"Insurmountable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could go no further, the beach in that direction being walled in by a rocky cliff, steep and high, and but for a narrow fissure upon which I happily came, insurmountable. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... of the Federal and State authorities difficulties nearly insurmountable arose at the outset and subsequent collisions were deemed inevitable. Amid these it was scarcely believed possible that a scheme of government so complex in construction could remain uninjured. From time to time embarrassments have certainly occurred; but how just is the confidence of future ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... fenders and andirons were gladly parted with, growing rusty as they had been for years, and almost forgotten in garrets and cellars. New England farmers remember too distinctly the shiverings and burnings of their youth not to feel an insurmountable prejudice against open fires. So Knapp, whose wider knowledge made him master of the fact that this present generation, sickened of stoves and dreary black holes in the wall and burnt dead heat, and longing for some cheerful ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... as duration was concerned. Unorna reasoned coldly with herself, recalling all that Keyork Arabian had told her and all that she had read. She tried to admit that Beatrice might be disposed of in some other way, but the difficulties seemed to be insurmountable. To effect such a disappearance Unorna must find some safe place in which the wretched woman might drag out her existence undiscovered. But Beatrice was not like the old beggar who in his hundredth ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... explained that there would be some minor points of course on which Johannesburg would have to give way in order to meet the Government, as their position was also a very difficult one, and there were in particular two matters on which there would be some difficulty, but by no means insurmountable. When asked if the two matters were the removal of religious disabilities and the franchise, one of the two gentlemen replied that he had been told that there would be some difficulty on these two ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... lake. It was a beautiful piece of water, his eye, educated at least in the excellences of landscape-painting, acknowledged. But although he could pull a good oar, and liked other lakes, to this particular sheet of water there lurked within him an insurmountable antipathy. It was engendered by ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... tired, Wayland's boots, loaded with mud, became fetters, and every slope greasy with mire seemed an almost insurmountable barricade. He fell several times, but made no outcry. "I will not add to her anxiety," ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... that everything may be openly carried on and that it may not be said afterwards that everything was not openly carried on. My wish is that everything should be openly carried on. I desire to leave a good name behind me. If I consulted merely my own interests with Mr. C., I should not be here. So insurmountable, as you must well know, would be his objections. This is not a professional attendance. This can he charged to nobody. I have no interest in it except as a member of society and a father—AND a son," said Mr. Vholes, who ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... order" of the East, in which their abilities found no recognition. Whoever has deservedly failed in the older states is sure at least once in his life to think of redeeming his fortunes in California. Once on the Pacific slope the difficulties in the way of his return seem insurmountable. The dread of the winter's cold is in most cases a sufficient reason for never going back. Thus San Francisco, by force of circumstances, has become the hopper into which fall incompetents from all the world, and from which few escape. The city contains more than four hundred thousand ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan
... not give it up. They are true. My heart almost leapt from my bosom when that telegraph message was read from Missouri a few days ago. Tennessee has taken up the cry, "Union for ever," The nation is troubled. All nations are, at times. But our troubles are not insurmountable. We are all here together to settle them. Why not settle them, and give peace to the Union, and joy to the ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... respect them is to entail upon ourselves I know not what load of acrimony, contempt, and misery! I must speak—I never yet met a youth whom I thought so deserving of Anna St. Ives as Frank Henley! The obstacles you will say are insurmountable. Alas! I fear they are. And therefore 'tis fortunate that the same thought has not more strongly occurred to you. Perhaps my caution would have been greater, but that I know your affections are free; and yet I confess I wonder that they are so. If it be the effect of your reason, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... wellnigh circumnavigated the vast head. It seemed first of all to make straight for the ears on either side. Then, quite suddenly, finding these obstacles insurmountable, it dodged underneath them, and the scared observer could almost imagine its two ends meeting with a click somewhere in the wilderness at the back of that ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... encouraged them with the assurance that with God all things are possible. Thus were they given to understand that while wealth is a means of temptation to which many succumb, it is no insuperable obstacle, no insurmountable barrier, in the way of entrance to the kingdom. Had the young ruler followed the advice called forth by his inquiry, his possession of riches would have made possible to him meritorious service such as few are able to ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... issued his proclamation every man in the kingdom who was not already a knight, straightway tried to contrive ways and means to kill the Pumpkin Giant. But there was one obstacle which seemed insurmountable: they were afraid, and all of them had the Giant's Shakes so badly, that they could not possibly have held a knife steady enough to cut off the Giant's head, even if they had dared to go near ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... I was prepared to do anything. I did not earn much in my youth, and could not expect to earn much in manhood without preparation. I then resolved to enter school again, but the expense of a thorough course was an apparently insurmountable obstacle. I had been unable to save much from my meager allowance. I had heard of the Tuskegee Institute and of the opportunities there offered to poor young men and women. I decided to enter that school. A friend helped me to purchase an excursion ticket to Atlanta, Ga., where was being held ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... are known to me, Roberto," she said, with a touch that was almost a hope of vengeance. "They have an insurmountable honor; they will revenge this insult to it in some terrible way. If the gracious Maria holds not the hands of Santa Anna, he will utterly destroy the Americans! He will be like a tiger that ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... she; "I have no right to question your selection of a lover or doubt your power, Angelique. But are you sure there exists no insurmountable obstacle to oppose these high aspirations? It is whispered that the Intendant has a wife, whom he keeps in the seclusion of Beaumanoir. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... fully to utilize this natural power, we only require machinery to turn the variable into a constant velocity—no insurmountable difficulty. ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... the walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse potentate unless the townsmen gave their consent thereto.' Now, what would the military engineers of Chatham and Paris and Berlin, who are now at their wits' end, not give for a secret like that! A wall impregnable and insurmountable and not to be sapped or mined from the outside: a wall that could only suffer hurt from the inside! And then that wonderful wall was pierced from within with five magnificently answerable gates. That is to ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... translate, and have translated, two books of Ariosto, at the rate, nearly, of 100 lines a day; but so much meaning has been put by Michael Angelo into so little room, and that meaning sometimes so excellent in itself, that I found the difficulty of translating him insurmountable. I attempted, at least, fifteen of the sonnets, but could not anywhere succeed. I have sent you the only one I was able to finish: it is far from being the best, or most characteristic, but the others ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... every problem can be solved, but it will hardly be during the progress of this war. The men at the head of the Volunteers were not geniuses, neither were they fools, and the difficulty of acquiring military aid from Germany must have seemed as insurmountable to them as it does to the Germans themselves. They rose because they felt that they had to do so, or be driven like sheep into the nearest police barracks, and be laughed at by the whole of ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... bank account down to the irreducible minimum and borrowed on his securities up to the insurmountable maximum. It was a bad time for his children to tap him. But here they were—Jno. P., Jerry, and Julia—all very unctuous over the home-coming, and yet all of them evidently cherishing an ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the government of children. Centuries ago, in the patriarchal period, the father of the family seems also to have exercised the functions of a criminal judge; but the uniting of the two sets of duties in one person does not appear to have inspired the children with insurmountable awe, for laws are found both in Numbers and Deuteronomy fixing the penalty of disobedience, and of the striking of a ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... cried again, catching Eugene's hand. "You are just beginning life; you find barriers at the outset that many a man finds insurmountable; a woman's hand opens the way and you shrink back! Why, you are sure to succeed! You will have a brilliant future. Success is written on that broad forehead of yours, and will you not be able to repay me my loan of to-day? Did not a lady in olden times arm her knight with sword and helmet ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... procession pass through. But on the Boulevard des Capucines a mass of troops, infantry and cavalry, who were guarding the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its unpopular Minister, M. Guizot, blocked the thoroughfare. In front of this insurmountable obstacle the head of the column tried to stop and turn; but the irresistible pressure of the enormous crowd behind pushed the front ranks on. At this juncture a shot was fired, on which side is not known. A panic ensued, followed by a volley. Eighty fell ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... on both sides, which was exceedingly heavy, and without any intermission, insomuch that the oldest soldier present never saw so furious and incessant a fire. The affair at Fontenoy was nothing to it. I saw both. We labored under insurmountable difficulties. The enemy's breastwork was about nine or ten feet high, upon the top of which they had plenty of wall pieces fixed, and which was well lined in the inside with small arms. But the difficult access to their lines was what gave ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... encouragement is wanting? I must be regardful of insurmountable limits. Yet when minds are imbued with a genuine sympathy, are not words and looks superfluous? Are not motion and touch sufficient to impart feelings such as mine? Has he not eyed me at moments, when the pressure ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... be made over its bare expanse save at a considerable loss. The infantry clung in a long fringe to the edge of the position, but for two hours no guns could be brought up to their support, as the steepness of the slope was insurmountable. It was all that the stormers could do to hold their ground, as they were enfiladed by a Vickers-Maxim, and exposed to showers of shrapnel as well as to an incessant rifle fire. Never were guns so welcome as those of the 82nd battery, brought by Major Connolly into the firing line. The ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... noticed it too—that settles it—not a word, mind; if it's sprung upon her at a few days' notice it may come off. If she has time to think she'll discover insurmountable difficulties. Strategy, my dear, strategy must be ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... with her while bound by other ties. Sometimes he felt that he must explain to her how intangible were those bonds. Yet he was sufficiently conscious of their actual existence to feel that the difficulties of explanation were almost insurmountable. And Hilda, poor child, took his ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton
... those on the lofty summit of the insurmountable barrier, and my friend Omar were long, and, to me tedious. I could make nothing of them, although it was apparent that my old chum was carrying on an interesting conversation with some person unseen. ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... like whitened sails, are quiet homes, real argosies ventured by the sturdy and industrious people who have fought their way through almost insurmountable difficulties to the tranquillity ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... Synod of the empire,—the highest assemblage in the church, and he the most influential man in it, really controlling archbishops and bishops throughout the empire,—whether the "filioque" clause is an insurmountable obstacle to union, he replied, "Not at all; that is simply a question of dialectics. But with whom are we to unite? Shall it be with the High-churchmen, the Broad-churchmen, or the Low-churchmen? These are three different bodies of men with distinctly ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... would have revealed much in the Irish character and afforded the key to many startling episodes in Irish history. It was a look at once of infinite rage and infinite despair; it spoke of wrong—hated, gigantic, at once intolerable and insurmountable. One sees a similar impress in the faces of Irishmen in Massachusetts, though the climate of America has reduced the large, loose frame to the thin build of the new country, and has bleached the ruddy complexion of Ireland to a sickly white or an ugly yellow; ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... there is an insurmountable barrier surrounding them, the matter of language. The knowledge of Greek and Latin that we acquired at school has become painfully rusty. Is it worth while slogging away laboriously with grammar and dictionary at the expense of valuable ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... impossible to explain to Netta that the fee for the course might prove an insurmountable barrier. Gwen was always too proud to plead poverty, and hid her father's narrow circumstances from her schoolmates as well as ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... disagreeable to him, unless it touched upon his personal affections. The beings who did not think as he did, were only phantoms in his eyes. As his manners were polished and graceful, it was easy to mistake his cold disdain or insurmountable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "If no insurmountable obstacles present themselves in a distance of one hundred miles, none may be expected in one thousand or in ten thousand miles; and then will be presented for the consideration of the Government the propriety of completely organizing this new telegraphic system as a part of the Government, ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... operated seriously to the disadvantage of Mr. Adams, was the amalgamation of the strong Crawford party with the supporters of Gen. Jackson. This combination threw obstacles in the way of the administration which were insurmountable. It enabled the opposition to send a majority of members to the twentieth Congress, both in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The test of the strength of parties in the House took place on the election of Speaker. Andrew ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... charging over them, stretched two more with well-placed blows from left and right, and continued on across the clearing, running at top speed, for he realized that for all the desperation of his fight and the losses already inflicted on his assailants, the odds against him were insurmountable. ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... springing from the ranks of the industrial classes, who have achieved distinction in various walks of life—in science, commerce, literature, and art—shows that at all events the difficulties interposed by poverty and labour are not insurmountable. As respects the great contrivances and inventions which have conferred so much power and wealth upon the nation, it is unquestionable that for the greater part of them we have been indebted to men of the humblest rank. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... of many of the works of the ancients, which would otherwise have never, perhaps, been known to us, it is really surprising, that their language should be so little known in Europe. It is certainly very difficult and abstruse, (to learners particularly,) but this difficulty is rendered insurmountable by the European professors knowing it only as a dead language, and teaching it without due attention to the pronunciation of the before mentioned synonymous letters, a defect which is not likely to be remedied, and which will always subject ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... ignorant vote." The patent answer to this is, abolish the ignorant vote. Our legislators have this power in their own hands. There have been various restrictions in the past for men. We are willing to abide by the same for women, provided the insurmountable qualification of sex be forever removed.... Surely, when we compel all classes to learn to read and write and thus open to themselves the door of knowledge not by force but by the promise of a privilege all intelligent citizens enjoy, we are benefactors, not tyrants. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... and resolute adversaries among the Mexicans, who opposed almost insurmountable difficulties to his progress, Pizarro had no trouble in vanquishing the Peruvians, who were timid and enervated, and who never made any serious resistance to his arms. Of the conquests of Peru and Mexico, the less difficult produced ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... the 26th of November. Here they found a dozen lodges of Shoshonies, recently arrived, who informed them that had they persevered along the river, they would have found their difficulties augment until they became absolutely insurmountable. This intelligence added to the anxiety of Mr. Hunt for the fate of Mr. M'Kenzie and his people, who had ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... had swept swiftly by, and was out of sight before a gun could be raised. They reached the same point. He was still before them, but his race was nearly run. Steep, slippery rocks, shelving down to the edges of a small, deep pool of water, the source of the stream, formed an apparently insurmountable barrier in that direction. Rooted—Heaven knows how!—in some reft or fissure of the rock, grew a wild ash, throwing out a few boughs over the solitary pool; this was all the support Luke could hope for, should he attempt to scale the rock. The ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... all who approved the secession of Kentucky, was her isolated position. Not only did the long hesitation of Virginia and Tennessee effectually abate the ardor and resolution of the Kentuckians who desired to unite their State to the Southern Confederacy, but while it lasted it was an insurmountable, physical barrier in the way of such an undertaking. With those States antagonistic to the Southern movement, it would have been madness for Kentucky to have attempted to join it. When at length, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... foregoing discussion it will be clear that there are very grave, if not insurmountable, difficulties in the way of regarding the "terms of relationship" as being in reality such. In reply to those who regard them as status terms it is urged that if they are not terms of relationship, then the savages have no terms of any sort to express relationships which we regard ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... at length reach some of the Hudson's Bay Company's trading posts. That they reached the mouth of Fish River we have melancholy evidence. Here they probably encamped, and, when the season advanced, proceeded some way up, but, finding the difficulties of the navigation insurmountable, they returned to the mouth of the river, with the intention perhaps of proceeding along the coast to the westward through the North-West Passage, which they now knew for a certainty to exist. Before, however, they could do this, it was necessary to send to the ships ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... immediately presented himself before the council of state, to remove the impression. He pointed out to them the insurmountable obstacles to such an invasion, physical and moral. He urged to them that the nations of the earth felt so much jealousy and ill-will towards one another, that they never cordially co-operated in any enterprise for their common interest or glory; and that ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... venerable elms. "But surely this is no fault of mine.—Hold there! Are you quite sure it's no fault of yours? Are we not responsible to a much greater extent than we imagine for our physical condition? After making all abatement for insurmountable hereditary influences upon organization,—after granting to that remorseless law of genealogical transmission its proper weight,—after admitting the seemingly capricious facts of what the modern French physiologists call atavism, under which we are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... Constantine, as the barbarians of the Euxine, who in the preceding age had poured their armaments into the heart of the Mediterranean, soon desisted from the exercise of piracy, and despaired of forcing this insurmountable barrier. When the gates of the Hellespont and Bosphorus were shut, the capital still enjoyed within their spacious inclosure every production which could supply the wants or gratify the luxury of its numerous inhabitants. The sea-coasts of ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... solved, or only in one way. If her heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish. Thus Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere. At times a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to send Pearl at once to Heaven, and go herself ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... next to him, and coming up as close as I could, I found that one step further would have precipitated the adventurous guide into an abyss, the bottom and sides of which were undistinguishable; after gazing for a moment into this apparently insurmountable obstacle to our further progress, I could just perceive a narrow ledge about sixteen feet below me, that the eye could trace for a few yards only, beyond which it was lost in the deep gloom surrounding us. Our ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... concession of Austro-Hungarian and German territory in that form was, naturally, not possible. But still we thought that, under certain premises in the territorial questions, an agreement might perhaps not meet with insurmountable difficulties. As a matter of course, however, the Entente were not in a position to make terms such as could only be laid down by the victor to the vanquished, as we were anything but beaten, but, in spite of that, we did not cling so firmly to the ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... This latter fact would seem more surprising, did we not know, that even the natives of Vera Cruz, who are not attacked with typhus in their own town, sometimes sink under it during the epidemics of the Havannah and the United States. As the black vomit finds an insurmountable barrier at the Encero (four hundred and seventy-six toises high), on the declivity of the mountains of Mexico, in the direction of Xalapa, where oaks begin to appear, and the climate begins to be cool and pleasant, so the yellow fever ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... surprising accuracy. Here it may be said to me that the piercing of the great St. Gothard Tunnel was accompanied by considerable loss. That is true, but it must be recalled also that this colossal work was accomplished amid the most insurmountable difficulties which ever presented themselves. In spite of this, the cost of the tunnel per running foot was also a third less than that of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... not an insurmountable obstacle." Cheniston saw the victory was won, and in an instant he was awake to the expediency of clinching the matter finally. "We don't know, of course, that she will listen either to me or to you. But for my part I am ready to take my chance. And"—at the last moment the inherent honesty ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... realized that relationship with him meant possible motherhood for her again. The tragedy of giving birth to a child—ah, she could not go through that a second time, at least under the same conditions. She could not bring herself to tell him about Vesta, but she must voice this insurmountable objection. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... 20th, 1908, after days on the hot desert, my weary party and pack train reached the summit of Powell's Plateau, the most isolated, inaccessible and remarkable mesa of any size in all the canyon country. Cut off from the mainland it appeared insurmountable; standing aloof from the towers and escarpments, rugged and bold in outline, its forest covering like a strip of black velvet, its giant granite walls gold in the sun, it seemed apart from the world, haunting with its ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... to keep Crowther at arm's length, but neither did he seem inclined for any closer intimacy. His attitude neither invited nor repelled confidence. Yet Crowther knew intuitively that his very indifference was in itself a barrier that might well prove insurmountable. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... field in the world, as regards the physical sufferings and privations endured; but, fired by a noble ambition to preach the Gospel "in the region beyond," these men of God considered no sufferings too severe, or difficulties insurmountable, if only they could succeed. They were among those of whom ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... governed the nations of Europe, society possessed, in the midst of its wretchedness, several different advantages which can now scarcely be appreciated or conceived. The power of a part of his subjects was an insurmountable barrier to the tyranny of the prince; and the monarch, who felt the almost divine character which he enjoyed in the eyes of the multitude, derived a motive for the just use of his power from the respect which he inspired. High as they were placed above the people, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... occupied with the teaching of doctrine, and others with the reproof of prevailing sins; but when on the basis of these and other subordinate distinctions, you proceed to arrange them into separate classes, you are met and repelled by insurmountable difficulties. When Bauer, for example, has arranged them in three divisions, dogmatic, moral, and historic, he is compelled immediately to add another class called the mixed, as dogmatic-moral and dogmatic-historic, thereby proving that his ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... Life of Jesus. A complete treatise upon the compilation of the Gospels would be a work of itself. Thanks to the excellent researches of which this question has been the object during thirty years, a problem which was formerly judged insurmountable has obtained a solution which, though it leaves room for many uncertainties, fully suffices for the necessities of history. We shall have occasion to return to this in our Second Book, the composition of the Gospels having ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... countrymen, on our first acquaintance with filth and vermin in this our British captivity. Many a time have I got up from my dinner as hungry as I sat down, when disgust has been greater than appetite. I have, however, gradually surmounted antipathies I once thought insurmountable. I am not the only one who has often retired from our disgusting repast, to my bunk or sleeping birth, in silent agony, there to breathe out to my Maker, woes too great for utterance. O, Britain! Britain! will there not be a day of retribution for ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... opportunities, enabling them to get mental snap-shots of picturesque events and to acquire valuable first-hand information for writing magazine articles or books, but that from a newspaper standpoint there would be insurmountable difficulties preventing them from getting their "news to market," that is to say, in getting their despatches on the wires for their respective papers. However, Mr. Herrick is doing everything he can to obtain all possible facilities for Mr. ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... of the criminal he is apt to transmit to his offspring a physical defect which will make it difficult for him to adapt himself to the conditions of the society in which he is placed. This difficulty becomes almost, though not quite, insurmountable when the environment is one in which the practice of vice and dishonesty is easier than ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... look about first, and settle things. He had promised to write as soon as there was anything definite to say, and had left her his address, and asked her to write also. But the address frightened her. It was in New York, at a club with a long name in Fifth Avenue: it seemed to raise an insurmountable barrier between them. Once or twice, in the first days, she got out a sheet of paper, and sat looking at it, and trying to think what to say; but she had the feeling that her letter would never reach its destination. She had never written to anyone ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... notable, great. insignia badge, insignia. insoportable insupportable. inspirar to inspire. instante m. instant. instintivo instinctive. instruir to instruct, educate. insultante insulting. insulto insult. insuperable insuperable, insurmountable. intenso intense. intento purpose, design; de —— on purpose. interes m. interest. interesante interesting. interior interior, internal. interlocutor m. speaker. interponer to interpose. interprete m. interpreter. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... exaggerated at night. It is so, I suppose, because our nerves are in an excited condition, and our brain not sufficiently awake to give a due account of our foolish imaginations. I have myself many times lain awake wrestling in thought with difficulties which in the hours of darkness seemed insurmountable, but with the dawn resolved themselves into merely trivial inconveniences. So on this night, as I sat up in bed looking into the dark, with the sound of that melody in my ears, it seemed as if something too terrible for words had happened; as ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... begging him for the sake of party unity, and for the sake of the country, to allow the Prime Minister to cancel the agreement of the day before; to accept a peerage and the War Office in lieu of the Exchequer and the leadership of the House. The Premier gave a full account of the insurmountable difficulties in the way of the completion of the Government, which had disclosed themselves during the course of the afternoon and evening following his interview with Ferrier. Refusals of the most unexpected kind, from the most unlikely quarters; letters and visits of protest from persons ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... steps, would of course be preferable to one which, starting from truths whose precision and certainty might be doubtful, advances by more or less probable inferences to a more or less probable conclusion, did there not exist some powerful cause for a contrary action. A difficulty thus far insurmountable has, indeed, stood in the way of the adoption of the Deductive Method in any department of investigation, save the one already referred to. This Method, we have seen, leads to truth or error accordingly as the Principles or Laws ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... barrack-yard was bounded on three sides by lofty buildings and on the fourth by a high wall, with gates in it, it is true, but gates which would be closed and locked at that hour of the night. The difficulties of escape by way of the front were great, and might very possibly prove insurmountable; I therefore determined to make my first attempt at ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... had been his love for his first wife but a poor, pitiful, smoldering spark, too dull to be extinguished, too feeble to burn? But this was love—this fever, this longing, this restless, uncertain, miserable hesitation; these cruel fears that his age was an insurmountable barrier to his happiness; this sick hatred of his white beard; this frenzied wish to be young again, with glistening raven hair, and a slim waist, such as he had twenty years before; these, wakeful nights and melancholy ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... elapsed since the abolition of the slave trade. But if it be true that the abolition of the slave trade has not produced all the effects, which the abolitionists anticipated or intended, it would appear to be their duty, unless insurmountable obstacles present themselves, to resume their labours: for though there may be upon the whole, as I have admitted, a somewhat better individual treatment of the slaves by their masters, arising out of an increased prudence in same, which has been occasioned by stopping ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... insurmountable detestation of my profession, I spent but a few days of the week in my parish. It was not that I was careless, and indifferent for the welfare of my parishioners; for, in spite of myself, I ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... United States, our cheap and fertile lands have acted as an important safety-valve for the enterprise and discontent of our non-capitalist population. Every hired workman knows that if he chooses to use economy and industry in his calling, he may without great or insurmountable difficulty establish himself in independence on the public lands; and, in fact, a large proportion of our most energetic and intelligent mechanics do constantly seek these lands, where with patient toil they master nature ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... over the heights of Switzerland into Germany with such consummate skill and undaunted energy as added fresh honors to his name. The dangers and difficulties of this memorable operation were such as would have been considered absolutely insurmountable by one less daring, and a commander less beloved could never have encouraged his troops to hold out against surrender. But they followed him in the midst of winter snows, through unknown and intricate ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... first visit to the print shop Corinna had felt a genuine liking for her. The girl had something deeper than charm, reflected the older woman; she had determination and endurance, the essentials of character. Of course she was crude, she was ignorant; but these are never insurmountable obstacles except to the dull. With intelligence and resourcefulness all things are possible—even the metamorphosis of a circus rider's daughter into a ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... in view, Madame de l'Enclos carefully trained her daughter in the holy exercises of her religion, to which she hoped to consecrate her entire life. But the fond mother met with an impasse, an insurmountable obstacle, in the budding Ninon herself, who, even in the temples of the Most High, when her parent imagined her to be absorbed in the contemplation of saintly things, and imbibing inspiration from her "Hours," the "Lives of the Saints," ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... therefore difficulties insurmountable, and such as I knew not what to do in. I had such strong impressions on my mind about discovering myself to my brother, formerly my husband, that I could not withstand them; and the rather, because ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... what terrified you! Well, you have hit upon one of the greatest difficulties of the trip; but it is far from insurmountable. We will not turn back yet, especially as we have started in the most opportune time. You have mentioned this 'little shadow.' It is eight thousand miles wide at the surface of the Earth, and gradually, very gradually, tapers down to nothing far out in space. Have ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... I am afraid that there are insurmountable obstacles, but if it were possible it would be checkmate to our friend the Emperor, and he would have nothing left but to climb down. The trouble is that in the absence of any definite proof of an understanding between Russia and Germany, France could not break ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... our opinions as to whether God, as we understand the term, talked to Moses, giving him such explicit commands as the great leader afterwards laid down to his people accompanied by the insurmountable barrier to dissent or discussion, "thus saith the Lord," we can but admit that the prophet was possessed of intellectual power far in advance of his time, and his laws did indeed, save his people from self destruction, through uncleanliness and strife, ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... and her husband's; to have a vivid experience of how they looked, spoke, and lived; to see them in spirit—in their morning good wishes, their noonday cares, their evening cheer, their nightly prayers? Was their union only apparent? were they severed by a dim, shapeless, insurmountable barrier, for ever together, yet ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... topic was worth his while to set to music. His dismay was accordingly all the greater when Pillet rejected our plot on the ground that the staging would be too difficult, and that the second act especially would entail insurmountable obstacles for the ballet, which had to be given each time. In place of this Dessauer wished me to compose him an oratorio on 'Mary Magdalene.' As on the day that he expressed this wish he appeared to be suffering from acute melancholia, so much so that he declared ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... of the remedy clearly, and urge it respectfully without pretending to find fault with the Judges; merely say that their interpretation of the laws of evidence laid down for their guidance, however conscientious, forms an insurmountable obstacle to the conviction of offenders by hereditary profession, whose system has been founded upon the experience of their ancestors in the most successful modes of defeating these laws, and the technicalities of ordinary ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... Incumbent as to the proper course to be adopted. In these matters a stitch in time often saves nine, and though we have now no compulsory Church-rate to fall back upon for Church expenses, yet in an harmoniously worked parish there really ought to be no insurmountable difficulty in raising the sum necessary for the due repairs of the Church and for the services of the Sanctuary. Offertories and subscriptions can be made to supplement one another, and if what is necessary in the way of repair is really honestly done year by year, it will ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry
... ghost—at all events, very wild and seedy—for he asked me, more seriously than usual, how I was; and I think I would have told him the story of my adventure, despite the secret ridicule with which, I fancied, he would receive it, had it not been for a certain insurmountable disgust and horror which held ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... in vain." From the time when the first Spanish navigators extended their explorations into every bay and inlet of the Central American isthmus, to discover, if possible, a short route to the Indies, or "from Cadiz to Cathay," the human mind has not been willing to rest content and accept as insurmountable the natural obstacles on the Isthmus which prevent uninterrupted communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Excepting, possibly, Arctic explorations, in all the romantic history of ancient and modern commerce, in all the annals of ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... though small, was influential. Still worse for us, he had in his district the State Agricultural College, which the founding of Cornell University must necessarily wipe out of existence. He might rise above the first of these difficulties, but the second seemed insurmountable. No matter how much in sympathy with our main aim, he could not sacrifice a possession so dear to his constituency as the State College of Agriculture. He felt that he had no right to do so; he knew also that to do so would be to sacrifice ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... altitude towards the centre of the country and becomes merely a line of low hills, connecting Gebel Ansarieh with the Lebanon proper; beyond the latter it continues without interruption, till at length, above the narrow Phoenician coast road, it rises in the form of an almost insurmountable wall. Near to the termination of Coele-Syria, but separated from it by a range of hills, there opens out on the western slopes of Hermon a valley unlike any other in the world. At this point the surface of the earth has been rent ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... it daily growing larger through the accumulation of interest, and gives up in despair. The desire to be free from debt spurs many a man into effort. But make the difficulties in his way so large as to appear insurmountable, and he will fold his hands in helpless inactivity. Thousands of dollars are lost every year in consequence of creditors grasping after too much, and breaking down the hope and ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur
... a possibility of hope that there would be relief after the ordeal, was new to Rachel; and it soon gave way to that trying feature of illness, the insurmountable dread of the mere physical fatigue. The Dean of Avoncester, a kind old friend of Mrs. Curtis, had insisted on the mother and daughters coming to sleep at the Deanery, on the Tuesday night, and remaining ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... penetrated, like those of the Gallura, are principally virgin forests; the want of roads, of navigable rivers, and even of flottage, presenting formidable obstacles to the conveyance of the timber to the seaboard for exportation, though the first is not insurmountable. The forests of the Marghine and Goceano ranges round Macomer, having the little port of Boso on the western coast for an outlet, are felled to some extent. The contracts are mostly in the hands of foreigners, who obtain them on such low terms that their profits ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... in England is to organise the very individualistic British race without letting them imagine that they are being organised. This sounds like the problem about the irresistible force up against the insurmountable obstacle. But seriously if you have followed my train of thought you will agree with me that what is wanted is to frame a system of military service and national organisation which yet conforms to the national predilection in favour of laissez-faire. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... needful rules and regulations in relation to any personal or movable property it might acquire there. For the words, other property necessarily, by every known rule of interpretation, must mean property of a different description from territory or land. And the difficulty would perhaps be insurmountable in endeavoring to account for the last member of the sentence, which provides that "nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States or any particular State," or to say how any particular State ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... are likely to attend the completing our Continental regiments, the more anxiously is my mind bent upon the scheme, which I lately communicated to you. The obstacles to the execution of it had presented themselves to me, but by no means appeared insurmountable. I was aware of having that monstrous popular prejudice, open-mouthed against me, of undertaking to transform beings almost irrational, into well disciplined soldiers, of being obliged to combat the arguments, and perhaps the intrigues, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... hourly-increasing remorse at having concealed my proceedings from my mother. I imagined that, had I treated her from the first with the confidence due to her, I should have avoided all my present difficulties. Now the obstacles to confidence appeared insurmountable, and my only consolation was, that by inflexible resolution I might shun any new cause ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... bogus Bunny you will know,'" I read, spreading the message out before me. "That is to say, she believes that if I am really myself I can surmount the insurmountable. Gad! I'll do it." And I set off hot-foot up Fifth Avenue, hoping to discover, or by cogitation in the balmy air of the spring-time afternoon, to conceive of some plan to relieve my necessities. But, somehow ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... retreat was discovered! He stood at the foot of the brick precipice, and stared up with helpless eyes and failing strength. Baby was inside, hungry, and with no better nurse than ill conditioned Tommy; her milk was in his pocket, Tommy's bread in his hand, the insurmountable wall between him and them! He had the daylight now, however, and there was hardly any one about: perhaps he could find another entrance! Round the outside of the wall, therefore, like the Midianite ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... than a year before, but the memory of that meeting remained with him. At the back of all his plans for the future was the thought of her, and although he did not know it, he had made up his mind to win her as his wife. The difficulties seemed almost insurmountable. She belonged to a class far removed from his own, and he knew by the look on her face that she regarded him with anger, if not with contempt. To her he was an agitator of the worst kind, one who had broken the laws of his country, and had outraged the feelings of her ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... Mackenzie's river, under any circumstances, was extremely hazardous to navigate; but under the difficulties which Captain Franklin experienced, further perseverance on his part would have been unpardonable rashness. The whole party being of opinion that the obstructions were insurmountable, were compelled to return, in the conviction, however, that the navigation of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 278, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... fishes delivers me also from the fear that a too great ardor might cause you irreparable losses. You have shown not only what a talent like yours can accomplish, but also how a noble courage can triumph over seemingly insurmountable obstacles. ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... hard work, approaching to climbing, for the heavily-armed foot soldiers, difficult for the cavalry—whose horses needed the sure-footedness of mules to get along, their riders having to dismount and lead their steeds—while for the little train of chariots the difficulties were almost insurmountable. The pony-like pairs that drew them were safer footed and got on better than the heavier animals that bore the Roman mounted men, but the chariots were always in need of help. Sometimes one wheel would be high in the air, sometimes the other, ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... consideration—for 'Iceland,' to Londoners, seems much the same in point of compass as the moon! And there really is some similarity in the volcanic surface of both. Here, however, the similarity ends, for while the luminary is indeed inaccessible, the island can easily be reached without any very insurmountable difficulty. ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... of the stairs she hesitated—not knowing what to do. Her horror of entering Geoffrey's room, by herself, was insurmountable. But who else was to do it? The girl had gone to bed. The reason which Julius had given for not employing the assistance of Hester Dethridge was unanswerable. She listened again at Geoffrey's door. No sound was now audible in the ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... a steep trail leading over the Monterey Coast Range. Concho was very tired, Concho was very dusty, Concho was very much disgusted. To Concho's mind there was but one relief for these insurmountable difficulties, and that lay in a leathern bottle slung over the machillas of his saddle. Concho raised the bottle to his lips, took a long draught, made ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... adjourn. The clerk said that he could put no question, not even of adjournment, till the House should be formed. But there was a general cry to adjourn, and the clerk declared the House adjourned. Mr. Adams went home and wrote in his Diary that (p. 292) the clerk's "two decisions form together an insurmountable objection to the transaction of any business, and an impossibility of organizing the House.... The most curious part of the case is, that his own election as clerk depends upon the exclusion of the New Jersey members." ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... of the decision of the House of Commons upon Mr. Wilkes's election for Middlesex[380], and of the unconstitutional taxation of our fellow-subjects in America[381], must have been a powerful advocate in any cause. But here, also, the want of a degree was an insurmountable bar. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... might be carried at least twenty miles to the westward, and every foot of the ground apparently as good as that on which they were now at work; but we found here, that although the land was tolerable, there would be great, and I think an insurmountable difficulty, in attempting an extensive farm, chiefly for ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... knew how the thing was accomplished—indeed, he had rather opposed it, believing the mere physical impediments to his ward's overlooking his own affairs were insurmountable; but Lord Cairnforth contrived in the course of a day or two to initiate himself very fairly in all the business attendant upon the "term;" to find out the exact extent and divisions of his property, and to whom ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... on that basis," said Kate, "just one more question and we'll proceed with our drive. From the same standpoint: would you say from your observation and experience that the mother of the man had any insurmountable objection to the proceedings?" ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... that a born coward's make and temperament would be an absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from the brethren of the apparently insurmountable obstacles with which they had to struggle in attempting the conversion of the heathen, gave occasion to the venerable Bishop Spangenberg to write an impressive letter to the believing Esquimaux. This letter was translated into their language, and read to ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... everything that is ungenteel he gives a proof, when he refuses, though on the brink of starvation, to become bonnet to the thimble-man, an office, which, though profitable, is positively ungenteel. Ah! but some sticker-up for gentility will exclaim, "The hero did not refuse this office from an insurmountable dislike to its ungentility, but merely from a feeling of principle." Well! the writer is not fond of argument, and he will admit that such was the case; he admits that it was a love of principle, rather than an over-regard ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... thoughts, emotions—through which we pass when we are reading as poetically as we can. Of course this imaginative experience—if I may use the phrase for brevity—differs with every reader and every time of reading: a poem exists in innumerable degrees. But that insurmountable fact lies in the nature of things and does ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... forgetting the master's lash he would suspend his walk and stop to breathe in that song, impregnated with all the secret homesickness of the soul, which made him think of his far distant country, of his lost love, and of the insurmountable obstacles of fate. Whence came that song, that sigh softly breathed in the silence of the city? What restless soul was awake when all around ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... some marks of disgust, at our people, and at last went away altogether, expressing by signs that they suspected the strangers of eating human flesh. Our officer endeavoured to free himself and his shipmates from this suspicion; but the want of language was an insurmountable obstacle to his undertaking, even supposing it possible to persuade a set of people, who had never seen a ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... annexed to skill and virtue; but these, for the most part, were the incoherences of speculation, and in no degree influenced the stream of my actions and practical sentiments. The barrier that existed in the present case I deemed insurmountable. This was not even the subject of doubt. In disclosing the truth, I should be conceived to be soliciting my lady's mercy and intercession; but this would be the madness of presumption. Let me impress her with any other opinion ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... deck, unless in use for stowage purposes, as previously suggested. Captain Collins very interestingly notes in a letter to the author, concerning the measurements indicated by his model: "Here we meet with a difficulty, even if it is not insurmountable. This is found in the discrepancy which exists between the dimensions—length, breadth, and depth—requisite to produce a certain tonnage, as given by Admiral Paris and the British Admiralty. Whether this is due to a difference ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... regarded as of a more or less speculative character, I think everyone will be prepared to admit. Darwin had to contend with the same difficulty in writing the Origin of Species. To have included the question of the origin of mankind prominently in that work would have raised an almost insurmountable barrier to its reception. He says in his autobiography, 'I thought it best, in order that no honourable man should accuse me of concealing my views, to add that by the work "light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history." It would have been useless and ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... steadfastly refused to look at him, her memory kept losing its hold on the appalling fact facing them. She realised fully only that she was in a great, unwarrantable, and insurmountable difficulty, but until she actually lifted her eyes for a moment she had not fully realised what that difficulty was. She got up with a sudden and horrible nausea. 'One moment,' she said, 'I will see if the servants have ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... will suffice," Gorham responded, as if expecting to receive Kenmore's permission. "You will remember, perhaps, the apparently insurmountable complications which arose over the placing of the recent loan of fifty million dollars to the Chinese government, for their currency reforms and other necessary improvements. As soon as the Consolidated Companies ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... were necessarily left behind, having previously conducted themselves with great propriety and courage, I think it but justice to express my belief that the same difficulties which had nearly proved fatal to Captain Cobb's personal escape were probably found to be insurmountable by landsmen, whose coolness, unaccompanied with dexterity and experience, might not be available to them in ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor
... striven hard to mitigate the evils resulting from the commerce with the whites in general. Such attempts, however, have been rather injudicious, and often ineffectual: in truth, a barrier almost insurmountable is presented in the dispositions of the people themselves. Still, in this respect, the morality of the islanders is, upon the whole, improved by the presence of ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... only her love was like her blood, he might have had no scruples; or if her blood were as pure as her love—even then it would be easier; but, as it was, he must give her up to-night, and for all time. Her love had placed a barrier between them greater and more insurmountable than her blood. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... and now she felt the annoyance of a rather wearied swimmer who, on nearing shore, to land, finds a smooth straight wall of rock when he had counted upon a clean firm beach. Her power, in the American air, seemed to have lost its prehensile attributes; the smooth wall of rock was insurmountable. "Surely je n'en suis pas la," she said to herself, "that I let it make me uncomfortable that a Mr. Robert Acton should n't honor me with a visit!" Yet she was vexed that he had not come; and she was ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... noble conception,—that of making a treaty between this magnificent Indian confederacy and New England for the purpose of introducing civilization and religion; and for a moment he lost sight of the insurmountable obstacles in the way. ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... This, however, proved an insurmountable obstacle; for the countess, hearing rumours of the pleasures which were enjoyed at my Lord Bristol's table, insisted on attending the king thither, and soon gave his gracious majesty an intimation he dared not disregard—that ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... of relief dawned upon Mrs. Stuart's countenance, for the black cook had been an insurmountable obstacle to all the Irish ladies who had applied. Thoughtfully tapping her Roman nose with the handle of her brush Madame took another survey of the new applicant, and seeing that she looked neat, intelligent, and respectful, ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... those barracks where they expect to make soldiers in dormitories," said the veteran, whose aversion for officers trained in that nursery was insurmountable. "To what ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... they got to their feet and pelted back down the strand. However, the guards were of sterner stuff. They were withdrawing all right, but slowly backing away, their swords held up before them as men might retreat before insurmountable odds. ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... part of the advocates for the perfectibility of mankind is not easily accounted for. I cannot doubt the talents of such men as Godwin and Condorcet. I am unwilling to doubt their candour. To my understanding, and probably to that of most others, the difficulty appears insurmountable. Yet these men of acknowledged ability and penetration scarcely deign to notice it, and hold on their course in such speculations with unabated ardour and undiminished confidence. I have certainly no right to say that they purposely shut ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... these Leudes that he did not ask them for money. His wife, the much-feared Fredegonde, did not, however, exempt them more than Brunehaut had done; and her judges or ministers, Audon and Mummius, having met with an insurmountable resistance in endeavouring to force taxation on the nobles, nearly ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... done already I knew that Viola would forgive, even though it grieved and distressed her. If I went further I did not know that she would ever forgive, and that made an insurmountable barrier that nothing Veronica could do or say could ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... selecting him to be the Catholic King than for selecting the Margrave of Baden or the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Something was said about Victor Amadeus of Savoy, and something about the King of Portugal; but to both there were insurmountable objections. It seemed, therefore, that the only choice was between a French Prince and an Austrian Prince; and William learned, with agreeable surprise, that Lewis might possibly be induced to suffer the younger ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the united colonies, perceiving the necessity of accommodating internal differences, now took a decided part in favour of the proposed incorporation. The most intelligent inhabitants of New Haven became converts to the same opinion; but the prejudices imbibed by the mass of the people being still insurmountable, a vote in favour of the union ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... this shock could be avoided, and if we could reach the object of an exclusive metallic circulation, we should find in that very success serious and insurmountable inconveniences. We require neither irredeemable paper, nor yet exclusively hard money. We require a mixed system. We require specie, and we require, too, good bank paper, founded on specie, representing specie, and convertible into specie ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... important mining village of Daiquiri, which, before the war, was the shipping-port of the Spanish-American Iron Company. There is no harbor, shelter for vessels, or safe anchorage at any of these places; but as the rampart, everywhere else, presents an almost insurmountable barrier, an invading force must either disembark in these notches, or go eastward to the Bay of Guantanamo and march forty miles to Santiago through the foot-hills. General Shafter, after inspecting the coast, decided to land in the notches occupied by the villages ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... During these months what was to become of me? My Father could not take me with him from hotel to hotel and from lecture-hall to lecture-hall. Nor could he leave me, as people leave the domestic cat, in an empty house for the neighbours to feed at intervals. The dilemma threatened to be insurmountable, when suddenly there descended upon us a kind, but little-known, paternal cousin from the west of England, who had heard of our calamities. This lady had a large family of her own at Bristol; she offered to find room in it for me so long as ever my Father should ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... night in great uneasiness. All day the weather had threatened to turn to rain, and we have already said how rapidly the Taro could swell; the river, fordable to-day, might from tomorrow onwards prove an insurmountable obstacle; and possibly the delay had only been asked for with a view to putting the French army in a worse position. As a fact the night had scarcely come when a terrible storm arose, and so long as darkness lasted, great ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the whole cost, amounting to $105,000. The road, too, owing to unexpected difficulties in construction, was dreading bankruptcy, from which it was saved by Mr. Cooper's ingenuity in devising a locomotive that enabled the company to overcome certain difficulties that had been thought insurmountable. Failing in the end to sell his land as he had hoped, Mr. Cooper decided to utilize the timber growing on it in the manufacture of charcoal iron. When he had, after many difficulties, established his works, he sold out to some Boston ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... upon which he stood was the last of the ridges, for the elevation that lay directly across was a noble range of foothills, timbered, canyoned, apparently insurmountable for horses. Gray cliffs stood out of the green, crags of yellow rock ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... lost in this "playing themselves with fish," as Stanley expressed it, and it behoved them to embark as speedily as possible. About a mile above the pool which had nearly proved fatal to La Roche was the head of a series of insurmountable rapids, which extended all the way down to the waterfall. Beyond this was a pretty long reach of calm water, up which they proceeded easily; but as they advanced the current became so strong that no headway ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... purely physical limitations; whose eye shall be able to pierce the most impenetrable of veils; to whom nothing in the way of obtaining information as to the doings of such specimens of mankind as he has selected for his pages is an insurmountable obstacle. ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... forget the adventure, probably because I thought, rightly or wrongly, that I had put an insurmountable barrier between the nun and myself, when, ten days after I had sent my letter, as I was coming out of the opera, I met my messenger, lantern in hand. I called him, and without taking off my mask I asked him whether he knew me. He looked at me, eyed me from head to foot, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... law rests on considerations which can not here be fully explained. They are considerations, however, which arise from causes inherent in the very nature of man as a social being, and which are of universal, perpetual, and insurmountable force. To guard his creatures against the deplorable consequences, both physical and moral, which result from the practice of such marriages, the great Author of Nature has implanted in every mind an instinctive ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... was to become a Dream Garden, but it was only after six years of incessant effort, with obstacles and interventions almost insurmountable, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... This argument proved insurmountable, and while Ben was left by the ivory Harry and Frank hurried down the steeps to the plateau on which they had left the Golden Eagle II. It was the work of a few minutes to tune her up. In a brief time from the moment they had left the ivory cache, considering the clamber they had had, the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the Master's degree, which it was intended should be in imitation of the greater Mysteries; and in it were to be unfolded, explained, and enforced the great doctrines of the unity of God and the immortality of the soul. But here there must have at once arisen an apparently insurmountable obstacle to the further continuation of the resemblance of Masonry to the Mysteries of Dionysus. In the pagan Mysteries, I have already said that these lessons were allegorically taught by means of a legend. Now, in ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... on the unfortunate hunter, racking his body and adding physical torture to his mental anguish. Still he struggled to overcome the insurmountable obstacles in his way. But, while a firm resolve may do many things there is also a limit to all things, and there came a day when Oomah could go no further. He had already wandered far from the country so well known to him. Around him grew castanha ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... dear to me and weighty and whom I herewith offer my renewed gratitude. Not very many copies of the limited edition were sold; my friend had a good share of them in his custody, and I remember that one evening when our domestic arrangements heaped up for us insurmountable difficulties, this pile of printed matter was fortunately disposed of as waste paper to a huckster. During the days immediately following we lacked none of the prime ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen |
