"Thinkable" Quotes from Famous Books
... the universe. Now if evil is a non-vital, deciduous, and sterile phenomenon par excellence, art must be necessarily opposed to it, and opposed in proportion to art's vigour. While, on the other hand, the seeking, the realisation of greater harmony, whether harmony visible, audible, thinkable, and livable, is as necessarily opposed to anomaly and perversity as the great healthinesses of air and sunshine are opposed to bodily disease. Hence, in whatever company we find art, even as in whatever company we find bodily health and vigour, let us understand that in ... — Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... for the sake of the argument, we admit it, are we then through with the problem? No. We have only moved the difficulty one step backward. We can see how one billiard ball may set another in motion, but it is only thinkable upon the supposition that there was an agent behind the ball which put the second ball in motion. What put the first ball in motion? Did it put itself in motion? No. The law is this: A body must remain forever ... — The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... it the superstition of a God? Whatever it may be called, it was very far from being religion yet. The fact was only this—that the idea of a God worth believing in, was coming a little nearer to him, was becoming to him a little more thinkable. ... — There & Back • George MacDonald
... their colloquial tongue was unknown to him, he was not drawn into any undue expenditure of speech. He watched his smoke and he thought, thought so hard that at last he appeared to himself to have exhausted the thinkable. When this moment of combined relief and dismay arrived (on the last of the evenings that we are concerned with), he took his way down Third Avenue and reached his humble dwelling. Till within a short time there had been a resource for him at such an hour and in such a mood; ... — The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... is the explanation of the phenomena involved in wireless telegraphy, and is equally the explanation of the phenomena involved in telepathy. At a meeting of the Society of Arts in May of 1901, Professor Ayrton, commenting on Marconi's system, said that we "are gradually coming within thinkable distance of the realization of a prophecy he had ventured to make four years before, at a time when, if a person wanted to call to a friend he knew not where, he would call in a very loud electro-magnetic voice, heard by him who had the electro-magnetic ear, silent to him ... — The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... renunciation, though not the nature of it; and several questions brought it forth—the old pioneer dream of land spaciousness; of cattle on a hundred hills; one hundred and sixty acres of land the smallest thinkable division. ... — The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... punishment did issue in moral improvement, and that such improvement should go on increasing, is it thinkable that under an infinitely gracious and wise government there would come no time of such perfection as would warrant release? But in that case the suffering would not be endless. Whichever way you take it, that seems to ... — Love's Final Victory • Horatio |