"Plausibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hull, her rigging filled my eye with a great content. That feeling of life-emptiness which had made me so restless for the last few months lost its bitter plausibility, its evil influence, dissolved in a flow ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... and inconsistencies. The witty and wicked Sir Roger L'Estrange compiled from the irreconcilable portions of his works a laughable Dialogue between Richard and Baxter. The Antinomians found him guilty of Socinianism; and one noted controversialist undertook to show, not without some degree of plausibility, that he was by turns a ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of extension as one of the two infinite divine attributes cognizable by us has, with a certain amount of plausibility, been urged as a note of materialism. And this reproach has been supported by reference to his insistence that in man the body and the soul are only two different aspects of the same thing; for to him the body ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... of the serpent into the fountain, which is neither averred nor denied, like a devil cast out as in old times, is puerile; but Hawthorne was, in other tales, not averse to a naturalistic explanation of his mysteries, as if a basis of matter of fact, however irrelevant essentially, gave more plausibility to their truth. If the snake is "egotism," if it is the torture of self in a man, if its cure is the loss of self in love, then making the snake real and physical is absurdity; medicine and morals are confounded; ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... intellect? He may be absolutely honest and quite unconscious that his conclusions were prearranged by his sympathies. No philosophic creed of any importance has ever been constructed, we may well believe, without such sincerity and without such plausibility as results from its correspondence to at least some aspects of the truth. But the result is sufficiently shown by the perplexed controversies which arise. Men agree in their conclusions, though starting from opposite premises; or from the same premises reach the most diverging conclusions. The ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... her cleverness might have saved her, had she been of one of those "good families" whom fashionables the world over recognize, regardless of their wealth or poverty, because recognition of them gives an elegant plausibility to the pretense that Mammon is not the supreme god in the Olympus of aristocracy. But—who were the Rangers? They might be "all right" in Saint X, but where was Saint X? Certainly, not on any map in the ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... which is easy when she is well, becomes difficult or even impossible when she is ill. Her health has been good since her last operation, the syncopes are easy, and the communications obtained in this state have acquired a degree of coherence and plausibility which was previously wanting. ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... plausibility of this opinion of M. Mariotte, and the number of celebrated men who joined him in it, I must confess, that none of their arguments, though very ingenious, have been able to make me ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... floating and rather indefinite one. It has some plausibility but there is nothing which to my mind can be dignified by the name of proof. The facts of the Turner case will be found in a Report by Mr. (afterwards Chief) Justice Powell to Sir Peregrine Maitland's Secretary Edward McMahon, November 1, 1819, Canadian Archives, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... not in minute accuracy of execution, this may rank with the best in Europe. We can trace the beginnings of this lighter and most graceful work as early as the thirties, and it might be contended with a certain plausibility that it began at the Universities. Certainly the two earliest examples known to me—the copy of her Statutes presented to Charles I. by Oxford in 1634, and the Little Gidding Harmony of 1635, the tools employed in which ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... at least with much more plausibility, the noble Lord and several other members on the other side of the House have argued against the proposed Reform on the ground that the existing system has worked well. How great a country, they say, is ours! How eminent in wealth and knowledge, in arts and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ensued? Had the veto been equivocal, or had it not covered the whole ground; if it had merely taken exceptions to the details of the bill or to the time of its passage; if it had not met the whole ground of constitutionality and expediency, then there might have been some plausibility for the allegation that the question was not decided by the people. It was to compel the President to take his stand that the question was brought forward at that particular time. He met the challenge, willingly took the position into ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... men untimely slain. Had Sophocles been cut off in his prime, before the composition of "Oedipus"; had Handel never merged the fame of his forgotten operas in the immortal music of his oratorios; had Milton been known only by the poems of his youth, we might with equal plausibility have laid that flattering unction to our heart. And yet how shallow would have been our optimism, how fallacious our attempt at consolation. There is no denying the fact that when a young Marcellus is shown by fate for one brief moment, and withdrawn before his springtime ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... failure." We must suppose that Mr. Rushbrooke did not literally mean what he said. His words imply a theory of the war more monstrous even than that of Archbishop Carr. To punish Europe for the sins of unbelievers has at least a genuine medieval plausibility about it; but to send this indescribable plague on the nations of Europe because the clergy failed to do their duty.... One must really assume that Mr. Rushbrooke did not mean what he said, and leave the sentence ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... was a maxim of Howard's, that no admiral was good for any thing that was not brave even to a degree of madness. As the sea service requires much less plan and contrivance, and capacity, than the land, this maxim has great plausibility and appearance of truth; though the fate of Howard himself may serve as a proof, that even there courage ought ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... when the congregation can sing. This congregation could not sing, but it could grind the Psalms of David powerfully. They sing nothing else but the old Scotch version of the Psalms, in a patient and faithful long meter. And this is regarded, and with considerable plausibility, as an act of worship. It certainly has small element of pleasure in it. Here is a stanza from Psalm xlv., which the congregation, without any instrumental nonsense, went through in a dragging, drawling manner, and with perfect individual ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... stuck a knife in me? I must admit there is a nasty air of plausibility about your sketch." The detective mused a moment. "There's one consolation if it's true; it's mighty complimentary—almost flattering—to ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... Campbells, the children of Diarmid, had become in the Highlands what the Bourbons had become in Europe. The parallel might be carried far. Imputations similar to those which it was the fashion to throw on the French government were thrown on the Campbells. A peculiar dexterity, a peculiar plausibility of address, a peculiar contempt for all the obligations of good faith, were ascribed, with or without reason, to the dreaded race. "Fair and false like a Campbell" became a proverb. It was said that Mac Callum More ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that it must be dated, not, as the Bishop of Durham argues, about A.D. 154, but in A.D. 161. Neither is there any evidence whatever that Polycarp was put to death immediately after his return to Smyrna. This supposition is absolutely necessary to give even an appearance of plausibility to the bishop's chronology; but he has not been able to furnish so much as a solitary ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... Mr. DENNIS EADIE's Disraeli for a good deal. Where it was at all possible—which it was in general; Mr. PARKER only sprinkled his extravagances—the ease and plausibility of it were quite admirable. This adroit player gave us the tact, the wit, the gallantry, the generosity, the romantic exuberance. It was a fine performance, and it will be finer as its firm outline is filled in. The play, for all its vagaries, may even serve to remind a careless age of its too ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... between them of a word. He hadn't, God knew, to take it from her—he was too conscious of what he wanted; but the lesson for him was in the straight clear tone that Charlotte could thus distil, in the perfect felicity of her adding no explanation, no touch for plausibility, that she wasn't strictly obliged to add, and in the truly superior way in which women, so situated, express and distinguish themselves. She had answered Mrs. Assingham quite adequately; she had not spoiled it by a ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... discredit what is pure and good in their work. More particularly, it would be a great pity to let our minds dwell on the favourite materialistic theory that saintliness, especially as cultivated and venerated by Catholicism, has its basis in "perverted sexuality." There is enough plausibility in the theory to make it mischievous. The allegorical interpretation of the Book of Canticles was in truth the source of, or at least the model for, a vast amount of unwholesome and repulsive pietism. Not a word need be said for such a paltry ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... has never seen; which exists not upon the least shadow of evidence—which has not even the lowest dictates of sense and plausibility in its favour—on this Ignis fatuus, eluding the grasp, and for ever mocking the folly of its pursuers, thou canst build thine hopes, because it flatters thy wishes and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... fantastic story is that it lacks artistic measure and objective plausibility. Immermann, omnivorous reader that he was, wrote this part of his book, not from life, but from other books. And even granting that he carried out his plan with a reasonable degree of cleverness, the average reader is not sufficiently acquainted with Kerner and Platen and their long line ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... windings of his reasoning upon this subject, which (in truth) seem such incoherent shreds, that it is impossible to tie them together; and therefore, what I purpose is, to answer such objections to the Test, as are advanced either by this author, or any other which have any appearance of reason, or plausibility. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... entirely unaccustomed. "Robinson Crusoe" is a gospel to the world, and yet it is the most palpably and innocently impossible of books. It is so plausible because the author has ingeniously or accidentally set aside the usual earmarks of plausibility. When an author plainly and easily knows what the reader does not know and enough more to continue the chain of seeming reality of truth a little further, he convinces the reader of his truth and ability. Those men, therefore, who have been endowed with the genius almost unconsciously to absorb, ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... daughters had now no one to look after them; Junior must be started right at learning the business of which he would soon be the head, as his uncle had shown himself far too easy-going for large executive responsibility. So, I stayed on, doing just enough to keep a face of plausibility upon my pretexts for not returning to Washington. The fact was that Carlotta's death had deepened my mood of distaste into disgust. It had set me to brooding over the futility and pettiness of my activities in politics, of all activities ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... obtained importance not only from its own plausibility, but because it was introduced under favourable auspices and at a favourable time. It came into Asia Minor as a portion of the wisdom of Egypt, and therefore with a prestige sufficient to assure for it an attentive reception. But this would have been of little avail had not the mental ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... which had sailed to Markland, and there were eighteen men on board." As Mr. Reeves well observes: "The nature of the information indicates that the knowledge of the discovery had not altogether faded from the memories of the Icelanders settled in Greenland. It seems further to lend a measure of plausibility to a theory that people from the Greenland colony may from time to time have visited the coast to the southwest of their home for supplies of wood, or for some kindred purpose. The visitors in this case had evidently ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... the two Arabic words Ma and Sar; i.e. Mother of Walls. Possibly some Arabic professor versed in bibliographic lore, to favor a darling hypothesis, has transmuted Massar into Misr, to strengthen the plausibility of the etymology of ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... necessary to mention Goettling's derivation from IEMI to ODOS (which would make 'Hesiod' mean the 'guide' in virtues and technical arts), and to refer to the pitiful attempts in the "Etymologicum Magnum" (s.v. {H}ESIODUS), to show how prejudiced and lacking even in plausibility such efforts are. It seems certain that 'Hesiod' stands as a proper name in the fullest sense. Secondly, Hesiod claims that his father—if not he himself—came from Aeolis and settled in Boeotia. There is fairly definite evidence to warrant our acceptance of this: the dialect of the "Works and ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... Heredith as a woman of exceptionally good type. He had to admit to himself that her graciousness and dignity were not the qualities usually associated with a murderer. Religion, hypocrisy, smugness, plausibility; these were the commonest counterfeit qualities of criminals; not dignity, worth, ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... could reach this ravine, and even then we might save ourselves by climbing up on the rocks, and abandoning our horses to their fate. It would be no worse for them than starving and freezing to death in the mountains. Divested of its verbal plausibility, his plan was nothing more nor less than a grand thirty-mile race with a high tide along a narrow beach, from which all escape was cut off by precipitous cliffs one and two hundred feet in height. If we reached ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... yet it seems only by these that the kingdom of Ulysses, or any other, can be identified, as, if such an idea be admitted, every small and rocky island in the Ionian Sea, containing a good port, might, with equal plausibility, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... Italy and Spain; nor had it been forced into channels which led nowhither, as in France and southern Germany; nor were men who might otherwise have pursued it dazzled and drawn away from it by the multitude of splendid prizes for plausibility, for sophistry, or for silence displayed before the ecclesiastical vision in England. In the frugal homes of North German and Dutch professors and pastors high thinking on these great subjects went steadily on, and the "liberty of teaching," which is the glory of the northern Continental ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... can account for them, unless by impugning the veracity of the records. And then we are back again on the old abandoned ground of deceit and imposture. It sounds plausible to say, Hallucination is a proved cause of many a supposed supernatural event—why not of this? But the plausibility of the solution ceases as soon as you try it on the actual facts in their variety and completeness. It has to be eked out with a length of the fox's skin of deceit before it covers them; and we may confidently ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... philosophy founded on the hypothesis of a state of nature has fallen low in general esteem, in so far as it is looked upon under its coarser and more palpable aspect, it does not follow that in its subtler disguises it has lost plausibility, popularity, or power. I believe, as I have said, that it is still the great antagonist of the Historical Method; and whenever (religious objections apart) any mind is seen to resist or contemn that mode of investigation, it will generally be found under the influence of a prejudice or vicious bias ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... and she made a little pause, as if to gather plausibility. "The Grand Union was very full, and he thought that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... astonishment. Wherever people met, The Case of Summerfield was on men's tongues. Was Caxton's contention possible? Was it true that, by the use of potassium, water could be set on fire, and that any one possessing this baneful secret could destroy the world? The plausibility with which the idea was presented, the bare directness of the style, added to its convincing power. It sounded too real to be invention, was told with too frank a simplicity to be all imagination. People could not decide where ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... himself up to his full height and uttered these strange words with a sad majesty that was very imposing. But General Rolleston, steeled by experience of convicts, their plausibility and their histrionic powers, was staggered only for a moment. He deigned no reply; but told Helen that Captain Moreland was waiting for her, and she had better go ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... charming; chatting with what seemed absolute frankness about her future life in the cottages, answering little questionings of Lady Shuttleworth's with a discretion and plausibility that would have warmed Fritzing's anxious heart, dwelling most, for here the ground was safest, on her uncle, his work, his gifts and character, and Lady Shuttleworth, completely fascinated, had offered her ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... been standing over him and had just left the room, escaping by way of the khansamah's quarters. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and went out to remonstrate vigorously with the khansamah. The latter naturally professed complete ignorance of the visitation and dwelt with such insistence upon the plausibility of dreams that Amber lost patience and kicked him grievously, so that he complained with a loud voice and cast himself at the sahib's feet, declaring that he was but as the dust beneath them and that Amber was his father and mother and the light of the Universe besides. In short, he raised ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... this day the same book is in great estimation among the learned in the oriental nations, and by the Indians, who cultivate this art, it is called aljabra and alboret; though the name of the author himself is not known.,' The uncertain authority of these statements, and the plausibility of the preceding explanation, have caused philologists to accept the derivation from al and jabara. Robert Recorde in his Whetstone of Witte (1557) uses the variant algeber, while John Dee (1527-1608) affirms that algiebar, and not algebra, is the correct ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... further experiment. Indeed he went further, and characterized the Baron as the most intolerable formal pedant he had ever had the misfortune to meet with, and the Chief of Glennaquoich as a Frenchified Scotchman, possessing all the cunning and plausibility of the nation where he was educated, with the proud, vindictive, and turbulent humour of that of his birth. 'If the devil,' he said, 'had sought out an agent expressly for the purpose of embroiling this miserable country, I do not ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... finished this Paper, the printer sent me two small pamphlets, called "The Management of the War,"[9] written with some plausibility, much artifice, and abundance of misrepresentation, as well as direct falsehoods in point of fact. These I have thought worth Examining, which I shall accordingly do when I ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... doleful chants, by unwedded maids. Youths and maidens dedicated locks of their hair in his temple before marriage. His grave existed at Troezen, though the people would not show it. It has been suggested, with great plausibility, that in the handsome Hippolytus, beloved of Artemis, cut off in his youthful prime, and yearly mourned by damsels, we have one of those mortal lovers of a goddess who appear so often in ancient religion, and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... And when these last are hastily sought after, not from any devotion to scientific truth, or any genuine love of it, but for some purpose of controversy, we may receive it as a sure and certain fact that they will not be found. Some mere plausibility will be produced instead, bearing on its front an obviousness favorable mayhap to its reception for the time by the vulgar, but in reality fatal to its claims in the estimate of all deep thinkers; while truth will meanwhile lie concealed ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... that he was a miller of Landreslaw, called Rebok, and that he was a creature of the Duke of Saxony, who coveted the Brandenburgian possessions, and who, being a relative of the family, had thoroughly instructed him as to the private life of Voldemar. His plausibility, and the accuracy of his answers, however, led many persons of influence to believe that he was no counterfeit. The Emperor Charles IV. (of Bohemia), the Primate of Germany, the Princes of Anhalt, and the Dukes of Brunswick, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, and Saxony, all ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... nervous irritations, since his constitution was strong and excellent(!), but as a source of luxurious sensations," we must receive anything which he has to say on this particular point with the utmost caution; but there is only too much plausibility in his statement that, Coleridge being necessarily thrown, while at Malta, "a good deal upon his own resources in the narrow society of a garrison, he there confirmed and cherished ... his habit of taking opium in large quantities." Contrary to his expectations, moreover, ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... plausibility the threatened young women interpreted this as an expulsion, and declined to remove their boxes and personal belongings. Miss Babs Wheeler thereupon entered the Bloomsbury Hostel, and in the teeth of three express prohibitions from ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... repeating, that the cruelty of the daughters is an historical fact, to which the poet has added little, having only drawn it into a series by dialogue and action. But I am not able to apologise with equal plausibility for the extrusion of Gloucester's eyes, which seems an act too horrid to be endured in dramatick exhibition, and such as must always compel the mind to relieve its distress by incredulity. Yet let it be remembered that our authour ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... from hypotheses not to be tested by any known logical canon familiar to science, whether the hypothesis claims support from intuition, aspiration or general plausibility. And, again, this method turns aside from ideal standards which avow themselves to be lawless, which profess to transcend the field of law. We say, life and conduct shall stand for us wholly on a basis of law, and must rest entirely in that region of science ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... There it was again—the same, familiar, disarming plausibility of Martin's, the old trick of making her seem to be the one in ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... this artifice will no' deceive the enemy, who, by means that would be unintelligible, did not our suspicions rest on an unhappy young man with too much plausibility, are familiar with all our doings and plans, and well know that the sun will not set before the worthy Sergeant and his companions will be in their power. Aweel! Submission to Providence is ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... was particularly admirable on Monday last in the house of Signor Frederico Ghisilieri; and what especially pleased me was, that before replying to the contrary arguments, he amplified and enforced them with new grounds of great plausibility, so as to leave his adversaries in a more ridiculous plight, when he afterwards ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... as Jamie was, Black Jock's plausibility appealed to him, and he began to think that Walker perhaps was not so bad as he was made to appear. Again, Jamie knew that Rundell was a man of hasty temper and impulsive judgments, and could not brook trouble, and he began to think that ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... of the Spanish theory have contented themselves with stating that Lyly borrowed from Guevara, and pointing out the parallels between the two writers. But it is possible to give their case a greater plausibility, by showing that Guevara was no isolated instance of such Spanish influence, and by proving that during the Tudor period there was a consistent and far-reaching interest in Spanish literature among a certain class of Englishmen. Intimacy with Spain dates from Henry ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... he could once have set in motion, and as it were to gather his strength for a mighty tussle with the king of terrors, when his pale fingers should tap at his cell door. I have seen two of his letters, written with consummate plausibility and adroitness, and which have given me altogether a very high idea of his powers. But they were all received with a terrifying coldness or with absolute silence. There was no reasoning against an intuition. Every human being felt that the verdict was true, and that ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... perplexing and moving question, and at last frames a conclusion with painstaking precision in perfectly clear language, it is not pleasant to have that accurate utterance misstated with tireless reiteration, and with infinite art and plausibility. But for this vexation Lincoln could find no remedy, and it was in vain that he again and again called attention to the fact that he had expressed neither a "doctrine," nor an "invitation," nor any "purpose" or policy ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... an uncommon portion of good sense; but her mind was accessible, on this quarter, to wonder and panic. That her voice should be thus inexplicably and unwarrantably assumed, was a source of no small disquietude. She admitted the plausibility of the arguments by which Pleyel endeavoured to prove, that this was no more than an auricular deception; but this conviction was sure to be shaken, when she turned her eyes upon her husband, and perceived that Pleyel's logic was far from having produced ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... once recognise as the supreme merit of the stories, namely, their dramatic faculty, or (in the actual words of the "Preface"), their art of "keeping alive hope and fear and curiosity, by some degree of intricacy."[24] The plausibility of invention, the amount of ingenious contrivance and of clever expedient in these professedly nursery stories, is indeed extraordinary; and nothing can exceed the dexterity with which—to use Dr. Johnson's words concerning She Stoops to Conquer—"the incidents are so prepared as not to seem ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... transformation of human beings into stones, trees, plants, beasts, birds, and the like, is cast into a continuous narrative. The adroitness with which this is done makes the poem rank as a masterpiece of construction. The atmosphere of romantic fable in which it is enveloped even gives it a certain plausibility of effect almost amounting to epic unity. In the fabulous superhuman element that appears in all the stories, and in their natural surroundings of wood, or mountain, or sea—always realised with fresh enjoyment and vivid form ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... received with an excess of hospitality; and the most marked attention was offered to the Master of Ravenswood, in particular, by their noble entertainers. The truth was, that Lord Bittlebrains had obtained his peerage by a good deal of plausibility, an art of building up a character for wisdom upon a very trite style of commonplace eloquence, a steady observation of the changes of the times, and the power of rendering certain political services ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the man, from time to time, were baleful; but, with his usual tact and plausibility, he restrained his temper before the sheriff, lest that gentleman might imagine that he had acted from any other principle ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... it was desirable for Eliza to take refuge with him. However, he does not seem to have responded warmly, for Mary's suggestion was never acted upon. Theirs was a situation in which friends are not apt to interfere, and besides, Bishop's plausibility had won over not a few to his side. Furthermore, the chance was that if he worked successfully upon Mr. Skeys' sympathies, the Bloods would be influenced. There was absolutely no one to help them, but Mary knew that it ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... pretty fair capacity to understand such details and their various relations. Before proceeding with the narrative of the event referred to, we may remark that while, on the one hand, it may be argued, with great plausibility, that her numerous disasters and misfortunes prove that she is unfitted for the navigation of the sea, it may, on the other hand, be argued, with equal plausibility, that the very fact of her having come through such appalling trials unconquered, though buffeted, ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... dried and had crumpled, threats and consequent "languishing" and death, these were the trappings of the stories. The tales were old. Only the Malking Tower incident was new. But its very novelty gave a plausibility to the stories that were woven around it. There was not a single person to interpose a doubt. The cross-examinations were nothing more than feeble attempts to ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... Mr. J. D. Baldwin, author of "Prehistoric Nations," declares that this system of village-communities existed in India long before the Aryan conquest. He attributes it to Cushite or AEthiopic influence, and with great plausibility. Nevertheless, the same system flourished in prehistoric Greece, even till the Roman conquests. Mr. Palgrave observed it existing in Arabia. "Oman is less a kingdom than an aggregation of municipalities," he remarks; "each town, each village has its separate existence ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... extraordinary man had shown him still more extraordinary kindness; the die was cast for them to stand or fall together; and there was something about the gaunt old visionary, a confidential candour, a dry intellectual plausibility, which could not but stimulate respect for his ungodliest views. Whether they really were his views, or only a tortuous attempt at comfort, the sympathy underlying their expression was undoubted and indubitable. But the doctor spoke as ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... the "bells" of a primrose. Mr. W.J. Linton proposed "With harebell slim": although if we must read "harebell" or "harebells," "dim" would be a pretty and proper word for the color of that flower. The conjecture takes some little plausibility from Shakespeare's elsewhere ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that the logical ground is more and more conceded; and the point now usually made is not that the Jeffersonian maxim excludes women, but that "the consent of the governed" is substantially given by the general consent of women. That this argument has a certain plausibility may be conceded; but it is equally clear that the minority of women, those who do wish to vote, includes on the whole the natural leaders,—those who are foremost in activity of mind, in literature, in art, in good works of charity. It is, therefore, pretty sure that they only predict the opinions ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... newspapers. But it soon became the vehicle of bitter attacks upon all measures of the administration which did not originate with, or were approved by, Mr. Jefferson; and the character of the secretary became thereby seriously compromised before the American people. He was charged, with great plausibility, with being the author of many anonymous political articles in Freneau's paper; but he solemnly declared ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... considerations were urged and represented by Villebecque to La Petite, with all the practised powers of plausibility of which so much experience as a manager had made him master. La Petite looked infinitely distressed, but yielded, as she ever did. And the night of Coningsby's arrival at the Castle was to witness in its private theatre the first appearance of ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... of Comte and Buckle to assimilate history to the sciences of nature by reducing it to general "laws," derived stimulus and plausibility from the vista offered by the study of statistics, in which the Belgian Quetelet, whose book Sur l'homme appeared in 1835, discerned endless possibilities. The astonishing uniformities which statistical inquiry disclosed led to the belief that it was only a question of collecting ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... from us, whatever objections might have been made on that account before the invention of the mariner's compass, nothing can be alledged for it, with any colour of plausibility in the present age. Men can now sail with as much certainty through the Great South Sea, as they can through the Mediterranean, or any lesser Sea. Yea, and providence seems in a manner to invite us to the trial, as there are to our knowledge trading companies, ...
— An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens • William Carey
... do with you? Is there a trace in their lives of kindred and affinity? Does oil mix with water? If they grow their beards and call themselves philosophers and look solemn, do these things make them like you? I could have contained myself if there had been any touch of plausibility in their acting; but the vulture is more like the nightingale than they like philosophers. And now I have pleaded my cause to the best of my ability. Truth, I rely upon you to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... imputed plagiarisms so industriously hunted out in his writings, this line has been, with somewhat more plausibility than is frequent in such charges, included,—the lyric poet ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Emancipation Proclamation at least a year too late; but we must now see that the time selected for its promulgation was as skilfully chosen as its aim was laudable. Had it come out a year earlier, in 1861, the friends of the Rebels could have said, with much plausibility, that its appearance had rendered a restoration of the Union impossible, and that the slaveholders had no longer any hope of having their property-rights respected under the Federal Constitution. But by allowing seventeen months to elapse before issuing it, the President compelled the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... received the nickname of the "Merry Brothers." Federici gives forcible reasons for his opinion that the Arena Chapel was employed in the ceremonies of their order; and Lord Lindsay observes, that the fulness with which the history of the Virgin is recounted on its walls, adds to the plausibility of his supposition. ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... we came to Solomonsville in such peace that he would have been astonished at my private thoughts. For I had met no undisguised vagabond nor out-and-out tramp whom I did not prefer to Luke Jenks, vote-buyer and politician. With his catch-penny plausibility, his thin-spread good-fellowship, and his New York clothes, he mistook himself for a respectable man, and I was glad to ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... prosecute them. No local jury would convict in face of the hostility that would be aroused. They had made "alibis" a special study; the very judges were staggered by the calmness and plausibility with which they got themselves ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... Hoccleve, Lydgate, Hawes, Barclay, Skelton, and even Wyatt; and thus concludes, that, it was first abandoned by Surrey, in whom it very rarely occurs. This hypothesis, it should be observed, derives some additional plausibility from a passage in Gascoyne's 'Notes of instruction concerning the making of verse or rhyme in English,' printed in 1575. 'Whosoever do peruse and well consider his (Chaucer's) works, he shall find that, although ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... that the expulsion from West Point was of his own seeking. Highly-colored pictures have been drawn of his eccentric behavior at the Academy, but the fact remains that he wilfully, or at any rate purposely, flung away his cadetship. It is surmised with plausibility that the second marriage of Mr. Allan, and his expressed intention of withdrawing his help and of not endowing or bequeathing this adopted son any of his property, was the mainspring of Poe's action. Believing it impossible to continue without ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... But notwithstanding the plausibility of these conjectures, we are now inclined to give up our original opinion, and to ascribe the performance to a gentleman of Wales, who lived so late as the reign of king William the third. The name of this amiable person was Rice ap Thomas. The romance was certainly at one time in ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... he did not fully understand. Still he remained there, his mind obsessed by the plausibility of the woman's story and by the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... generally be thought nothing of. We habitually make such large deductions for pretence and imposture that no real merit will stand against them. It is necessary to set off our good qualities with a certain air of plausibility and self-importance, as some attention ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... could set forth, and the influence of several friends of high standing, he was compelled to relinquish all hope of his daughter's being allowed to return to the family. The reasoning set forth had every plausibility; but such is our respect for the law, that we were compelled to forego our hospitality, and maintain it, even though the case was painful to our feelings. Thus, you see, we maintain the point and spirit of the ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... horrible plausibility of what he had said actually cover the truth? Did she owe that first golden hour with Rodney, his passionate thrilling avowal of his life's philosophy, to nothing deeper in herself than her unconscious power of rousing in him ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... one of those men who, with smart and showy qualities and great plausibility of manner, was yet altogether without purpose or steadfast principle in the most ordinary affairs of life. He had no fixed notions upon either morals, religion, or politics; and when we say so, we may add, that he was equally without ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Voyage, to whom it must seem impertinent beyond the prophet's wont; there are—(but they scarce count)—who grub (as for truffles) for meanings in Browning. But it was not uttered to please, and in truth it has enough of plausibility to infuriate whatever poet-sects there be. Especially ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... not know whether to count on Lockwood as an ally or not. My estimation of him had been rising and falling like the barometer in a summer shower. I had been convinced that he was against us. But his manner and plausibility now equally convinced me that I had been mistaken. I felt that it would take some supreme action on his part to settle the question. That crisis ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... eloquence. In substance they abound in much pure toryism, and his speech after the Peterloo massacre, and upon the topics relating to public meetings, sedition, and parliamentary reform, though by sonorous splendour and a superb plausibility fascinating to the political neophyte, is by no means free from froth, without much relation either to social facts or to popular principles. On catholic emancipation he followed Pitt, as he did in an enlarged ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... which fill the world with splendour for a while, and then sink and are forgotten, the candidates of learning fixed their eyes upon the permanent lustre of moral and religious truth, they would find a more certain direction to happiness. A little plausibility of discourse, and acquaintance with unnecessary speculations, is dearly purchased, when it excludes those instructions which fortify the heart with resolution, and exalt the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... accompanied by a lad, who was said to be a girl in boy's clothes. This report was confirmed to me by Webster, who was then living at Brighton. The vivid description of the page in Lara, no doubt, gave some plausibility to this often-told tale. I myself witnessed the dexterous manner in which Byron used to get into his boat; for, while standing on the beach, I once saw him vault into it with the agility of a harlequin, in spite of his ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... difficulty in doing so. This was altogether a mistake, and was already producing evil results. We think there is another mistake in the preamble. It seems small, but because of this fact, and of its plausibility, it has done more, perhaps, than anything else in leading our Church into the false position which she seems now to occupy. Therefore, we should examine it with some care. It is the assumption, as a matter of course, that, ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage
... to accept these principles as incontrovertible. Even if we take the great blockade of 1803-5, which has most firmly dominated thought on the subject ever since, it may be argued with some plausibility that the situation could have been solved more quickly and effectually by letting Ganteaume get out from Brest into the open, at least as far as Admiral Togo was forced to permit the Russians to emerge from Port Arthur, though his reasons for keeping them in were even stronger than ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... spoken with such an air of conviction, of unconscious plausibility, as it were, that it was impossible for Hodder to doubt the genuineness of the attitude they expressed. And yet it was more than his mind could grasp . . . . Horace Bentley, Richard Garvin, and the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... them, Patterson the Bishop of Edinburgh came in; and with many interjections, mingled with wishes for a calm procedure, he told the Lords of our escape. He was indeed, to do him justice, a man of some repute for plausibility, and take him all in all for a prelate, he was, in truth, not void of the charities of human nature, compared with others ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... to mind his own business? And if he did not mind it, what possible chance had he against a power so ruthless and so cunning? An accident to a man driving a loaded wagon down the Spirit Canyon grade had a diabolic plausibility that no man in the country could question. Brit, he reasoned, could not have known before he started that his rough-lock had been tampered with, else he would have fixed it. Neither was Brit the man to forget the ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... his own arms. The use and necessity of personal experience consisted in the power of choosing and applying what had been read, and of discriminating by the light of analogy the practicable from the impracticable, and probability from mere plausibility. Without a judgment matured and steadied by actual experience, a man would read to little or perhaps to bad purpose; but yet that experience, which in exclusion of all other knowledge has been derived from one man's life, is in the present ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... ways than by desertion, some of his comrades going so far as to express the opinion that he was murdered at the instigation of his captain. None of these theories, however, seem to be more than conjectures with various degrees of plausibility. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... It is argued with plausibility that a sensitive people would have no use for museums. It is said that to go in search of aesthetic emotion is wrong, that art should be a part of life—something like the evening papers or the shop windows that people enjoy as they go about their business. But, ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... by no means were those many sources of light to be indiscriminately rejected, but that there must be some truth in what they advanced? In a singularly uncritical age, the seductive simplicity of one reading,—the interesting fullness of another,—the plausibility of a thirds—was quite sure to recommend its acceptance amongst those many eclectic recensions which were constructed by long since forgotten Critics, from which the most depraved and worthless of our existing texts and versions have been derived. ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... theory was new to him. It seemed to have a certain plausibility. He wanted to think it over before committing himself ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... the sword preferred bronze for all their military purposes, just as fifteenth-century soldiers found the long-bow and cross-bow much more effective than guns, or as the Duke of Wellington forbade the arming of all our men with rifles in place of muskets ... for reasons not devoid of plausibility. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... This article was in type too early for a review of Dellenbaugh's identification of Cibola with a more southeasterly locality. His arguments bear some plausibility, but they are ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... under consideration. In his well-known work on "Theism," Professor Flint says "that granting all the atoms of matter to be eternal, grant that all the properties and forces, which with the smallest degree of plausibility can be claimed for them to be eternal and indestructible, and it is still beyond expression improbable that these atoms, with these forces, if unarranged, uncombined, unutilised by a presiding mind, ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... the Third Act of a comedy which had tied itself in this kind of a knot simply could not be played. The author had completely sacrificed plausibility, and it was not uninteresting to see him twisting and turning, hedging and bluffing to save it; and a little uncomfortable to note the conviction oozing away out of the performers.... Queer also that it isn't more generally recognised that to come ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... is to be found in what has been said of its manner of composition. Goethe began it in his romantic youth, and availed himself recklessly of the supernatural elements in the legend, with the disregard of reason and plausibility characteristic of the romantic mood. When he returned to it in the beginning of the new century his artistic standards had changed, and the supernaturalism could now be tolerated only by being made symbolic. Thus ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... and Jobbing Gardener, "highly recommended" for skill and low charges. The latter is a grizzled personage, very bowed as to back, and baggy as to breeches, but in his manner combining oracular "knowingness" and deferential plausibility in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... world, he sought only to escape his difficulties by inactivity, and he trusted to provide himself with a refuge against all contingencies by waiting upon time. Even when at length he was compelled to act, and to act in a distinct direction, his plausibility long enabled him to explain away his conduct; and, honest in the excess of his dishonesty, he wore his falsehood with so easy a grace that it assumed the character of truth. He was false, deceitful, treacherous; yet he had the virtue of not pretending to be virtuous. He was a real ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... and indeed a little more than plausibility in favour of this plan. Degrees in literature and in dramatic art are conferred, given by 'collation,' by incompetent people, that is by the public. We can say to the public: "You know nothing of literary and dramatic art." It will retort: "True, I know ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... it. So far as appears, it is a fanciful theory which can not be proved. No one is under obligation to attempt disproving it. It may, in some cases, win supporters by enlisting in its favor all the forces of imagination, to which it appeals with seductive plausibility. On the other hand, it will be rejected without much regard to what can be said in its favor, for it interferes with current unreasoning beliefs concerning antiquity and ancient history, and must encounter vehement contradiction from habits of thought fixed by these ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... on an engaging and attractive appearance. Many a young woman, who would be shocked at the imputation of an intrigue, is extremely flattered at the idea of a sentimental connexion, though perhaps with a dangerous and designing man, who, by putting on this mask of plausibility and virtue, disarms her of her prudence, lays her apprehensions asleep, and involves her in misery; misery the more inevitable because unsuspected. For she who apprehends no danger, will not think it necessary to be always upon her guard; ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... Bloke had let the intoxicating bowl alone himself, he never would get into so much trouble about this exasperating imaginary accident. I have read this absurd item over and over again, with all its insinuating plausibility, until my head swims; but I can make neither head nor tail of it. There certainly seems to have been an accident of some kind or other, but it is impossible to determine what the nature of it was, or who was ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... denoted precedence in time, and the first beast passed off the stage of action when the two-horned beast came on, just as Babylon gave place to Persia, which then exercised all the power of Babylon before it, there would be some plausibility in the claim. But the word rendered "before" is [Greek: enopion] (enopion) which means, literally, "in the presence of." And so the language, instead of proving what is claimed, becomes a most positive proof that these beasts are distinct and ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... and reports from Canadian engineers which vouched the plausibility of a ship canal from a deep-water point on that eastern arm of Lake Huron called Georgian Bay to ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... line, then enforced monogamy would seem to be a sundering of tender ties and hardness toward the cast off Hagars that is inconsistent with the Christian spirit. An earnest, Godly man, a missionary friend of the writer, under whose ministry a heathen chief was converted, was misled by the plausibility. The chief had a number of wives; he had children by them; he was much attached to his wives and was fond of his children, and they all seemed to love him and clung to him. The missionary in the kindness of his heart did not interfere with the family, permitting the chief to keep his wives and placed ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... of analysis; and certain grave antiquaries dismember it accordingly into two Druidical words, "Gurch" and "I;" corresponding, they tell us, to our own words, "Power" and "Water;" which, an' it be so, we see not how they can derive Vichy from this source. Others, with more plausibility, hold Vichy to be a corruption of Vicus. That these springs were known to the Romans is indisputable; and, as they are marked Aquae calidae in the Theodosian tables, they were, in all probability, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... than can corrode a solid body may nevertheless be unable to "fret" a different body which is considerably softer and thinner, if the "texture" does not admit the small particles.[55] Reasoning by analogy served to explain the logical plausibility. In other words, he was very open-minded. He refused to dismiss all such claims, and provided analogy as a reason for keeping his mind open; yet he refused to accept particular claims of medicine that dissolved stones, because the evidence ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... the lance-flags of the escort were visible, although the soldiers themselves were still out of sight, having halted just here arriving on the crest of the hill. The countenances of the Carlists, which for a moment had contracted with alarm, were beginning again to expand, as the plausibility of their companion's explanation occurred to them, when suddenly they saw the Count and his companions turn their horses in all haste, and disappear behind the hill. At the same moment, and before they could guess at the meaning of this manoeuvre, a shout was heard, a troop of Christino ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... humour, and the author wisely avoids an absurd happy-ever-after conclusion. The play was supersaturated with sentiment, with a sentiment which drove out nearly all the humour and, roughly speaking, all the plausibility. Is it easy to doubt that it is the sentimental treatment which has caused the history of the play to be so different from that of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... in that market-town one of those adventurous, speculative men, who are the more dangerous impostors because imposed upon by their own sanguine chimeras, who have a plausibility in their calculations, an earnestness in their arguments, which account for the dupes they daily make in our most sober and wary of civilized communities. Unscrupulous in their means, yet really honest in the belief that their ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... foregoing expressions, though all are perhaps intelligible enough in common practice, are, in some respect, difficult of analysis, or grammatical resolution. I think it possible, however, to frame an argument of some plausibility in favour of every one of them. Yet it is hardly to be supposed, that any teacher will judge them all to be alike justifiable, or feel no interest in the questions which have been raised about them. That the language of arithmetic is often defective or questionable in respect to grammar, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... consummate his avaricious designs, and screen his name from opprobrium, he told the world that I was hopelessly insane; and that the discovery of this fact, one hour after his marriage, had induced him to send me abroad under the care of a faithful and judicious nurse. To give plausibility to this statement, a paragraph was inserted in the New York papers announcing that I was a raving maniac and an inmate of an English asylum for lunatics. Mr. Clayton, my lawyer, was the sole surviving witness of my final interview, and of its financial provisions; and, had he yielded to bribes and ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... in conversation, for neglecting everything not essential to her present plausibility. "A woman like Lady Fanny can have no 'grounds' for anything—for any indignation, I mean, or for any revenge worth twopence. In this particular case at all events they've been sacrificed with such extravagance that, as an injured wife, she hasn't ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... and this, it appears to me, has much the same force and intention as the previous words. It is to be noted, however, that it is separated from them by the disjunctive 'or;' and, therefore, it might be argued with some plausibility that any act of forceful or fraudulent detention, after notice, by persons who have originally acquired a child's custody in a lawful way, came within the section. The point is new, and of great importance; and if the Protestant Detectoral Association feel disposed to try it, they would do so under ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... place load them with attentions and shower them with presents. This whole episode, in fact, may be thought of as a mime cast in the narrative form, and the same conception may be applied with great plausibility to the entire story ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... expressed, wherever the Constitution has jurisdiction, of supreme law, are thought by most men, once and forever, to have satisfactorily answered. It was a complaint, certainly, which the South had had ever since the Constitution was formed, and which could with no plausibility be brought forward as a justification of war, while there existed a Constitutional tribunal for adjusting difficulties of Constitutional interpretation. Yet, as it was almost universally asserted, of course, by the Northern partisan ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... seaman, from an apprentice boy in the coal trade, to a post-captain in the royal navy, he has had no opportunity of cultivating letters. After this account of myself, the public must not expect from me the elegance of a fine writer, or the plausibility of a professed book-maker; but will, I hope, consider me as a plain man, zealously exerting himself in the service of his country, and determined to give the best account he is able ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... thorough familiarity with the modes of society, gave him the entree to many houses where his talents amply requited the hospitality he received. He possessed, amongst his other gifts, an immense amount of plausibility, and people found it, besides, very difficult to believe ill of that well-bred, somewhat retiring man, who, in circumstances of the very narrowest fortunes, not only looked and dressed like a gentleman, but actually brought up a daughter ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... laid. What first excited Mr. Wilson's suspicions was the charming simplicity and apparent truthfulness which, in common with all readers of Bernal Diaz, he has found to be the distinguishing characteristics of the narrative. "A striking feature," he tells us, "in Spanish literature, is the plausibility with which it has carried a fictitious narrative through its most minute details, completely captivating the uninitiated. If its supporters were not permitted to write truth, they succeeded in getting up a most excellent imitation. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... in a sense, warranted by the facts; and it gains further in artistic plausibility when we consider that the idealized bandit was already a familiar type in literature. The author of 'The Robbers' was acquainted with Robin Hood, and he had probably read 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona', in which ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... collect a fresh cargo ready for their return, after which he meant to perambulate the continent of America, and show his countrymen the path to unbounded wealth. Jones, it seems, was so much taken with the plausibility of a scheme, which presented at once the prospect of adventure, fame, and profit, that he advanced money to Ledyard to purchase a part of the cargo for the outfit; but, being suddenly called away to L'Orient, to look after his prize ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... practice a very mild case. In modern practice the free educationists forbid far more things than the old-fashioned educationists. A person with a taste for paradox (if any such shameless creature could exist) might with some plausibility maintain concerning all our expansion since the failure of Luther's frank paganism and its replacement by Calvin's Puritanism, that all this expansion has not been an expansion, but the closing ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... to the alleged legal obligation to return fugitives, it has more plausibility, but has it in reality any firm foundation? Americans boast of making their own laws, and of amending them whenever circumstances render it necessary. How, then, can they excuse themselves, or expect the civilized world to excuse them, ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... in dreams confusion reigns, and illogical connections occur gives plausibility to the theory which Sir Arthur Mitchell and other scientific men hold, that our dream-thinking is uncontrolled and undirected by the will. The will—the inhibiting and guiding power—finds rest and refreshment in sleep, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... some degree measurable. Recent discoveries of the dependence of capacity for mental exertion upon physical vitality and measurements of chemical energy received into the system as food, and somehow exhausted by the activities of thought, have lent plausibility to the hypothesis of a universal energy of which physical and "psychical" processes are alike manifestations. And the conception of energy seems capable not only of unifying nature, but also of satisfying the ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... piece of mockery, of false tinsel and fringe and folly and pretence, is your stage-player beside one of these fellows! Who is going to sit three weary hours at the Haymarket, bored by the assumed plausibility of the actor, when the real, the actual, the positive thing that he so poorly simulates is to be met on the railroad, at the station, in the club, on the chain-pier, or the penny steamer? Is there ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... contradictory conceptions of a single human being. But it was not so; 'the elements' were 'so mixed' in Mr. Gladstone that his bitterest enemies (and his enemies were never mild) and his warmest friends (and his friends were never tepid) could justify, with equal plausibility, their denunciations or their praises. What, then, was the truth? In the physical universe there are no chimeras. But man is more various than nature; was Mr. Gladstone, perhaps, a chimera of the spirit? ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... a romance, is universally recognized as a great economic treatise in a framework of fiction. Without this guise it could not have obtained the foothold that it did; there is just enough of the skillful novelist's touch in its composition to give plausibility to the book and exert a powerful influence upon the popular imagination. The ingenious device by which a man of the nineteenth century is transferred to the end of the twentieth, and the vivid dramatic quality of the dream at the end of the book, are instances of the art of the ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... other has so few who are really able to lead. In mitigation of this fact, it may be said with truth, that nowhere else is it so difficult to lead; for nowhere else does force rule so little. Every one has opinions; the whole nation is awakened; thousands are able to discuss any subject with plausibility; and to be simply keen-witted and versatile is to be of the crowd. We need men whose intellectual view embraces the history of the race, who are familiar with all literature, who have studied all social movements, who are acquainted with the development of philosophic thought, who ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... examined, this assumption lacks plausibility. "We consider the Ph.D. a scholar's degree and not a teacher's degree," says the dean of one of our leading graduate schools, and yet preparation for this scholar's degree has been and is practically the only formal preparation open to ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... must have become apparent that success in a prosecution of Ralegh depended solely on the plausibility and consistency of Cobham's accusations. They were peculiarly deficient in those qualities. Ralegh has recorded that Cobham's remorse for the evil wrought by his charges of July 20 commenced within the building ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... been waking up. The Chinese, as a matter of fact, have very little veneration, respect, or esteem, for their Japanese neighbours. The former plume themselves on being the aristocrats of the East, and they reason, with some show of plausibility, that if the upstart Japanese have been able to so thoroughly rout the Russian forces the potential possibilities of China on the warpath are enormous. Every thoughtful student of the East has looked forward ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... 1910 in 691. If this is not progression—and progression under the Legislative Union—to what can the predicate be more truthfully applied? Statistics are apt to be barren and uninforming and can be adapted, with almost equal plausibility, to support the arguments of either side; but these figures are eloquent and speak for themselves. They embody a large and vital portion of the history of Irish Primary Education, and are a proof of the interest which ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... in the underworld, but among those of his own set, rivals, perhaps, who might even stoop to secure the aid of those of the underworld who could be bought to commit any crime in the calendar for a price? I did not pause to examine the plausibility or the impossibility of such a theory. What interested me was whether in her mind there was such a thought. Had she, perhaps, really more of an idea than I who it could be? She betrayed nothing of what her intuition told her, but I felt sure that, even though she knew ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... return to his own house to dinner but perhaps some disaster had befallen him. Experience had taught me the insecurity of a canoe, and that was the only kind of boat which Pleyel used; I was, likewise, actuated by an hereditary dread of water. These circumstances combined to bestow considerable plausibility on this conjecture; but the consternation with which I began to be seized was allayed by reflecting that, if this disaster had happened, my brother would have received the speediest information of it. The consolation which this idea imparted was ravished from me by a new thought. This ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... were on a lower wave length than any receiver then in existence could receive with any degree of clarity, and the additional fact that they appeared to come from an immense distance lent a certain air of plausibility to these ebullitions in the Sunday magazine sections. For some weeks the feature writers harped on the subject, but the hurried construction of new receivers which would work on a lower wave length yielded no results, and the solemn pronouncements ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... country political corruption and the grasping spirit of corporations are constantly affording the demagogue or the dreamer opportunity to preach the destruction of civil order with great plausibility, giving scope to reckless theorists who have so often, in the world's history, baffled the endeavours of the rational and patient ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... in the popular mind; but a male consort could be given her who might rule with her. Another factor that may have entered into play in the adaptation of the Marduk-Tiamat story to Nergal and Allatu, and that gave to the adaptation more plausibility, was the disappearance of the summer sun after he had done his work. Nergal did not exert his power during the whole year, and even as the sun of midday, he was not in control all day. When he disappeared, there was only one place ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... with his badges and stars, bent on duty, but not accomplishment. All the town soon knew that he was following a clew, but all the town was at sea concerning its character, origin, and plausibility. A dozen persons saw him stop young Mrs. Perkins in front of Lamson's store, and the same spectators saw his feathers droop as she let loose her wrath upon his head and went away with her nose in the air and her cheeks far more scarlet than when Boreas kissed them, and all in response to a single ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... a certain plausibility in this reasoning, such conduct would appear to every one perfectly absurd; and yet many parents seem to act on a similar principle. A mother who is from time to time, during the week, fretful and impatient, evincing ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... true that to do full justice to Spanish humour in any other language is well-nigh an impossibility. There is a natural gravity and a sonorous stateliness about Spanish, be it ever so colloquial, that make an absurdity doubly absurd, and give plausibility to the most preposterous statement. This is what makes Sancho Panza's drollery the despair of the conscientious translator. Sancho's curt comments can never fall flat, but they lose half their flavour when transferred from their native Castilian into any other medium. But if foreigners ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... heroes there had been at least two armed risings in Ireland against the British Crown and Government. If the taunt flung at Ulstermen had been that they had at last thrown overboard law and order and had stolen the Nationalist policy of active resistance, there would at least have been superficial plausibility in it. But when it was suggested or implied that the Ulster example was actually responsible in any degree whatever for violent outbreaks in the other provinces, a supercilious smile was the only possible retort from the ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... composition of Lycidas. But the connexion between the two is not one of date only, nor even of the spectacular demand it was the end of either to meet. It may, namely, in the absence of any definite evidence, be with much plausibility presumed that the impulse to the entertainment, of which as we are told Arcades formed a part, originated with that very Lady Alice Egerton and her two young brothers who, the following year probably, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... so far as I know, the charge of materialism can be brought with the greatest plausibility at the present day are those who still force themselves to bow before the most grossly material symbols, and give a physical interpretation to the articles of her creed. A man who proposes to look for God in ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... of all other people, whatever pains or trouble he takes for his own security—to watch, for instance, as vigilantly that his neighbour's house as that his own is not broken into. And while the one solitary claim of any plausibility to universal equality of treatment requires to be largely qualified before it can be conceded, there is no other claim of the kind which does not carry with it its own refutation; there is no other which does not ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... patriotism, or in politics, or in any other of the wider affairs of life, in which our passions or our mystical intuitions fix our beliefs beforehand. It finds arguments for our conviction, for indeed it HAS to find them. It amplifies and defines our faith, and dignifies it and lends it words and plausibility. It hardly ever engenders it; it cannot now ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... music while looking at a stage-setting more colossal than any ever contemplated by dramatist before. We should see a wide stretch of the plain of Shinar; in the foreground a tower so tall as to give color of plausibility to a speech which prates of an early piercing of heaven and so large as to provide room for a sleeping multitude on its scaffoldings. Brick kilns, derricks, and all the apparatus and machinery of building should be on all hands, and ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... mix any more than oil and water mix. A religion is a mechanical mixture, not a chemical combination, of morality and dogma. Dogma is the science of the unseen: the doctrine of the unknown and unknowable. And in order to give this science plausibility, its promulgators have always fastened upon it morality. Morality can and does exist entirely separate and apart from dogma, but dogma is ever a parasite on morality, and the business of the priest ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... been disdainfully granted, Marcian proceeded with seeming timid boldness, marking in his listener's eyes the eager interest with which she followed him. Though every detail of the story was of his own invention, its plausibility had power upon one whose passions inclined her to believe it. He told then that Muscula, bribed by Basil, was secretly endeavouring to procure the release of Veranilda, which should be made to appear ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... Mackerly, while in conversation with his son, was a great shock to the latter, who could scarcely believe that the news he had just been relating should have such an extraordinary effect upon his imperious and lofty father. Was it possible that the statements at which he had scoffed had some plausibility, and that there was a grain of hidden truth in the charge brought by his rival, Alan Heathcote? There was no mistaking the fact that something external had caused the magnate's startling indisposition, ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various |
