"Insuperable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... natural difference, leading to confusion of thought, and very possibly to that instinct of contradiction of which I was speaking? A great deal of time is lost in profitless conversation, and a good deal of ill temper frequently caused, by not considering these organic and practically insuperable conditions. In dealing with them, acquiescence is the best of palliations ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the parent of sloth, frauds, and chicane, king Asychis made a very judicious law.(331) The wisest and best regulated states, as Athens and Rome, ever found insuperable difficulties, in contriving a just medium, to restrain, on one hand, the cruelty of the creditor in the exaction of his loan; and on the other, the knavery of the debtor, who refused or neglected to pay his debts. Now Egypt took a wise course on this occasion; and, without doing any injury ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... dictate terms which England could not accept without degradation, or refuse without aggravating the existing grounds of hostility. Circumstances might arise—such as a change in the Government—to obviate the former difficulty; but the latter was insuperable. It would have been inconsistent with the principles upon which the war was undertaken to have proposed or submitted to any conditions which France, exulting over her recent successes, could have been expected to approve; and the result of such a ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... the facts bear witness that there were grave imperfections in our work. After a heroic battle, fought under insuperable difficulties, and when there was every promise of still more brilliant triumphs, the cause went into an eclipse, from which it emerged only after ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... incline them to listen with more patience, and a milder temper, to the doctrines and evidences of the Christian religion. The degree of adhesion to their castes, which still remains, is certainly unfavourable, and must be considered as one of Satan's arts to render men unhappy; but it is not insuperable. The Roman Catholics have gained myriads of converts from among them. The Danish missionaries record their thousands too: and one (Schwartz) of the most successful missionaries at present in the world is labouring in the southern part of Hindostan. Besides a very considerable number ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... to the throne, are obliged, by all the duties of gratitude, to adore that Providence which has so signally interposed in our behalf, by clearing a way to the Protestant succession through such difficulties as seemed insuperable—Swift. I wish he had told us any ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... privileged insular situation, enormous mercantile navy and flourishing trade in coal have enabled her to resume her pre-war economic existence almost entirely, no country has emerged scatheless from the War. The rates of exchange soar daily to fantastic heights, and insuperable barriers to the commerce of European nations are being created. People work less than they did in pre-war times, but everywhere a tendency is noticeable to consume more. Austria, Germany, Italy, France are not different phenomena, but different manifestations and phases ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... arguments in general, and those in that Epistle in particular, preserved in his Theological Repository, where he will see absurdity in reasoning, and, something worse, in quotation, exposed in a masterly manner. Indeed, some learned Christians are so sensible of the insuperable difficulties attending every attempt to reconcile that Epistle to the Doctrine of inspiration, or even to common sense, that they avoid the trouble, by denying that Paul could have been the author of such a work, and attribute it to the same, or a similar, hand, with that which forged the marvellous ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... invitations I have refused for so many years. I hope to get at Mr. Kingsley; but I have seen little of him this winter. We are five miles asunder; his wife has been ill; and my fear of an open carriage, or rather the medical injunction not to enter one, has been a most insuperable objection. We are, as we both said, summer neighbors. However, I will try that you should see him. He is well worth knowing. Thank you about Mr. Blackstone. He is worth knowing too, in a different way, a very learned and very clever man (you ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... gentlest heart that poet ever bore. I think there are not many things in poets' lives more touching than his silence, in verse, as to his own chief sorrow. A stranger intermeddles not with it, and he kept secret his brief lay on that insuperable and incommunicable regret. Much would have been lost had all poets been as reticent, yet one likes him better for it than if he had given us a ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... and in that cage is the bird you seek; ask him which are the singing-tree and the yellow-water, and he will tell you. I have nothing more to say, except to beg you again not to expose your life, for the difficulty is almost insuperable." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... that these were the summits of submarine volcanoes on which the coral had grown. But as the reef-making coral does not live at greater depths than about twenty-five fathoms, the immense number of these reefs formed an almost insuperable objection to this theory. The Laccadives and Maldives for instance—meaning literally the "lac of or 100,000 islands," and the "thousand islands"—are a series of such atolls, and it was impossible to imagine so great a number of craters, all so ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... This difficulty appeared insuperable even to the iron will of Anicza. It was a test even she could not submit to. She stamped her foot with rage and uttered again and again the word Dracu, which in Roumanian means nothing less than his ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... illiterate nobody. And now he had a motor car, and looked at the tottering James with sardonic contempt, from under his heavy, heavy-lidded dark eyes. He was rather stout, frail in health, but silent and insuperable, was A. W. Jordan. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... in science said that when he encountered an apparently insuperable obstacle, he usually found himself upon ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... however urgently pressed, could not in all probability be obtained in time to reach Washington before the necessary adjournment of Congress by the Constitution. The reasons given by the ministry for refusing to convoke the Chambers at an earlier period were afterwards shewn not to be insuperable by their actual convocation on the 1st of December under a special call for domestic purposes, which fact, however, did not become known to this Government until after the commencement of the last ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... been traversed by some small vessel, and is rightly considered as that which it will be most difficult for a vessel to double during the whole North-East Passage; but our vessel, equipped with all modern appliances, ought not to find insuperable difficulties in doubling this point, and if that can be accomplished, we will probably have pretty open water towards Behring's Straits, which ought to be reached before the end of September. From Behring Strait the course will be shaped for some Asiatic ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... not the mother's only objection to me, or only proof of that frailty she justly ascribes to me. To prove me innocent of this charge will not reconcile her to her daughter's marriage. It will only remove one insuperable impediment to her reconciliation with ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... Polish Jews resemble their brethren in faith in the Orient at Saadia's time or in the Spain of Gabirol and Maimonides. Isolation and clannishness were inevitable in view of the character of the Christian environment and the almost insuperable barriers raised between the classes of Polish society. But it was this exclusiveness that gave peculiar stability and completeness to the life of the Jew as an individual and as a member of Jewish society, and it was the same exclusiveness that afforded opportunity for the development of a sharply ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... commercialism, the other with his demagogic violence—had possibly a useful part to play at the present stage of things. He, however, could have no place in that camp. Too indiscreetly he had hoisted his standard of idealism, and by stubborn resistance of insuperable forces he had merely brought forward the least satisfactory elements of his own character. 'Hold on!' cried Malkin. 'Fight the grovellers to the end!' But Earwaker had begun to see himself in a light of ridicule. There was just ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... persevere, trusting much to a belief that when once he was married his father would "come round." His father always did come round. But the more he thought of it, the more impossible it seemed to him that he should ask his father's consent at the present moment. Lady Mabel's presence in the house was an insuperable obstacle. He thought that he could do it if he and his father were alone together, or comparatively alone. He must be prepared for an opposition, at any rate of some days, which opposition would make his father quite unable to entertain his guests while ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... but he is a Monarch whose personal qualities are of so distinguished an order that he has come to be regarded as a statesman of the first rank (applause). The world watches His Majesty's movements with breathless interest. Under his masterful touch international difficulties which seem insuperable are solved, political sores are healed. His presence seems to breathe the spirit of peace and of goodwill, so that when he undertakes a journey it needs no strong imagination to picture to oneself the Angel of Peace hovering over his footsteps with healing in her wings (applause). ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... "forgive me if I seemed to take it lightly. My most earnest thought is wholly at your disposal. And now let me ask you a few questions. How did you ever succeed in convincing Dalmain that such a thing as this was an insuperable ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... That Leslie was especially so. That when she was of age she would have a vast inheritance. There had been no sign of great wealth or ostentation in their living but if that were so then there was an insuperable wall between him ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... right, claim the fulfilment of the stipulation; we, thinking slavery wrong, cannot fulfil the stipulation without consciousness of participation in wrong. Here is a real difficulty, but it seems to me not insuperable. It will not do for us to say to you, in justification of non-performance, "the stipulation is immoral, and therefore we cannot execute it;" for you deny the immorality, and we cannot ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... sent part of his troops two days' journey up-stream, with orders to cross the Rhone and fall on the rear of the barbarians. His orders were executed by Hanno, and the passage of the river was safely effected. He crossed the Alps in fifteen days, in the face of obstacles which would have proved insuperable to almost any other commander. His troops, reared under African and Spanish suns, perished in thousands amid ice and snow. The native tribes threatened the annihilation of his force, and were only dispersed by his matchless courage and address. The beasts of burden fell over precipices, or ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... the history of humanity, in order that certain faculties might grow and become strong, and that the spiritual side for a time might seem apart, and the other might go its own way unruled. Many difficulties grew out of it, but still they were not insuperable—a certain clashing of authorities from time to time, and certain jealousy between the one and the other. These things were the inevitable concomitants of the separation, of the differences between the spiritual and temporal sides, ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... my musing. To account for the absence of Pleyel became once more the scope of my conjectures. How many incidents might occur to raise an insuperable impediment in his way? When I was a child, a scheme of pleasure, in which he and his sister were parties, had been, in like manner, frustrated by his absence; but his absence, in that instance, had been occasioned by his falling from a boat into the river, in consequence ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... fifty yards by drains, known to us as tap-ditches, which cross the water furrows at right angles, and are cut from two to four inches deeper than the furrows themselves. I am particular in describing the land, as I had always supposed that an insuperable obstacle in the way of the regular action of any machine would be found in the irregularity of surface into which our land is necessarily thrown by our system of culture. The machine surmounted every anticipated difficulty, and was eminently successful, ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... in the middle of February, they reached the drowned lands of the Wabash, where the ice had just broken up and everything was flooded, the difficulties seemed almost insuperable, and the march became painful and laborious to a degree. All day long the troops waded in the icy water, and at night they could with difficulty find some little hillock on which to sleep. Only Clark's indomitable courage and cheerfulness kept the party ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... delight; I count them amongst the most successful creations of my genius. Where my technique forsook me, you must be satisfied with the good intention, which will be clear to you from the literary explanation attached to it. The trees especially presented me with insuperable difficulties, and if every painter has to perspire over perspective as I have done, his art is by no means an easy calling. As to the rest, I have in my notes always referred to the full score, in which I have indicated—much more fully and clearly than in the libretto—the ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Mr. Ramy's shop, and pictures of domestic disorder mingled with the more poignant vision of her sister's illness. But surely if Evelina were ill Mr. Ramy would have written. He wrote a small neat hand, and epistolary communication was not an insuperable embarrassment to him. The too probable alternative was that both the unhappy pair had been prostrated by some disease which left them powerless to summon her—for summon her they surely would, Ann Eliza with unconscious cynicism reflected, if she ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... conjunction with the bridge; and when it is considered that scarcely two Violins can be found of exactly identical structure, it must be admitted that the difficulties in the way of laying down any set of hard and fast rules for their regulation seem to be insuperable. ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... that Miserrimus Dexter is the man who ought to have been tried for the murder at Gleninch; and it is another thing, at this distance of time, to lay our hands on the plain evidence which can alone justify anything like a public assertion of his guilt. There, as I see it, is the insuperable difficulty in the case. Unless I am completely mistaken, the question is now narrowed to this plain issue: The public assertion of your husband's innocence depends entirely on the public assertion of Dexter's guilt. How are ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... compelling subordination, and, with the exception of his brother Louis (who was slain at the battle of Mookerheyde), without a single captain of generous military capacity,—with such odds, seemingly insuperable, William of Orange met the chief captains of his generation, and made head against them, creeping forward, as the tides do, till they own the shore. When these facts are co-ordinated, his achievements become phenomenal. His resiliency was tremendous. In some significant ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... barons; and their discord, poverty, and ignorance, extended the ramifications of tyranny to the most sequestered villages. The Greeks were oppressed by the double weight of the priest, who were invested with temporal power, and of the soldier, who was inflamed by fanatic hatred; and the insuperable bar of religion and language forever separated the stranger and the native. As long as the crusaders were united at Constantinople, the memory of their conquest, and the terror of their arms, imposed silence on the captive land: their dispersion betrayed the smallness ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... grand idea of an all-governing independent mind involved difficulties which proved insuperable; because it gave to matter, in the form of chaos, an independent and eternal self-existence, and so introduced a dualism of mind and matter. In the Mind or Intelligence, Anaxagoras included not only life and motion, but the moral ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... for the discovery which had changed his prospects. They would have done anything for him that they could, but all Lord Kirkaldy's interest was at the foreign office, or with his fellow-diplomates, and here he soon found an insuperable bar. Mark's education had stood still from the time of Miss Headworth's flight till his father's second marriage, his energies having been solely devoted to struggles with the grim varieties of governess purveyed by his grandmother, ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... long Melbourne and Sydney, together with all about them, will weigh, with ourselves at least, as heavily as New York. The coal question is, of course, an awful difficulty for three weeks instead of five to six days, but not, we hope, insuperable. Our "Coptic" burns but fifty tons a day, but the New York liners ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... English tongue, in Christ Church Cathedral. As a reward for his energy in introducing the reform in general, and the liturgy in particular, Edward VI. annexed the primacy of all Ireland to the see of Dublin by Act of Parliament. There was one insuperable obstacle, however, in the way of using the English tongue, which was simply that the people did not understand it. Even the descendants of the Anglo-Norman were more familiar with the Celtic dialect, and some attempt was made at this time to procure a Latin ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... middle course; and accordingly some late writers, who reject the latter system, while they do not admit the authority of conscience, seem to refer our moral impressions entirely to the will of the Deity as made known to us by revelation. I have formerly stated what seem to me to be insuperable objections to this doctrine. It appears, indeed, to be distinctly opposed by the very words of Scripture, which clearly recognise a power, or a process in the mind by which "those who are without law," that is, without ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... most unimaginable happiness, of a kind which would perhaps have hardly satisfied his more modern instincts. She saw a maiden of indescribable beauty, brought up in unapproachable perfections, guarded by the all but insuperable jealousy of an ideal home. Orsino was to love this vision, and none other, from the first meeting to the term of his natural life, and was to win her in the face or difficulties such as would have made even Giovanni, the incomparable, look grave. This radiant creature was also to love Orsino, ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... forces. It is their task to weld the assemblage of men, armed and maintained by the State, into an harmonious whole, skilled in technique and imbued with a psychological and mental attitude which will not admit that any obstacle is insuperable. ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... she might meddle in the distribution of places that he was willing to keep in his own hands; and he represented to the King that the Roman Catholic religion that she professed was an insuperable objection to her appearance at the Court of England, at least so early; but he gave her private hopes that things might be so arranged as to make her admittance easy when the King was settled in his new dominions. And with this hope she ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... matter is simple enough, and the necessary measures to be taken to remedy it are no less simple—barring sentimental objections which will probably prove insuperable. A monarchy, even a sufficiently inane monarchy, carries the burden of a gentlemanly governmental establishment—a government by and for the kept classes; such a government will unavoidably direct the affairs ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... difference between her and other girls. Besides this, she was a singularly determined young woman. She had made up her mind to marry the young Squire; he in his folly had given no single hint of the vast, the insuperable difficulties that lay in the way; and so the ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... us to establish between our ideas the same clear and precise distinctions, and the same break in continuity, as between material objects. This assimilation is useful in practical life and necessary in most sciences. But we are right in asking whether the insuperable difficulties of certain philosophical problems do not arise from the fact that we persist in placing non-spatial phenomena next one another in space, and whether, if we did away with the vulgar illustrations ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... witness the phenomena and personally to verify all the details, cannot rationally deny the possibility of such an hypothesis. Yet I find little parallel between the cases, and difficulties, apparently insuperable, in the way of accepting such a solution of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... Others say, that, "having committed the Prince to prison in his younger days, he was afraid that, on the sceptre of justice falling into his hands, that royal culprit would take a too severe revenge thereof; and this filled him with such insuperable melancholy, that he was driven to the desperate act of self-murder." But his appointment to succeed Gascoyne as Chief Justice of the King's Bench, March 29, 1413, must have conquered that melancholy; and he discharged ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... thought the difficulties of transport were insuperable, we came straight on the railway lines and the station, where a train had pulled up on its way to Ghent. Miss Ashley-Smith got on to the train. I got on too, to go with her, and the Chaplain, who is abominably strong, put his arms round my ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... perhaps nothing will tend to lift the whole subject of paternity in the popular mind to the plane where it belongs, as will this love and knowledge, when it is bred in the child from his early years. Many difficulties in handling this subject that become insuperable might never even exist if the knowledge of fatherhood, if love and respect for it and for the father as the giver of life, were bred into the boy at an early age. Moreover a certain shyness, which often makes it more difficult for fathers to talk to their ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... position seems to them insoluble. But the wave they feel to be rising does not come from the quarter they expect. It rises again from the same point as before—Paris. The last backwash of the movement from the west occurs: a backwash which serves to solve the apparently insuperable diplomatic difficulties and ends the military movement of that period ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... preserved, it would not be a very heavy burden on it to pay their ransom; and to paying it, no patriot or loyal citizen of the free States would raise the slightest objection. The objection therefore urged, though grave, need not be regarded as insuperable; and we think the advantages of the measure, in a military point of view, would be far greater than any disadvantage we ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... Alliances may form a temporal show of friendship, but it cannot continue; for their situation produces a natural rivalship, which every accidental circumstance has contributed to increase. Long wars, for many reigns after the conquest, established a radical and insuperable hatred between us, nor did those wars cease till the reformation produced new occasions of jealousy and aversion. France was, by these reasons, obliged for many ages to employ all her influence and policy ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... Wuertemberg borders. To the fulfilment of this scheme there were, however, in the sickness which his Mother had fallen into, in the fettered position of the Father, and in the rigorously frugal economies of the Family, insuperable obstacles. Whereupon his Father made him the proposal, that he, Friedrich, either himself or by him, the Captain, should apply to the Duke Karl's Serene Highness; and petition him for permission to return to his country and kindred. As ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... advance of his soldiery along that fearful wilderness which is called emphatically, "The Valley of Desolation." A single look or word was commonly sufficient to set all in motion again. But if the way presented some new and apparently insuperable difficulty, the Consul bade the drums beat and the trumpets sound, as if for the charge; and this never failed. Of such gallant temper were the spirits which Napoleon had at command, and with such admirable skill ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... anxious that their home should continue ever to be hers, yet they feared that her dislike to a new country might be an insuperable objection to this. At last Jem took advantage of an evening of unusual placidity, as he sat alone with his mother just before going to bed, to broach the subject; and to his surprise she acceded willingly to his proposition of her ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... "One insuperable objection to such a reciprocity arises from the nature of our government, as a confederation, since there is no identity in our own criminal jurisprudence: but a chief reason is the exceedingly artificial condition of your ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... said, Not so, Lord: Forgive now this people their sin; or if thou wilt not, blot me also out of the book of the living. O admirable charity! O insuperable perfection! The servant speaks freely to his Lord: He beseeches him either to forgive the people, or to destroy him together ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... workmen, who can not be dispensed with, are so abundant and so cheap here, so rare and so dear at home, that that alone is a decisive reason for coming abroad. Even here it is a heavy expense to procure sufficient and competent workmen; at home it is almost at ruinous cost and with nearly insuperable difficulty. I have two workmen—as good, certainly, as the best in America—to the finest of whom I pay only four dollars a day. He could make twice that cutting weeping-willows on American tomb-stones. What could he not justly ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... in the application of Mr. Hare's scheme are almost insuperable, but it is not worth while pursuing the subject, since it is now admitted by recent advocates that the faddist argument is fatal. This is an admission that Mr. Hare completely neglected the factor of human ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... English-speaking immigrants of earlier days. They wanted a parliament, public schools, and many other things new to the country; and they were the sort of people who had a right to have them. The problem of defence was always a vexed one with the inadequate military forces at hand and the insuperable difficulties concerning the militia. The British still held the Western forts pending the settlement of the frontier and the execution of the treaty of peace in full. This naturally annoyed the American government and gave Carleton ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... Virtue; for by a right managery of other things she makes them all beneficial and advantageous. What is most pernicious? Vice; for it depraves the best things we enjoy. What is most strong? Necessity; for this alone is insuperable. What is most easy? That which is most agreeable to nature; for pleasures themselves are sometimes ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Juan should not be found to be navigable, and that it might be most advisable to cut a canal along its banks, from the Atlantic to the lake, the distance is not very great (45 or 50 miles), and the country presents no insuperable obstacles to it; on the contrary, it is believed to be easy of access. This distance might be cut for 675,000l.—a small sum even joined to the other, when the immense object to be attained is considered. ...
— A General Plan for a Mail Communication by Steam, Between Great Britain and the Eastern and Western Parts of the World • James MacQueen
... turned and addressed the white-robed throng in a voice of sharp command: "Klansmen! Remember your oath! The hour of Judgment is here! The guilty wretch cowers! The grand insuperable sentence has been spoken! Coelum animum imperiabilis senescat! Similia similibus per quantum imperator. Inexorabilis ingenium parasimilibua esperantur! Saeva itnparatus ignotum indignatio! Salvo! Suppositio! Indurato! ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... mountains, in which, fitted as thoroughly as he could fit himself for his profession, he had come West and found himself unable to get work, had been spent hunting, fishing, and wandering, often cold and often hungry, in the upper Crawling Stone country. The valley in itself offers to a constructionist no insuperable obstacles; the difficulty is presented in the canyon where the river bursts through the Elbow Mountains. South of this canyon, McCloud, one day on a hunting trip, found himself with two Indians pocketed in the rough country, and was planning how to escape passing ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... to the settlement at Detroit, there is not much evidence available. It was Haldimand's intention at first to establish a large settlement there, but the difficulties of communication doubtless proved to be insuperable. In the event, however, some of Butler's Rangers settled there. Captain Bird of the Rangers applied for and received a grant of land on which he made a settlement; and in the summer of 1784 we find Captain Caldwell and some others applying ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... alienation. With reason and memory, misery returned; but I was no longer in the frenzy of excitement; my mind was as exhausted as my body, and I felt a species of calm despair. Convinced that all was lost, that an insuperable bar was placed between Rosina and me, I reasoned myself into a kind of philosophy, and resolved, as soon as I could recover my strength, to fly from a place which had been the scene of so much anticipated happiness, and of so ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... through rivers and swamps; and that no other animal but the patient bullock, could endure the fatigue and privation of alternate heat, wet, hunger and thirst, and a constant taxation of strength and resignation. 'Tis true, at times, the obstacles to travelling are almost insuperable, and that the roads have no title to the dignity of such a name; being, in most instances, merely tracks formed by the drays following the course of a predecessor; but still, no attempt even is made to improve the means of conveyance. The settlers content themselves with the existence of things ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... shall be a good defence to prove that such admixture has not reduced the spirit more than twenty-five degrees under proof for brandy, whisky or rum, or thirty-five under proof for gin.'' Almost insuperable difficulties as to the meaning of "nature, substance and quality'' subsequently arose as regards every conceivable food material. its it was obviously impossible for parliament to define every article, to lay down limits of composition within which it might vary, to specify the substances ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was our way, and the country would have to be difficult indeed to stop our getting on to the plateau. Our plan was to go south, and not to leave the meridian unless we were forced to do so by insuperable difficulties. I foresaw, of course, that there would be some who would attack me and accuse me of "shabby rivalry," etc., and they would perhaps have had some shadow of justification if we had really thought of taking Captain Scott's route. But it ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... winds or chilling winter frosts. For two years and two months I had seen active service. During that time I had tried to acquit myself conscientiously of my duties as a man. No sacrifice was too great, and no obstacle appeared insuperable for the cause in which I was engaged. Looking back upon the past I observe how often I have fallen short and failed—failed as a burgher and as a leader. And though I do not wish for another war, I believe I should try to do better were I to ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save the weak can believe in the absolute union of two spirits ... No man, no poet assuredly, could love as Browning loved, and fail to be aware, often with vague anger and bitterness, no doubt, of this insuperable isolation even when spirit seemed to leap to spirit, in the touch of a kiss, in the evanishing sigh of some ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... town preferred before its neighbours, blinds the annalist to all the violence and villany of the magnificent Casa Baglioni. So strong was the esprit de ville which through successive centuries and amid all vicissitudes of politics divided the Italians against themselves, and proved an insuperable obstacle ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... moment's reflection; and the difficulty lies in the nature of things, the one being the work of the Creator, and the other of the creature. We shall therefore assume as a fact, the eternal and insuperable difference between Art and Nature. That our pleasure from Art is nevertheless similar, not to say equal, to that which we derive from Nature, is also a fact established by experience; to account for which we are necessarily led to the ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... then that its mirth might be insuperable, not to be saddened by the most grievous song; nevertheless he did not turn back then, but softly climbed the stairs and, placing the agate bowl upon a step, struck up the chaunt called Dolorous. It told of desolate, regretted things befallen happy cities long since in the ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... play, and still struggling to manifest their undeveloped strength. Up to that time there had been nothing like society in the city of intelligence. Of course there was no dearth of scholars and clever, brilliant people, but insuperable obstacles seemed to prevent their social contact with one another. Outside of Moses Mendelssohn's house, until the end of the eighties the only rendezvous of wits, scholars, and literary men, the preference was for magnificent ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... constitutional peculiarity, or, as he subsequently explained it himself, a "Stunin'tun principle," Captain Poke conceived he was bound, in a bargain, to dispute every proposition which came from the other party. This difficulty would probably have proved insuperable, had not Dr. Reasono luckily bethought him of a frank and liberal proposal to leave every other article, without reserve, to the sole dictation of his colleague, reserving to himself the same privilege for all the rest. Noah, after being well assured that the philosopher was no lawyer, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... silk, and furnishes her own capital. Now, even supposing that persons so fortunately placed as to be able to fulfill all these conditions should wish to engage in silk reeling, which is in the highest degree improbable, there exists an almost insuperable obstacle to the production of good silk except by an establishment large enough to use ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... identified with it; and his appointment was apparently ask'd for by that powerful body. Bishop Simpson, of Philadephia, came on and spoke for the selection. The President was much perplex'd. The reasons for appointing Col. Dubois were very strong, almost insuperable—yet the argument for Mr. Harlan, under the adroit position he had plac'd himself, was heavy. Those who press'd him adduc'd the magnitude of the Methodists as a body, their loyalty, more general and genuine than any other sect—that they represented the West, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... which my proposals were received and discussed by the European public in Egypt afforded good reason for supposing that the obstacles to be overcome before any serious reforms could be effected, though formidable, were by no means insuperable. After my departure in 1907, events occurred which rendered it impossible that the subject should at once come under the consideration of the Government, but in 1911 Lord Kitchener was able to report that the legislative powers of the Court of Appeal sitting at Alexandria had been somewhat increased. ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Another class hold the view which is termed cosmogonies than that of Moses, whether contained in the sacred books of religions that have long existed, or professing to be based on modern scientific discovery, raise difficulties that are insuperable. Whence came matter if not from the creative word of God? To assign eternity to it is to invest it with an attribute that is Divine, and Pantheists carry such an explanation to its logical conclusion when they affirm that the universe is God. ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds
... without reference, and devoid of all business relations or acquaintance in Paris, it was at best a questionable expedient, and I probably would have had a take-down. But the accident at Marquise came and smoothed the apparently insuperable difficulties in my way. But I have found that something unusual does come to help a man on his way to the devil when he is anxious to get there, which he is pretty sure to do, if he is only diligent and careful to ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... yourself, the following morning, a walk in the grove of Boulogne, in the garden de la Muette, or in your own garden, and have violated your promise, alleging at one time it was too cold, at another too warm, too windy, too moist, or what else you pleased; when in truth it was too nothing but your insuperable love of ease? ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... Cordiner. He was much gratified, and would gladly have accepted the appointment. He liked the place—his native town; thought highly of the respectability of the congregation; but there was one objection, which to him was insuperable. The congregation had for some time been Episcopal only in name, and it went against Mr. Ramsay's conscience to minister in a church calling itself Episcopal, but without the communion or discipline of a bishop. He explained to the ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... of cash payments be an insuperable obstacle in the way of a man of steady and respectable habits and good repute, obtaining advances in provisions from any merchant in his neighbourhood?-I believe it would help him very considerably. I consider that if it system of cash ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... every proud spirit, and turns even the sweets of life to ashes in the mouth, had him in bitter bondage. He lashed himself with it, reminding himself constantly of his origin and his environment, and magnifying these into insuperable barriers which would for ever stand blankly in his way. Although common-sense told him that there was no other course open to Gladys than to accept the kindness offered her by the lawyer and his wife, and though in his inmost better heart he did ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... useless; and it was only now that his choir was beginning to recover from this egregious calamity. But though the difficulty of the trebles and the altos was always the difficulty of his choir, it no longer seemed insuperable. With the large amount of money at his disposal, he could afford to pay almost any amount of money for a good treble or alto, so every boy in London who showed signs of a voice was brought to him. But in three or four years a boy's voice breaks, and the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... the fish may be occasionally injured where there is much fall lost, and a strong stream running from a wheel constituted in the old way with open float boards. But the objections to such a plan on the part of the manufacturers will be insuperable, in fact, the accumulation of sticks and leaves in the autumn, and ice in the winter, will be so great at the grating in the tail-goit, that the wheels will be thrown into back water and the works stopped, and all this loss and inconvenience will be incurred ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... that time, it had proceeded; and while we are on the subject, we may as well state a few facts connected with the foundation and superstructure, which cannot fail to interest all who take pleasure in contemplating man's efforts to overcome almost insuperable difficulties. ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... there are in introducing all new systems. You have to meet the doubts and suspicions of those who are unacquainted with them, the opposition of interested parties, and the general feeling which influences all men to let well enough alone. But that there are no insuperable obstacles in the way is evident from the fact that this system has already been partially applied on a railway doing a very large business, the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore, under the able ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... the water-line, having a peculiar heating-apparatus attached which effected a great saving of fuel, and with their furnaces and flues so constructed as to burn anthracite as well as bituminous coal. Instead of the ordinary tall smoke-pipe,—an insuperable objection to a steamer as a ship of war,—he constructed a smoke-pipe upon the principle of the telescope, which could be elevated or depressed at pleasure; and in order to provide a draught independent of the height of the smoke-pipe, he placed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... vanquished perpetrated more deeds of cruelty on themselves than the enraged conquerors would have committed; nor did any one of them come into his hands alive, except such as chains, or some other insuperable restraint, forbade to die. Philip, leaving a garrison in Abydus, returned to his kingdom; and, just when he had been encouraged by the destruction of the people of Abydus to proceed in the war against Rome, as Hannibal had been by the ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... of its outrageous improbability, and the insuperable obstacles in the way of its accomplishment, the prince found himself ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... distressed me beyond measure, as it must needs distress any conscientious girl in a similar position. My instincts told me that it was vain to hope that they would relent. Their objections were baseless, but none the less I knew that they would prove insuperable. I found myself face to face with a dilemma fraught with unhappiness whichever way I should solve it. What was there to allege against Mr. Dale? Nothing. He was poor. But what of that? My father had money enough ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... think, has interposed far more insuperable obstacles—in the young lady's own heart—than I could ever have done. Your nephew's character and opinions, I am sorry to say, are not such as are likely to command the respect and affection of a pure ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... losse of Libertie, Estate, and life it self, when yet all seem'd to be determin'd against them; so as even their enemies were at last vanquish'd with their constancy, and their very Tormentors wearied with their insuperable Patience; nor can they in all that tract of Time, hardly brag of having made one signal Proselyte in twenty Years that this difference continu'd; and that because the obedience of your Majesties Subjects, ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... effects of changed climate and food; from correlation of growth; from occasional reversions to old and long-lost characters; from the crossing of breeds, when more than one had been formed; but, above all, from unconscious selection carried on during many generations, there is no insuperable difficulty, to the best of my judgment, in believing that all the breeds have descended from some one parent-source. Can any single species be named from which we may reasonably suppose that all are descended? The Gallus ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... the Ministers as criminal as himself; for the Queen, to this day, believes that Beaumarchais was sanctioned by them and, you know, Her Majesty has ever since had an insuperable dislike to both De Maurepas and De Vergennes. But I have nothing to do ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... internal maturity must have come about in them, by virtue of which their spiritual eyes were opened, and they saw. When those eyes were closed, evidence was useless. Fifty years earlier, a direct attack would have spent itself on insuperable obstacles; but with the lapse of time the subject presented itself, and was simply and universally accepted, not only without a struggle, ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... opinion, be very easily understood, without any emendation. The lady says, "I can see neither one way nor other, before me nor behind me, but all the ways are covered with an impenetrable fog." There are objections insuperable to all that I can propose, and since reason can give me no counsel, I will resolve at once to follow ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... disappointment. "Such an event," may they say, "we were not prepared to expect.—After so many, and such various trials of heart; after innumerable difficulties surmounted; almost invincible objects overcome, and insuperable barriers removed—after attending the hero and heroine of your tale through the diversified scenes of anxiety, suspense, hope, disappointment, expectation, joy, sorrow, anticipated bliss, sudden and disastrous woe——after elevating them to the threshold of happiness, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... puts an onion in the tin with a joint," I said tentatively, for I was not very hopeful. I know that there is always some insuperable objection to anything not ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... among the foliage. The youth, if he had any at such an hour, spared his reproaches. He narrated in plain and unexaggerated language, as if engaged in the merest narration of commonplace, all the circumstances of his trial. He pointed out the difficulties of his situation, to his mind insuperable, and strove to prepare the minds of those who heard, for the final and saddest trial of all, even as his own mind was prepared. In that fearful work of preparation, the spirit of love could acknowledge ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... There are here two ideas absolutely distinct: the power which acts, and the manner in which it acts. If the naturalist thinks that his science is everything, he must conclude that we can know nothing beyond the laws, and that an insuperable ignorance hides from our view the power of which they express the action. But he rarely succeeds in keeping this position, and deceives his reason by confounding the laws which he discovers with the causes with which his mind is not able to dispense. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... morning Julie could be gay. She made a great effort to look happy, to hide, not her melancholy, as heretofore, but an insuperable loathing. From that day she no longer regarded herself as a blameless wife. Had she not been false to herself? Why should she not play a double part in the future, and display astounding depths of cunning in deceiving her husband? In her there lay a hitherto ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... trial, so as to meet the evidence then adduced. A similar alteration could not be allowed in criminal cases, lest the grand jury should have found a bill for one offence, and the defendant be put upon his trial for another. There appear, however, insuperable objections to restricting one offence to a single count, in respect of the other object, on peril of the perpetual defeat of justice. The risk is sufficiently serious in civil cases, where the proceedings are drawn so long beforehand, and with such ample time for consideration as to the proper ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... often afterwards in Sterling's life, when the excuse was real enough but not the chief excuse; "ill-health, and insuperable obstacles and engagements," had to bear the chief brunt in apologizing: and, as Sterling's actual presence, or that of any Englishman except Boyd and his money, was not in the least vital to the adventure, his excuse was at once accepted. The English connections ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... three times." He was faithful to one principle only, self-aggrandisement by fair means or foul. His favourite scheme was a kingdom in Northern Italy; but in the way of its realisation his own overreaching ambition placed an insuperable bar. Italy had been excluded from his truce with France to leave him free to pursue that design;[118] but in July, 1512, the (p. 061) Italians already suspected his motives, and a papal legate declared that they no ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... farmer—a rich man, as riches are reckoned in Ireland. He was a clerk in a lawyer's office, and poorly paid. But he might have earned more. She would gladly have given up anything. And the objections of parents in such cases are not insuperable. But between these two there was something more. Denis Ryan was a revolutionary patriot. Mary Drennan's parents were proud of another loyalty. They hated what Denis loved. The two loyalties were strong and irreconcilable, like the loyalties of the South and the North ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... "that we cannot do in the completest manner." Mr. Robert Adam, to whom the scheme was mentioned, promised his support, and said he would do all in his power to recommend them. But the great difficulty was money, which neither of them possessed; and Telford, with grief, admitting that this was an "insuperable bar," went ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... approached in May, 1606, but without any result. Early in 1607 however the efforts were renewed, and negotiations were actively set on foot for the purpose of concluding a peace or a truce for a term of twelve, fifteen or twenty years. There were, however, almost insuperable difficulties in the way. In the first place the stadholders, the military and naval leaders, the Calvinist clergy, and the great majority of the traders honestly believed that a peace would be detrimental to all the best interests of the States, and were thoroughly ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... faced with an imperial problem of apparently insuperable difficulty, which reached its most acute stage just at the time when the American trouble was at its height. The British parliament and government intervened, and in 1773 for the first time assumed some responsibility ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... of S. Sophia occur in the course of this volume, but the reader will not find that great monument of Byzantine architectural genius dealt with in the studies here offered. The obstacles in the way of a proper treatment of that subject proved insuperable, while the writings of Salzenberg, Lethaby, and Swainson, and especially the splendid and exhaustive monograph of my friend Mr. E. M. Antoniadi, seemed to make any attempt of mine in the same direction superfluous if not presumptuous. ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... winning and gentle a nature, as to announce a disposition pregnant with all the affections. Still it was well understood that Adrienne was not likely to marry, her birth raising her above all intentions of connecting her ancient name with mere gold, while her poverty placed an almost insuperable barrier between her and most of the impoverished young men of rank whom she occasionally saw. Even the power of the dauphine was not sufficient to provide Adrienne de la Rocheaimard with a suitable husband. But of this the charming ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... is certain that our friend William Dobbin, who was personally of so complying a disposition that if his parents had pressed him much, it is probable he would have stepped down into the kitchen and married the cook, and who, to further his own interests, would have found the most insuperable difficulty in walking across the street, found himself as busy and eager in the conduct of George Osborne's affairs, as the most selfish tactician could be in ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... conformation created by the diffusion of this superstitious spirit is an obstacle, an insuperable barrier set up against the development of the moral sense. We shall sow principles of morality as the farmer who sows in the fields the seeds properly selected which will not grow unless the soil is adequate. ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... teaming, in Lorain county. In the following Spring he returned to Cleveland and obtained a situation as helper in a hardware store. Here it became apparent to him that he was sadly deficient in an educational point of view, and that it offered an almost insuperable barrier to his advancement in life. To remedy this, so far as possible, he devoted all his leisure hours to study, and on the establishment of the evening schools the following winter, he availed himself of them, and the ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... book have hoped for many readers. Least of all would it have found them among the Italians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to whom its energetic language and unfamiliar conceptions would have presented insuperable difficulties. Between Dante and Alfieri no Italian poet except Michael Angelo expressed so much deep thought and feeling in phrases so terse, and with originality of style so daring; and even Michael Angelo is monotonous in the range of his ideas and uniform ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... which they arrived at the present use. These I have noted with great care; and though I cannot flatter myself that the collection is complete, I believe I have so far assisted the students of our language that this kind of phraseology will be no longer insuperable; and the combinations of verbs and particles, by chance omitted, will be easily explained by comparison with those that ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... frame a Declaration of Independence, another committee was appointed to draw up Articles of Confederation. It reported July 12, 1776; but the moment discussion began, it was seen that there were almost insuperable difficulties. The first was the question whether each State should have one vote, as in the existing government, or whether each should cast a number of votes in proportion to its population; the second question ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... to adopt for themselves measures of a similar kind. The whole course of proceeding in the two countries in reference to the negro having been so widely different, there are, however, difficulties in the way that seem to be almost insuperable. The power to purchase the slaves of the British colonies was a consequence of the fact that their numbers had not been permitted to increase. The difficulty of purchasing them here is great, because of their having been well fed, ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... government. I believe thoroughly in democracy, the extension of the franchise to all men, for all have a right to a voice in the making of the laws that govern them, and no nation has a right to place before any of its people an insuperable barrier to self-government. We would make no outcry against an educational standard, the necessary age limit, a certain term of residence in any place—in fact there is no regulation women would object to that applied to all citizens equally. I make no criticism ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... ascertained. Browning would not urge her a step beyond her actual feelings, but he must know whether her refusal was based solely on her view of his supposed interests. And with the true delicacy of frankness she admits that even the sense of her own unworthiness is not the insuperable obstacle. No—but is she not a confirmed invalid? She thought that she had done living when he came and sought her out. If he would be wise, all these thoughts of her must be abandoned. Such an answer brought a great calm to Browning's heart; he did not ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the ministry of Jesus extended over but little more than one year is beset, however, by difficulties that seem insuperable. The first is presented by the three Passovers distinctly mentioned in the Gospel of John (ii. 13; vi. 4; xii. 1). The last of these is plainly identical with the one named in the other gospels. The ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... at once most sure and most easy. The difficulty is indeed increased ten thousandfold, when the neglect of parents has suffered even careless habits on this point to be contracted. The difficulties, however, though great, are not insuperable to those who seek the freely-offered grace of God to help them in the conflict. The resistance to temptation, the self-control, will indeed be more difficult when the effort begins later in life; but the victory will be ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... we are unable to do this; and we must therefore be satisfied with the attempt to determine in individual cases whether manifestations of the sexual life occur during childhood, and if so, which manifestations. But even here we encounter difficulties, which in many instances are insuperable, but in others arise from the incompetence of adults. This is all the more deplorable because the effectiveness of sexual education is minimised through the lack of insight. Just as in the practice of medicine an accurate diagnosis is an indispensable prerequisite to correct therapeutics, ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... idea of making me a partner in his firm, to get my protection, but on hearing I was opposed to slave-dealing, it could not be done, as he and all the merchants were obliged to deal in slaves. Indeed, the obstacle of English merchants joining the Tripoline is at present insuperable, on account of the slave traffic; if they could unite in one firm, it would be ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... British at defiance. It was determined, therefore, to attack Nankin itself, the second city in the empire, situated about 200 miles up the great river Yang'tse Kiang, or Yellow River. The difficulties of the navigation had hitherto been considered an insuperable obstacle; although the river is of great size, the current runs with prodigious force, and there are numerous shoals and rocks in its course. The river, however, was surveyed by Commanders Kellett and Collinson, and as they reported that water for the largest ships was ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... Pighius. The Jesuit Francesco Torres accused Maes, and threatened Latini. Sigonius obtained a license for his History of Bologna, but could not print it, owing to the delation of secret enemies. Baronius, when he had finished his Martyrology, found that a cabal had raised insuperable obstacles in the way of its publication. I have been careful to select only examples of notoriously Catholic authors, men who were in the pay and under the special protection of the Vatican. How it ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... in limiting foreign exchange is the general equalization of all nations which has long ago come about as to intelligence and the knowledge and practice of sciences and arts. A nation of to-day would be humiliated to have to import any commodity which insuperable natural conditions did not prevent the production of at home. It is consequently to such productions that commerce is now limited, and the list of them grows ever shorter as with the progress of invention man's conquest of Nature proceeds. As to the old advantage of ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... with difficulties, and we would by no means discuss or decide it on sentimental grounds. But our choice would seem to be between unqualified citizenship, to depend on the ability to read and write, if you will, and setting the blacks apart in some territory by themselves. There are, we think, insuperable objections to this last plan. It would put them beyond the reach of all good influence from the higher civilization of the whites, without which they might relapse into barbarism like the Maroons of Surinam, and it would deprive ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... breath of gratitude he felt that he was in truth being watched over by a supreme power. If not, why were all the turns of chance in his favor? Why had he stopped to rest a moment or two by the stony ledge, and why in doing so had he caught a glimpse of the lake which soon would have been an insuperable bar across his path, enabling the Indians to hem him ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to tell you a very different story," he said, "and one which at the moment seems to present insuperable difficulties. I can only show you that I care for you by bringing trouble into your life—which ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... very little work Patch has when you and I are alone here. It is a pity there is not time to obtain Sir Charles's sanction. That would be more proper, of course, more satisfactory. But under the circumstances it need not, I think, be regarded as an insuperable objection. I told the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the Earl of Westmoreland and Countess Joane, twenty-five years at the lowest computation; or, if we take the date which they assign for the death of Lord Ferrers of Wemme, forty years older than her husband,—a difference this, which, although perhaps it might not prove an insuperable impediment to marriage where the lady was a great heiress, would undoubtedly put a bar on all hopes of issue: whereas it stands on record that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... the memorial, respecting the different Particular Synods to which the brethren belong, and the delays of carrying out a system of appellate jurisdiction covering America and China, it is enough to say:—(1) That the Presbyterian Church (O.S.) finds no insuperable difficulties in carrying into operation her system which comprehends Presbyteries and Synods in India as well as here; and (2) That whatever hindrances may at any time arise, this body will, in humble reliance upon the divine aid and blessing, undertake ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage
... the first of these difficulties, it must be said that it is under our present system of school administration practically insuperable. Adequately equipped schools for industrial education will cost a great deal of money,—money which the whites of the South will probably not be willing to give for many years to come, and which we think ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... conveniently as in sumas. Notwithstanding, however, all the attention which is thus exhibited on the part of the Russian government to make Ochotsk a complete and valuable naval station; and the care paid to its arrangement and furnishing supplies, there yet exists an insuperable obstacle to all their efforts, from the fact that it has not a good port. No vessel of any great burthen, carrying guns, can enter or be wintered there, without incurring the risk of being bilged by the ice of the river Ochota, which flows ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... all manner of illnesses set in, often driving the physician to desperation. How often are not physicians compelled to declare that, along with a change of life, the most radical cure is marriage. But how apply such a cure? Insuperable obstacles ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... attention, and sometimes penetration; whose understanding is often obstructed by prejudice, and often dissipated by remissness; who comes sometimes to a new study, unfurnished with knowledge previously necessary; and finds difficulties insuperable, for want of ardour ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... not Christians as their inferiors; but the conviction which possesses them, that they have what others have not, is obviously not open to the temptation which nationalism presents. According to their own faith, there is no insuperable gulf between themselves and the rest of mankind; there is not a being in the whole world but is invited by their religion to occupy the same position as themselves, and, did he come, would stand on their very level, as if he had ever been there. Such accessions to their ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... the proposal of the Delegate of Great Britain, Mr. FLEMING, I would say that it would be attended with great inconvenience, because it departs from the usages and habits now existing. That, to my mind, is a very great and insuperable objection, and I do ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... is not an insuperable obstacle to the transfer of thought. My companion was in communication with our friends, and from time to time conveyed to me messages of anguish from my dear love; for, being well aware of the nature of the currents and the unapproachableness of the islands, those ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... consequence, long ago pronounced her to be a positive fright; and Lady Belstone had declared that such hair would prove an insuperable obstacle to her ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... after some weeks, during which he remained unapproached, and at the end of which he came to a belated perception of the insuperable barrier between the elect and the undesirable, and of his own identity with the latter class, he decided he must fall back upon his friends for what they might be worth. He had undergone many snubs in his efforts to ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... support of a common root, some hundred words analogous in sound, construction and meaning, as being spoken all over New Holland, have jumped to the conclusion with, I fear, too much haste and eagerness. Besides many other insuperable difficulties, which an investigation of such a nature presents, there was one quite sufficient to defeat all attempts to fathom the subject, namely, the syntactic ignorance of the language to which the inquiry related. Indeed, to any man who knows and speaks four European languages, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... her powers of subtle reasoning, gladly embraced this way out of the difficulty which had first appeared insuperable. "So to give them," she said, appeased, "confirms rather than questions our authority, since no one may 'give' to another that over ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... foreigner mentioned by name in the dynastic histories of China, was inclined to regard worship of ancestors more as a civil than a religious rite. He probably foresaw, as indeed time has shown, that ancestral worship would prove to be an insuperable obstacle to many inquirers, if they were called upon to discard it once and for all; at the same time, he must have known that an invocation to spirits, coupled with the hope of obtaining some benefit therefrom, is worship pure ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles |
