are twelve months of thirty days and five intercalary days. These intercalary ...
— The Egyptian Conception of Immortality • George Andrew Reisner
... books which are classed among the prophets having the Spirit of prophecy, and those of the books belonging to the Hagiographa simply the Holy Spirit (the Holy Spirit, but not in the degree necessary for prophetic revelation). But this distinction is untenable. Who had the spirit of prophecy if not Daniel? In the opinion of some modern scholars, they reckoned to the Prophets only books written by men who were prophets in the stricter sense of the term; that is, men trained to the prophetical office, and exercising it as their profession; while the writings ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... July 27, 1895, p. 141, this gentleman writes in defence of craniotomy: "The question is a legal one per se against which any conflicting view is untenable. The subdivisions under which the common law takes consideration of craniotomy are answers in themselves to the conclusions quoted above, under the unfortunate necessity which demands the operation." ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... us, and in less than an hour there was not a board or timber left of either building. The ground, although quite uneven and sloping, soon became so flooded that tents, even when they could be pitched, were untenable. The men attempted to build fires, but in most instances the floods of water quenched the flames. Some, however, succeeded in starting huge fires, and around these stood the men during the whole night, while the ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... heathendom being mere ignorant superstitions. But have not some vague notions of these customs being founded originally on a true knowledge of scientific principles found their way amongst European scientific circles? At first sight the idea seems untenable. But why may we not suppose that the ancients prescribed this observance in the full knowledge that the effect of electricity upon the organs of digestion is truly beneficial? People who have studied the ancient philosophy of India with a firm resolve to penetrate ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... of the Edda are certainly older than the MS., although the old opinion as to their high antiquity is untenable. The majority probably date from the tenth century in their present form; this dating does not necessitate the ascription of the shape in which the legends are presented, still less of their substance, to that period. With regard to the place of their composition opinions vary ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... in the house came nearest to being untenable, was one morning in January, when the whole party were assembled on the steps to see the sportsmen off for ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... appears to have been made by an eminent Calvinistic clergyman of the present day, who, instead of coming to the legitimate conclusion that Calvinism is therefore untenable, as being an impracticable system, has recourse to a delusive theory of ecclesiastical fellowship, which confounds the visible with the invisible Church, or reduces the former to a mere nullity. According to his view of the subject, ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... the Galileo documents at the Vatican, he published several of the most important, without suppression or pious-fraudulent manipulation. This made all the intrenchments based upon Marini's statements untenable. Another retreat had to ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the greatest rogue in London, taken from him eight thousand pounds of ill gotten money, and freed himself of an incubus that would have made his position untenable. ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... is found to contain so many errors, inaccuracies, false statements and absurdities, the notion, or claim, of its being a "revelation," communicated, or inspired, from a supernatural source, is unreasonable and untenable. An all-wise Creator could not be ignorant, or inaccurate. This particular book, like many other similar and rival ones to be found in other parts of the world, may be scientifically assumed to be no more than a typical and very creditable product of the unenlightened ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... set right that which would never come right more: forgetting that, alas, the crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered; till the flood came and swept them away, standing bravely to the last at a post long since untenable, but still—all honour to ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... open to the sea; he saw that there was but one and that a fatal remedy. "By the living God, if this thing be repeated a third time I will make Alexandria as open to anybody as is the house of a prostitute!" He was better than his word, for he forthwith dismantled its fortifications, and made it an untenable place. ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... otherwise than he did. Had he suspected Corona and accused her on grounds wholly frivolous and untenable, in the unreasoning outbreak of a foolish jealousy, he could not have been so persuaded of her guilt as to feel the keenest joy on finding her innocent. In that case his remorse would have outweighed his satisfaction. Had he, on the other hand, suspected her without making the accusation, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... this point of view as untenable and anti-republican, and taking the opposite, that suffrage is a natural right—as necessary to man under government, for the protection of person and property, as are air and motion to life—we hold the talisman by which to show the right of all classes to the ballot, to remove every obstacle, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... youths, of being forced to take tricks of words such as this (and there are too many of them in even the best Greek writers) for subjects of daily study and admiration; the theory of the Ethics being, besides, so hopelessly untenable, that even quibbling will not always face it out,—nay, will not help it in exactly the first and most important example of virtue which Aristotle has to give, and the very one which we might have ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... meaning "those only who were in order of succession to the throne." Such a definition would have excluded the Queen as effectually as the Princess Dowager; and when Mr. Grenville found the peers reluctant to accept this view (which, indeed, his own Lord Chancellor pronounced untenable), he then sent another of his colleagues to represent to the King that his mother was so unpopular that, even if the Lords should pass the bill in such a form as rendered her eligible for nomination, the Commons would introduce a clause to exclude her by name. With great unwillingness, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... troops were beginning to move off the hill, he received a letter from Warren, asking for his views on the situation, and as to the measures to be adopted. It was now unnecessary to give these, and he sent a brief reply that he was obliged to abandon Spion Kop as the position was untenable. ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... the English Jacobites set all wheels in motion. Charles's refuge at Avignon even was menaced by English threats directed at the Pope. The Prince tried to amuse himself; he went to dances, he introduced boxing matches, {41a} just as years before he had brought golf into Italy. But his position was untenable, and he disappeared. ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... a silk material, of which no more is known than that it was very expensive, and had a glossy sheen, like satin. Some antiquaries have supposed it to be an old name for satin; but as several Wardrobe Rolls contain entries relating to both in immediate sequence, this supposition is untenable. ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... depreciated currency is, that the good precious metal money is withdrawn from circulation and even from the country; for the reason that it cannot maintain its true value side by side with the paper money; the usual effect in all untenable mixed standards or currencies.(923) A second, and worse consequence is the unrightful revolution produced in so many income and property relations, based on old contracts, to the advantage of the debtor, to the disadvantage of the creditor, and of those who receive nominally fixed salaries.(924) ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... Moreover, if they made a gallant fight, might not Persia be expected to second their efforts? Would she not attack Alexander from the flanks of Lebanon, intercept his supplies, cut off his foragers, and make his position untenable; the Tyrians could scarcely anticipate that Persia would sit with folded hands, a calm spectator of a seven months' ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... answer, nothing but the dull roar of the flames in the hold and the spitting hiss as some spray was flung over the vessel's side. No one appeared on deck. The bow, where it was high above the water was cherry red hot, and even the more submerged stern seemed absolutely untenable. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... already made at one of its extremities. The tiles and rafters covering the room were green with damp, and, through various small apertures, allowed the wind and even the rain to enter with a facility which would have rendered the abode untenable for a human inhabitant during any but the summer season. In one of the slopes of the roof was an opening in the tiles, at about four feet from the floor, closed by a wooden door, and large enough to give egress to a man. To this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... the Establishment, and gave up all its advantages when the post had become so untenable that these could be no longer retained with honour—or we should perhaps rather say, retained compatibly with right principle; but they did not in wholesale desperation give up other posts which could still be ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... me to discover this; and very dreadful—but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. The common notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished together, I found, to be wholly untenable. Peace and the vices of civil life only flourish together. We talk of peace and learning, and of peace and plenty, and of peace and civilisation; but I found that those were not the words which the Muse of History coupled together: that on her lips, the words were—peace and sensuality, peace ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... to be carried by each unit was carefully and personally explained to us by General the Hon. H.A. Lawrence, who was at that time our Brigadier. Secondly, we had to tell our men that the Turkish lines would have been rendered almost untenable before their advance, in consequence of the heavy bombardment, which was to precede the attack. Thirdly, we were to emphasise to the men that Turkish morale was on the wane. Prisoners, whose only words were "English good; Turkey finish," were, I fancy, responsible for this ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... that electricity has entered largely into the modus operandi of cloud formation. He opposes the opinion of Deluc and De Saussure that clouds are composed of particles of water in the form of hollow vesicles (miniature balloons, in short, perhaps filled with hydrogen), which untenable opinion was a revival of the theory as to the formation of all vapor which Dr. Halley had advocated ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Gospels themselves or else a later work, of the nature of a harmony based upon them [Endnote 136:1]. The theory (if it is really held) that he was ignorant of our Gospels in any shape, seems to me, in view of the facts, wholly untenable. ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... times, the theory was often proposed that hypnosis is an artificial hysteria. Such a view is untenable to-day; but that hysteria too shows abundant effects of increased suggestibility is correctly indicated by such a theory. The hysteric patient may by any chance pick up the idea that her right arm is paralyzed or is anaesthetic and the idea at once transforms itself into a belief ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... responsible for his son's bringing up. When the boy had learned it, and was willing to acknowledge the error of his ways, then, perhaps, he might kill the fatted calf—that is, of course, if the prodigal should return on all fours and with no stilted and untenable ideas about his rights—ideas that St. George, of course, was instilling into ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... sacrifice. I blushed and grew ashamed, and for a moment forgot that the bereaved creature was unable to behold the confusion with which defeat and exposure had covered me. At length I spoke imperfectly, loosely, and at random. The woman detected me in an untenable position—checked me—and in her artless manner, laid bare the fallacy of an inconsiderate assertion. In an instant I was aware of my conviction, I retracted my expression, and involved myself immediately in fresh dilemma. Again, and as gently as before, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... and children flocked thither from the neighbourhood, in the hope of escaping from the violence and rapine of the patriot army. Their expectations, however, were disappointed, as the Roman general deemed it more prudent to evacuate an untenable post, than to risk the dominion of the entire island on the event of a battle fought under adverse circumstances. At the same time the slaughter of the inhabitants justifies the inference that they were foreigners rather than natives, some being traders from Gaul, but the majority ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... Blake (chap. ii). While the theory of the descent of Masonry from the Order of the Temple is untenable, a connection between the two societies, in the sense in which an artist may be said to be connected with his employer, is more than probable; and a similarity may be traced between the ritual of reception in the Order of the Temple and that used by Masons, but that of the Temple was probably ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... that the establishment of particular opinions was no guarantee for their truth; and it becomes thus our duty as well as our right to examine periodically our intellectual defences, to abandon positions which the alteration of time makes untenable, and to admit and invite into the service of the sanctuary the fullest light of advancing knowledge. Of all positions the most fatally suicidal for Protestants to occupy is the assumption, which it is competent for Roman Catholics ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... much as he; he had once more a friend and supporter at Court, who replaced the loss of Gerlach. Roon and he had known one another in the old Pomeranian days. There was a link in Moritz Blankenburg, who was a "Dutz" friend of Bismarck's and Roon's cousin. We can understand how untenable Roon's position was when we find the Minister of War choosing as his political confidants two of the leaders of the party opposed to the Ministry to ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... David and his companions had cut off from the Philistines, the word orloth meaning the virile member, and not the prepuce. That Israelitish circumcision could have originated from either phallic worship or any of the hero-warrior usages is untenable as a proposition, as regards the living prisoners, and is contrary to the monotheistic idea which ruled Israel, or to the benign nature of their God. The strict opposition of the religion of Judaism ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... purposes. Meanwhile the private family intrigues went on more actively than ever; until at last, in 501, when Confucius was fifty years of age, the most formidable agitator of them all, finding his position untenable, escaped to Ts'i; it even seems that Confucius placed, or thought of placing, his services at the disposal of one of these rebel subjects. Possibly it was in view of such contingencies that the reigning duke at last gave Confucius a post as governor ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... says Sergeant, 'that they've abandoned this trench as being untenable, and probably left a few mines behind for us.' I didn't like that. I thought our trench was a much nicer trench in every way, and I felt it was time to think of going back, when suddenly we hears a norrible yell come ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... and those is which direct perception is regarded as more authoritative. In 5, the speaker refers to the atomic and other theories of the creation derived from Reason. Bhishma declares it as his opinion that all such theories are untenable or groundless. In the first line of 6, the word Ekam implies Brahma. The sense is, if thou thinkest that Brahma alone is the cause of the universe and in thinking so becomest landed on doubt. The ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that famous isthmus. Mexico states that she looks towards Asia with equal favour as towards Europe, and geographically she may do so indeed. But this is a sentiment which—except in the mere matter of buying and selling—time will show to be untenable. Mexico is a "European" state, in character, tradition, and civilisation; and she, in common with all Latin America, must continue largely to draw her inspirations, and to augment her population from old Europe, not from Asia; nor, indeed, save in certain respects, ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... Mexicans made desperate assaults upon the Spanish quarters, in which both sides suffered severely. At last Montezuma, at the request of Cortes, tried to interpose. But his subjects, in fury at what they considered his desertion of them, gave him a wound of which he died. The position became untenable, and Cortes decided on retreat. This was carried out at night, and owing to the failure of a plan for laying a portable bridge across those gaps in the causeway left by the drawbridges, the Spaniards were exposed to a fierce attack from ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... definitely excited the jealousy and opposition of the leading men of his nation. Even such popular enthusiasm as had followed his mighty works was of a sort that Jesus could not encourage. The situation in Judea had at length become so nearly untenable that he decided to withdraw into seclusion in Galilee, where, as a prophet, he could be "without honor." He had gone to Jerusalem eager to begin there, where God should have had readiest service, the ministry of the kingdom of God. Challenge, ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... found the street absolutely untenable, for each time they made a rush to storm our position they were compelled to fall back, and few indeed reached a place of safety amid our deadly fire. When we had held the barricade for nearly an hour, Kona, Omar and myself being close together bearing our part in repulsing ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... husky musical voice smote upon Cairn's ears as the most hated sound in nature—"you have followed me. Not content with driving me from London, you would also render Cairo—my dear Cairo—untenable for me." ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... believe that there is no God. Hence, matter was not created, but was eternal, or came by chance. Only a mere handful of the whole human race have ever yet believed such an untenable doctrine. The existence of a Creator, is doubted or denied by extreme atheistic evolutionists, who would dethrone God, "exalt ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... convinced that was only a bold stroke to gain time and prevent the committal, so as to be able to escape, and that he 'reckoned upon bullying a dense old country magistrate;' but that he knew it was quite untenable before a body of unexceptionable witnesses. Altogether the man looked greatly altered and crest-fallen, and there was a meanness and vulgarity in his appearance that made me wonder at our ever having credited his account of himself. He had an abject look, very ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... even to—accept my sacrifice?" she asked so softly that he did not note the yearning in the tones—the beseeching of him to abdicate the position that, for her, was untenable. ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... such splendid use. Meantime his wretchedness was deep. A miserable lodging in a garret, insufficient food, inadequate clothing, and complete absence of fire may be an incentive to high endeavour, but do not render easy the pathway of fame. The position had become all but untenable when Zola received an appointment in the publishing house of M. Hachette, of Paris, at a salary beginning at a pound a week, but soon afterwards increased. During the next two years he wrote a number of short stories which were published later under the title Contes a Ninon. The ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... by formal resolution, approved of a sermon delivered by B. Kurtz in which he denounced baptismal regeneration as "a part of papistical superstition" and the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in, with, and under the bread and wine as "consubstantiation," and "just as untenable and absurd as transubstantiation." (L. u. W. 1860, 384.) Considering the Constitution of the General Synod together with the fact that the Platform synods had not been molested, the admission of the Melanchthon Synod, advocated by Krauth, cannot ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... tangled up, but eventually the formation was accomplished, and the Division stood in an irregular line along the San Juan River, the Second Brigade on the right. We were subjected to a heavy fire from the forces on San Juan Ridge and Kettle Hill; our position was untenable, and it became necessary to assault the enemy or fall back. Kettle Hill was immediately in front of the Cavalry, and it was determined to assault that hill. The First Brigade was ordered forward, and the Second Brigade was ordered to support the attack; ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... is little really to be said. We established a number of facts—that the River dashes most scenically from rapid to rapid, so that the stagnant pool theory is henceforth untenable; that the hills get higher and wilder the farther you penetrate to the interior, and their cliffs and rock-precipices bolder and more naked; that there are trout in the upper reaches, but not ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... Breton winced a little—he felt he had fairly laid himself open to this unmitigated rebuff—but he did not retire immediately from his untenable position. 'I suppose,' he said quietly, 'there are still people who really do take a practical interest in other people's souls—my brother Ronald does for one—but the idea is positively too ridiculous. Whenever ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... defensive at the Somme certainly lost at least 600,000 men. Attrition, to be sure, works both ways, but if the Germans are out-gunned this year in the West to the extent expected their position must become untenable. The deadly work of reducing German man-power continues even though the Allied line does not advance. I know of a section of the German front opposite the French last winter which for five months did not have an action of sufficient importance to be mentioned by either side in the official ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... the most amazing thing about Greenwich Village is that the most unlikely things that you can find out about it are true. The obvious, every-day things that are easily believed are much the most likely to be untenable reports or the day dreams of imaginative chroniclers. You are safe if you believe all the quaint and romantic and inconsistent and impossible things that come to your knowledge concerning the Village. That ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... their origin to animal sources; that they are formed from animal remains in a manner strictly analogous to that of the formation of ordinary coal from wood and other vegetable debris. For geological as well as chemical reasons, the author holds that Mendeleeff's theory of their igneous origin is untenable, pointing out that the hydrocarbons could not have been formed by the action of water percolating through clefts in the gradually solidifying crust until it reached the molten metallic carbides, as these clefts could only occur where complete solidification had taken ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... Nations, and also from that of the Jugoslavs, will not be denied. That some of the main arguments to which he trusted his case were invalidated by the concessions which he had made to other countries was Italy's contention, and it cannot be thrust aside as untenable. ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... destined to correct that defect, and we shall mark the growth of its most precious fruits in the increased power of observation and the counterpoise it offered to hasty generalizations, as well as in the confidence which learnt to reject untenable fictions, whether produced by luxuriant imagination or by a priori speculations, on the similar ground of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... On the south-east it was commanded by the hills of another peninsula called Dorchester Neck. A battery on either the Charlestown hills or the Dorchester heights would have rendered Gage's position untenable; for, independently of any loss which his troops might sustain from bombardment, the British shipping would be drawn from its anchorage, and if he remained he would be practically imprisoned in the town and cut off from supplies. It should therefore have been Gage's first care to shut ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... content to skew we have some ground for them, they are useful, if not essential, in the right management of the young, but, like every thing else, require to be managed judiciously. It appears to me that the argument to the contrary would be untenable. I should like to see the man who would invest his capital in railways—electric telegraphs, steam ships, and in business of any kind, without hope of reward, pooh! it is the mainspring of human action, the incentive to public service, it rests not in this world but follows ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... dark speck represented, in 1862, and found that the small chamber in which we had slept on planks and logs had become a more total ruin than before, in the course of the winter, so that it is now utterly untenable. ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... kept the Sabbath the day before. He was arrested under the Sunday law, and in order to make it effective against him it was alleged that his work on his own farm on Sunday created a public nuisance. On this entirely untenable ground he has been harassed from court to court. He was a poor man, but he has been supported by the friends of religious liberty. Mr. King has been greatly wronged, but his only remedy at law is under the law and Constitution of Tennessee. It appears ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... rallied very quickly from the shock, and opened so tremendous a fire from the walls, aided by the cross-fire from the ships, that no reinforcements could reach the party in the tower, and the next morning early they evacuated the place, which was rendered untenable by the fire of the Turks in the ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... of the state with the people is false from a legal and untenable from a political standpoint ... The state is the law-forming organization and the law serves the inner order of the community; the people is the politically active organism and politics serve the outward maintenance of the community ... ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... a great wind) moved," &c. Here there is nothing in the context to assist us in determining the sense to be chosen; but, as will be seen in the sequel, modern science indicates that the Jewish interpretation is untenable, and that our translation is, consequently, the correct one. As an instance of confusion of time, we may refer to ii. 19. In our translation this verse seems to place the creation of animals after that of man; but in xii. 1, the very same form is translated by the pluperfect, "Now the Lord had said ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... improbable that the quinary was the original system. But an extended study of the methods of counting in vogue among the uncivilized races of all parts of the world has shown that this theory is entirely untenable. The decimal scale is no less simple in its structure than the quinary; and the savage, as he extends the limit of his scale from 5 to 6, may call his new number 5-1, or, with equal probability, ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... of honourable prison. Virtual master in Milan, but without a legal title to the throne, unrecognised in his authority by the Italian powers, and holding it from day to day by craft and fraud, Lodovico at last found his situation untenable; and it was this difficulty of an usurper to maintain himself in his despotism which, as we shall see, brought the French ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... this problem of aerial flotation as if it were of the nature of a miracle—something not to be explained. Explanations which have been advanced have, it is true, been in many cases altogether untenable. For instance, some have asserted that the albatross, the condor, and other birds which float for a long time without moving their wings—and that, too, in some cases, at great heights above the sea-level, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... Newfoundlanders might have been practising trench-digging in camp in Scotland. When a man was hit some one gave him first aid, directed the stretcher-bearers where to find him, and coolly resumed digging. In two hours our position had become untenable. We had been subjected to a merciless and devastating shelling, and our first experience of war had cost us sixty-five men. In a new and safer ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... no time to discuss such a matter as this now, Mr Terry," said Syd. "You are to hold this gun in readiness to cover the retreat if the lower work becomes untenable; and now you must keep yourself and men hidden, and the gun ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... whereas elsewhere, such conditions do not prevail, and that on no other sphere can such physical habitudes be found as will enable life to originate or to exist. It can be easily shown that such reasoning is based on untenable foundations. Other worlds have to go through processes of evolution, and there can be no doubt that many are in a state similar to our own. It required hundreds of thousands, perhaps hundreds of millions ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... readily by reason of a deep rocky fissure, or ravine, running from the rear yard to the water's edge, through which the sound ascended in hollow echoes, added double horror to its appearance. It was, moreover, obviously insecure and untenable against any resolute enemy, to whom the ruins of the fallen wing and stockade and the rugged depths of the ravine offered much more effectual shelter, as well as the best place of annoyance. The repugnance, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... the "Chickamauga room," being chiefly occupied by Chickamauga prisoners. The sentinel who had formerly been placed at this stairway at night, to prevent the prisoners from entering the kitchen, had been withdrawn when, in the fall of 1863, the horrible condition of the floor made it untenable for sleeping purposes. ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude.' What an Apollo Belvidere the man would be, moulded by no sympathies, standing aloof from his race, and independent of it, disdainful, magnificent, a palace of ice, untenable by the summer heat of Love. The true cosmopolite is the man of his age, even if he has known no latitude but that of his birth, for he has won for himself the highest individuality, and the greatest power of association with his fellow-man, and the laws that govern man in his efforts to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... this work of the subterranean origin of the hypogene formations would be untenable, if the supposed fact here alluded to, of the appearance of tertiary granite at the surface, was not a rare exception to the general rule. A considerable lapse of time must intervene between the formation ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... sooner than was anticipated. Her fleet at Manila was destroyed by Admiral Dewey, May 1, and her West India squadron by the fleet in which Rear Admiral Sampson held the chief command, on July 3. Meantime a small American army had rendered Santiago untenable. After the surrender of Santiago, Porto Rico was soon overrun. Manila, which had been under the American guns since May, was also forced to surrender. A protocol signed in August led to the negotiation of peace ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the islanders, stung by the demand of the French Convention that Paoli should go to Paris, had rallied to the dictator's side; and the aged chief made overtures to England for alliance. The partisans of France, now menaced by England's naval power, were in an utterly untenable position. Even the steel-like will of Buonaparte was bent. His career in Corsica was at an end for the present; and with his kith and kin he ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... happened in 1358, by later critics another which occurred in 1364. Clearly, the assumption that the period from 1340 to 1345 includes the date of Chaucer's birth, suffices of itself to stamp the one of these conjectures as untenable, and the other as improbable, and (when the style of the poem and treatment of its subject are taken into account) adds weight to the other reasons in favour of the date 1381 for the poem in question. Thus, backwards and forwards, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Bentinck would deem it wise, proper, and expedient; but if after Easter, then the complexion and character of the bill were, in the noble lord's judgment, utterly transformed, and it was declared to be quite untenable and unconstitutional. Was that the kind of support on which the government calculated ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... thousand years before it began anew the work of invention, and took up the thread of original thought where Atlantis dropped it, what probability is there of three or four separate nations all advancing at the same speed to precisely the same arts and opinions? The proposition is untenable. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... General Mackensen to continue his movement eastward, he would naturally meet a check at the Russian fortified positions partly composed of a chain of lakes extending north and south, about eighteen miles west of Lemberg. It is thought, however, that these positions will prove untenable, because General Linsingen, having crossed the Dniester to the west of Mikolajow, will likely cut the communications with Lemberg. The Austro-German plan of operations against Lemberg apparently is the same as against Przemysl. The assailants ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... his downward career. The conflagration, it is true, did not drive him at once from Moscow. He lingered for more than a month amid its ruins, in the vain hope that the czar would ask him for terms of peace. But the czar kept silent, the city was untenable for winter-quarters, and retreat became imperative. When, at length, the grand army marched, winter marched with it,—a winter such as even Russia had rarely seen. Napoleon had delayed too long. The north gathered its ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... absolutely that of a woman surprised by insinuations she was too innocent to rate at their real importance. And yet, if she did not take away that letter, who did? Mrs. Couldock? Impossible. Miss Dawes? The thought was untenable, even for an instant. I waited in great depression of spirits for the call I knew Taylor would not fail to ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
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