"Unlikelihood" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these shelves had no other backing than the wall, he had feared striking a spot not covered by a book. But he had not undertaken so risky a piece of work without first noting how nearly the tops of the books approached the line of the shelf above them, and the consequent unlikelihood of his striking the space between, at the height he planned the hole. He had even been careful to assure himself that all the volumes at this exact point stood far enough forward to afford room behind them for the chips and plaster he must necessarily push through ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... sang their ancient hymns, after which all the scene vanished like silver fumes of smoke, and this continued for one hundred years. This most unlikely legend has been told in beautiful Spanish and English poetry, and for all its unlikelihood has found its way with its weird charm into ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... not improved his position at Edinburgh. Gratitude was not then a common virtue among public men. Claverhouse had done for his colleagues all that he had promised. The recollection of their debt to him, and the unlikelihood of their being able to increase it, did not serve to endear to them this successful soldier of fortune, who had indeed helped them to their ambition, but who had thereby shown a dangerous capacity for helping himself. At the head of these malcontents was, of course, Queensberry, though, as the ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... orthography better to the pronunciation, without considering that this is to measure by a shadow, to take that for a model or standard which is changing while they apply it. Others, less absurdly indeed, but with equal unlikelihood of success, have endeavoured to proportion the number of letters to that of sounds, that every sound may have its own character, and every character a single sound. Such would be the orthography of a new language, to be formed by a synod of grammarians upon principles of science. But ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... is not so defined as to preclude his acceptance of fees from whites resident on the Reserve, provided the advice be sought at his office. The Government, probably, being well aware of the stress of work under which their medical appointee chronically labours, and appreciating the consequent unlikelihood of this privilege being exercised to the prejudice of the Indian, have not, as yet, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... left unmolested to follow their natural bent; but Chatty felt a little sinking of the heart when she thought of being bound to the Warren for ever; of the necessity there would be for her constant services, and the unlikelihood of any further opening of life. While there had been two, there was always a possibility of an invitation, of a visit and little break of novelty: but it was one of Minnie's most cherished maxims that a young lady in the house was indispensable, and Chatty in the recollection ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... results of this orienting study appear to be the unlikelihood of euphoria and allied symptoms in the "mild" or non-atrophic cases and the unlikelihood of certain symptoms, here termed contra-environmental, in the severe or atrophic cases. Perhaps these statistical facts may lay a foundation for a study of the pathogenesis of these symptoms. Meantime ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... languages as Lowlander and Borderer; since good reasons can be given for referring them both to the Keltic. Their exact import is difficult to ascertain; but if we suppose them to mean coasters and watersidemen, respectively, we get a clear view of the unlikelihood of one being German and ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... life of Lee, finds excuse for Jackson in a story that he was utterly exhausted, and that his staff let him sleep until the sun was high. Apart from the unlikelihood that a man who seems to have done without sleep whenever the enemy was in front should have permitted himself to be overpowered at such a crisis, we have Colonel Munford's evidence that the general was well in advance of his columns at sunrise, and the regimental reports show that the troops ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson |
