"Plausibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... uses the word 'detain;' and this, it appears to me, has much the same force and intention as the previous words. It is to be noted, however, that it is separated from them by the disjunctive 'or;' and, therefore, it might be argued with some plausibility that any act of forceful or fraudulent detention, after notice, by persons who have originally acquired a child's custody in a lawful way, came within the section. The point is new, and of great importance; and if the Protestant Detectoral Association feel disposed to try ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... of what she perhaps had lost, and he made it more vivid by adding: "Rolled up in a tight little ball, you know—her way of treating banknotes as if they were curl-papers!" Maisie's flush deepened both with the immense plausibility of this and with a fresh wave of the consciousness that was always there to remind her of his cleverness—the consciousness of how immeasurably more after all he knew about mamma than she. She ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... Panegyric to my Lord Protector of the present greatness and joint interest of his Highness and this Nation, by E. W., Esq. The author was Edmund Waller, still under a cloud for his old transgression, but recovering himself gradually by his wealth, his plausibility and fine manners, and his powers of versifying. Here are four ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... was she to part with the mummy that we could hardly get her to accept a merely nominal price. To give plausibility to the purchase, we said we wanted the rags for a paper-mill. Joyously did Leonora and I call a passing chariot, and, with the mummy between us, we drove to our abode. I was surprised on the way by receiving a pettish ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... great heavy-headed clock in the passage. He did not appear at all to know that he had come down in the world through being sold by auction for two pounds ten. He said with great plausibility, "My worth is not to be measured by the amount of money I can command; I am the same personage as before." And I thought it a very true observation, but the philosophy thereof was a little discounted by his haughty demeanour, which had certainly gone up as he himself ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... and plausibility Perfervidum Ingenium contended that the Congo or Zaire was the Nigerian debouchure. Major Rennell, who had disproved the connection of the Niger and the Egyptian Nile by Bruce's barometric measurements on the course of the mountain-girt Bahr el Azrak, and by Brown's altitudes ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... their assumed parts in their daily life at Croton with such skill that the legacy-hunters of the place load them with attentions and shower them with presents. This whole episode, in fact, may be thought of as a mime cast in the narrative form, and the same conception may be applied with great plausibility to the ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... earth. All other religions were founded by men,—wicked, blood-thirsty, ambitious men, who wanted a broad license to sin, and who reserved only such fragments of our divine faith, as would give plausibility to their new doctrines without fettering theirs with responsibilities to spiritual tribunals. This is why all these discords, exist among professors. In leaving the one faith which acknowledges one Lord and one baptism, they have hewn out for themselves ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... American diplomacy. "It is impossible," says Lecky, the ablest historian of this period, "not to be struck with the skill, hardihood, and good fortune that marked the American negotiations. Everything the United States could with any show of plausibility demand ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... begins to hang together. A certain plausibility creeps into it. The late Nutcombe was crazy about golf. The governor used to play with him now and then at Walton Heath. It was the only thing Nutcombe seemed to live for. That being so, if you got rid of his slice for him it seems to me, that you earned your money. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... the Third Act of a comedy which had tied itself in this kind of a knot simply could not be played. The author had completely sacrificed plausibility, and it was not uninteresting to see him twisting and turning, hedging and bluffing to save it; and a little uncomfortable to note the conviction oozing away out of the performers.... Queer also that it isn't more generally recognised that to come ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... innumerable cases. In spite of all the remonstrances which Jones could set forth, and the influence of several friends of high standing, he was compelled to relinquish all hope of his daughter's being allowed to return to the family. The reasoning set forth had every plausibility; but such is our respect for the law, that we were compelled to forego our hospitality, and maintain it, even though the case was painful to our feelings. Thus, you see, we maintain the point and spirit of the ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... of "Murder by a certain person unknown," and now the police were occupied in following such clues as I could give them. All the daily papers assigned robbery as the motive, and the disappearance of Tom's watch-chain gave plausibility to the theory. But I knew too well why that chain had disappeared, and even in my grief found consolation in the thought of Colliver's impotent rage when he should come to examine his prize. I had described the ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... little shapes of dogs, cats, and hares, clay pictures that had been dried and had crumpled, threats and consequent "languishing" and death, these were the trappings of the stories. The tales were old. Only the Malking Tower incident was new. But its very novelty gave a plausibility to the stories that were woven around it. There was not a single person to interpose a doubt. The cross-examinations were nothing more than feeble attempts to bring out ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... says Smollett, "was first projected by Sir John Blount, who had been bred a scrivener, and was possessed of all the cunning, plausibility, and boldness requisite for such an undertaking. He communicated his plan to Mr. Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Secretary of State. He answered every objection, and the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... world, he sought only to escape his difficulties by inactivity, and he trusted to provide himself with a refuge against all contingencies by waiting upon time. Even when at length he was compelled to act, and to act in a distinct direction, his plausibility long enabled him to explain away his conduct; and, honest in the excess of his dishonesty, he wore his falsehood with so easy a grace that it assumed the character of truth. He was false, deceitful, treacherous; yet he had the virtue of not pretending to be virtuous. He was a real man, though ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... responsible politicians did not at any time endorse the scheme. Sir John Macdonald, as a practical man, saw at once a fatal objection {145} in the sacrifice of Canadian self-government which it involved.[3] Some of the members of the Imperial Federation League urged with plausibility that political federation would bring the colonies new power in the shape of control over foreign policy, rather than take old powers away, but Macdonald much doubted the reality of the control it would give. Nevertheless the Imperial Federation League ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... astonishment. Wherever people met, The Case of Summerfield was on men's tongues. Was Caxton's contention possible? Was it true that, by the use of potassium, water could be set on fire, and that any one possessing this baneful secret could destroy the world? The plausibility with which the idea was presented, the bare directness of the style, added to its convincing power. It sounded too real to be invention, was told with too frank a simplicity to be all imagination. People could not decide ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... Collier's Bays, behind the islands of the Archipelago, where it is also probable there is an opening trending to the south-east. The great rise and fall of the tides in the neighbourhood of Point Gantheaume gives a plausibility to this opinion; and the only thing that I know against it is the trifling depth of the water between that point and Cape Villaret. This however may be caused by the numerous banks and channels existing there, and which, of themselves alone, are indicative of the opening being something ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... meanwhile, Maurice, not wishing to overhear the conversation, had entered the house, and father and daughter were left to continue their parley in private. There was really, as Elsie thought, some plausibility in the old man's prognostications, and the situation began to assume a very puzzling aspect to her mind. She admitted that scientists, viewed as a genus, were objectionable; but insisted that Fern, to whose personal charms she was keenly alive, ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... a Swiftian plausibility to give an air of truth to his remarks. Certain parts of America were at that time reputed to be inhabited ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... principle of this objection would condemn a practice, which is to be seen in all the State governments, if not in all the governments with which we are acquainted: I mean that of rendering those who hold offices during pleasure, dependent on the pleasure of those who appoint them. With equal plausibility might it be alleged in this case, that the favoritism of the latter would always be an asylum for the misbehavior of the former. But that practice, in contradiction to this principle, proceeds upon the presumption, that the responsibility ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... effective narrative. (Defoe wrote for the man in the street. He was a literary jack-of-all-trades whom dignified authors of his day would not countenance, but who possessed genius.) It relies upon directness and plausibility of substance and style rather than temerity of phrase. Yet it never sags into tameness. Notice how everyday expressions ("My business was to hold my breath," "I took to my heels") add subtly to our belief that what Defoe is telling us is ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... shook his head, and declined further experiment. Indeed he went further, and characterized the Baron as the most intolerable formal pedant he had ever had the misfortune to meet with, and the Chief of Glennaquoich as a Frenchified Scotchman, possessing all the cunning and plausibility of the nation where he was educated, with the proud, vindictive, and turbulent humour of that of his birth. 'If the devil,' he said, 'had sought out an agent expressly for the purpose of embroiling this miserable country, I do not think he could find a better ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... however, some plausibility and indeed a little more than plausibility in favour of this plan. Degrees in literature and in dramatic art are conferred, given by 'collation,' by incompetent people, that is by the public. We can say to the public: ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... expected to do, Douglas had explained with plausibility why the Van Buren administration had in 1838 spent $40,000,000. Lincoln takes up his statements one by one, and proves, as he says, that "the majority of them are wholly untrue." Douglas had attributed a part of the expenditures ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... with a specious apology for enlarging their jurisdiction. The argument from the necessity of unity, which was urged so successfully for the creation of a bishop upwards of a hundred years before, could now be adduced with equal plausibility for the erection of a metropolitan; and, from this date, these prelates undoubtedly exercised archiepiscopal power. Seventy years afterwards, or at the Council of Nice, [359:1] the ecclesiastical rule of the Primate of Rome was recognised by the bishops of the ten suburbicarian provinces, including ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... now I happen to be here. I was on my way to take this overcoat to—to get something altered at the tailor's for next winter. 'Course I wouldn't want it till winter, but I thought I might as well get it DONE." He paused, laughing carelessly, for greater plausibility. "I thought he'd prob'ly want lots of time on the job—he's a slow worker, I've noticed—and so I decided I might just as well go ahead and let him get at it. Well, so I was on my way there, but I just noticed I only got about six minutes ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... thereof, some worthless succedona for such, who strive not to do their god-given duty though the world reward them with a gibbet, but to win wages of gold and grub, to obtain idle praise by empty plausibility. They aspire to ride the topmost wave, not of a tempestuous ocean which tries the heart of oak and the hand of iron, but of some pitiful sectarian mud-puddle or political goose pond. Under the guidance of these shallow self-seekers we have abandoned the Ark of the Covenant ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... so numerous in all the countries of Europe in the Middle Ages? We are perfectly contented to form no opinion upon the subject; but if compelled to express one, we should say that this last supposition (which is no novelty) possessed decidedly more likelihood than any other. Its plausibility will be confirmed by attending to the apparent signification of the name Robin Hood. The natural refuge and stronghold of the outlaw was the woods. Hence he is termed by Latin writers silvatious, by the Normans forestier. The Anglo-Saxon robber or highwayman ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... even educated men in Germany may have believed this in 1751, taking into account the universal ignorance then prevalent as to natural history and physics; but in our times it would be unpardonable to admit even the plausibility of such fables." ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... force, when properly expressed, wherever the Constitution has jurisdiction, of supreme law, are thought by most men, once and forever, to have satisfactorily answered. It was a complaint, certainly, which the South had had ever since the Constitution was formed, and which could with no plausibility be brought forward as a justification of war, while there existed a Constitutional tribunal for adjusting difficulties of Constitutional interpretation. Yet, as it was almost universally asserted, of course, by the Northern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... there was in that market-town one of those adventurous, speculative men, who are the more dangerous impostors because imposed upon by their own sanguine chimeras, who have a plausibility in their calculations, an earnestness in their arguments, which account for the dupes they daily make in our most sober and wary of civilized communities. Unscrupulous in their means, yet really honest in the ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... J. D. Baldwin, author of "Prehistoric Nations," declares that this system of village-communities existed in India long before the Aryan conquest. He attributes it to Cushite or AEthiopic influence, and with great plausibility. Nevertheless, the same system flourished in prehistoric Greece, even till the Roman conquests. Mr. Palgrave observed it existing in Arabia. "Oman is less a kingdom than an aggregation of municipalities," he remarks; "each town, each village has its separate existence and corporation, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... in type too early for a review of Dellenbaugh's identification of Cibola with a more southeasterly locality. His arguments bear some plausibility, but they ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes
... upheaving in his mind, Bat Scanlon managed to squeeze a reply to Nora's question which held some traces of plausibility. ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... from us, whatever objections might have been made on that account before the invention of the mariner's compass, nothing can be alledged for it, with any colour of plausibility in the present age. Men can now sail with as much certainty through the Great South Sea, as they can through the Mediterranean, or any lesser Sea. Yea, and providence seems in a manner to invite us to the trial, as there are to our knowledge trading companies, whose commerce ...
— An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens • William Carey
... which followed theirs. It is impossible that it should be now acted, though it continues, at long intervals, to be announced in the bills. Its hero, when Palmer played it at least, was Joseph Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the graceful solemn plausibility, the measured step, the insinuating voice—to express it in a word—the downright acted villany of the part, so different from the pressure of conscious actual wickedness,—the hypocritical assumption of hypocrisy,—which made Jack so deservedly a favourite in that character, I ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... necessarily infer equality of condition, or even equality of rights,—it meaning merely the substitution of the right of the commonwealth for the right of a prince. Had you said a democracy there would have been some plausibility in using the word, though even then its application would have been illogical. If I am a freeman and a democrat, I hope I have the justice to allow others to be just as free and democratic as ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... with Ward, I do not know the limits of my own opinions. If Ward says that this or that is a development from what I have said, I cannot say Yes or No. It is plausible, it may be true. Of course the fact that the Roman Church has so developed and maintained, adds great weight to the antecedent plausibility. I cannot assert that it is not true; but I cannot, with that keen perception which some people have, appropriate it. It is a nuisance to me to be forced beyond what I can ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... horrible plausibility of what he had said actually cover the truth? Did she owe that first golden hour with Rodney, his passionate thrilling avowal of his life's philosophy, to nothing deeper in herself than her unconscious power of rousing in him an equally unconscious, primitive sex desire? Was the fine mutuality ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... The plausibility of this objection will vanish the moment we advert to the essential difference between a mere NON-COMPLIANCE and a DIRECT and ACTIVE RESISTANCE. If the interposition of the State legislatures be necessary to give effect to a measure of the Union, they have ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... excellent specimens of Canning's rich, gay, aspiring eloquence. In substance they abound in much pure toryism, and his speech after the Peterloo massacre, and upon the topics relating to public meetings, sedition, and parliamentary reform, though by sonorous splendour and a superb plausibility fascinating to the political neophyte, is by no means free from froth, without much relation either to social facts or to popular principles. On catholic emancipation he followed Pitt, as he did in an enlarged view of commercial policy. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... ground is more and more conceded; and the point now usually made is not that the Jeffersonian maxim excludes women, but that "the consent of the governed" is substantially given by the general consent of women. That this argument has a certain plausibility may be conceded; but it is equally clear that the minority of women, those who do wish to vote, includes on the whole the natural leaders,—those who are foremost in activity of mind, in literature, in art, in good works of charity. It is, therefore, pretty sure that they only predict ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... would suggest that it reflects a time when man's mind was preoccupied with wild beasts, and when the alliances and friendships, which he would value in life, might be found in that sphere. There is much plausibility in the view put forward by M. Salomon Reinach, that the domestication of animals itself implies a totemistic habit of thought, and the consequent protection of these animals by means of taboos from harm and death. It may well be that, ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... cigarette it came to a stop, while the chauffeur, dropping to the ground, rummaged fiercely with the interior. Green leaned back in the shadow, his eyes fixed on the steps leading to Grell's house. There was a sufficient air of plausibility about the whole accident to impress any one but the ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... with the respectable vulgarity of her home. The pet of the nursery and school-room looked down on the lodge kitchen and parlour, and her discontent was a matter of vanity with her parents, as a sign of her superiority, while plausibility and caution were continually enjoined on her rather by example than by precept, and she was often aware of her mother's indulgence of erratic propensities in religion, unknown either to her ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... arrangements, but I am quite curious to know just what the judges would reply to such a demand, provided they consented to entertain it seriously. I suppose they would laugh me out of court. Still, I think I might argue with some plausibility that, seeing I was not present when the Revolution divested us capitalists of our wealth, I am at least entitled to a courteous explanation of the grounds on which that course was justified at the time. I do not want my million back, even if it were possible to return it, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... of the Spanish theory have contented themselves with stating that Lyly borrowed from Guevara, and pointing out the parallels between the two writers. But it is possible to give their case a greater plausibility, by showing that Guevara was no isolated instance of such Spanish influence, and by proving that during the Tudor period there was a consistent and far-reaching interest in Spanish literature among a certain class of Englishmen. Intimacy with Spain dates ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... the right point. Yet beware of over great pleasure in being popular, or even beloved. As far as an amiable disposition and powers of entertainment make you so, it is a happiness; but if there is one grain of plausibility, it is poison. ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... antiquated simplicity in supposing that to be still a grave and operating principle which was a bygone barbarism to himself and other absentees from the island. His father, as a money-maker, might have practical wishes on the matter of descendants which lent plausibility to the conjecture of Avice and her mother; but to Jocelyn he had never expressed himself in favour of the ancient ways, old-fashioned ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... beasts, birds, and the like, is cast into a continuous narrative. The adroitness with which this is done makes the poem rank as a masterpiece of construction. The atmosphere of romantic fable in which it is enveloped even gives it a certain plausibility of effect almost amounting to epic unity. In the fabulous superhuman element that appears in all the stories, and in their natural surroundings of wood, or mountain, or sea—always realised with fresh enjoyment ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... the rudest of the species, and of every thing that is odious in human nature, when corrupted to the extreme. Desperadoes in courage, and gluttons in revenge, they have also the low cunning and the treacherous plausibility with all the licentious propensities of the most designing and profligate of mankind. Their advancement in the arts which render life comfortable, and sometimes, too, embellish even vice, cannot in any measure redeem them into favourable estimation. They are in most points inferior ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... No one else is bound to take, for the protection of all other people, whatever pains or trouble he takes for his own security—to watch, for instance, as vigilantly that his neighbour's house as that his own is not broken into. And while the one solitary claim of any plausibility to universal equality of treatment requires to be largely qualified before it can be conceded, there is no other claim of the kind which does not carry with it its own refutation; there is no other which does not partake of the absurdity patent in the communistic notion that all ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... the sanction thus given, or from its typographical beauty, or from the plausibility of its new readings, this edition continued in favour, and even 'rose to the price of 10l. 10s. before it was reprinted in 1770-1, while Pope's, in quarto, at the same period sold off at Tonson's sale for 16s. ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... not with safety to the Senate's honor be withheld. He grieved to say that one of those mysterious dispensations of an inscrutable Providence which are decreed from time to time by His wisdom and for His righteous, purposes, had given this conspirator's tale a color of plausibility,—but this would soon disappear under the clear light of truth which would now be thrown upon ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... affectionate husband. Twenty years of constancy, of kind and respectful attention, on the part of Mahomet, fully justified her choice. It may, indeed, be imagined, and we confess the supposition bears the appearance of some plausibility, that the affection of Cadijah was not uninfluenced by the handsome person and insinuating eloquence of her youthful suitor. And we cannot refuse our applause to the conduct of Mahomet, who, whatever might ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... scornfully rejecting comfort. He quarrelled with his wife and with most of his friends, even with the gentle Lamb, till Lamb regained his affections by the brief quarrel with Southey. Certainly, he might call himself, with some plausibility, 'the king of good haters.' But, after all, Hazlitt's cynicism is the souring of a generous nature; and when we turn from the politician to the critic and the essayist, our admiration for his powers is less frequently jarred by annoyance at their wayward misuse. His egotism—for he ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the Sibyl of Rizpah and Vastness and Lucretius and The Voyage, to whom it must seem impertinent beyond the prophet's wont; there are—(but they scarce count)—who grub (as for truffles) for meanings in Browning. But it was not uttered to please, and in truth it has enough of plausibility to infuriate whatever poet-sects there ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... the plausibility of these conjectures, we are now inclined to give up our original opinion, and to ascribe the performance to a gentleman of Wales, who lived so late as the reign of king William the third. The name of this amiable person was Rice ap Thomas. The romance was certainly at one time in his custody, ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... of slavery are always at their wits end when they try to press the Bible into their service. Every movement shows that they are hard-pushed. Their odd conceits and ever varying shifts, their forced constructions, lacking even plausibility, their bold assumptions, and blind guesswork, not only proclaim their cause desperate, but themselves. Some of the Bible defences thrown around slavery by ministers of the Gospel, do so torture common sense, Scripture, and historical fact, that it were hard to tell whether absurdity, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... brings home to our inmost sense his inventions, daring as they are—the skeleton ship, the polar spirit, the inspiriting of the dead corpses of the ship's crew. The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner has the plausibility, the perfect adaptation to reason and the general aspect of life, which belongs to the marvellous, when actually presented as part of a credible experience in our dreams. Doubtless, the mere experience of the opium-eater, the habit he must almost ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... Emperor": Mei Yao-ch'en asks, with some plausibility, whether there is an error in the text as nothing is known of Huang Ti having conquered four other Emperors. The SHIH CHI (ch. 1 ad init.) speaks only of his victories over Yen Ti and Ch'ih Yu. In the ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... majority of the permanent indwellers of Pill, as well as the casual ones, not only protected themselves from the press, when such a course was necessary, by a ready use of the fist and the club, but, when this means of exemption failed them, pleaded the special nature of their calling with great plausibility and success. They were "pilots' assistants," and as such they enjoyed for many years the unqualified indulgence of the naval authorities. The appellation they bore was nevertheless purely euphemistic. As a matter of fact they were sailors' assistants who, under cover of an ostensible vocation, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... was a man of parts, conscientiousness, and plausibility, besides being educated and a wreck to his appetites. He told me all about it. Colleges had turned him out, and distilleries had taken him in. Did I tell you his name? It was Clifford Wainwright. I didn't ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... the light of day. There is in such a case not the slightest ground for supposing any such thing; and the animal may more reasonably be presumed to have simply hopped into the debris from its ordinary habitat. But laying aside narratives of this kind, which lose their plausibility under a very commonplace scrutiny, there still exist cases, reported in an apparently exact and truthful manner, in which these animals have been alleged to appear from the inner crevices of rocks after the removal of large masses of the formations. ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... an often-quoted paradox to the effect that, in drama, the probable impossible is to be preferred to the improbable possible. With all respect, this seems to be a somewhat cumbrous way of stating the fact that plausibility is of more importance on the stage than what may be called demonstrable probability. There is no time, in the rush of a dramatic action, for a mathematical calculation of the chances for and against a given event, or for experimental proof that ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... life, they received the nickname of the "Merry Brothers." Federici gives forcible reasons for his opinion that the Arena Chapel was employed in the ceremonies of their order; and Lord Lindsay observes, that the fulness with which the history of the Virgin is recounted on its walls, adds to the plausibility of his supposition. ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... we find him endowed with a variety of senses, and a great variety of bodily functions,—each adapted to its proper purpose, and all distinct from each other; and the physiologist is content to view them simply as they are. Were he to exercise his ingenuity upon them, he might contend with much plausibility, that it is highly incorrect to speak of five distinct and separate senses;—for that they are all merely modifications of sensation, differing only in the various kinds of the external impression. Thus, what ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... Finances are out of order; a season of spurious commercial activity has come to an end; new resources are to be sought for somehow; and man must change to be other than he is when he wholly ceases to believe in financial miracle-working. There is an air of plausibility about most of the new projects; and, indeed, like the scheme told of in Ben Jonson for the recovery of drowned lands, the enterprise is usually something within human power to accomplish, if only human skill could make it pay. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... would be pale too if you had nothing to eat." He could hardly speak the words and felt his strength failing. But there was some plausibility in his reply; and the old ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... floating and rather indefinite one. It has some plausibility but there is nothing which to my mind can be dignified by the name of proof. The facts of the Turner case will be found in a Report by Mr. (afterwards Chief) Justice Powell to Sir Peregrine Maitland's Secretary Edward ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... simplicity of the story. These objections may, I think, be answered, by repeating, that the cruelty of the daughters is an historical fact, to which the poet has added little, having only drawn it into a series by dialogue and action. But I am not able to apologize with equal plausibility for the extrusion of Gloster's eyes, which seems an act too horrid to be endured in dramatick exhibition, and such as must always compel the mind to relieve its distress by incredulity. Yet let it be remembered that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... time the governor happened to be absent on a short excursion into the country, to the northward: the report having been made to the lieutenant-governor, he, of course, examined the man, who had made the discovery, and who told his story with so much plausibility, that it was not doubted but an ore of some ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... and she made a little pause, as if to gather plausibility. "The Grand Union was very full, and he thought that at ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... knowledge, owes it to a decent regard to the opinions of others, to produce some credible testimony in favor of his veracity. I am peculiarly placed in regard to these two great essentials having little more than its plausibility to offer in favor of my philosophy, and no other witness than myself to establish the important facts that are now about to be laid before the reading world for the first time. In this dilemma, I fully feel the weight ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 5: Almost all the facts of Alberti's life are to be found in the Latin biography included in Muratori. It has been conjectured, and not without plausibility, by the last editor of Alberti's complete works, Bonucci, that this Latin life was ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... rites and customs that at first sight might seem to have had no connection with them. The throwing of the shoe after a newly-married couple is said to refer to the primitive mode of marriage by capture; but there is equal plausibility in referring it to the prehistoric worship of the footprint as a symbol of the powers of nature. To the same original source we may perhaps attribute the custom connected with the Levirate law in the Bible, when the woman ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... of Atys in Phrygia, and those of Cybele his mistress, like their worship, much resembled those of Adonis and Bakchos, Osiris and Isis. Their Asiatic origin is universally admitted, and was with great plausibility claimed by Phrygia, which contested the palm of antiquity with Egypt. They, more than any other people, mingled allegory with their religious worship, and were great inventors of fables; and their sacred ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... having written the poems himself. Such do not know Mrs. Eddy. She does an inordinate deal of protecting, but in no distinctly named and specified case in her history has Number Two been the object of it. Instances have been claimed, but they have failed of proof, and even of plausibility. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Terror that to have saved so many kittens from the awful death of drowning was a great work. But she asked no questions, not even how it was that the cats' home was fragrant with the scent of hidden apples. She knew that an explanation, probably of an admirable plausibility, was ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... hull, her rigging filled my eye with a great content. That feeling of life-emptiness which had made me so restless for the last few months lost its bitter plausibility, its evil influence, dissolved in a flow of ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... of the scheme, and let Digwell into it; and together they went to work. They had a few hundred dollars in cash, no particular credit, an entirely unlimited fund of lies, a good deal of industry, plausibility, talk, and cheek, considerable acquaintance with business, and an instinctive appreciation of some of the more selfish motives ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... Experience had taught me the insecurity of a canoe, and that was the only kind of boat which Pleyel used; I was, likewise, actuated by an hereditary dread of water. These circumstances combined to bestow considerable plausibility on this conjecture; but the consternation with which I began to be seized was allayed by reflecting that, if this disaster had happened, my brother would have received the speediest information of it. The consolation which this idea imparted was ravished from me by ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... return to the method of experience with a vengeance. Charlotte's success, indeed, was so stunning that for all but sixty years Villette has passed for a roman a clef, the novel, not only of experience, but of personal experience. There was a certain plausibility in that view. The characters could all be easily recognized. And when Dr. John was identified with Mr. George Smith, and his mother with Mr. George Smith's mother, and Madame Beck with Madame Heger, ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... as Longinus closed, 'deny strength and plausibility to your arguments, but I cannot admit that they satisfy me. After the most elaborate reasoning, I am still left in darkness. No power nor wit of man has ever wholly scattered the mists which rest upon life and death. I confess, with Socrates, that I want ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... his intellect? He may be absolutely honest and quite unconscious that his conclusions were prearranged by his sympathies. No philosophic creed of any importance has ever been constructed, we may well believe, without such sincerity and without such plausibility as results from its correspondence to at least some aspects of the truth. But the result is sufficiently shown by the perplexed controversies which arise. Men agree in their conclusions, though starting from opposite premises; ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... The boys were placed at various distances from the disc in question; and it was found that the drawings made by those who were just too far off to see distinctly, bore out the above theory in a remarkable manner. Recently, however, the plausibility of the illusion view has been shaken by photographs of Mars taken during the opposition of 1905 by Mr. Lampland at the Lowell Observatory, in which a number of the more prominent canals come out as straight dark lines. Further still, in some photographs made ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... our ideas of reason and fitness, and to use the same method of attack by which some men have assaulted revealed religion, we might with as good color, and with the same success, make the wisdom and power of God in his creation appear to many no better than foolishness. There is an air of plausibility which accompanies vulgar reasonings and notions, taken from the beaten circle of ordinary experience, that is admirably suited to the narrow capacities of some, and to the laziness of others. But this advantage is in a great measure lost, when a painful, comprehensive survey of a very complicated ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... already sketched some of the reasons suggestive of such a theory of derivation of species, reasons which gave it plausibility, and even no small probability, as applied to our actual world and to changes occurring since the latest tertiary period. We are well pleased at this moment to find that the conclusions we were arriving at in this respect are sustained by the very high authority and impartial ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... friends for his cause. He had repeated audiences of the King, to whose court he had come in disguise. He made a strong and warm impression upon Elizabeth's envoy at the French Court, Walsingham. It is probable that in the Count's impetuosity to carry his point, he allowed more plausibility to be given to certain projects for subdividing the Netherlands than his brother would ever have sanctioned. The Prince was a total stranger to these inchoate schemes. His work was to set his country free, and to destroy the tyranny which had grown colossal. That employment was sufficient ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... may be seen in Hugo's Valjean, which was undoubtedly suggested by Balzac's Vautrin. In the play of Vautrin, the main character, instead of appearing sublime, becomes absurd, and the action is utterly destitute of that plausibility and coherence which should make the most improbable incidents of a play hang together ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... seen that chess crossed over from India into Persia, and became known in the latter country by the name of shatranj. Some have understood that word to mean "the play of the king"; but undoubtedly Sir William Jones's derivation carries with it the most plausibility. How and when the game was introduced into Persia we have no means of knowing. The Persian poet Firdusi, in his historical poem, the Shahnama, gives an account of the introduction of shatranj into Persia in the reign of Chosroes ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... The door creaked, swung partially open. He frowned. Had she forgotten to latch it? he wondered. Or had she deliberately left it unlatched so that Zarathustra could get in? Zarathustra himself lent plausibility to the latter conjecture by rising up on his hind legs and pushing the door the rest of the way open with his forepaws, after which he trotted into the ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... monogamy would seem to be a sundering of tender ties and hardness toward the cast off Hagars that is inconsistent with the Christian spirit. An earnest, Godly man, a missionary friend of the writer, under whose ministry a heathen chief was converted, was misled by the plausibility. The chief had a number of wives; he had children by them; he was much attached to his wives and was fond of his children, and they all seemed to love him and clung to him. The missionary in the kindness of his heart did not interfere with the family, permitting the chief to ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... eyes and swallow whatever opinions the Teuton thinks good to offer them, it may have interest for the psychologist. For the rest it is a very prosy piece of literature, only saved occasionally in its dulness by the unconscious crudity of the hatreds lurking beneath its mask of plausibility. One of these hatreds is clearly directed against Ambassador GERARD, to whose well-known book this volume is in some sort a counter- blast. Neither a historian seeking truth nor a plain reader seeking recreation will have any ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... effectiveness, though not in minute accuracy of execution, this may rank with the best in Europe. We can trace the beginnings of this lighter and most graceful work as early as the thirties, and it might be contended with a certain plausibility that it began at the Universities. Certainly the two earliest examples known to me—the copy of her Statutes presented to Charles I. by Oxford in 1634, and the Little Gidding Harmony of 1635, the tools employed in which have been shown by Mr. Davenport to have been ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... the night, and a return to the Flying Fish until the morning, when they could come back to the spot, provided with everything necessary to enable them to carry the pursuit to a successful issue. But von Schalckenberg protested so vehemently against this course, urging with so much plausibility the likelihood that the creature would drop exhausted before it had run a mile, and that, if the search for it were left until the morning, all that they would find of it would probably be its mangled remains, so torn and mauled by other animals as to ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... intermittent business in the gilding of small idols, to be shipped overseas and traded as objects of worship among the negroes of the American plantations. Jewellery, however, was his stand-by. In the manufacture of meretricious ware he had a plausibility amounting to genius, in the disposing of it a talent for hard bargains; and the two together had landed him in affluence. Well, sir, being headed off my boyhood's dream by the geographical inconvenience of Warwickshire—for a lad may run away to be a sailor, sir, but the devil take ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... again grew down-hearted at this intelligence, and it was as much as Burgher Jans could do, with all his plausibility, to make her hopeful; while Lorischen, her old superstitious fears and belief in Mouser's prophetic miaow-wowing again revived, did all her best to negative the fat little man's praiseworthy efforts at cheering. Ever since the Burgher had been elected a confidant of Madaleine's ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... on the occupations of those by whom the ruins had been formerly possessed, they wandered for some time from one moss-grown shrine to another, under the guidance of Oldbuck, who explained, with much plausibility, the ground-plan of the edifice, and read and expounded to the company the various mouldering inscriptions which yet were to be traced upon the tombs of the dead, or under the vacant niches of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature, so their grand maxim is, to cultivate reason, and to be wholly governed by it. Neither is reason among them a point problematical, as with us, where men can argue with plausibility on both sides of the question, but strikes you with immediate conviction; as it must needs do, where it is not mingled, obscured, or discoloured, by passion and interest. I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... accused is telling the truth. For, he knows that while the guilty man's lie may sound entirely plausible, it will collapse like a perforated gas-bag in the end. Likewise, truth coming from the innocent man's lips may be utterly lacking in plausibility. Yet, it will establish itself by reason of its ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... want of knowledge of the great world, she had considerable knowledge of human nature, which stood her wonderfully in stead. She had no notion of being made sport of for the elegantes, and, with all Lady Masham's plausibility of persiflage, she never obtained her end, and never elicited anything really absurd by all attempts to draw her out—out she would not be drawn. After an unconquerable silence and all the semblance of dead stupidity, ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... constituting the reign of Semiramis. As the wife or as the mother of Nabonassar, that lady (according to many) directed the affairs of the Babylonian state on behalf of her husband or her son. The theory is not devoid of a certain plausibility, and it is no doubt possible that it may be true; but at present it is a mere conjecture, wholly unconfirmed by the native records; and we may question whether on the whole it is not more probable that the Semiramis of Herodotus is misplaced. In a former volume it was shown ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... Hervey's, Mangea and Wattea Islands to the S.E. of Why-to-tackee were inhabited, I did not think it probable that Christian, in the weak state the ship was in, would attempt to settle upon either of them, and as there was some plausibility in the information given me by Hillbrant the prisoner, and as the Duke of York's Island seemed to answer the description of such an island as Christian had been heard by others to declare he would search for to settle on, it being ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... meteors of philosophy, which fill the world with splendour for a while, and then sink and are forgotten, the candidates of learning fixed their eyes upon the permanent lustre of moral and religious truth, they would find a more certain direction to happiness. A little plausibility of discourse, and acquaintance with unnecessary speculations, is dearly purchased, when it excludes those instructions which fortify the heart with resolution, and exalt the spirit ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... writing. Few men are Johnsons; yet how many men at this day are assailed by incessant demands on their mental powers, which only a productiveness like his could suitably supply! There is a demand for a reckless originality of thought, and a sparkling plausibility of argument, which he would have despised, even if he could have displayed; a demand for crude theory and unsound philosophy, rather than none at all. It is a sort of repetition of the "Quid novi?" of the Areopagus, and ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... have been the tooth of an ordinary human being, so that even the faithful can only contend that the Buddha was of superhuman stature. Whether it is the relic which was venerated in Ceylon before the arrival of the Portuguese is a more difficult question, for it may be argued with equal plausibility that the Sinhalese had good reasons for hiding the real tooth and good reasons for duplicating it. The strongest argument against the authenticity of the relic destroyed by the Portuguese is that it was found in Jaffna, which had long ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... man has never seen; which exists not upon the least shadow of evidence—which has not even the lowest dictates of sense and plausibility in its favour—on this Ignis fatuus, eluding the grasp, and for ever mocking the folly of its pursuers, thou canst build thine hopes, because it flatters thy wishes and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Just how far was it justifiable to mind his own business? And if he did not mind it, what possible chance had he against a power so ruthless and so cunning? An accident to a man driving a loaded wagon down the Spirit Canyon grade had a diabolic plausibility that no man in the country could question. Brit, he reasoned, could not have known before he started that his rough-lock had been tampered with, else he would have fixed it. Neither was Brit the man to forget the brake on his load. If Brit lived, ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... no one but Morton—to be repeated by almost every historian down to the present period; and it is only within a few years that its correctness has been questioned by writers whose judgment is entitled to respect. But notwithstanding the plausibility of the arguments urged to disprove this charge, and even the explicit assertion that it is a "Parthian calumny," and a "sheer falsehood," we must frankly own that, in our estimation, the veracity of Morton yet remains unimpeached. Facts prove that the Dutch were contemplating permanent settlement ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... spots which the Frenchmen visited bore evidences of a ghastly tragedy. So numerous were the human bones bleaching on the sandy soil that they called it Massacre Island (to-day Dauphin Island). It was surmised—and with some plausibility—that here had perished some portion of the ill-fated following of Pamphile de Narvaez. (See "Pioneer Spaniards in North ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... only from its own plausibility, but because it was introduced under favourable auspices and at a favourable time. It came into Asia Minor as a portion of the wisdom of Egypt, and therefore with a prestige sufficient to assure for ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... had not been a great fool he never would have been a great writer." This is one of those paradoxical statements to which Macaulay likes to give a glittering plausibility. It is true that Boswell wrote a great book, and it is also true that in some regards he was what we are accustomed to designate as a fool; but to connect the two as cause and effect is like saying that a man was a great athlete because he was lame, or ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... addressed (about 1722) to another lady, Judith Cowper, afterwards Mrs. Madan, who was for a time the object of some of his artificial gallantry. The only thing that can be said is that his abuse was a sheer piece of Billingsgate, too devoid of plausibility to be more than an expression of virulent hatred. He was like a dirty boy who throws mud from an ambush, and declares that he did not see the ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... with his badges and stars, bent on duty, but not accomplishment. All the town soon knew that he was following a clew, but all the town was at sea concerning its character, origin, and plausibility. A dozen persons saw him stop young Mrs. Perkins in front of Lamson's store, and the same spectators saw his feathers droop as she let loose her wrath upon his head and went away with her nose in the air and her cheeks far more scarlet ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... conjectures came thronging on me, and I cast my eyes up, day after day, at the little window, hoping some change of appearance might give plausibility to some one of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... unfitness to the case, of such illogical reasoning as is adopted by the advocates of Negro equality. Human equality, as applied to the Negro, is an idle fantasy, without even the shadow or semblance of plausibility. White men are equals in few things; certainly not in physical nor mental capacity, nor power. The equality declared by our Revolutionary Sires was the political equality of white men. Let us arise from that lethargy in which we have dreamed of universal ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... the consequences which occasionalism would seem to involve, have embraced an opposite scheme. They criticise the definition of the laws of nature, and contend that occasionalism derives all its plausibility from adroitly availing itself of the ambiguities of language. They would have us view the creation as a species of clock, or other machinery, which, being once made and wound up, will for a time perform its movements without the assistance or even presence of its maker. ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... two elements that never mix any more than oil and water mix. A religion is a mechanical mixture, not a chemical combination, of morality and dogma. Dogma is the science of the unseen: the doctrine of the unknown and unknowable. And in order to give this science plausibility, its promulgators have always fastened upon it morality. Morality can and does exist entirely separate and apart from dogma, but dogma is ever a parasite on morality, and the business of the priest is to confuse ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... itself may have been in existence before it was read in 622 to Josiah cannot be determined with certainty. Many argue that D was written immediately before it was found and that, in fact, it was put into the temple for the purpose of being "found." This theory gives some plausibility to the charge that the book is a pious fraud. But the narrative in 2 Kings xxii. warrants no such inference. The more natural explanation is that it was written not in the early years of Josiah's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... opposing his claim stoutly asserted that he was a miller of Landreslaw, called Rebok, and that he was a creature of the Duke of Saxony, who coveted the Brandenburgian possessions, and who, being a relative of the family, had thoroughly instructed him as to the private life of Voldemar. His plausibility, and the accuracy of his answers, however, led many persons of influence to believe that he was no counterfeit. The Emperor Charles IV. (of Bohemia), the Primate of Germany, the Princes of Anhalt, and the Dukes of Brunswick, Pomerania, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... initiative. I felt somehow that the blame would lie with my counsellors; they had undertaken to guide and control me. If they failed they, more than I, must answer for the failure. Sophistry of this kind passes well enough with one who wants excuses, and may even array itself in a cloak of plausibility; it was strong in my mind by virtue of the strong resentment from which it sprang, and the strong ally to which its forces were joined. Passion and self-assertion were at one; my conquest would be two-fold. While the Countess was brought to acknowledge my sway, those who had ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... that these considerations give a front and plausibility to the hypothesis, that, in some cases of dreams and sensorial illusions, which have turned out true and significant intimations of the death of absent persons, there may have been at the bottom of them a relation established between the minds or nervous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... wherewith he had been assailed. The position was one of high honour and dignity. It would be impossible to represent the occupant of that position as the mere tool and mouthpiece of a low Radical clique, or as a person whom no gentleman could admit to a conference. There was much plausibility about these arguments, and they had the more weight inasmuch as Dr. Rolph was said to be personally indifferent about the matter. Dr. Rolph, moreover, needed no accession of dignity. He could certainly derive none from being elected to the mayoralty, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Madison. The triumph claimed by him must be qualified, however, by the reflection that it was obtained at the expense of becoming the dupe of a French deception, on its face so obvious as to deprive mistake of the excuse of plausibility. The eagerness of the Government, and of its representatives abroad, for a diplomatic triumph, had precipitated them into a step for which, on the grounds taken, no justification existed; and they had since then been ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... What advance, then, of promotion, and reward of virtue, or generally of conduct, is proved from this in our Lord's instance? For if he was not God, and then had become God—if, not being king, he was preferred to the kingdom, your reasoning would have had some faint plausibility. But if he is God, and the throne of his kingdom is everlasting, in what way could God advance? Or what was there wanting to him who was sitting on his Father's throne? And if, as the Lord himself has said, the Spirit is his, and takes of his, ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... for the explanation of the heavenly movements, that the Ptolemaic theory was not seriously questioned until the great work of Copernicus appeared. No doubt others before Copernicus had from time to time in some vague fashion surmised, with more or less plausibility, that the sun, and not the earth, was the centre about which the system really revolved. It is, however, one thing to state a scientific fact; it is quite another thing to be in possession of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... be too particular about the plausibility and inner significance of an allegory, and are prepared for as much awkwardness in it as one might expect in the confessions of an awkward man, provided only that the costume is correct, I should like to relate to you here ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... that had been previously travestied in the more stilted passages of the letters of Burns. "Many of his opinions are not to be adopted. How odd does it look to refer all the modifications of national character to the influence of moral causes. Might it not be asserted with some plausibility that even those which he denominates moral causes originate from physical circumstances?" The whole first volume of this somewhat overexpanded collection overflows with ebullitions of bile, in comparison ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... on any such paternal procedure in a few years gravitation itself would be called in question, and the whole science would wither under the fatal shadow. There are many phenomena still unexplained to give plausibility to scepticism; there are others more easily formularised for working purposes in the language of Hipparchus; and there would be reactionists who would invite us to return to the safe convictions of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... chants, by unwedded maids. Youths and maidens dedicated locks of their hair in his temple before marriage. His grave existed at Troezen, though the people would not show it. It has been suggested, with great plausibility, that in the handsome Hippolytus, beloved of Artemis, cut off in his youthful prime, and yearly mourned by damsels, we have one of those mortal lovers of a goddess who appear so often in ancient religion, and of whom Adonis is the most familiar type. The rivalry of Artemis and Phaedra for the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... man, from time to time, were baleful; but, with his usual tact and plausibility, he restrained his temper before the sheriff, lest that gentleman might imagine that he had acted from any other principle than a sense ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Suburban Villa. Present, Simple Citizen, with budding horticultural ambitions, and Jobbing Gardener, "highly recommended" for skill and low charges. The latter is a grizzled personage, very bowed as to back, and baggy as to breeches, but in his manner combining oracular "knowingness" and deferential plausibility ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... need not be startled at the new terms he introduces. Indeed, I am not quite sure that some thinking people will not adopt his view of the matter, which seems to have a degree of plausibility as he states and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... moving question, and at last frames a conclusion with painstaking precision in perfectly clear language, it is not pleasant to have that accurate utterance misstated with tireless reiteration, and with infinite art and plausibility. But for this vexation Lincoln could find no remedy, and it was in vain that he again and again called attention to the fact that he had expressed neither a "doctrine," nor an "invitation," nor any "purpose" or policy whatsoever. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... interview with Beaumaroy at the Cottage had left her puzzled, distrustful—and attracted. She suspected him vaguely of wanting to use her for some purpose of his own; in spite of the swift plausibility of his explanation, she was nearly certain that he had lied to her about the combination knife-and-fork. Yet his account of his own position in regard to Mr. Saffron had sounded remarkably candid, and the more so because ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... Hull. "That's what gives plausibility to the shrieks of demagogues like Victor Dorn—though Victor is too well educated not to know better than to stir up ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... lie-makers must make plausibility one element of their craft; but this did seem a pleasant specimen of the manufacture. To be sure, I am bound to add that this account came from Whigs, and the attack was made by a Tory paper upon two members of the ex-Government; so you may believe it or not, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... incoherent shreds, that it is impossible to tie them together; and therefore, what I purpose is, to answer such objections to the Test, as are advanced either by this author, or any other which have any appearance of reason, or plausibility. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... considerations were urged and represented by Villebecque to La Petite, with all the practised powers of plausibility of which so much experience as a manager had made him master. La Petite looked infinitely distressed, but yielded, as she ever did. And the night of Coningsby's arrival at the Castle was to witness in its private theatre the first appearance of ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... more force, at least with much more plausibility, the noble Lord and several other members on the other side of the House have argued against the proposed Reform on the ground that the existing system has worked well. How great a country, they say, is ours! How eminent in wealth ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it seems to me that if you were not you, and I were not I, you might with some plausibility accuse me of being—what?—in love with Miss Bretherton? But you know me too well. You know I am one of the old-fashioned people who believe in community of interests—in belonging to the same world. When I come coolly ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not fully understand. Still he remained there, his mind obsessed by the plausibility of the woman's story and by the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... teacher of virtue and religion; but they obstinately adhered to the ceremonies of their ancestors, and were desirous of imposing them on the Gentiles, who continually augmented the number of believers. These Judaizing Christians seem to have argued with some degree of plausibility from the divine origin of the Mosaic law, and from the immutable perfections of its great Author. They affirmed, that if the Being, who is the same through all eternity, had designed to abolish those sacred rites which had served to distinguish his chosen people, the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... the neck, whilst the rest hung behind like a hood. By analogy with the scarf of our Protestant clergy, which is clearly the stole of the Roman Church retained under a different name, this suggestion is not without some degree of plausibility. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... country we have had them in 1815, 1836, 1857, and 1877, and by panics we do not mean such local whirlwinds as have desolated Wall Street, but wide-spread commercial crises, affecting all branches of business. This periodicity is ascribed, and with much plausibility, to the fact that inasmuch as panics are the result of certain mental conditions, they recur as soon as the experience of the previous one has lost its influence, or, in other words, as often as a new generation comes into the ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... question as peacemaker. She told him that the colonel was really innocent in the whole matter, and that she herself had been the cause of the trouble, having spread a false report under an erroneous impression. She managed to tell her yarn with so much plausibility as entirely to deceive and bamboozle the other party, who thereupon withdrew his challenge with expressions of his profound regret. So, you see, she saved the colonel's life, for the civilian is known as a dead shot. Since then she has the ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... charming; chatting with what seemed absolute frankness about her future life in the cottages, answering little questionings of Lady Shuttleworth's with a discretion and plausibility that would have warmed Fritzing's anxious heart, dwelling most, for here the ground was safest, on her uncle, his work, his gifts and character, and Lady Shuttleworth, completely fascinated, had offered her help of every sort, help in the arranging of her ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... he is asked how he is to manage this practical paradox, he says: 'Oh, I shall put out the L.10 to interest, and in the course of time it will increase until it pays off the L.100.' The lender is perhaps a little staggered at first by the audacious plausibility of the proposal, but it requires but a few seconds to enable him to say: 'Why, yes, you may lend out the L.10 at interest; but in the meantime, as you have borrowed it, interest runs against you upon it; so what better are you?' The lender, so ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... take in other partners. By this Mr Speckle came to be a resident in the parish, he having taken up a portion of Mr Cayenne's share. He likewise took a tack of the house and policy of Wheatrig. But although Mr Speckle was a far more conversible man than his predecessor, and had a wonderful plausibility in business, the affairs of the company did not thrive in his hands. Some said this was owing to his having owre many irons in the fire; others, to the circumstances of the times: in my judgment, however, both helped; but the issue belongs to the events of another ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... panic. I revolved them anew, but they only acquired greater plausibility. No doubt I had been the victim of malicious artifice. Inclination, however, conjured up opposite sentiments, and my fears began to subside. What motive, I asked, could induce a human being to inflict wanton injury? I could not account for his delay; but how numberless were the contingencies ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... reference to the intoxicating bowl? It does seem to me that if Mr. Bloke had let the intoxicating bowl alone himself, he never would have got into so much trouble about this exasperating imaginary accident. I have read this absurd item over and over again, with all its insinuating plausibility, until my head swims, but I can make neither head nor tail of it. There certainly seems to have been an accident of some kind or other, but it is impossible to determine what the nature of it was, or who was the sufferer by it. I do not like to do it, but I feel ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... to the China market, while Ledyard was to remain behind and collect a fresh cargo ready for their return, after which he meant to perambulate the continent of America, and show his countrymen the path to unbounded wealth. Jones, it seems, was so much taken with the plausibility of a scheme, which presented at once the prospect of adventure, fame, and profit, that he advanced money to Ledyard to purchase a part of the cargo for the outfit; but, being suddenly called away to L'Orient, to look after his prize ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... contradiction in the author's attitude is to be found in what has been said of its manner of composition. Goethe began it in his romantic youth, and availed himself recklessly of the supernatural elements in the legend, with the disregard of reason and plausibility characteristic of the romantic mood. When he returned to it in the beginning of the new century his artistic standards had changed, and the supernaturalism could now be tolerated only by being made symbolic. Thus he makes ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe |
