"Plausible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plausible theory advanced by the Buddhist historians, and sustained by the Buddhist traditions, that as Moses had fled into the wilderness to spend forty years in fasting and preparation for his life work, so Jesus had fled, not to the wilderness, but to the ancient culture ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... suffers some alteration. He seems to think that one of these branches contains the eggs of males, while the other has none but common eggs, and as he ascribes the inability of certain queens to lay the latter to some disease, his conjecture becomes very plausible. In fact, if the eggs of males and workers are indiscriminately mixed in both branches of the ovary, it appears at first sight that whatever cause acts on that organ, it should equally affect both species of eggs. If on the contrary, one branch is occupied by the eggs of drones only, and ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... by king Sebastian, who had resolved to bury the glory of his kingdom in the burning sands of Africa; and finding his own youthful impetuosity unable to conform with the prudent councils of the count, he constituted him viceroy of India as a plausible means of removing him. The count arrived at Goa about the end of August 1577, where he immediately fitted out a mighty fleet which struck terror into all the neighbouring princes. After continuing the war for some time against Adel Khan, a peace ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... stepmother, and, of course, they did not mitigate the Baroness's uneasiness. Madame de Nailles revenged herself for this insult by dismissing the innocent echo of the impertinence—of course, under some plausible pretext. She felt it necessary also to be very cautious how she treated the enemy whom she was forced to shelter under her own roof. Her policy—a policy imposed on her by force of circumstances—was ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... should assent to his theory. And indeed on thinking it over it would have been plausible enough if there hadn't been always the essential falseness of irresponsibility in Schomberg's chatter. However, I was not disposed to investigate the psychology of Falk. I was engaged just then in ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... previously to announce. However, as she was acquainted with my reasons, she did not insist upon this point, but conjured me to avoid coming to an open rupture let it cost me what mortification it would, and to palliate my refusal by reasons sufficiently plausible to put away all unjust suspicions of her having been the cause of it. I told her the task she imposed on me was not easy; but that, resolved to expiate my faults at the expense of my reputation, I would give the ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... institution of private property. But as a contribution to political theory it was open to severe attack from the representatives of experience and common sense. Of these, the chief was Aristotle, whose criticism has been preserved to us, and who, while admitting that Plato's scheme has a plausible appearance of philanthropy, maintains that it is inapplicable to the facts of human nature. To this conclusion, indeed, even Plato himself was driven in the end; for in his later work, the "Laws," although he still ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... alternative is. But, if, on a question of such importance, we are justified in suggesting theories that have no foundation in probability, I could suggest another which, as compared with that of a Fiction by Leonardo, would be neither more nor less plausible; it is, moreover the only other hypothesis, perhaps, which can be devised to account for these passages, if it were possible to prove that the interpretation that the documents themselves suggest, must be rejected a priori; viz may not Leonardo have written ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... Mr. Meems stand alone. Prof. Elihu Thomson of Lynn, Mass., also believes it possible to construct electromotors of a velocity of 160 kilometers, and, with suitable strengthening of the rolling stock and improvement of the signal system, of a velocity of 260 kilometers; and he has given a plausible explanation of his system. The same scientist holds, and in this Werner Siemens, who expressed similar views at the Berlin Convention of Naturalists in 1887, agrees with him, that it is possible by ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... theory of slopes so completely upset. He must have picked out favourable cases for measurement. And such an array of facts he gives! You have scotched, and will see die, I now think, the Crater of Elevation theory. But what vitality there is in a plausible theory! (490/2. The rest of this letter is published in "Life and Letters," II., ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... nothing now seemed likely to interfere with his carefully prepared plans to capture an American heiress. The interview with Kate Roberts in the library, so awkwardly disturbed by Jefferson's unexpected intrusion, had been followed by other interviews more secret and more successful, and the plausible secretary had contrived so well to persuade the girl that he really thought the world of her, and that a brilliant future awaited her as his wife, that it was not long before he found her in a mood to refuse ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... magic simply will not work, even in theory. The reason is that there is some powerful counter-influence at work. He has to know when he can't use magic, and he has to be able to explain why. And when he's theoretically able to do something by magic, he has to have a plausible explanation why it won't produce results—just as any highly civilized and ethical Terran M.D. has to be able to explain his failures to the satisfaction of his late patient's relatives. Only a shoonoo doesn't get sued for malpractice; he gets a spear stuck in him. Under those ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper
... suspect that he was engaged in some very unusual enterprise. He had therefore warned Giuseppi to be very careful in his replies. He knew that it was not necessary to say more, for Giuseppi had plenty of shrewdness, and would, he was sure, invent some plausible story without the least difficulty, possessing, as he did, plenty of the easy mendacity so general among the lower classes of the races inhabiting countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Their ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... view against which common sense would not rebel; nevertheless, I believe it to be radically mistaken. It cannot be refuted logically, but various facts can be adduced which make it gradually less simple and plausible, until at last it turns out to be easier to abandon it wholly and look at the matter in ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... been wrought into a somewhat plausible form by the brilliant and imposing generalizations of Aug. Comte. The religious phenomena of the world are simply one stage in the necessary development of mind, whether in the individual or the race. He claims to have been the first to discover the great law ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... And with that painted hope she braves your mightiness] [W: cope] Painted hope is only specious hope, or ground of confidence more plausible than solid. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... privileged classes were liable. They, as might be supposed, cavilled, disputed, and appealed. The appeal lay to a sort of county board, which was composed of people of their own kind, and before which they too easily made out a plausible case against a clumsy collector, who more often than not knew neither how to read nor to write. Turgot's reform of a system which was always harassing and often ruinous to an innocent individual, consisted ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... proposed assumption of state debts, then dividing the public mind, afforded plausible cause for opposing federalism; and ostensibly for this reason, the Livingstons ceased to be Federalists. Some of the less conspicuous members, residents of Columbia County, continued their adherence, but the statesmen who give the family its name in history wanted nothing more of a party whose ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... notions, and gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with that facility . . . ," accepting the tradition of his lively wit; admitting that he had some Latin and literature, I would find in him a sufficiently plausible mask for that immense Unknown with a strange taste for furbishing up older plays. I would merely deny to Will his GENIUS, and hand THAT over to Bacon—or Bungay. Believe me, Mr. Greenwood, this is your ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... sufficient courage and ability perhaps, but with too much of the knave in his composition, and too little of enthusiasm, ever to be a great and superior character. That such a youth as this should, even from the propensities of character alone, take any plausible occasion to injure a frank unguarded man of wit and pleasure, will not appear unnatural. But he had other inducements. Falstaff had given very general scandal by his distinguished wit and noted poverty, insomuch that a little cruelty and injustice towards him was likely to pass, in the eye of the ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... recall the distress of bitter disillusionment which has followed the collapse of some plausible system of "sweet reasonableness" under the granite-like impact of a rock of reality which has knocked the bottom out of it and left it a derelict upon the waves? This collapse of an ordered and reasonable system under the impact of some atrocious projection ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... soldiers passed the Elbe, as Ordonner and his gang had crossed the Rhine on the 14th of March, and boldly seized Rumbold within the territory of an independent and friendly state. He was hurried to Paris, and confined in the fated dungeons of the Temple: but none of his papers afforded any plausible pretext for resisting the powerful remonstrance which the King of Prussia thought fit to make against an outrage perpetrated almost within sight of his dominions; and, after a few days, Sir George was ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... friend," he said, "your story is not even plausible. The articles are missing, and there was no one but yourself and Florence who were in a position to take them. Do you wish me to think that my ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... of nature are permanent, how are we to explain the fact that in the barbarous centuries after the decline of Rome—the term Middle Ages has not yet come into currency—ignorance was so dense and deep? This breach of continuity is one of the plausible arguments of the advocates of the Ancients. Those ages, they say, were ignorant and barbarous because the Greek and Latin writers had ceased to be read; as soon as the study of the classical models revived there was a renaissance ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... This news of the South American republic showed what an accomplished liar old Efaw Kotee could be. Very plausible, indeed, and an adequate excuse for keeping her in a ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... and grow fat by their petty pilferings,—yet often gave them what they asked, and privately owned myself a simpleton. There is a decorum which restrains you (unless you happen to be a police-constable) from breaking through a crust of plausible respectability, even when you are certain that there is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Critical, censorious and selfishly ambitious in her little childhood, her womanhood had strengthened along these well-marked lines, and the lines had led her infallibly into the net of the shallowest, most smug religion that ever has set forth a plausible excuse for total selfishness. Once she was landed in the net, the rest was simple. She was in growing harmony with Universal Mind. Whatever thing opposed her viewpoint was out of harmony, and therefore sinful and laden with ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... revenge may have been the outcome of many hoarded grievances that no one knew existed. The fellow was more than half insane. What more likely than that he had attacked his master in a fit of animal passion; and then, terrified at the result, escaped to the woods? That seemed to me the only plausible explanation. ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... unimpeached; popular, in good odor; in high esteem &c (respected) 928; in favor, in high favor. deserving of praise, worthy of praise &c n.; praiseworthy, commendable, of estimation; good &c 648; meritorious, estimable, creditable, plausible, unimpeachable; beyond all praise. Adv. with credit, to admiration; well &c 618; with three times three. Int. hear hear!, bully for you! [Slang], well done!, bravo!, bravissimo!, euge! [G.], macte virtute! [Lat.], so far so good, that's right, quite right; optime!^, one cheer more; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... reached the St. Lawrence thirty leagues, and not three, below the Falls of Saint Louis. The three rivers thus named inclose or form an island of about the extent described in the text. This explanation is plausible. The passage amended would read, "This river extends near another which falls into the great river St. Lawrence thirty leagues below the falls of St. Louis." We know of no other way in which the passage ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... homeseekers would fight for ground. And it was only a step from settlement to trolley cars, electric lights, sandstone business blocks and cement pavements, together with lawns growing real grass! Under the spell of his magnetic presence and convincing eloquence nothing seemed more plausible or possible than the fulfilment of these prophecies. And all this was to be brought about through the efforts of Andy P. Symes, who intimated that not one million but millions had been placed at his disposal ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... Renan, the plausible and analytical infidel, read the record carved on the stones of Baalbeck, and announced, openly, that Luke ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... before," Bradley argued, in a tense and yet plausible tone. "You was hit in the head by a falling beam in that storm. You told me so. You was laid up with a lot of others in the hospital, and for a solid month didn't know your hat from a hole in the ground. That's how ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... and babbled to himself about fate and destiny, and decided that the most merciful course would be to deceive both women. Mercy was patient. Mercy was unsuspicious. She would content herself with occasional visits, if he could only feign some plausible tale to account ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... them,' said Mr Haredale, 'though I held it, at the time, in detestation. Let no man turn aside, ever so slightly, from the broad path of honour, on the plausible pretence that he is justified by the goodness of his end. All good ends can be worked out by good means. Those that cannot, are bad; and may be counted so at once, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... prevalent headlong precipitancy of public judgment, anaesthetics have not been more generally employed on this side of the water of late.) Certainly he is no physician, they say. But, on the other hand, a conjecture that he has been before the mast is as plausible a one as that ever Herman Melville was; there is the true sailor's-roll about him; nobody less skilful than the captain of a three-decker could have run the Agra through such a gantlet of broadsides and hurricanes; the manoeuvring of the ship, when her master puts her before ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... had but some plausible pretext," he thought, "some ostensible reason for my return, some excuse to allege which might show I came not as a degraded supplicant, or a discarded menial, I might go thither—but as I am, I cannot—my heart would leap ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... unhappiness for all of us. You must consider it finished. We won't have any disturbance; but, all the same, you can't see Arthur again. We'll invent some reason to explain your going away to-morrow ... something plausible ... to satisfy him. With your husband it will be more difficult. But I'm prepared to help you. It can be managed without any scandal if we work together... I'm sure you'll agree with me and be sensible about it. If you won't, I can't answer ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... passiveness, time, space, cause and effect, consciousness, perception, memory and habit; if he feels his mind completely at rest concerning all these, and is satisfied, if only he can analyse all other notions into some one or more of these supposed elements with plausible subordination and apt arrangement: to such a mind I would as courteously as possible convey the hint, that for him the chapter ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... removal of Mrs. Montgomery; and notice as to time was given, which included three months. Formal application was made to the Court having power in the case, for authority to sell and re-invest. The reasons for so doing were set forth in detail, and involved plausible arguments in favor of the heirs ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... of thing sounds extremely plausible, of course; and if there were no other explanation for your obstinacy—. But as it ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... which they had senselessly driven it loaded; then the havildar came on (his men pretending they could go no further from weakness), and killed the young buffalo and eat it when they thought they could hatch up a plausible story. They said it had died, and tigers came and devoured it—they saw them. "Did you see the stripes of the tiger?" said I. All declared that they saw the stripes distinctly. This gave us an idea of their truthfulness, as there is no striped tiger in all Africa. All who resolved ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... relics of their holiest saints, and threatening the very fane itself with fire. Mere words will never strike him dumb. He does not bow to the shadow of Justice or kneel with the ignorant and unsuspicious at the shrine of every plausible Madonna by the roadside. Hear him on the constitutional pillars that heaven and earth are now moved to keep in place, and let us commiserate what must now be the distracting dread of Increse D. O'Phace, Esquire, lest some Samson in blind revenge ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... storm also, like all before it, is to blow over—if there be faith in human nature, will do more to shake the Repeal speculation than any possible course of direct English resistance. All frauds would be forgiven in an hour of plausible success, or even in a moment of undeniable preparation. But disappointment coming in the rear of extravagant hopes will be fatal, and strike a frost to the heart of the conspiracy. For it cannot be doubted that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... there was a faint bluish spot on the sleeve of the shirt. This made Ben's story a plausible one, though not conclusive. The superintendent decided to inquire of Mike about the matter, and see what ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... Pere Michel," said Cazeneau; "I have now no hard feeling left. I may say, I have almost no suspicion. I wish to be assured of your innocence. I will take anything that seems like a plausible excuse. I respect your character, and would rather have you as my ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... which have been so much, and in some sense justifiably ridiculed. Man has been wretched and foolish since the race began, and will be till it ends; one chorus of lamentation has ever been rising, in countless dialects but with a single meaning; the plausible schemes of philosophers give no solution to the everlasting riddle; the nostrums of politicians touch only the surface of the deeply-rooted evil; it is folly to be querulous, and as silly to fancy that men are growing worse, as that they are much better than they ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... this case we are convinced it must be the latter. Edwards knew perfectly well—for he seems to have been sane—that nobody but the subjects of these biographies would seek them "with avidity," and he made these plausible, bombastic assertions to excuse himself for having sprung such a trap on an unsuspecting public. That he tries to palliate the offence is, sufficient proof ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... to the system when the interpretation is not strained, but is plausible, consistent, and productive of the same results as in the instance of Mount Calvary: all that I contend for is, that such interpretations are modern, and that they do not belong to, although they may often be ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... mouthful; not literally such, but so much as a polished man could allow himself to put into his mouth at once. "We took a mouthful," says Sir William Waller, the Parliamentary general, "took a mouthful; paid our reckoning; mounted; and were off." But there Sir William means, by his plausible "mouthful," something very much beyond either nine or nineteen ordinary quantities of that denomination, whereas the Roman "jentaculum" was literally such; and, accordingly, one of the varieties under which ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and on. She was longing for something better than she had. The arguments of the pamphlet seemed plausible to her, and she embraced them. Seeing that the Christian Science text-book was advised, she ordered a copy of Mrs. Eddy's Science and Health. When it arrived she read it assiduously. She was getting very deep into the meshes of it. Her theology ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... men. Just noting that these different analogies asserted by Plato and Hobbes, serve to cancel each other (being, as they are, so completely at variance), we may say that on the whole those of Hobbes are the more plausible. But they are full of inconsistencies. If the sovereignty is the soul of the body-politic, how can it be that magistrates, who are a kind of deputy-sovereigns, should be comparable to joints? Or, again, how can the three mental functions, memory, reason, and will, be severally ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... who gave life to you. So soon as I foresaw the excesses into which his headlong passion (for, to do him justice, I believe his unreasonable conduct arises from excess of attachment to you) was likely to hurry him, I endeavoured, by finding a plausible pretext for your absence for some weeks, to extricate myself from the dilemma in which I am placed. For this purpose I wished, in case your objections to the match continued insurmountable, to have sent you privately for a few ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... be to keep him there, training and teaching him until he shall have arrived at an age when he can be taught a trade. The tiny fellow is small for his eight years, and his little wizened face, sallow and delicate, has a plausible tale to tell. He is always fretting and grieving for those whose heads were shown to him after decapitation. However, he is being cared for, and it is doubtful whether the authorities—or even the emperor himself—will mete ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... the phraseology, to say the least, of the present day, was, indeed, quite contrary to this. He assumed freedom to exist only where law is not, that is, in the savage state, and to be surrendered, piece for piece, with every acknowledgment of social obligation. Seldom was ever so plausible a doctrine equally false. Law is properly the public definition of freedom and the affirmation of its sacredness and inviolability as so defined; and only in the presence of it, either express or implicit, does man become free. Duty and privilege are one and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... all this sudden glory in a half-bewildered manner, but adhered so correctly to his plausible story that none of those generous Irish folk doubted that he was any other than the disinherited ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... him. 'Why,' they said, 'when you are being thrashed, and you are in pain, your only thought is to bawl out girls! Is it perchance that you expect us young ladies to go and intercede for you? How is that you have no sense of shame?' To their taunts he gave a most plausible explanation. 'Once,' he replied, 'when in the agony of pain, I gave vent to shouting girls, in the hope, perchance, I did not then know, of its being able to alleviate the soreness. After I had, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... asked a large ransom? This last suggestion threw them into a cold perspiration of fear. The wealthiest were seized with the worst panic and saw themselves forced, if they valued their lives, to empty bags of gold into the rapacious hands of this soldier. They racked their brains for plausible lies to dissemble their riches, to pass themselves off as poor—very poor. Loiseau pulled off his watch-chain and hid it in his pocket. As night fell their apprehensions increased. The lamp was lighted, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Earl of Cromarty, while pretending to comply with the instructions of the Lord President, offered the command of one of the companies to a neighbouring gentleman, whom he well knew to be a strong Jacobite, and at the same time made some plausible excuse for his son's refusal of another ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... growing darkness, where all rehearsed cold-hearted murder, Wilkes Booth grew great of stature. He had found a purpose consonant with his evil nature and bad influence over weak men; so he grew moodier, more vigilant, more plausible. By mien and temperament he was born to handle a stiletto. We have no face so markedly Italian; it would stand for Caesar Borgia any day in the year. All the rest were swayed or persuaded by Booth; his schemes were three ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... country pays the carriage of the commodity which it imports. Upon this supposition, each country would gain whatever share of the joint saving of labour would otherwise fall to its lot, minus the cost of bringing from the other country the commodity which it imports. This solution is rendered plausible by the circumstance just now mentioned, that the price of the commodity will be higher in the country which imports it, than in the country which exports it, by the amount of the cost of carriage. If linen ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... his priest's privileges; to all my inquiries he replied that the matter touched the confessional, and was within his vows; and that he neither could, nor dared—to please anyone, or for any cause, however plausible—divulge the slightest detail of the affair. I had him summoned to the arsenal, and questioned him myself, and closely; but of all armour that of the Roman priesthood is the most difficult to penetrate, and I quickly gave ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... Hi was the best known of his contemporaries on the tableland through which the Palmer River wanders a hundred miles from the Gulf of Carpentaria. Short, slimly made as a fourteen-year-old boy, nimble, fussy, plausible, he stood out from among his countrymen as one having authority, while he posed among the Europeans as a kind of diplomatic agent, explaining away misunderstandings, conciliating grievances, and generally ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... tend to fortify the popular prejudice, would also, by accounting for it, and ingrafting it upon a reasonable origin, so far tend to take from it the reproach of a prejudice. Though erroneous, it would yet seem to us, in looking back upon it, a rational and even an inevitable opinion, having such plausible grounds to stand upon; plausible, I mean, until science and accurate examination of the several cases had begun to read them into a different construction. Yet, on the other hand, in spite of any colorable excuses that may be pleaded for this prejudice, it is pretty plain that, after all, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... which our people are invariably ready to respond. Since it was essentially experimental, and therefore not lacking in mistakes, there was ample opportunity for a criticism that seemed at times extremely plausible. The old and tried method of dealing with such anarchy as existed across our southern border was made to seem the safe one; while the new, because it was untried, was presented as disastrous. In reality, the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... not only a delicate sympathy, but a penetration and a sanity of judgment that enable him to put before us not merely a plausible, but a convincing portrait of a man who twenty years after his death, in spite of changing fashions, exercises, as in his own day, a strange and potent spell ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... to this pungent recital in silent wonder. It had a painfully plausible sound, and was not inconsistent with certain shy suspicions of my own. My hostess was not only a clever woman, but presumably a generous one. I determined to let my judgment wait upon events. Possibly she was right; but ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... is right, that partakes a little of instinct, perhaps, but is more unerring than far fetched theory on many occasions. This was seen in a most exemplary manner, at the time that the principles of the French revolution were most approved of here. Those principles were plausible, though flimsy, and founded on sophisms, and a species of reasoning, that plain unlettered men could not answer, and men who did give themselves the pains to reason might have answered; yet, three times in four, it was the man who could not answer it, who, guided by upright ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... little John. Jank—Jak. This etymology has, I confess, a very great resemblance to the Millerian mode of educing Cucumber from Jeremiah King; but it is the most plausible which occurs at ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... for the execution by the General Government of obligations which had been imposed by the Federal compact upon the several States of the Union. The benefit to be derived from a fulfillment of that law would be small in comparison with the evil to result from the plausible pretext that the States had thus been relieved from a duty which they had assumed in the adoption of the compact of union. Whatever tended to lead the people of any of the States to feel that they could be relieved ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... questioned. Were Von der Tann to seize the reins of government a state of revolution would exist that would divide the state into two bitter factions, weaken its defense, and give Austria what she most desired—a plausible ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... allowance is made for the fact that a script to be written upon wood, as the runes were, of necessity avoids horizontal lines which run along the fibres of the wood, and would therefore be indistinct, most of the runic signs thus receive a plausible explanation. The strongest argument for the derivation from the Latin alphabet is undoubtedly the value of attaching to @; for, as we have seen, the Greek value of this symbol is w, and its value as f arises only by abbreviation from FH. On the other hand, several ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to say it, Jack; but the fact is, that I have such a confounded hesitating address that I fear I should make an unfavorable impression, and ruin my cause; whereas, if a plausible, voluble fellow like yourself could get his ear and plead for me, my appointment would be ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... told by Travellers, that some of these Customs now prevail among the Tartars. As we have no Satisfactory, or even a plausible, Account of the Ten Tribes carried Captives to the East by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, we may be disposed to think that the Tartars are descended from them. All the Discoveries of our late Navigators shew that the North Continent of America ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... her, I shall solicit her friendship for my wife. By this means I may enjoy her society, at least, which will alleviate the confinement of a married state. To my spouse I must be as civil as possible. I really wish she had less merit, that I might have a plausible excuse for ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... tails, words running at their end to an almost straight line, the letters merely indicated. The flatter, finer and more perpendicular this writing, the greater the insincerity. Such a writer would probably be a polite, pleasing and plausible person, but ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... is then passed between glass rollers for trituration and afterwards mixed with a definite amount of glycerine and distilled water. This complex pathologic product of unknown origin is injected into the wholesome bodies of helpless children under the false but plausible name of "pure calf ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... himself a valuable servant. He was the best cook in the regiment, and what was still more important, he was the most skillful thief and the most plausible liar in the army. He could defend himself so nobly from the insinuations of the suspicious that they would apologize for the wrong unwittingly done his character. John had not lived so well since ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... gravely, but received no other acknowledgment than a frigid glare from the veteran. Josef had undoubtedly prejudiced Sutphen against the accused. This was more plausible than to suppose that the Colonel had become rancorous merely because the unconscious Trusia had not been more promptly surrendered to him, for it was he who had received her from the automobile. Proudly meeting ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... constructions are too easy-going, too conjectural, too much dominated by prepossessions and the 'will to interpret.' The alleged sources or determinants for this dream may or may not have played the parts you assign to them; the mystery of the matter must remain inscrutable. But what your methods, so plausible in effect, certainly do show is how easy it may be to confabulate an explanation that goes no deeper than a phrenological reading of cranial bumps or than a seance in the cabinet of a palmist. Let us turn away from all this and consider what really ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Reason, in a shrewd Intimation, in cunningly diverting, or cleverly retorting an Objection: Sometimes it is couched in a bold Scheme of Speech, in a tart Irony, in a lusty Hyperbole, in a startling Metaphor, in a plausible Reconciling of Contradictions, or in acute Nonsense; Sometimes a scenical Representation of Persons or Things, a counterfeit Speech, a mimical Look or Gesture passeth for it. Sometimes an affected Simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous Bluntness giveth it Being. Sometimes ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... enough, he had always funds at his disposal, which is not the case now, and whenever there was a collection of valuable MSS. in the market he often prided himself on having secured it long before any other library had the money ready. Now and then, it is true, he allowed himself to be persuaded by a plausible seller of rare books or MSS., but generally he was very wary. He was not always very courteous to visitors, and still less so to his under-librarians. The Oriental under-librarian Professor Reay, in particular, who was old and somewhat infirm, had much ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... Monday evening the head-boy reported to Dr Rowlands that the perpetrator of the offence had not been discovered, but that one boy was very generally suspected, and on grounds that seemed plausible. "I admit," he added, "that from the little I know of him, he seems to me a very unlikely sort of boy ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... sleeping, in a direction towards the sleeping-place of the natives, clearly indicated that it was not until he had arisen from his sleep, and had been closely pressing upon them, that they had fired the fatal shot. Such appeared to me to be the most plausible and rational explanation of this melancholy affair—I would willingly believe it to be ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... even as to that I can but set down a few principal considerations. The progress of the military art is the most conspicuous, I was about to say the most SHOWY, fact in human history. Ancient civilisation may be compared with modern in many respects, and plausible arguments constructed to show that it is better; but you cannot compare the two in military power. Napoleon could indisputably have conquered Alexander; our Indian army would not think much of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. And I suppose the improvement ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... the pictures of Titian, Rubens, Veronese, their colour would at once seem crude, superficial, without cohesion or rarity. But some will aver that if the colour is right the values must be right too. However plausible this theory may seem, the practice of those who hold it amply demonstrates its untruth. It is interesting and instructive to notice how those who seek the colour without regard for the values inherent in the colouring matter never succeed in producing more than a certain shallow superficial ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... plausible argument. The Catholics say that no Protestant can be saved, but the Protestants admit that a Catholic may be, if in heart honest, just, and true. The sophistry of the plea in behalf of an insincere ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... that he had an aversion to any color, it would greatly strengthen your case. His 'antipatia,' as his man called it, must be one which covers a wide ground, to account for his self-isolation,—and the color hypothesis seems as plausible as any. But, my dear Miss Vincent, I think you had better leave your singular and striking hypothesis in my keeping for a while, rather than let it get abroad in a community like this, where so many tongues are in active ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... books was not "immaculate," and that it was "strangely at variance, with that sound and lofty morality which ought to form the basis of every education." She also speaks of the philosophy of that day as "the delusive though plausible theory that no license of tone, or warmth of coloring, could injure any really healthy and high-toned mind." In the article on "Woman in France," she touches on similar theories. As this article was written just at the time ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... strenuously for destruction of King Olaf Tryggveson on this grand Wendland expedition of his. Fleets and forces were with best diligence got ready; and, withal, a certain Jarl Sigwald, of Jomsburg, chieftain of the Jomsvikings, a powerful, plausible, and cunning man, was appointed to find means of joining himself to Tryggveson's grand voyage, of getting into Tryggveson's confidence, and keeping Svein Double-Beard, Eric, and the Swedish King aware of all ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... proceed to the election of a Speaker, had forgotten or neglected to demand the previous question, and thus cut off debate. Mr. James Brooks, most plausible in address, and most ready in talk on the side of the minority, saw the point left unguarded by his opponents, and resolved to enter. Born in Maine, now a citizen of New York, and editor of the "Express," Mr. Brooks ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... this extraordinary statement, the prince questioned him, and was told a plausible story by the young man. He had escaped the murderer, he said, the boy who died being the son of a serf, who resembled and had been substituted for him by his physician Simon, who knew what Boris designed. The physician had fled with him from Uglitch and put him in the hands ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... I gave my interviewer material for a very plausible article, which I remember was duly published, and which thus helped to divert attention from ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... support this view comes from the frequency with which the extremities are cyanotic or cold, the skin greasy, sweating profuse or absent, and so on. Further observations are necessary to confirm or disprove this hypothesis, but we feel inclined to accept it tentatively because it is plausible and consistent with the view that stupor is essentially a psychogenic type of reaction. Another physical anomaly, which is presumably of endocrine origin, is the suppression of the menses. This probably ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... undesirable post, since they were shunned by the decent part of the town's-people, and to be "sent to Coventry" became, in consequence, a synonym for being "cut." There are, however, other interpretations of the saying, and, though this sounds plausible, it may be incorrect. The heart of the town, once the strong-hold of the "Red Rose," is still very ancient, picturesque and sombre-looking, though the suburbs have been widened, "improved" and modernized to suit present requirements. The Coventry ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... first expansion of the productive element in the State, through mechanism and a co-operative organization, as to point at once to a causative connection. The more closely one looks into the social and political life of the eighteenth century the more plausible becomes this view. New and potentially influential social factors had begun to appear—the organizing manufacturer, the intelligent worker, the skilled tenant, and the urban abyss, and the traditions of the old land-owning non-progressive aristocratic monarchy that prevailed in Christendom, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... is that, however plausible the French derivation theory may sound, it is after all pure speculation—and a landsman's speculation at that—unsupported by a shred of ...
— The Shanty Book, Part I, Sailor Shanties • Richard Runciman Terry
... commission from heaven, bore the aspect of presumption and impiety. It seemed an offence which could not fail to draw after it the vengeance of the deity. My wishes for a time yielded to my fears, but this scheme in proportion as I meditated on it, became more plausible; no other occurred to me so easy and so efficacious. I endeavoured to persuade myself that the end proposed, was, in the highest degree praiseworthy, and that the excellence of my purpose would justify the means employed ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... universal Consent prov'd the contrary, they appear to have been of no Weight with the Doctor; he knew very well t'would sufficiently answer his End if by boldly and roundly asserting whatever he thought proper, and sticking at no Method of Defamation he should make the whole appear plausible and gain Adherents; and therefore with the utmost Assurance he affirms this Woman to be a Whore, that a Bawd, this Man a Pimp, that a Pathick tho' neither of them ever gave any Reason to be thought such, or were ever ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... sorrow. When a man was dead he ceased to be.[17]He became as he had been before he was born. Probably almost every one in the Senate thought like Caesar on this subject. Cicero certainly did. The only difference was that plausible statesmen affected a respect for the popular superstition, and pretended to believe what they did not believe. Caesar spoke his convictions out. There was no longer any solemnity in an execution. It was merely the removal out of the way of troublesome persons; and convenient as such a method might ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... "But then the whole thing is disgraceful, and always was. I should think Lord Plausible must be thoroughly ashamed of his sister." Lady Selina was sister to the Earl of Plausible, but, as all the world knew, was not on speaking ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Court or the most inconsiderable rhymester in Petticoat Lane, it made no difference; there was no crime too heinous for "the great Mr. Pope's" next verses to charge you with, and, worst of all, there was no misdoing so out of character that his adroit malignancy could not make it seem plausible. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... be pointed out that the opportunity for the evasion of constitutionalism which is created by this power of suspension is enormous, and anyone at all familiar with the history of public affairs in Spain would be able to cite numerous occasions upon which, upon pretexts more or less plausible, the guarantees of the fundamental law have ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... O'Malley and the galling sense of inferiority it carried with it; but once on the highroad again the smart returned and the sting lingering behind the man's scorn was not to be allayed. It required every excuse his wounded dignity could muster to bolster up his pride and make out for himself the plausible case that had previously comforted him and lulled his conscience to rest. It was now more impossible than ever for him to make any confession, he decided; for having denied in his father's presence O'Malley's acquaintance ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... disgust from the scholastic husks of its superficial knowledge. What he had learned came from inborn capacity, from desultory reading, and from the untutored imaginings of his garden at Brienne, his cave at Ajaccio, or his barrack chambers. What more plausible than that he should first turn to the land of his birth with some hope of happiness, usefulness, or even glory! What more mortifying than the revelation that in manhood he was too French for Corsica, as in boyhood he had been too Corsican ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the Earl of Leicester listened to his doctrines and predictions, affords a good specimen of the manners of those times. The movements of the heavenly bodies, (imperfectly as they were then understood,) seemed to afford the most plausible vehicle for these "oracles of human destiny;" and even now, while we are tracing these lines, the red and glaring appearance of the planet Mars, shining so beautifully in the south-east, is considered by the many as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... of the most celebrated of them, of Robespierre, frequently astound one by their incoherence: by merely reading them no plausible explanation is to be found of the great part played ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... "it remains to be seen whether this whole affair is not a most unworthy fraud. The circumstances are inexplicable - I had almost said incredible; and until I see a little more daylight, and some plausible motive, I confess I should be very sorry to put a hand to the transaction. I appeal to you in this difficulty for information. I must learn what is at the bottom of it all. If you do not know, cannot guess, or are not at ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... very plausible reason, too," replied I; "nor do I think I have any right—I am sure I have no intention of doing as you propose. Surely, people have a right to choose their acquaintance, and to cut me, if they think ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... of critical vipers the various offenses of which they were guilty, the stupidities that seemed to belong to their very nature, and that utter lack of literary skill which prevented them from giving a look of sense to the most plausible nonsense they concocted. By Cooper, indeed, the preface was looked upon not as a place to conciliate the reader, but to hurl scorn at the reviewer. In his hands it became a trumpet from which he blew from time to time critic-defying strains, which more than made up in vigor for all they lacked in ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... number of Interrogatories and Answers to Interrogatories, and even assisted in their preparation. The last thing that any one of the pupils thought of, was in what manner the client would desire to express his own views. They drew the most plausible Answers they could imagine, taking care that their words were sufficiently near to the actual facts for the client to be able ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... and lack of talent whitewashed over by the factory concern lose only too soon their plausible brilliancy. A failure in life is generally the sad end of such a factory product; and to factory methods the whole art of song is more and more given over as ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... Prussia to the first place in Europe,—a position held by himself, and which he had no desire to vacate. It was in his power to prevent the occurrence of war down almost to the very hour when the Diet of the Germanic Confederation afforded to Prussia so plausible a ground for setting her armies in motion, by adopting a course that bore some resemblance to the old process of putting a disobedient member under the ban of the Empire. Prussia would not have gone ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... published in a quarto volume in 1609. At the end of the volume a narrative poem was printed, under the name A Lover's Complaint. It tells in the first person the story of a girl who has been seduced by a plausible villain. It is a work of Shakespeare's youth, fresh and felicitous as youth's work often is, and very ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... laugh, and all of us tried hard to smother the sound, or at least to ignore it. Every one talked at once, loudly, and with exaggerated decision, obviously trying to say something plausible against heavy odds, striving to explain naturally that an animal might so easily conceal itself from us, or swim away before we had time to light upon its trail. For we all spoke of that "trail" as though it really existed, and we had more to go upon than the mere marks of paws ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... on business first," said I, speaking from the lips outward, and meanwhile (in the private apartments of my brain) trying for the thousandth time to find some plausible arrangement of my story. "I want to have a notion how we ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... it suggested to the few a plausible reason why she had married Willoughby. There had been nothing openly unhappy in their life together. Still, as others saw, Willoughby was much older than his wife, radically without her social instincts, and, furthermore, when she had accepted him, it had been pretty generally ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... The most plausible objection that I ever heard to Colonel Gardiner's character is, that he was too much attached to some religious principles, established indeed in the churches both of England and Scotland, but which have of ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... assisted by Maurice and the coachman, who, finding their inquiry ineffectual, did not scruple to declare his suspicion of the two fat turtles who had deserted the coach in such an abrupt manner. In a word, he rendered this conjecture so plausible, by wresting the circumstances of their behaviour and retreat, that poor Elenor implicitly believed they were the thieves by whom she had suffered; and was prevailed upon to accept the proffered assistance of the generous Count, who, seeing her very much disordered by this ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Then he said, My lord, this man, notwithstanding his plausible name, is one of the vilest men in our country; he neither regardeth prince nor people, law nor custom, but doeth all that he can to possess all men with certain of his disloyal notions, which he in the general calls principles of faith and holiness. And in particular, I heard him once myself ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... himself equal to the highest command that Congress could be persuaded to give him. On the battle-field he seems to have been wanting even in personal courage, as he certainly was in power to handle his troops; but in society he was quite a lion. He had a smooth courteous manner and a plausible tongue which paid little heed to the difference between truth and falsehood. His lies were not very ingenious, and so they were often detected and pointed out. But while many people were disgusted by his selfishness and trickery, there were always some who insisted that he was a great genius. ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... duped by her plausible tongue," cried Reginald bitterly." She completely bewitched my poor uncle. Do you know that he picked her up out of the gutter, and knew no more of her past life than he knew of the inhabitants of the other planets? If you ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the way, had passed between us, and I had wondered—oh, HOW I had wondered!—if he were groping about in his little mind for something plausible and not too grotesque. It would tax his invention, certainly, and I felt, this time, over his real embarrassment, a curious thrill of triumph. It was a sharp trap for the inscrutable! He couldn't play any longer at innocence; so how the deuce would he get out of it? There beat ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... have some private conversation with Alethea; but the other guests showed no inclination to take their departure; and he felt that he could not remain much longer, as his companion, Burdale, would naturally be becoming impatient. He himself could not agree with the priest's remarks, plausible as they were. Though he had not seen much of Romanists, he had heard a good deal of what took place at Rome, and believed truly that the union spoken of was very far from being real. He had heard, too, of a Spanish army of Roman Catholics attacking Rome, and of its being given ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... who may at any time compose that system, which, under the plausible title of an administration, subsists but for the establishment of weakness and confusion; they fall into different classes, with different merits. I think the situation of some people in that state may deserve a certain degree of compassion; at the same time that they furnish an example, which, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... indications of piety, so fallacious and so plausible that there are very few, even among intelligent Christians, who are not often greatly deceived. "By their fruits ye shall know them," said the Savior; a direction sufficiently plain, one would think, and pointing to a test sufficiently easy to be applied. But it is slow ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... and Lincoln was memorable. As a dexterous debater, Douglas had no equal in the Union. He was strong on the stump and incomparable in a popular assembly. Without grace or imagination, he was yet a plausible, versatile man, quick and ingenious, resolute and ready, with a rare faculty for convincing men. He was small and sinewy, with smooth face, bright eye, and broad brow, and his neighbors called him the "Little Giant." He could be specious, even fallacious; he employed an ad captandum kind of ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... perhaps claim to have shown, however briefly, in what direction we must look for the solution of our problem of universal immanence—a problem unnecessarily complicated by a plausible but false construction of that doctrine. We conclude that every portion of the cosmos, including our conscious selves, manifests so much, and such aspects, of God as it has the capacity to manifest—His Power, His Purpose, His moral Law, which vindicates its sanctity ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... child, a crime seldom committed in this country. She is since married, and become the careful mother of a family. This might be given as an instance, that a desperate act is not always a proof of an incorrigible depravity of character, the only plausible excuse that has been brought forward to justify the ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... indeed, lies the justest and most plausible objection against a considerable part of metaphysics, that they are not properly a science, but arise either from the fruitless efforts of human vanity, which would penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding, or from the craft of popular superstitions, which, being ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... had been prepared for the purpose of upsetting her. This was an interesting point in the proceedings, because few there had seen a self-righting boat, and, as usual, there was a large sprinkling in the crowd of that class of human beings who maintain the plausible, but false, doctrine, that ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... with reluctance that we go on to notice the religion of these books; but since religion appears so largely in them, we must not decline the task. To us, at least, the theory of the writer's "High-Church tendencies" could never have appeared plausible; for even in the "Scenes of Clerical Life" the chief religious personage is the "evangelical" curate Mr. Tryan, and whatever good there is in his parish is confined to the circle of his partisans and converts; while in "Adam Bede" the Methodess preacheress, Dinah Morris, is intended to shine ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Bastiat's theory of value. He also accepts the wages-fund theory, rejects the law of Malthus, and, although believing in the law of diminishing returns from land, regards rent as the reward for a service rendered. Another writer, Henry George,(99) has gained an abnormal prominence by a plausible book, "Progress and Poverty" (1880), which rejects the doctrine of Malthus, and argues that the increase of production of any kind augments the demand for land, and so raises its value. His conclusions lead him to advocate the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... attained (p. 144) such dimensions by February, 1521, that Henry thought Charles was likely to lose his Spanish dominions. The temptation was too great for France to resist; and in the early spring of 1521 French forces overran Navarre, and restored to his kingdom the exile D'Albret. Francis had many plausible excuses, and sought to prove that he was not really the aggressor. There had been confused fighting between the imperialist Nassau and Francis's allies, the Duke of Guelders and Robert de la Marck, which ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... want you to be let in by Murchison," he said suddenly. "You will find him damnably plausible. If he thinks you really want the place he will ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... of laws, and — what is incomparably more important — it has considerably reduced the number of independent hypothese forming the basis of theory. The special theory of relativity has rendered the Maxwell-Lorentz theory so plausible, that the latter would have been generally accepted by physicists even if experiment had decided less unequivocally in ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... for the plantations outside of Charleston.[1] In the whole matter of the choice of his chief assistants he showed remarkable judgment of character. His penetration was almost uncanny. "Rolla was plausible, and possessed uncommon self-possession; bold and ardent, he was not to be deterred from his purpose by danger. Ned's appearance indicated that he was a man of firm nerves and desperate courage. Peter was intrepid and resolute, true to his engagements, and cautious ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... and a visionary. Many men who have been able to show much more plausible grounds for their theories than he could for his have died the laughing-stock of the world. Columbus was a laughing-stock for nearly twenty years; but though the special application of his theory was absurdly wrong, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... and they are well met, for 'tis as dry an Orange as ever grew: nothing but salutation, and "O lord, sir!" and "It pleases you to say so, sir!" one that can laugh at a jest for company with a most plausible and extemporal grade; and some hour after in private ask you what it was. The other monsieur, Clove, is a more spiced youth; he will sit you a whole afternoon sometimes in a bookseller's shop, reading the Greek, Italian, and Spanish, when he understands not a word of either; if he had the tongues ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... at Hampstead, with its well-remembered gloomy garden. He pictured himself escaped from this present peril, and freed from the sordid thraldom which so long had held him. He saw himself returning, with some plausible story of his wanderings, to take possession of the wealth which was his—saw himself living once more, rich, free, and respected, in the world from which he had been so long an exile. He saw his mother's sweet pale face, the light of a happy home circle. He saw himself—received ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... whole, not a twentieth part of the writings which pass under the name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves and two or three other plausible inventions, can be fairly doubted by those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have taken place in his philosophy (see above). That twentieth debatable portion scarcely in any degree affects ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... plausible; but consider the effect of it upon yourself. You listen to a symphony by Beethoven; and before you esteem it good, you must ask yourself, not whether it is good to you, but whether it will satisfy the demands of those great masses ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... not get over his surprise. He cast about for plausible explanations. But the fact was there before him. Two rows of teeth, cutting through the thin red peel, had left their regular, semicircular bite clearly in the pulp of the fruit. They were clearly marked on the top, while the lower row had melted into a single ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... however, that there was less content and happiness on the estate than there had been in the old times. Complaints had reached her from time to time of overwork and harsh treatment. But upon inquiring into these matters, Jonas had always such plausible reasons to give that she was convinced he was in the right, and that the fault was among the slaves themselves, who tried to take advantage of the fact that they had no longer a master's eye upon them, and ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... liberal allowance per annum, managed to wring a few thousands overdraft from his banker by dint of a plausible tongue and a charm of manner. When the crash came and Featherstone was forced to face realities, the house ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... I have by plausible logic, mental suggestion, and good cheer to the hospital patients, brought many a smile through a mist ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... I will not go. I own there is something in what you say. I always knew you had the wit to make good your own story, and tell a plausible tale. But I will not be come over thus. It has been my character, when I had once conceived a scheme of vengeance, never to forego it; and I will not change that character. I took up Hawkins when every body forsook him, and made a ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... of the fair, which was within three months of the period which my beloved and myself had fixed upon for the celebration of our nuptials. To the fair I went, a couple of trusty men following me with the horses. I soon found a purchaser for the animals, a portly, plausible person, of about forty, dressed in a blue riding coat, brown top boots, and leather breeches. There was a strange-looking urchin with him, attired in nearly similar fashion, with a beam in one of his eyes, who called him father. The man paid me for the purchase ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... concord at the expense of their honor; which, nevertheless, it would be proper for good pastors to do. They ask only that they would release unjust burdens which are new and have been received contrary to the custom of the Church Catholic. It may be that in the beginning there were plausible reasons for some of these ordinances; and yet they are not adapted to later times. It is also evident that some were adopted through erroneous conceptions. Therefore it would be befitting the clemency of the Pontiffs to mitigate them now, because such a modification does not shake ...
— The Confession of Faith • Various
... German authorities put the loss of output at somewhat above 30 per cent, divided about equally between the shortening of the shift and the other economic influences. This figure appears on general grounds to be plausible, but I have not the knowledge to endorse or ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... almost complete, and would be large or small, in proportion to the time spent upon it. Perhaps succeeding generations built at some of the larger pyramids. They are monuments erected to the memory of kings or ruling families, and contain their tombs. Such, at least, is a plausible solution ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... him, and with a single voice the Republicans of Illinois called upon Lincoln to oppose him. Douglas was indeed an opponent not to be despised. His friends and followers called him the "Little Giant." He was plausible, popular, quick-witted, had winning manners, was most skilful in the use of words, both to convince his hearers and, at times, to hide his real meaning. He and Lincoln were old antagonists. They had first met in the far-away Vandalia days of the Illinois legislature. In Springfield, Douglas ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... which managed his affairs in England. The errand of this gentleman was to give his client the soundest and speediest advice, relating to the investment of money. Having indicated the safe and solid speculation, the visitor added a warning word, relating to the plausible and dangerous investments of the day. "For instance," he said, "there's ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... personage was present than "Mooty," the crafty, determined, plausible philosopher—the sagest of the counsellors, the most flowery of orators, the most weird of the wizards. Long before he had established his reputation as a medicine-man. A settler had purchased some cast-off goats in a distant ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... been placed beyond a doubt. I shall now go on to explain in detail how completely unsatisfactory are the answers that are at present given it; how it is evaded by some and begged by others; and how those that are most plausible are really made worthless, by a subtle but ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... sound most plausible, are found for every sort of negligence in the service of God—indeed, for not ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberations and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... Cromarty that he had told her of Sir Malcolm's engagement to Miss Farmond—and I suspected he had started her suspicions of them; and I saw that he was set on that theory, in spite of the fact that it was palpably improbable if one actually knew the people. Of course if one didn't, it was plausible enough. When I first came down here it seemed to me a very likely theory and I was prepared to find a guilty couple, but when I met Miss Farmond and told her suddenly that Sir Malcolm was arrested, and she gazed blankly at me and asked 'What for?' well, I simply ran my pencil, so to ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... "that we will risk the young lady outside. Your story, my dear, is ingenious, but scarcely plausible. ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
