"Indefensible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and bluntness, not hitherto used in American communications with the belligerents, marked this note of protest to Austria-Hungary. Demands were made for a denunciation of the submarine commander's act as "illegal and indefensible," for his punishment, and for reparation by the payment of indemnity for the loss of American lives. The United States left an avenue open through which Austria-Hungary could find an acceptable excuse. It preferred to believe that the submarine commander acted contrary to instructions ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... ecclesiastical constitution of the country, but which long survived to be a stain and disgrace to it. A measure so miserably false in principle as to render civil and military qualifications dependent upon a sacramental test must in any case be worse than indefensible. As all feel now, and as many ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... of one resuming an argument] There can't be two opinions about it, Ronny. Young Dunning's refusal is simply indefensible. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... which they were taken. If it had been found impracticable to have devised models of a more perfect structure, the enlightened friends to liberty would have been obliged to abandon the cause of that species of government as indefensible. The science of politics, however, like most other sciences, has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... miles east of Strasburg, was committed to the charge of Colonel Kenly, of the 1st Maryland Regiment in the Federal service, and 1000 rifles and 2 guns were placed at his disposal. The post itself was indefensible. To the west and south-west, about three miles distant, stand the green peaks of the Massanuttons, while to the east the lofty spurs of the Blue Ridge look down into the village streets. A mile and a half north the forks of the Shenandoah unite in the broad river that runs ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... philistine. Possibly by so doing we have given the impression that poets are beating the air against an abstraction when they are in reality delivering thumping blows upon the body of a personal enemy. And if these generalizations appear indefensible, still more misleading, it may be urged, is an attempt to represent that the poet, when he takes issue with this and that opponent, is answering a challenge hidden away from the unstudious in the tenth book of Plato's Republic. It is doubtful even whether a number of our poets ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... be to select a procuress for mistress of a girls' school;' and a parish boy, if he could read properly, might go through the Church services with the Prayer Book and the Homilies, so that an established Church is a costly and indefensible luxury. Taking Utility, founded on observation of actual facts, as his guide and his measure of existing institutions, he treated them as colossal iniquities, as frauds upon the people, as dead and ineffectual for the purposes of moral and political life. Nevertheless, although he condemned the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... When he deals with woman he is no longer scrupulously conscientious. We begin to have our suspicions of his uprightness when we find him in his Subjection of Women laying it down as a fundamental postulate that the subjection of woman to man is always morally indefensible. For no upright mind can fail to see that the woman who lives in a condition of financial dependence upon man has no moral claim to unrestricted liberty. The suspicion of Mill's honesty which is thus awakened is confirmed by ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... the Customs officers in the usual way. I consider that this entrance into my stateroom on the high seas, and this arbitrary resolve of yours to acquaint yourself with the nature of my belongings is indefensible and a gross insult." ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that the same man shall be alternately governed by the meanest and most exalted motives: that he shall now appear an essence celestial and divine, and now debase himself by a conduct the most indefensible and unworthy? But such I am afraid is man. Mixed in all his qualities, and inconsistent in all his purposes. The most virtuous and most venerable of us all are too often guilty of things weak, sordid, ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... It's a detail. You get well—do you hear? You go and get well; then try it again! Then you'll see! And if she is an idiot—in the event of her irrational persistence in an incredible and utterly indefensible attitude"—he choked up, then fairly barked at Siward—"take her anyway, sir! Run off with her! Dominate circumstances, sir! take charge of events! ... But you can't do it till you've clapped yourself into prison for life. ... And God help you ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... intrinsically be justified in the same way; and if all wealth consisted of such commodities as are due to the efforts of man, and to the man-made machinery which assists him, all interest would be really, as it is said to be by some, indefensible. But, he continues, since interest on capital such as machinery is not the whole of the interest paid in the modern world, but is only a minor part of it, and since in the modern world all forms of capital are ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... compeer working in the fields of South Italy: and between the household servants of a Virginian family and the plantation-slaves of the farther South. Let us remember, in passing judgement on what is admittedly an indefensible system, that during the war which resulted in the freeing of the American slaves the slaveholders of the South trusted their household slaves to protect the women and children during their absence from home and that that trust was ...
— Progress and History • Various
... replied Mary. "It was the hardest task of all. Of you, Jacob, I have to ask forgiveness for depriving you of your early and truest friend—yes, and for much more. Of you, sir," addressing the Dominie, "for my conduct towards you, which was cruel and indefensible—will you forgive me?" ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... reproaching him with shooting his pickets, contrary, as he alleged, to all the laws of civilized warfare, and defying him to a combat in the open field. Marion replied, that the practice of the British in burning the houses of all who would not submit and join them, was more indefensible than that of shooting pickets, and that as long as they persisted in the one he would persevere in the other. That as to his defiance, he considered it that of a man in desperate circumstances; but if he wished to witness a ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... was quite indefensible (it being situated in a neighbourhood swarming with the class of which the mob was composed), had decided on bringing his family to the house of Mr. Walters, and sharing with him the fortunes of the night, his wife and daughters having declared they would feel as safe there as elsewhere; ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... assumptions are unsound. In order to make any solution at all possible you have assumed cosine squared theta negligible. Mathematically, it is of course vanishingly small compared to the first power of the cosine, but fields of that type must be exact, and your neglect of the square is indefensible. Since you cannot integrate with the squared term in place, your ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... protection and his way to progress, not in mutual support, like other animals, but in a reckless competition for personal advantages, with no regard to the interests of the species. To a mind accustomed to the idea of unity in nature, such a proposition appears utterly indefensible. And yet, improbable and unphilosophical as it is, it has never found a lack of supporters. There always were writers who took a pessimistic view of mankind. They knew it, more or less superficially, through their own limited experience; they ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... code of ethics—my own, for that matter—what followed was entirely indefensible. The grab for the treasure, its swift hiding, the breathless dash into the shadows of the nearest cross street; all these named me for what I was at the moment—a half-starved, half-frozen, despair-hounded thief. When I had made sure that there was no policeman in sight I examined my prize ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... Clotilde Graves, with "Richard Dehan" on the title-page. The author was stirred to a vigorous and public protest. In the ensuing controversy someone made the point that the proposed reissue would not be more indefensible than the act of a publishing house in bringing out posthumous "books" by O. Henry and dragging from its deserved oblivion Rudyard Kipling's ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... but lay stupidly upon your back, gazing at the sky; nor did you get up and let your men see you, until Marcus Agrippa had forced the enemies' ships to sheer off." Others imputed to him both a saying and an action which were indefensible; for, upon the loss of his fleets by storm, he is reported to have said: "I will conquer in spite of Neptune;" and at the next Circensian games, he would not suffer the statue of that God to be carried in procession as usual. Indeed he scarcely ever ran more or greater risks ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... a man of all claim to the courtesies usual among gentlemen? If not, the attempt to pry into what is obviously meant to be withheld—my name—and to publish the rumors which such prying may give rise to, seems to me quite indefensible, still more so to state these rumors as ascertained facts. I am, sir. ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Charing Cross for our penny. We desire to get the worth of our bawbee. And it is a cold day when we don't. But it must be remembered that a Scotsman is conscientious, and he knows that tipping is an indefensible vice, so he discourages it as much as possible, being compelled by custom to fall in with it. Then, again, the man who claims that Americans are not liberal doesn't know what he is talking about. The trouble with the American is that ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Toryism, he hated Scott, and has been guilty not merely of an absurd and no doubt partly humorous comparison of the Waverley novels to pantomimes, but of more definite criticisms which will bear the test of examination as badly. His strictures on a famous verse of "The Dream of Fair Women" are indefensible, though there is perhaps more to be said for the accompanying gibe at Sir John Millais's endeavour to carry out the description of Cleopatra in black (chiefly black) and white. The reader of Peacock must never mind his author trampling on his, the reader's, favourite corns; or rather he must ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... fellows against the saucy monks. He had bought their monastery for three hundred marks of the king, and when they would not budge, he chased them away with beating and maiming, sacked their house, burnt their charters, and so on. Hugh was against this too vigorous gentleman, who was clearly indefensible; but it was by no means because he was blindly prejudiced in favour of monks, for he seems to have supported the Bishop of Rochester against his monks. These disputes of astonishing detail, are very important in the history of the church, as by their ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... of battle or command, he promised them, that if they behaved themselves bravely in the next engagement, he would give them up two cities to spoil and plunder, Thessalonica and Lacedaemon. This is the one indefensible thing of all that is found fault with in the life of Brutus; though true it may be that Antony and Caesar were much more cruel in the rewards that they gave their soldiers after victory; for they drove ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... through the other swing-door cut the speaker short. 'Good Shabbos,' said the shameless sinner. 'Ah, Mr. Gabriel, that was a very fine sermon.' He stroked his beard. 'I quite agree with you. To dig down a public wall is indefensible. Nobody has the right to make more than a private hole in it, where it blocks out his own prospect. So please do not bracket me with Mr. Levy again. Good Shabbos!' And, waving his hand pleasantly, he left them ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... across into Zips Starosty: seize the whole Thirteen Townships of Zips, and not only these, but by degrees tract after tract of the adjacencies: "Must have a Frontier to our mind in those parts: indefensible otherwise!" And quietly set up boundary-pillars, with the Austrian double-eagle stamped on them, and intimation to Zips and neighborhood, That it is now become Austrian, and shall have no part ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... her territorial integrity. Provided these guarantees were observed faithfully, the closing of the Scheldt by Holland in time of war, the critical situation on the Eastern frontier created by the indefensible cul-de-sac of Dutch Limburg, and the supremacy in Luxemburg of a foreign Power, did not seriously jeopardize the country's security. The treaties of 1839 were considered as forming a whole, the moral safeguard of guaranteed neutrality counterbalancing, to a certain extent, the new territorial ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... heard big manufacturers talk about control of production by the farmer as an indefensible "economy of scarcity." And yet these same manufacturers never hesitate to shut down their own huge plants, throw men out of work, and cut down the purchasing power of whole communities whenever they think that they must adjust their production to an oversupply of the goods they ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... Highness,' returned Gondremark, too wise to defend the indefensible, 'the claim on Obermunsterol is ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and distribute his goods,—to marry Rochester, while his insane wife is living, (for Jane Eyre,)—to put to death an imbecile and uncomfortable grandmother, (for a Feegeean,)—these are actions which are indefensible, though the balance of public advantages might seem greatly in their favor. It is probable that at this moment a great good would be done to this nation and to the world by the death of Jefferson Davis; yet the bare suggestion of his assassination, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... despatch of Jan. 22,/Feb. 1, 1686, and from the expressions of the Pere d'Orleans (Histoire des Revolutions d'Angleterre, liv. xi.), it is clear that rigid Catholics thought the King's conduct indefensible.] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... tories. I regret to say that Bancroft is among the offenders. Hildreth is an honorable exception. Most of the British historians of the same events are even more rancorous and less trustworthy than the American writers; and while fully admitting the many indefensible outrages committed by the whigs, a long-continued and impartial examination of accessible records has given me the belief that in the districts where the civil war was most ferocious, much the largest number of the criminal class joined the tories, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Yet it has been suggested, though unsuccessfully, that honesty is not a necessary ingredient in the defence of "fair comment." It was argued that a criticism, defensible if written by an honest critic, could not be indefensible because written by one whose motive was malicious—in other words, that the matter was objective, not subjective. Certainly, at first sight, it seems strange that A can say with impunity that Smith's book is dull and B may have to pay damages for saying the ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... guardian or executor, or to inherit a legacy, and even liability to a pecuniary penalty of 500l.! Of course, such ridiculous penalties were in most cases suspended, but the law which imposed them still disgraced the statute-book, and was acknowledged by all unprejudiced persons to be indefensible. Besides, the most Holy Sacrament of the Christian Church was habitually reduced to a mere civil form imposed by Act of Parliament upon persons who either derided its solemn meaning or might be spiritually unfit to receive it. Was it decent, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... what I did. She even turned, with pretty courtesy, to hold the light for me at the crypt steps,—a service that I accepted perforce and with joyless acquiescence in the irony of it. I knew that I did not believe in her; her conduct as to Pickering was utterly indefensible,—I could not forget that; but the light of her eyes, her tranquil brow, the sensitive lips, whose mockery stung and pleased in a breath,—by such testimony my doubts were alternately reinforced and disarmed. Swept by these changing moods I followed ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... the 10th, the Consul endeavoured to show how indefensible my decision must be, if, in these days of improved artillery, I rested it on the fact of the vessels having been only three miles from land. This passage is, I think, of considerable importance, as involving an indirect admission that they ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... even resort to blandishments of costume to give their parts a special emphasis. Our leading ladies are more richly clad than the minor members of their companies. Even the great Mansfield resorted in his performance of Brutus to the indefensible expedient of changing his costume act by act and dressing always in exquisite and subtle colors, while the other Romans, Cassius included, wore the same togas of unaffected white throughout the play. This was a fault ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... our own Indian policy.... Wounded and disabled in our Indian wars... I know all about them and how indefensible they are..... ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... financial condition of the State during several years was such that the Legislature was obliged to authorize the issuance of bonds upon which to borrow money to meet current demands, thus adding materially to the bonded debt of the State. Can any thing more inexcusable and indefensible than this be imagined? That any one of the Reconstructed governments could possibly have been guilty of such maladministration as this is inconceivable. And yet, this administration typifies what Mr. Rhodes is pleased to term the restoration of home rule at the South, for which all lovers ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... out all hearts must be filled by that uncontrollable and yet vague longing, so characteristic of the great period of fantasy. The suggestion that the wealth of the East, exciting the greed of the western nations, led to the Crusades, is an absolutely indefensible idea. Doubtless, rumours of the fabulous treasure of the Orient had stirred the imagination of Europe, appealing far less, however, to the cupidity of the individual than to his desire for something strange, new ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... the hand of the murderer; in most countries of the world it has in every age made the ordinary business of the market-place a warfare of falsehood; the bodies of men and the hearts of women have been sold for gold. Why is it that gigantic wrongs flourish from age to age, and practices utterly indefensible are continued with the overwhelming sanction of society? It is because there is money in them. Avarice is a passion of demonic strength; but it may help us to keep it out of our hearts to remember that it was the ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... conception," Royston said; "well, perhaps it would not be a pleasant song to sing, but better, I should think, than some of those dreadful sentimental ones. They are not much worse than the Strephon and the Chloe class, in which our ancestors delighted; still, they are indefensible. If our Lauras find Petrarchs now, they are usually very beardless ones, and the green morocco cover, with its golden lock, covers their indiscretions. Those who write love ditties for the piano must celebrate a shadow who can't be critical. Imagine any ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... distance of four years from this conversation, 21st February 1777, My Lord Archbishop of York, in his 'Sermon before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts', thus indignantly describes the then state of parties: 'Parties once had a PRINCIPLE belonging to them, absurd perhaps, and indefensible, but still carrying a notion of DUTY, by which honest ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... least suspended. But there is one matter on which we must speak plainly. We have been silent on it too long, from feelings, perhaps of mistaken caution, perhaps of mistaken loyalty. This situation would never have arisen but for what we can only call the indefensible conduct of the King. It pains us to say such things, but, speaking as we do in the public interests (I plagiarise from Barker's famous epigram), we shall not shrink because of the distress we may cause ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... usual fare of life seemed unsalted. Henrietta, on the other hand, enjoyed the society of a gentleman who appeared somehow, in his way, made, by expensive, roundabout, almost "quaint" processes, for her use, and whose leisured state, though generally indefensible, was a decided boon to a breathless mate, and who was furnished with an easy, traditional, though by no means exhaustive, answer to almost any social or practical question that could come up. She often found Mr. Bantling's ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... now at once? He felt that it was his duty to hurry up to London, but he could not bring himself to live in the same house with the Dean. His wife must be taken away from her father. However bad may have been the language used by the Marquis, however indefensible, he could not allow himself even to seem to keep up affectionate relations with the man who had half slaughtered his brother. He too thought of what the world would say, he too felt that such an affair, after having become known ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... 'to see fair play' between his colleagues, and that he had not seen it, and should couple this charge with a promise to press for an inquiry into the working of the department whenever there should be a change of Government, is indefensible." ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... necessarily connected with her essential formularies, yet, were I ever so much to change my mind on this point, this would not tend to bring me from my present position, providentially appointed in the English Church. That your communion was unassailable, would not prove that mine was indefensible. Nor would it at all affect the sense in which I receive our Articles; they would still speak against certain definite errors, though you had ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... of Lord Bacon, as a whole, indefensible? Was the character of Bacon deserving of the approbation of posterity? Matson, p. 94: ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
... criminal mistake to underestimate either the magnitude, the fighting quality, or the staying power of the forces which are arrayed against us. But it would be equally foolish and equally indefensible to belittle our own resources, whether for resistance or attack. [Cheers.] Belgium has shown us by a memorable and a glorious example what can be done by a relatively small State when its citizens are animated and fired by the spirit of patriotism. In France ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... it the mind, matter, and indeed everything else except the pure self-luminous Brahman, would hardly appeal to our reason. If this system of world-order were only seeming appearance, with no other element of truth in it except pure being, then it would be indefensible in the light of reason. It has been proved that whatever notions we have about the objective world are all self-contradictory, and thus groundless and false. If they have all proceeded from the indefinite ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... verdict of guilty, but it rests entirely in the judgment and conscience of the jury what verdict they will bring in. They may act unwisely and unconscientiously, perhaps by mere favoritism, or a weak sympathy, or prejudice, or on any other indefensible ground; but yet they have entire power over the matter. It is for them finally to say what their verdict shall be, and the judge has no power beyond that of instruction upon the law ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... motor-transport, which atoned to some extent for the lack of railways, told in favour of German science and industry, and against the backward Russians. Apart from the absence of natural defences, the Russian frontier had been artificially drawn so as to make her Polish province an indefensible salient, though properly organized it would have been an almost intolerable threat alike to East Prussia and to Austrian Galicia. But for her preoccupation in the West, Germany could have conquered Poland in a fortnight, and Russian plans, indeed, contemplated a withdrawal as far as the line ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... favoured the proletariat. A crime against the Republic was indefensible, but one against the individual was dealt with, with all the paraphernalia of an elaborate administration of justice. There were citizen judges and citizen advocates, and the rabble, who crowded in to listen to the trials, acted ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... levying of the POOR'S RATE as a burden exclusively laid on real property in England, that is, lands and houses, to the entire liberation of personal property or professional incomes, is a most monstrous inequality—indefensible on every principle of justice or expedience, and the long continuance of which can only be explained by the well known and proverbial supineness of that class of men, and their inability to rouse themselves to any combined or general effort, even for matters in which their own vital ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... and acts of attainder lawgivers are bound, by every obligation of morality, systematically to refrain. In the same manner ought the British legislature to refrain from taxing the American colonies. The Stamp Act was indefensible, not because it was beyond the constitutional competence of Parliament, but because it was unjust and impolitic, sterile of revenue, and fertile of discontents. These sound doctrines were adopted by Lord Rockingham and his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the giants Of thought and of science," He said in his positive way: "So weigh them, obey them, Display them, and lay them To heart in your infancy's day!" Jack made no reply, But he said on the sly An eloquent word, that had come From a quite indefensible, Most reprehensible, But ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... following day informed all the European powers of her attitude. The neutral Press of the world and an unusually large section of the German Press, immediately pronounced Austria's position to be indefensible and untenable. The German Government, in spite of these facts, gave its official and unreserved support to Austria's attitude on July 26th. After eight weeks of war (on September 25th), Austria officially declared that she had never swerved from her original claims, ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... she had walked blindly into the clutches of cocaine and veronal, her subsequent experiments with chandu were prompted by indefensible curiosity, and a false vanity which urged her to do everything that was "done" by the ultra-smart and vicious set of which she had become ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... no such power to oppose the development of the Copernican ideas as the older Church had enjoyed. Yet there were some things in its warfare against science even more indefensible. In 1772 the famous English expedition for scientific discovery sailed from England under Captain Cook. Greatest by far of all the scientific authorities chosen to accompany it was Dr. Priestley. Sir Joseph Banks had especially invited him. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... cases, the matter might have rested; for though the conduct of this Arab chief would certainly have been indefensible in a civilized country, the worst charge that can be considered as fairly proved against him is that of being a receiver of stolen goods, as the price of his connivance at the appropriation of the rest by the supercargo—since with the wreck of the ship, whether premeditated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... Crozier's evidence because he chose to use another name than his own, because he was parted from his wife, because he left England practically penniless to earn an honest living—no one had shown it was not—was the last resort of legal desperation. It was an indefensible thing to endeavour to create prejudice against a man because of his own evidence given with great frankness. Not one single word of evidence had the defence brought to discredit Crozier, save by Crozier's own word of mouth; and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in specie, a hardship indeed in a community where lawsuits were very common, and whose entire solid coin would not have sufficed to pay the revenue for a single year. Even bitterest Tories' declared this requirement indefensible. Another flagrant feature of the act was the provision that violators of it should be tried without a jury, before a judge whose only pay came from ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... one modern method which has always seemed to me much to be condemned, and that is the habit of changing the end of a story, for fear of alarming the child. This is quite indefensible. In doing this we are tampering with folklore and confusing stages ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... politicians of the North, whose motive for supporting the indefensible regime established by the Reconstruction Act has already been noted, used, of course, the "atrocities" of the Ku-Klux-Klan as electioneering material in the North. "Waving the bloody shirt," it was called. But the North was getting tired ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... even to the President. If one minister was in fault— let us say the Postmaster-General—he alone was in fault, and it did not fall to the lot of any other minister either to defend him, or to declare that his conduct was indefensible. Each owed his duty and his defense to the President alone and each might be removed alone, without explanation given by the President to the others. I imagine that the late practice of the President's cabinet has in some degree departed from this theory; but if so, the departure has sprung ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... Frank, grumbling with some reason; for Mat was a surly old fellow, who tied a most indefensible neckcloth, and always contrived to have a great patch on his boots,—besides, he called Frank "Master," and obstinately refused to trot down hill,—"Mat, indeed! let Mat take the message, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... admirably chosen for defense against attack by troops employing regulation tactics; but, never dreaming of the possibility of sudden investment, Ferguson had erected no fortifications for his encampment. His frenzied efforts on the battlefield seem like a mad rush against fate; for the place was indefensible against the peculiar tactics of the frontiersmen. While the mountain flamed like a volcano and resounded with the thunder of the guns, a steady stricture was in progress. The lines were drawn tighter and ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... point, more particularly because the clergy generally were ready to be released from the financial exactions of the Holy See, as well as from its practical exercise of patronage. Parliament opened an anti-clerical campaign, but its measures at first were confined to dealing with almost indefensible and obvious abuses. Bishop Fisher recognised the familiar thin end of the wedge, and charged the Commons with desiring "the goods, not the good" of the Church; but the opposition was slender. In the six weeks of the first session, there were passed, the Probate and Mortuaries Acts, abolishing, ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... imitations of beasts and birds. Critics of the oratorio seldom fail to point out these "natural history effects"—to remark on "the sinuous motion of the worm," "the graceful gamboling of the leviathan," the orchestral imitations of the bellowing of the "heavy beasts," and such like. It is probably indefensible on purely artistic grounds. But Handel did it in "Israel in Egypt" and elsewhere. And is there not a crowing cock in Bach's "St Matthew Passion"? Haydn only followed the example ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... Professor Bergson, who, to defend himself against misunderstandings of his meaning, ought to amplify and more fully explain his statement that concepts have a practical but not a theoretical use. Understood in one way, the thesis sounds indefensible, for by concepts we certainly increase our knowledge about things, and that seems a theoretical achievement, whatever practical achievements may follow in its train. Indeed, M. Bergson might seem to be easily refutable out of his own mouth. His philosophy pretends, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... feasibility of setting up some dyke to arrest the torrent of innovation and revolution that is bursting in on every side. All the press almost is silenced, or united on the other side. 'John Bull' alone fights the battle, but 'John Bull' defends so many indefensible things that its advocacy is not worth much. An anti-Radical upon the plan of the Anti-Jacobin might be of some use, provided it was well sustained. I wrote a letter yesterday to Barnes,[7] remonstrating upon the general tone of the 'Times,' ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... contribution to the empress, and annually thereafter to send tribute to the capital of Japan. Thus they became the three tributary countries (sankan) dependent on Japan. Although this invasion of a foreign country without cause or provocation must be pronounced indefensible, yet it is not unlikely that the subject kingdoms were quite as safe and free under the distant and little intermeddlesome dominion of the Japanese empire, as they had been in the past or were likely to be in the future from ...
— Japan • David Murray
... are in its possession, for reconciling the inequalities of force between them. Marion's reply to McIlraith was sufficiently to the purpose. He said that the practice of the British in burning the property of those who would not submit and join them, was much more indefensible than that of shooting picquets, and that while they persisted in the one practice, he should certainly persevere in the other. As to the challenge of McIlraith, he said that he considered it that of a ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... essential features of the Catholic system of thought, we miss the key to that ecclesiastical statesmanship which dominates the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The programme of the great Popes, from Gregory VII to Boniface VIII, must appear a tissue of absurdities, of preposterous ambitions and indefensible actions, unless it is studied in relation to a theology as far remote from primitive Christianity as from the cults ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... 1798, he received an official letter, ordering the Clonard Cavalry upon permanent duty; in this emergency Mr. Thomas Tyrrell, finding his own house at Kilreiny about one mile and a half from Clonard inconvenient, and in truth indefensible from its situation, removed with his family to his Kinsman's house at Clonard, before described, where he mounted a guard of one Serjeant and 18 men who were to ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones
... subject of these observations is slight and trivial; but the evil itself is wide-spread and important, and deserves severe reprehension, as many portions of our national history have been strangely disfigured by such indefensible practices. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... of heaven, but might well seem to the king as capricious as those of Fairyland.' The tremendously suggestive thing of the whole story of Becket is that Henry II submitted to being thrashed at Becket's tomb. It was like 'Cecil Rhodes submitting to be horsewhipped by a Boer as an apology for some indefensible death incidental to the Jameson Raid.' Undoubtedly Chesterton has got at the kernel of the story that made an Archbishop a saint (a rare occurrence) and an English king a sportsman ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... strike a blow that would intimidate the Mexicans from making any insurrectionary movement. Alvarado himself declared that he had information that the Mexicans intended to rise, but he gave no proofs, whatever, to justify his suspicions. The affair, indeed, seems to have been utterly indefensible, and must ever remain a foul blot ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... logic or demand of justice could change Judge Hunt's will. We were convicted before we had a hearing and the trial was a mere farce." Some time afterwards Judge Selden wrote her: "I regard the ruling of the judge, and also his refusal to submit the case to the jury, as utterly indefensible." Scarcely a newspaper in the country sustained Judge Hunt's action. The Canandaigua Times thus expressed the general sentiment in an editorial, soon ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... as for night shooting, his eye and ear were such as, for accuracy of observation, few have ever witnessed. It is true he could subsist a long time without food, but, like the renowned Captain Dalgetty, when an abundance of it happened to be placed before him, he displayed the most indefensible ignorance as to all knowledge of the period when he ought to stop, considering it his bounden duty on all occasions to clear off whatever was set before him—a feat which he always accomplished with the ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the rude forces that destroyed them, and not see that the judgment on things is always on character, and that the last testing principle is, "See—not what manner of stones, but what manner of men." While we deplore the forces that destroyed, we have also to deplore the indefensible lives of the monks which at their last stage stirred such forces to ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... ended here he would not have exceeded the bounds of what is regarded as a fair method of deceiving an enemy, but his subsequent proceedings were absolutely indefensible, and are, indeed, almost incredible on the part of the man who in some respects carried the point of honor almost to an extreme. His notion, no doubt, was to paralyze the action of the enemy by exciting suspicions of treachery among their leaders, but the means which he took ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... alcohol, abstract truth, private emotion, money, simplicity, mysticism, hard work, a life close to nature, a life close to Belgrave Square are every one of them passionately maintained by somebody to be so good that they redeem the evil of an otherwise indefensible world. Thus while the world is almost always condemned in summary, it is always justified, and indeed ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... wrongly, civilization has created great material demands which must be satisfied. The individuals, companies, and governments which use force to exploit resources in weaker countries are merely the agents in supplying the demand created by all of us. While their methods are often indefensible, the exploiters cannot be regarded merely as irresponsible buccaneers who are projecting themselves unnecessarily into somebody else's business. Whatever the sentimental and ethical aspects of the question, it seems almost inevitable that ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... rest met their fate with heroic calmness and resolution. Napoleon's excuse for this hideous massacre was that the soldiers had broken the engagement they took at El A'rich, but this applied to only a very small proportion of the garrison, and the massacre was wholly indefensible, for if unable to feed his prisoners, they should have been allowed to depart unarmed to seek ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... brief and precariously enjoyed, men should so set their hearts on building a permanence in words: something to stand, in the lovely stability of ink and leaden types, as our speech out of silence to those who follow on. Indefensible absurdity, and yet the secret and impassioned ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... British Ministry and Parliament was fixed and irreversible; that there was only resistance to the execution of this policy on the one hand, and submission, which must end in abject slavery, on the other. If the American Revolution be morally indefensible, then not only are all wars indefensible, but all human governments, the wisest and the ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... blameworthy in such a man is an element;—first, as a survival of true moral standards; second, because to punish what would not be blameworthy in an average member of the community would be to enforce a standard which was indefensible theoretically, and which practically was too ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... felt that good judgment and the dramatic habit of things altogether excluded the simple physics of Democritus. Indeed, as things then stood, Democritus had no right to his simplicity, except that divine right which comes of inspiration. His was an indefensible faith in a single radical insight, which happened nevertheless to be true. To justify that insight forensically it would have been necessary to change the range of human vision, making it telescopic in one region and microscopic in another; ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... out vindictively that family livings were a corrupt and indefensible institution. Mr. Grey replied calmly that they probably were, but that the fact did not affect, so far as he could see, Elsmere's competence to fulfil all the duties of rector ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this extraordinary opinion, made use of it to restore the lapsed dogma of the two principles, or two gods, the one good, the other evil, as if this dogma were a better solution to the difficulties over the origin of evil. Yet again he acknowledges that it is an indefensible opinion and that the oneness of the Principle is incontestably founded on a priori reasons; but he wishes to infer that our Reason is confounded and cannot meet her own objections, and that one should disregard them and hold fast the revealed ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... conception of the finale of "Tannhauser," for instance, was beautiful, poetical, and reasonable; for the sake of a spectacle he reconstructed it after the original production and plunged it into indefensible confusion ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and sincerity of her egoism robbed it of offensiveness, and raised it from a trait of character to the dignity of a point of view. The established law of self-sacrifice which had guided her mother's life was not only personally distasteful to her—it was morally indefensible. She was engaged not in illustrating precepts of conduct, but in realizing her independence; and this realization of herself appeared to her as the supreme and peculiar obligation of her being. Though she was less fine than Jenny, who in her ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... pertinacity which he had been unable to understand— which, indeed, had looked like sheer audacity, that he would never marry Margaret Ibbotson. Philip was now convinced that he had done his sister much wrong. Her temper and conduct were in some instances indefensible; but since he had learned all this, and become aware how much of what he had censured had been said and done out of affection for himself, he had been disposed rather to blame her for the lateness of her explanations, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... indomitable abolitionist like Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, delivered his soul with invectives against the system of slavery and the new-fangled apologies that had been devised to defend it, declaring it "utterly indefensible on every correct human principle, and utterly abhorrent from every law of God," and exclaiming, "Out upon such folly! The man who cannot see that involuntary domestic slavery, as it exists among us, is founded on the principle of taking by ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... Suddenly Tufa deserted his new master, was joined by Odoacer, who came to Faventia, and certain of the Ostrogothic nobles, if not all of them, were slaughtered. The expedition was lost and not the expedition alone: Milan was no longer safe. Therefore Theodoric evacuated that city, always almost indefensible, and occupied Ticinum (Pavia), which was naturally defended by the Ticino and the Po. There he established himself in ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... voluntary enlistments made in neighboring States. The Executive could with difficulty bring itself to realize the fact that the citizens of other States should have forgotten their duty to themselves and the Constitution of the United States and have entered into the highly reprehensible and indefensible course of interfering so far in the concerns of a sister State as to have entered into plans of invasion, conquest, and revolution; but the Executive felt it to be its duty to look minutely into the matter, and therefore the Secretary of War was dispatched to Rhode Island ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... would not only ignore 1912 but would avoid also the explosive conflicts of 1916. The speaker skilfully selected the spoils system in diplomatic appointments. "Deserving Democrats" was a discrediting phrase, and Mr. Hughes at once evokes it. The record being indefensible, there is no hesitation in the vigor of the attack. Logically it was an ideal introduction to a ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... The first policy found indefensible has been your handling of the border slave states of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. You have not yet declared the slaves free in these states, the only ones in which you actually have the power ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... collocation is of no moment. Transpositions of that kind, to speak plainly, are important only as affording conclusive proof that such copies as B[Symbol: Aleph]D preserve a text which has undergone a sort of critical treatment which is so obviously indefensible that the Codexes themselves, however interesting as monuments of a primitive age,—however valuable commercially and to be prized by learned and unlearned alike for their unique importance,—are yet to be prized chiefly as beacon-lights preserved by a ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... had any doubts about the right and wrong of an attempt to thwart the sheriff before, Laura had none now. Perhaps her course was indefensible; but intuitively she believed that farmer to be a bad man. And she was sure that he was the one who had set the sheriff ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... Rembrandt. I bought the picture because, as you say, the situation was desperate, and I couldn't raise a thousand myself. What I did was of course indefensible; but the money shall ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... that night she sat weighing—first, the question itself of marrying Lord Mountclere; and, at other times, whether, for safety, she might marry him without previously revealing family particulars hitherto held necessary to be revealed—a piece of conduct she had once felt to be indefensible. The ingenious Ethelberta, much more prone than the majority of women to theorize on conduct, felt the need of some soothing defence of the actions involved in any ambiguous course before finally ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... for a moment, reconsider the motives which solve, as they guided, at once the indefensible guilt of Perez, and the malignant perfidy of Philip. The King of Spain unquestionably ordered the murder of Escovedo, and confided its perpetration to the docile secretary. But the death-warrant slumbered for a while in the keeping ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... was Sir Hyde Parker, a hesitant and mediocre leader who could be trusted to do nothing (if that were necessary), and Nelson was made second in command. Influence, seniority, a clean record, and what-not, often lead to such choices, bad enough at any time but indefensible in time of war. Fortunately for England, when the reply of the Danish court showed that force was required, the two admirals virtually changed places with less friction than might have been expected, and Nelson "Lifted and carried on his shoulders ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... Commons. He had made great efforts to promote the manufactures of the kingdom in which he resided; and he had found those efforts impeded by an Act of the English Parliament which laid severe restrictions on the exportation of woollen goods from Ireland. In principle this Act was altogether indefensible. Practically it was altogether unimportant. Prohibitions were not needed to prevent the Ireland of the seventeenth century from being a great manufacturing country; nor could the most liberal bounties have made her so. The jealousy of commerce, however, is as fanciful and unreasonable ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... were many things he would not tell her; his own desire to rehabilitate himself among the men he knew, his own new-born feeling that to take advantage of Clayton's absence on business connected with the war was peculiarly indefensible. ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... scarcely taken a definite shape, when he opened a communication, as appeared afterwards, with the heads of the Irish party, and announced the system on which he intended to govern the country. In any case, such a proceeding would have been inexpedient and indefensible, its inevitable effect being to commit the policy of the Administration beforehand, to deprive it at once of all dignity and independence, and to revive those heart-burnings and dissensions which had already so nearly endangered the connection of ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... officer. A member may abstain from voting by taking his station on "the steps of the throne," technically accounted outside the chamber. Prior to 1868 absent members were allowed to vote by proxy, but this indefensible privilege, abolished by standing order in the year mentioned, is likely never to ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... direction; and that Dr Macfarlane, who has since corresponded with the Duke of Sutherland upon the whole case—viz. upon the petition for land, as affected by the shocking menaces of the Seceders—has, in no other way, been able to evade the double mischief of undertaking a defence for the indefensible, and at the same time of losing the land irretrievably, than by affecting an unconsciousness of language used by his party little suited to his own sacred calling, or to the noble simplicities of Christianity. Certainly it is unhappy for the Seceders, that the only disavowal of the most fiendish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... he tells us, "a number of people who, without knowing that they offend common sense in a most indefensible manner, invoke sentimentality in order to dispense with exercising the most vulgar pity, to ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... been genuinely disgusted, not as a matter of duty, but unaffectedly, as a matter of simple nature. What interested him in her was her novel and bold moral attitude, her self-respect in the midst of her sin, her striking arguments in favor of an apparently indefensible course of life. Hers was no common case of loose living, he felt: there was a soul to be saved there, if only Heaven would raise her up a friend in some man absolutely proof against the vulgar fascination ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... night, when his infantry escaped to Shepherdstown, and his artillery and cavalry to Williamsport. In carrying out these movements, however, he lost five guns and five caissons. He passed the river and rejoined the main body at Harper's Ferry. The latter place is wholly indefensible against an enemy holding the hills around it. It is like fighting at the bottom of a well. General Tyler had therefore very wisely moved across the river to Maryland Heights, where he had a strong fortified post. From that commanding eminence he could very soon shell out any force ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... through the inevitable phases that awaited it. In 1834, England, though frightened at the reality of Reform, still adhered to its phrases; it was inclined, as practical England, to maintain existing institutions; but, as theoretical England, it was suspicious that they were indefensible. ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... of Cuba being, in my opinion, impracticable and indefensible, the question which next presents itself is that of the recognition of belligerent rights in the parties to the contest. In a former message to Congress I had occasion to consider this question, and reached the conclusion that the conflict in Cuba, ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 59, December 23, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... and our minds filled with a horror which their teachings instilled, sometimes think that they were slow to awaken to the enormity of some evils they tolerated. So perhaps our grandchildren may wonder that we endured, and even defended, present-day conditions, which to them will appear indefensible. And so looking back on the long continuance of the slave-trade, we wonder that it could have made so pertinacious a fight for life. We marvel, too, at the character of some of the men engaged in it in its earlier ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... told that purity of mind, soul, and manners, is the shield of her sex, and yet, in some circles, practices shall be tolerated, or fashions of dress, or conversation permitted, which to her all-unsophisticated reason must seem absolutely indefensible. History tells us, that in the thirteenth century, when the plague raged in Florence, it spread through the suburbs of that city, from the exhalations of certain beautiful flowers. See, my young friends, that ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... is altogether indefensible, and therefore without fortifications. There are only two iron guns upon a bastion that fronts the beach; and here the French had formed a considerable battery against the English cruisers, in the war of 1744, when the Mareschal Duke de Belleisle had his headquarters at Nice. This little ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... of the insufficient definition given to the mind. If it be recognised that the mind has an incomplete existence and is only realised by its incarnation in matter, the figure which is the basis of parallelism becomes indefensible. There is no longer on the one hand the physical, and on the other the mental, but on one side the physical and the mental combined, and on the other the same combination; which amounts to saying that the two faces to a reality, which it ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... town, one of strict honesty too; yet in affairs of love he was somewhat loose in his morals; not that he was even here as void of principle as gentlemen sometimes are, and oftener affect to be; but it is certain he had been guilty of some indefensible treachery to women, and had, in a certain mystery, called making love, practised many deceits, which, if he had used in trade, he would have been counted the greatest ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... arrangement which leaves the fate of England in the hands of Englishmen may be favourable to reform, but is fatal to revolution. Has this fact arrested the attention of Gladstonians? I know not. It is an unfortunate coincidence that the least defensible portion of an indefensible policy should, while it threatens ruin to England, offer temporary salvation to the party who rally round ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... mistake, Wolff," Seaman declared angrily. "I am your superior in the Service, and your attitude towards me is indefensible." ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is far more easy to maintain a wrong cause, and to support paradoxical opinions to the satisfaction of a common auditory, than to establish a doubtful truth by solid and conclusive arguments. When men find that something can be said in favor of what, on the very proposal, they have thought utterly indefensible, they grow doubtful of their own reason; they are thrown into a sort of pleasing surprise; they run along with the speaker, charmed and captivated to find such a plentiful harvest of reasoning, where all seemed barren and unpromising. This is the fairy land of philosophy. And it very frequently ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... short surprise attacks, and that it possesses in its mobility the infallible means of circumventing points of resistance. This conception, which restricts the functions of Cavalry within their narrowest limits, seems to me entirely untenable. It is essentially indefensible when it is a matter of gaining time or of carrying a given position, such as a defensible post on the lines of communication, a convoy marching under escort, the destruction of a defended railway, or in any similar undertaking. ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... critiques and the manner in which a vast number of my most monstrous fallacies have passed unchallenged. I will not repeat that powerful article here, for it cannot be necessary to do anything more than warn the reader against the perfectly indefensible line of argument adopted at the end of p. 28. I am also conscious that the title of the book is, strictly speaking, inaccurate. It is a legal metaphor, and, speaking legally, a defendant is not an enthusiast for the character of King John or the domestic virtues of the ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... which is really no plan at all, is, of course, wholly indefensible. No teacher has a right to go before his class with his material in so nebulous a state that it lacks coordination and purpose. It is this that results in chance and unrelated questions, irrelevant discussions, and fruitless wanderings without definite purpose ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... ideal, that he had wounded her sorely. What did she expect of him? Not any of the things which the ignorant or vulgar bystander expected of him—that he was certain. But still her claim had wearied him; and he had brushed it aside. His sulkiness about the book had been odious, indefensible. And yet—perhaps from another point of view—it had not been a bad thing for either of them. It had broken through habits which had become, surely, an embarrassment ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... terrible contest. If I remember it correctly, it was a mere diplomatic squabble, in which the British ministers, with the politic generosity which they are in the habit of showing towards their official subordinates, had tried to browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an ambassador in an indefensible proceeding; and the American Government (for God had not denied us an administration of statesmen then) had retaliated with stanch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevitably a cruel mortification upon their opponents, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... side of the woman. She had thrown herself, therefore, with ardour into the defence of Mrs. Verrier; and for her it was not the wife's desertion, but the husband's suicide which had been the cruel and indefensible thing. All these various traits and liberalisms had made her very dear ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wounded Doyle as to force him into sacrificing lucrative employment, and condemning him in the result to a life of toil. But for once in his career Doyle was guilty of behaviour which, if not inexcusable in the circumstances, was certainly indefensible. He left the paper in the lurch. His letter of resignation was sent in on November 27th, he having allowed the Editor to think that the blocks for the Almanac, already overdue, had all been completed; and when it was discovered that they had ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... liberties taken with human character, or with those principles of action, motives, and feelings, upon which men would move under given circumstances, or with the modes of action which in common prudence they would be likely to adopt. The truth is, that, as a coherent work of art, the Robbers is indefensible; but, however monstrous it may be pronounced, it possesses a power to agitate and convulse, which will always obliterate its great faults to the young, and to all whose judgment is not too much developed. And the best apology for Schiller is found in ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... international tribunal not merely the decision of a disputed case but the legislation necessary to regulate an international property was in itself a great step in the development of world polity. The charlatan who almost brought on war by maintaining an indefensible case was also the statesman who made perhaps the greatest single advance in the conservation of the world's ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... distracted tribes? What blame, therefore, to Heraclius, that Syria—the first object of assault, being also by much the weakest part of the empire, and immediately after the close of a desolating war—should in four campaigns be found indefensible? We must remember the unexampled abruptness of the Arabian revolution. The year sixteen hundred and twenty-two, by its very name of Hegira, does not record a triumph but a humiliation. In that year, therefore, and at ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... was—that is to say, that I was out of sight of land on those high seas of spelling reform in which so many strong swimmers have toiled vainly. To some the situation is exhilarating; as for me, I give one bubbling cry and sink. The compromise at which I have arrived is indefensible, and I have no thought of trying to defend it. As I have stuck for the most part to the proper spelling, I append a table of some common vowel sounds which no one need consult; and just to prove that I belong to my age and have in me the stuff of a reformer, I have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... generally presumed: and yet the charge of madness was very staggering; madness being, in the first place, indefensible, and everybody's enemy when at large; and Robert's behaviour looked extremely like it. It had already been as a black shadow haunting enthusiastic minds in the village, and there fell a short silence, during which Stephen made his preparations for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... gathered around the capitol. Cinna was overshadowed by the greatness of that plebeian general who had defeated the Cimbrians, and who was bent upon revenge for the mortification and insults he had received from the Roman aristocracy. Famine and desertion soon made the city indefensible, and Rome capitulated to an army ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... little lower down the river is a substantial bridge that runs across from Estcourt to Fort Napier, a quaint-looking structure, neither ornamental nor useful, for hills behind and round it command the situation. Thus commanded, it is utterly indefensible, and would need an army corps to hold it. The garrison, under Brigadier-General Wolfe-Murray, at this time consisted of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Border Regiment, one squadron of Imperial Light Horse, Natal Field Artillery, and some scouts. This small force would ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... wise man when he moved the capital of Israel from Shechem, an indefensible site, commanded by overhanging mountains and approached by two easy vales, to Shomron, the "watch-hill" which stands in the centre of the ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... sound every note in the scale of felicity. Some defects are to be acknowledged, but they sink into insignificance when measured by the magnitude of his achievement. Sudden transitions, elliptical expressions, mixed metaphors, indefensible verbal quibbles, and fantastic conceits at times create an atmosphere of obscurity. The student is perplexed, too, by obsolete words and by some hopelessly corrupt readings. But when the whole of Shakespeare's vast work is scrutinised with due attention, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... word in the sense of determined is not only inelegant but indefensible. "I am bound to have it," should be, "I am determined ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... its passage from State to State, and refuse it a passage forever. Pennsylvania, a central State, may separate the North from the South, prevent all intercommunication, render our country a republic divided and indefensible. Louisiana, purchased by taxes imposed upon the people of all the States, may secede and establish a separate and independent government, lay protective or prohibitory imposts on the imports and exports of this State and of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the Canadians for access to deep water along any part of the Alaskan Coast is just exactly as indefensible as if they should now suddenly claim ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... that I thought there was a shocking number of accidents of that sort, and suggested the best excuse I could think of—our youth and inexperience; but I certainly thought my venerable friend had touched a very indefensible point. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had eaten little and Mr. Meredith nothing at all, both went silently into the study. The switch lay on the table. Mr. Meredith had had a bad time getting a switch to suit him. He cut one, then felt it was too slender. Carl had done a really indefensible thing. Then he cut another—it was far too thick. After all, Carl had thought the eel was dead. The third one suited him better; but as he picked it up from the table it seemed very thick and heavy—more like a ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the existence of God, on the authority of my father; and defended my right to my atheism, on the authority of the Constitution. I considered myself absolutely, eternally, delightfully emancipated from the yoke of indefensible superstitions. I was wild with indignation and pity when I remembered how my poor brother had been cruelly tormented because he did not want to sit in heder and learn what was after all false or useless. I knew now why poor Reb' Lebe had been unable to answer my questions; it was because ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... of "the other man" who fired the shot are in the country to this day. But that other man's name, inquire as you please, you shall not hear; for the Highlander values a secret for itself and for the congenial exercise of keeping it I might go on for long to justify one point and own another indefensible; it is more honest to confess at once how little I am touched by the desire of accuracy. This is no furniture for the scholar's library, but a book for the winter evening school-room when the tasks ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shore, in which were planted twenty eighteen-pounders. On this, the General, having done all he could to annoy the enemy, and prevent their landing, and finding that the Fort at St. Simons had become indefensible, held a council of war at the head of his regiment; and it was the opinion of the whole that the fort should be dismantled, the guns spiked up, the cohorns burst, and that the troops there stationed should ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... church already divided by sectarian strifes a new division. It is to rend afresh the seamless robe. To say to any man asking for Christian fellowship on the simple ground of faith in Christ, "Stand back: for I am whiter than thou," is simply a new and indefensible form of Pharisaism. The church exists to proclaim certain truths, among which the brotherhood of man stands pre-eminent. It is difficult to see with what consistency a Christian minister can preach on the parable ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various
... permitted by law in Virginia, at any rate these auctions were conducted quietly and with as little publicity as possible. For although the better classes still regarded slavery as a necessary institution, they were conscious that these sales, involving as they did the separation of families, were indefensible, and the more thoughtful would gladly have seen them abolished, and a law passed forbidding the sale of negroes save as part and parcel of the estate upon which they worked, an exception only being made in the case of gross misconduct. Many of the slave-owners, indeed, forbade all flogging ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... it. The various foreign publications, whether they received their inspirations from Mr. Gutzlaff or not matters little, differed on most points, but were agreed on this, that the trade in opium was morally indefensible, and that we were bound, not only by our own interests, but in virtue of the common obligations of humanity, to cease to hold all connection with it. Those who had surrendered their stores of opium at the request of Captain Elliot held that their claim for compensation was ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... occurs. A few folk still cling to this spelling—there was a "segar-shop" in the Strand till quite recently, and I saw the notice "segars" the other day over a small tobacco-shop in York—which has no authority, and on etymological grounds is indefensible. The derivation of "cigar" is not altogether clear; but the probabilities are strongly in favour of its connexion with "cigarra," the Spanish name for the cicada, the shrilly-chirping insect familiar in the southern countries of Europe, ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... would be critical folly to speak of it as morbid. It is sad, it is terrible, as Lear is terrible, or as any one of the great tragedies, written by men we call 'masters,' is terrible. Jude is psychologically gruesome, no doubt; but not absolutely indefensible. Even if it were as black a book as some critics have painted it, the general truth of the statement as to the healthfulness of Hardy's work would not be impaired. This work judged as a whole is sound and invigorating. ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent |
