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More "Improbable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him alone. He did not believe it, but considered it as an excuse for postponing the execution, preparatory to revoking it altogether. And he was seized with joy; the confused, terrible moment, of which it was so painful to think, retreated far into the distance, becoming fictitious and improbable, ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... the sixteenth century, could not have been long posterior, to the capture of Granada. How far they may be referred to the conquered Moors, is uncertain. Many of these wrote and spoke the Castilian with elegance, and there is nothing improbable in the supposition, that they should seek some solace under present evils in the splendid visions of the past. The bulk of this poetry, however, was in all probability the creation of the Spaniards themselves, naturally attracted by the picturesque circumstances in the character and ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... live to be a hundred, and it is not improbable since I am healthy, I shall never forget that little garden at the inn at Bleau. It was a vegetable garden too, which is not in itself romantic. I recall vaguely that there were beds all about us, which in due course would ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... remarkable, to say the least, that one who was willing to face unknown odds in order to effect the girl's rescue should be so desperately anxious now to get away from a rather improbable pursuit. Yet again, the Arab's suggestion offered the only practicable course, and Moti had to bear a double load while they slowly climbed the hill down which they dashed so precipitately before they came upon the disabled vehicle. This time, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Brennan? She had been at some pains to inform me that she was married, yet there was that about her—her bearing, her manner—which I could not in the least reconcile with that thought. Her extreme youthfulness made me feel it improbable, and the impression remained with me that she intended to make some explanation of her words, when the coming of Bungay interrupted us. How they might be explained I could not imagine; I merely struggled against ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... trust to a report not sanctioned, indeed, by writers of high authority, but in itself not improbable, the work of Herodotus was composed not to be read, but to be heard. It was not to the slow circulation of a few copies, which the rich only could possess, that the aspiring author looked for his reward. The great Olympian festival was to witness ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... to Attis and Adonis, whatever their original character (and it seems to me highly improbable that there should have been two youths each beloved by a goddess, each victim of a similar untimely fate), long before we have any trace of them both have become so intimately identified with the processes of Nature that they have ceased to be men and become gods, and as such alone can we ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... unfavorable to poor Bert. His mother's straitened circumstances were well known, and it certainly did seem improbable upon the face of it that she should have a twenty-dollar bill in ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... he proposes as his immediate object a moral end instead of the giving of aesthetic pleasure. His prophets and wise men are pedlars and tramps not because it is probable that they should be of this condition—it is on the contrary highly improbable—but because we are thus to be taught a salutary moral lesson. The question of language in itself, if it enters at all here, enters only as the indifferent means by which a non-poetic end is sought. The accidentality ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... Josiah fought Necoh, as an Assyrian vassal (Benzinger on II. Kings xxiii. 28-30) is, of course, quite improbable, even if Nineveh did not fall till 606. But if the latest datum is correct that Nineveh fell in 612 (see Appendix I) it is ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... the course of affairs, both foreign and domestic, had Mr. Fox—as was, at one time, not improbable—been the Minister during this period, must be left to that superhuman knowledge, which the schoolmen call "media scientia," and which consists in knowing all that would have happened, had events been otherwise than they have been. It is probable that ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... account of the sixth day, before woman was made, the plural word them is used: "male and female created he them." They say that the blessing was pronounced on the man and woman in Adam. For they think it improbable that Moses would anticipate his history so much as to bring in woman, and, withal, her blessing, too, at the sixth day, when the narrative teaches that she was made some time afterwards. Hence, they say, it was that woman was for ages treated as included in man. There is something pleasing in this ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... course is to preserve the characters to which we have committed ourselves—you as his widow, and I as the witness of your marriage—and, in those characters, to court the fullest inquiry. In the entirely improbable event of his dying just when we want him to die, my idea—I might even say, my resolution—is to admit that we knew of his resurrection from the sea; and to acknowledge that we instructed Mr. Bashwood to entrap ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... cruelties, too abrupt in its succession of terrors, even for the exaggerating pencil of the most eccentric and gloomy imagination; surpassing whatever has been heard, read, or thought; and admitting no similitude but to the feverish visions of delirium! so marvellous in fertility of incident, so improbable in excess of calamity, so monstrous in impunity of guilt! the witches of Shakespeare are less wanton in absurdity, and the demons of Milton less ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... quaint devices in the garniture of her room, her person, and her feminine belongings. In nothing was this more apparent than in the visiting card which she had prepared for her use. For such an article one would say that she, in her present state, could have but small need, seeing how improbable it was that she should make a morning call: but not such was her own opinion. Her card was surrounded by a deep border of gilding; on this she had imprinted, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... that lay in his power to prevent this, Billy suddenly sprang up, and, seizing the tiller, dealt the prostrate Graddy several powerful blows on the head. It is not improbable that the frightened boy would have settled the question of his recovery then and there had not his father revived, ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... is improbable that Byron, when he wrote these lines, was thinking of Theresa Gamba, Countess Guiccioli. He met her for the first time "in the autumn of 1818, three days after her marriage," but it was not till April, 1819, that he made her acquaintance. (See Life, p. 393, and Letters, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... a loss to understand the relevance of this extremely improbable narrative. It did not appear, on the face of it, complimentary to connect me with a declared thief and gaol-bird. Still it was my duty to be courteous to one who was for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... possible that the heat could have been supplied by means of the iron bar to the end of which the blunt steel borer was fixed? Or by the small neck of gun-metal by which the hollow cylinder was united to the cannon? These suppositions seem more improbable even than either of the before-mentioned; for heat was continually going off, or OUT OF THE MACHINERY, by both these passages during the whole time ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... York law is, that a year must pass between the sentence and the execution. And long before the year passes, the public sympathy has turned in the criminal's favour. Endless petitions go up for his pardon. Of course he gets off. And indeed it is not improbable that he may receive a public testimonial. It cannot be denied that the natural transition in the popular feeling is from applauding a man to hanging him, and from hanging a man ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... always been the custom for all buyers of wares, whether archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, or other persons, to have the draught of the beam; but we have learnt by this time that a local custom was not allowed to override the law of the land, and thus it is most improbable that this protest, though it led to the issuing of two Royal mandates, ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... In the evening we fed and watered the horses, and Mr. Campbell offered to remain on board if he got someone to assist him to attend to the horses during the night; but as there were drunken sailors on board, and I thought the breaking up of the old Firefly not improbable, I did not like remaining or asking anyone else to do so. After the ship struck, the officers and crew considered themselves under no discipline, taking from the stores whatever they wanted, and, I am sorry to say, much of the Expedition spiced ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... upon the soft places above the drains. The tiles should lie far enough below the deepest path of the subsoil plow, not to be at all disturbed by its pressure in passing over the drains. It is by no means improbable that fields that have already been drained in this country, may be, in the lifetime of their present occupants, plowed and subsoiled by means of steam-power, and stirred to as great a depth as shall be found at all desirable. But, in ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... "Not improbable. I do not, however, feel much inclination just now to go to a party. Had it not been for that, I should have sent my card to Mrs. Goldsborough after my arrival. I met her at the springs last summer, and received much ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... mossy crevices, or on tree roots, then swept them all up and whirled them away in dark depths of the current from which they would never more come to the surface. It was a place which Esther would have loved, and I wondered, as I sat there hour after hour, whether it were really improbable, that she knew just then what I was doing for her. I wondered, also, as I often before had wondered, if it might not have been by Esther's will that the sacred hoard of letters, which had lain undiscovered for so many years, should fall ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... councils. It would be interesting to speculate as to what would have been the result had these two men been opposed. Stephens was naturally a Union man, and was no very ardent advocate of slavery. Toombs inherited the traditions of the Virginia landowners. It is not improbable that the firmness of the one would have been a foil for the fire of the other. History might have been written differently had not the conference committee in the Georgia Legislature in 1843 altered the schedule ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... a brutal murder? The bucolic jury shrank from either conclusion, and gave as their verdict "accidental death." That Amy Robsart ended her own life is far from improbable; for it was no secret to her friends that she was weary of it, and would welcome the release death alone could bring. But the general opinion, so far from supporting this plausible theory, turned to thoughts ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... Australia and New Guinea.[620] The frog is sometimes the sacred animal, and this recalls the Maerchen of the Frog Bridegroom living in a well, who insisted on marrying the girl who drew its waters. Though this tale is not peculiar to the Celts, it is not improbable that the divine animal guardian of a well may have become the hero of a folk-tale, especially as such wells were sometimes tabu to women.[621] A fly was the guardian spirit of S. Michael's well in Banffshire. Auguries regarding health were drawn ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... the frequent intimate association between structure and function. Rough outdoor games and wrestling thus correspond to the physical constitution of the boy. So, also, it is by no means improbable that the little girl, whose pelvis and hips have already begun to indicate by their development their adaption for the supreme functions of the sexually mature woman, should experience obscurely a certain impulsion toward her predestined ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... white turbans and green caftans and long spears became more and more distinct. It was clear that, in the event of Salisbury not returning in time, Walter would have to fight against great odds; and the return of the earl in time to aid him now appeared so improbable that the squire ceased even to hope for his banners, and resolved to take what fortune might be sent him. Suddenly, however, a sound—a whisper on the breeze, and the heavy tread of horses—reached his ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... gazing in the direction in which he had gone—to the other side of life. And that other side of life, of which she had never before thought and which had formerly seemed to her so far away and improbable, was now nearer and more akin and more comprehensible than this side of life, where everything was either emptiness and desolation or ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... said Grandfather, "it is improbable that the slightest whisper of the woes of Acadia ever reached the ears of Louis the Fifteenth. The exiles grew old in the British provinces, and never saw Acadia again. Their descendants remain among us, to this day. They ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... highly improbable story, Mrs. Malmayns," returned Hodges, "and I must have the matter thoroughly investigated before ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... you from the beginning that my going to Sussex was a most improbable event; I tell you now that unless want of health should absolutely compel me to give up work and leave home (which I trust and hope will not be the case) I certainly shall not think of going. It is better to be decided, and decided I must ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... attend the seances where flowers (bought from the nearest florist) are materialized, and some invest their money in Mrs. Howe's Bank of Benevolence. Their tendency is to reject the truth which is generally accepted, and to accept the improbable; if the impossible offers itself, they deny the existence of the impossible. Argument with this class of minds is a lever ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Now it is not improbable that the story of Opheltes and Hypsipyle occurred in the old cyclic poem.[559] But that scarcely justifies Statius in devoting the whole of the fifth and sixth books and some 200 lines of the fourth to the description of an episode so alien to the main interest ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... at Penshurst, it has been collected that he diverted his disappointment by a voyage; and his biographers, from his poem on the Whales, think it not improbable that he visited the Bermudas; but it seems much more likely, that he should amuse himself with forming an imaginary scene, than that so important an incident, as a visit to America, should have been left floating in ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... connected with the attack on the Malipieri palace, that the ministers of justice were hunting him out. Nor did he see how he should he able to convince his judges of his innocence. The tale he had to tell, although the truth, was still too marvellous and improbable to obtain credence, and would be more likely to draw upon him severe punishment, or perhaps the torture, with the view of inducing him to confess its falsehood. Bewildered by his terror, Antonio sat trembling, and utterly incapable of deciding as to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... herself at her trial and after her condemnation; and how she met the iniquitous injustice of her fate, sharpened, as it must have been, by the additional bitterness of the insults and execrations of the blind and infuriated populace at her execution. It is far from improbable that some of the correspondence now deposited in the family archives in the county hitherto unpublished may ultimately ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... Terrier, it seems a matter of difficulty to produce a perfect Clydesdale, and until the breed is taken up with more energy it is improbable that first class dogs will make an appearance in the show ring. A perfect Clydesdale should figure as one of the most elegant of the terrier breed; his lovely silken coat, the golden brown hue of his face fringe, paws and legs, his well pricked and feathery ear, and his generally ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... detachments had arrived before daybreak, and the other two hours after dark, it was improbable that their advent had been noticed; and, at the request of the knight who commanded the troop from Ruthyn, the gates of the castle had been kept closed all day, no one being ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... out of ten would deny the influence of the wife over her husband in such cases; but though this may be a remarkable exception in society, it may be insisted on as true, even if improbable. The magistrate is like the priest, especially in Paris, where the best of the profession are to be found; he rarely speaks of his business in the Courts, excepting of settled cases. Not only do magistrates' wives affect ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... up his mind about telling Ransford of the stranger's call at the surgery. He would say nothing—at that time at any rate. It was improbable that any one but himself knew of the call; the side entrance to the surgery was screened from the Close by a shrubbery; it was very unlikely that any passer-by had seen the man call or go away. No—he would keep his knowledge ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... the telegram that this is uncertain. Both the correspondent's account and that of Major Wortley refer to the delivery of the town by treachery, a contingency which on some previous occasions General Gordon has treated as far from improbable; and which, if the notice existed, was likely to operate quite independently of the particular time at which a relieving force might arrive. The presence of the enemy in force would naturally suggest the occasion or perhaps even the apprehension of the approach of the British army. In ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... sublime andante chorus, until the Casta Diva is sung—the "inconstant moon" that then and thereafter remains fixed in the heavens as though it were a part of the solar system inaugurated by Joshua. Again the white-robed Druids filed past me, again I saw that improbable mistletoe cut from that impossible oak, and again cold chills ran down my back with the first strain of the recitative. The thumping springs essayed to beat time, and the private box-like obscurity of the vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to the view. But it was a vast improvement upon ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Greek theatre, which appears to have comprehended nearly all that modern ingenuity has devised. Nevertheless, seats, thrones, weapons, and chariots, were certainly introduced, and as the intercourse between the inhabitants of heaven and earth was very frequent, it is not improbable that there may have been aerial contrivances to represent the chariots of celestial beings, as on the Greek stage. It is plain, however, from the frequent occurrence of the word natayitwa, 'gesticulating,' 'acting,' that much had to be supplied by the imagination ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... playing with his children. Frequently he was stopped for days and even weeks from all intellectual labor by attacks of vomiting and giddiness. Great, as were his sufferings on account of ill health, it is not improbable that the retirement of life which was thus forced on him, to a very large extent determined his wonderful assiduity in study and led to the production by him of so ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... Denis, to whom so amiable an address had restored all her good humor, "my son is with M. Joulu, his master; and, unless his business brings him this way, it is improbable that he will ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... notice the countenance of one of the others?" I asked. "I could not help fancying that I knew it well. If it were not so very improbable, I should say that it was that of a fellow I remember at school when I first went there. I wish that you had observed him, for as you must have known him better than I did, you would have been ...
— Adventures in Australia • W.H.G. Kingston
... trouble to any one. Maybe in the summer they could find a nice dry cave to live in. Lots of people had lived that way. Then in a few years he would be big enough to have a house of his own. All sorts of improbable plans flocked into his little brain under cover of the darkness, but always vanished ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... at full speed through the park, the villain's mind sped more rapidly than the animal he bestrode,—sped from fear to hope, hope to assurance. Grant that the spy lived to tell his tale,—incoherent, improbable as the tale would be,—who would believe it? How easy to meet tale by tale! The man must own that he was secreted behind the tapestry,—wherefore but to rob? Detected by Madame Dalibard, he had coined this wretched fable. And the spy, too, could not live through ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for boys and girls are not plentiful. Many stories, too, are so highly improbable as to bring a grin of derision to the young reader's face before he has gone far. The name of ALTEMUS is a distinctive brand on the cover of a book, always ensuring the buyer of having a book that is up-to-date ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... his next summons to the country place came without undue delay, and it is not at all improbable that Breede fell a victim to what the terminology of one of our most popular cults identifies ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... already easily recognized in the Mediterranean, and in all places where, in the twelfth century, the declination was as much as eight or ten degrees, even though their instruments were so imperfect that the ends of a magnetic needle did not point exactly to the geographical north or south. It is improbable that the Arabs or Crusaders drew attention to the fact of the compass pointing to the northeast and northwest in different parts of the world, as to a phenomenon which had long been known. The merit which belongs to Columbus is, not for the first observance of ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... manuscript is of the same age as the Vatican one, but that the Vatican manuscript was written by one of the four writers who, he infers from internal evidence, must have been employed upon the Sinaitic Codex. This opinion, however, has been disputed by other scholars; and it seems improbable, for the Sinaitic Codex has four columns to the page, whereas the Vatican Codex has only three. Its uncial letters are also much larger and plainer than those of the Vatican manuscript; and it has the Ammonian sections and ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... Ithaca to show curly grain would be that somehow the tree was not properly labelled or that scions were mixed in propagation and that the trunk was not derived from the original Lamb Curly Walnut. However, the fact that only a few trees were concerned makes it improbable that trees were mislabelled in the Ithaca planting and there is no good reason to believe that the tree planted at Beltsville was ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... suggest to you what those difficulties are, and suggest also that such as they are even they may overcome you. You have to choose your line of riding. Do not let your horse choose it for you instead of choosing it for yourself. He will probably make such attempts, and it is not at all improbable that you should let him have his way. Your horse will be as anxious to go as you are, but his anxiety will carry him after some other special horse on which he has fixed his eyes. The rider of that horse may not be ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... historical basis necessarily implies an acceptance of every statement contained in it. On this principle, one would be bound to accept the truth of every "snake-story," for the simple reason that one believed in the existence of snakes. Still, it is possible, and perhaps not improbable, that tales which preserve the memory of those people, may also be fairly accurate in many of the statements made regarding them. The reason, however, of introducing this particular story is to show that the Chinese or Japanese romancer did not require to create a race of ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... he felt competent to perform bigger things than he had yet been called to achieve in the ordinary routine of duty. He had the blood of heroes in his veins; and, in spite of all he could do to keep his thoughts within the limits of modesty, he found them soaring to the regions of the improbable and fanciful. His imagination led him a wild race, and pictured him in the act of performing marvelous deeds of ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... Salt Lake. The water was so impregnated with salt that our bodies floated upon the surface and there was no danger of drowning. The history of Salt Lake City, which owes its existence and wonderful development and prosperity to Brigham young, is like an improbable romance. I have already mentioned Young, having met him on my former visit with Thomas A. Scott. In the nine years that had elapsed the city had nearly doubled its population. Pure water was flowing in all the streets and the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... [2] In a note to Johnson's Works, 8vo. Edition, 1810, it is said that this is rendered improbable by the account given of Colson, by Davies, in his life of Garrick, which was certainly written under Dr. Johnson's inspection, and, what relates to Colson, probably from Johnson's confirmation. [3] Nichols's Literary ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... suddenly assuming the abrupt accents of an improbable Englishman, "oh very right, old chap. Let's toddle along and see what Fu Manchu has to say for himself. First off though I shall have to phone in to Fleet Street—I ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Tecumseh called the Governor a liar, that quick as a flash he arose to his feet, drew his sword and was about to resent the insult, when his friends interfered and prevented the blow. This story seems improbable, from the fact that the Governor was aware that many unarmed citizens were present, and that any rash or inconsiderate action on his part would precipitate a conflict that could only end in blood and carnage. ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... very improbable chance of General McClellan's election to the Presidency, how would he set about his policy of conciliation? Would he disarm the colored troops? In favor of prosecuting the war, as he declares himself to be, this ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... other flag-raisings in history,—even the persons most interested in this particular one would grudgingly have allowed that much,—but it would have seemed to them improbable that any such flag-raising, as theirs could twice glorify the same century. Of some pageants it is tacitly admitted that there can be no duplicates, and the flag-raising at Riverboro Centre was one of these; so that it is small wonder if Rebecca ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... but a negative fact, and, as such, cannot disprove the positive fact of their appearance at another moment, if that be otherwise satisfactorily attested." And the "Gazette" goes on to argue, from the nature of the facts, that it is in the highest degree improbable that they should have been the result ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... fruitful mother". She did not die of a broken heart; she lived to be 104, and, according to Dio Cassius, to have three more husbands. Divorces were easy enough at Rome, and had the lady been a rich widow, there might be nothing so improbable in this latter part of the story, though she was fifty years old at the date ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... the idea," he pursued. "It's more probable than improbable. Sooner or later. Tant va la cruche a l'eau qu' a ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... knelt before the catafalque on the day after the murder. Indeed, there was no reason why he should go there, and no one noticed his absence. He was a very insignificant person in the palace. As for any one coming to find him among the books, nothing seemed more improbable. The library was swept out in the early morning and no one entered it again during the twenty-four hours. He never went out into the corridor now, but left his coat upon a chair near him, when he remembered to bring it. As ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... together. And yet on the day after he resigned we resumed our old positions {32} and ceased to speak.'[1] To imagine that of all men those two should combine to carry federation seemed the wildest and most improbable dream. Yet ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... romance, one might picture a dinner-party of the bygone days, the lap of Mother Earth furnished with edibles and dainties, and the hungry and expectant members of the camp squatted round in anticipation of the various courses. Such a scene would be worthy of being classed among the most improbable; but as it would not be absolutely impossible, may not an attempt be made to treat ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... life has his eyes cleared to see his faults. But how much more will that be the case hereafter! When the rush of passion is past, and you are far enough from your life to view it as a whole, holding it at arm's length, you will see better what it looks like. There is nothing improbable in supposing that inclinations and tastes which have been nourished for a lifetime may survive the possibility of indulging them in another life, as they often do in this; and what can be worse than such a thirst for one drop of water, which never ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... adversary happens to be this Power or that Power, there will be some tremendous business with guns and torpedoes, and our admirals will return victorious to discuss the discipline and details of the battle and each other's little weaknesses in the monthly magazines. This is a desirable but improbable anticipation. No hostile Power is in the least likely to send out any battleships at all against our invincible Dreadnoughts. They will promenade the seas, always in the ratio of 16 or more to 10, looking for fleets securely tucked ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... been made prisoners by the inhabitants: they were apparently a quiet, peaceable people, living entirely by agriculture. Their close neighbours, however, the Moros of Tampassook, are a notorious tribe of the Illanoan pirates, who are the terror of the Asiatic seas. It was not improbable that these people might have many European prisoners as their slaves, but from what we knew of their character, we felt assured that if they possessed white female prisoners, they would never consent to their ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... have gone down to Bath on a short visit, and to have made friends with the Beau's executor, Mr. George Scott. It has even been said that he cultivated the Mayor and Aldermen of Bath with such success that they presented him with yet another fifteen guineas. But of this, in itself highly improbable, instance of municipal benefaction, the archives of the city yield no proof. At least Mr. Scott gave him access to Nash's papers, and with these he seems to have betaken ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... States of New Grenada, Venezuela, and Equador, forming the Republic of Colombia, seems every day to become more improbable. The commissioners of the two first are understood to be now negotiating a just division of the obligations contracted by them when united under one government. The civil war in Equador, it is believed, has prevented even the appointment of a ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... check this onrush of Slavism is not merely an obligation inherited from our fathers, but a duty in the interests of self-preservation and European civilization. It cannot yet be determined whether we can keep off this vast flood by pacific precautions. It is not improbable that the question of Germanic or Slavonic supremacy will be once more decided by the sword. The probability of such a conflict grows stronger as we become more lax in pacific measures of defence, and show less determination to protect the German ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... practically no casualties. Towards the end of the tour the Canadians gained a footing on the Southern corner of the slag-heap and established a post there, and at the same time took the whole of the Generating Station and the high ground round it. It seemed improbable that the Boche could hold Boot and Brick trenches much longer, so the General brought the 5th Lincolnshires into the line on the evening of the 18th to make a new attack on Fosse 3. This attack was to take the form of a ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... stolen interview which she had succeeded in obtaining with Lady Glyde, and at which she had observed the extraordinary accidental likeness between the deceased lady and herself. It was to the last degree improbable that she would succeed a second time in escaping from the Asylum, but it was just possible she might find some means of annoying the late Lady Glyde's relatives with letters, and in that case Mr. Fairlie was warned ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... little too boldly once or twice with a light head, she had at last found herself skating gingerly over a veritable sleet of scandal. She got herself rumoured about so persistently that from being merely improbable, she had become, in Gerty's words again, "one of the very last of the impossibilities." And of late Adams' friends had begun to ask themselves quite seriously, "why in the deuce he didn't keep a hand upon his wife." ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... undertakings, and in every momentous crisis in its history. It is true that Alexander's soldiers, about to leave their homes to go to another quarter of the globe, and into scenes of danger and death from which it was very improbable that many of them would ever return, had no other celestial protection to look up to than the spirits of ancient heroes, who, they imagined, had, somehow or other, found their final home in a sort of heaven among the summits of the mountains, where they reigned, in some sense, over human ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... understand, the Bourbons are not rich, the emigres whose property was confiscated are ruined. It is impossible to organize two armies and maintain a third without money. The royalists faced an embarrassing problem; the republic alone could pay for its enemies' troops and, it being improbable that she would do so of her own volition, the shady negotiation was abandoned, and it was adjudged quicker to take the money without permission than to ask ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... improbable that the terms Adam, Cain, Abel, and Seth have an esoteric meaning which for ages was known only to the priests. From various facts which in later times are being brought forward regarding the ancient myths of Genesis, it ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... books may be compared with those of Miss Alcott and Mrs. Meade, but all are thoroughly modern and wholly American in scene and action. Her plots, while never improbable, are exceedingly clever, and her girlish characters are as ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... he does look clever?" There could be no question but that Tregear, when he disliked his company, could show his dislike by his countenance; and it was not improbable that he had done so in the presence of Mr. Adolphus Longstaff. "Now tell the truth, Lady Mabel; does he ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... company. Marietta was not betrothed to Jacopo Contarini yet, but there was no doubt that she would be before many days; to "respect" undoubtedly meant that he must not try to win her away from her affianced husband; if he had ever dreamt that in some fair, fantastically improbable future, Marietta could be his wife, he had parted with the right to dream the like again. Therefore, when he had stood awhile looking up at her window that morning, he sighed heavily ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... the extraordinary contingencies he speculated on have already happened, to the profit of other actors, and the existing republic, in its mutinous armies, intolerant factions, and insane dynasties, offers no very improbable portent that, even after half a century of a centralized and well-fixed nationality, the old repartition of kingdoms may ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... north-west, still one may speak of a change of direction at the mouth of the River Kampar, about the entrance of the Strait of Malacca, whence the track begins to run more west, whilst it is more north before. The country of Kampar is of little importance now, but it is not improbable that there has been a Hindoo settlement, as the ruins of religious monuments decidedly Buddhist are still existing on the upper course of the river, the only ones indeed on this side of the island, it being a still unexplained ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... were only cursorily examined, and especially of the rivers of the Great Bight—which seem to offer a ready means of penetrating far into the interior of New Guinea—shall have been effected. That an expedition with this end in view will soon be undertaken is, however, highly improbable, the survey of the Rattlesnake having completed all that was requisite for the immediate purposes of navigation ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... for calling this paper dangerous for beginners is that it is improbable that experienced engineers or contractors will omit the bracing at the bottom, although, since the paper was printed, a glaring instance has occurred where comparatively little bracing was put in the bottom of a 40-ft. cut, the result being a bad cave-in from ...
— Pressure, Resistance, and Stability of Earth • J. C. Meem
... opponents, who began this Parliament by confidently calculating upon his death before the dissolution, are now beginning to admit that it is by no means improbable that Mr. Gladstone may survive the century. Nor was it quite so fantastic as it appears at first sight, when an ingenious disciple told him the other day that by the fitness of things he ought to live for twenty years yet. 'For,' said this political arithmetician, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... ball; heaps of people of all sorts; everybody talking of the elections. Both parties pretend to be confident, but the Government with the best reason. The county members, as Sefton says, are tumbling about like nine-pins, and though it seems not improbable that the Opposition will gain in the boroughs, they must lose greatly in the counties; and we must not only look to the relative numbers, but to the composition of the respective parties. A large minority composed of borough nominees, corporation members, and only a sprinkling of what ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... sudden laugh of sheer amusement when he realized to what a wild and improbable flight his fancy was soaring. He could not quite rid himself of a feeling that Stewart was, in some mysterious fashion, responsible for his friend's vanishing, but he was unlike Ste. Marie: he did not trust his feelings, ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... it, as he does his "native language", by learning from his elders. Before the body reaches sexual maturity, there has been abundant opportunity for the quick-learning child to observe sex attraction in older people. Yet it is highly improbable that the liking for the other sex which he begins to show strongly in youth is simply an acquired taste. It is improbable because the attraction between the sexes is so universal not only among mankind but among birds and ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... this which bring to our minds, in severe contrast, the youth's literature of our early days—the good little boy who died young and the bad little boy who went fishing on Sunday and died in prison, etc., to the end of the threadbare, improbable chapter."—Rural ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... now clear in my own mind that unless we get Europe to move—or some improbable convulsion occur in the North—the end will be a sad one. It seems to me therefore, impossible that too strenuous an effort can be made to move our Government and I cannot understand the Southerners who say: 'Oh, what can you make of it?' I have known a man ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... necessary to decide upon a course of action. The news which he had received made it appear most improbable that he would fall in with either of the United States vessels for which he was seeking. He was far from home, cruising in seas much frequented by British men-of-war. There were no naval stations or outposts belonging to the United States, into which he could put for protection or repairs; for ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... and the Acts of the Apostles are by the same man. They have been attributed to St. Luke traditionally, but in the higher criticism some doubt has been thrown on this and an elaborate hypothesis of dual authorship set up. It has been asserted that it is very improbable on extrinsic grounds that they were both written by one hand and certain intrinsic evidence, changes in the mode of narration, especially the use of the first personal pronoun in the plural in certain passages, has been pointed to ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... small particles detached from all parts of the body and transported by the blood to the germinal cells, to transmit to them, for example, the qualities acquired by the brain during life. This hypothesis was so improbable that Darwin himself was forced to recognize it. Let ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... answered that he had orders by word of mouth to take the town, if it were any hindrance to the digging of the Mine. The tale rests on the dubious testimony of James's Councillors writing in a desperate panic at an outburst of popular indignation after Ralegh's execution. In itself it is not improbable that Ralegh, with qualifications omitted in the official report, said something at a council of war to this effect. If he suggested a hostile movement at all, he may be presumed to have stated also with right that ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... quietly but most effectually packed away. Many authors, it seems to me, fail in their purpose by devoting too much time to the gem and too little to the setting. Others go too far the other way and write stories that give young readers a wrong idea of life—stories whose heroes do improbable and unnatural acts. While my purpose has been to make THE BOY BROKER interesting I have aimed to give a true idea of life in a great city. So much nonsense of a misleading character has been written about benevolent old gentlemen who help poor boys from the country that I have sought ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... have succeeded in eluding me on occasions was perhaps to be expected; but that in all those years I should not catch him once in what, if you are correct, must have been many and repeated conferences with the same men is too improbable ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... I have never been quite sure, from the tone of that laugh, whether it was a laugh of conviction or of unbelief. It is not improbable that my fair friend's mental constitution may have been somewhat similar to that of the old woman who declined to believe her sailor-grandson when he told her he had seen flying-fish, but at once recognised ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... psychological reason for thinking this story especially improbable and a physical reason for dismissing it as ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... which now exists, shall continue to exist unchanged until the Territory becomes a State; and in the mean time persons shall be admitted to go into that Territory and carry their slaves with them. Now, I submit it to my honorable friend if it is not entirely improbable that any such construction as he suggests can prevail before any court that seeks to attain the real intention of the parties who made this proposition? It is such slavery as now exists. Persons held to that service—you may carry as many there as ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Stratford-upon-Avon, might have derived all that was necessary from a very few books; from Totell's 'Presidents,' 1572; from Pulton's 'Statutes,' 1578; and from the 'Lawier's Logike,' 1588. It is one of the axioms of the 'Flores Regii,' that, To answer an improbable imagination is to fight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... of but little importance. He wanted to fasten upon the main features of the case, and then, without in the slightest degree hinting at anything which would connect his mother with the murder of Ned Wilson, to prove how utterly improbable, if not impossible, it was, that he should be guilty of the deed of which ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... of the existence of a modern literature in Hebrew seemed so strange, so improbable, that the best-informed circles refused to entertain the notion seriously—perhaps not without some semblance of ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... heavy dull discharge of the musket, and as yet the former only had been distinguishable, amid the intervals that ensued between each sullen booming of the cannon. While this impression continued on the mind of the anxious officer, he caught, with the avidity of desperation, at the faint and improbable idea that his companions might be able to penetrate to his place of concealment, and procure his liberation; but when he found the firing, instead of drawing nearer, was confined to the same spot, and even more fiercely kept up by the Indians towards the close, he again gave way to his despair, ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... inevitably have been encountered by Lapierre. How had he contrived to vanish so suddenly out of existence? And it was not only the man, but the horse, which had disappeared in this unaccountable manner. It seemed improbable that two living substances of such bulk should pass out of being and leave no trace behind them. They must literally have melted into ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... owners. Perhaps the final outcome will be that more drastic regulations are adopted than would have been the case had the shifting in ownership not taken place. There would still remain the possibility of the evasion of the law, and it is not at all improbable that the progress in the technique of evasion would outstrip the progress in regulation, thus leaving the tenant with a balance of disadvantage from ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... corn, was unpopular with the rural population, and it is possible that his name was given to the stealthy animal formerly called the bawson (Chapter I.), brock or gray (Chapter XXIII). That Badger is a nickname taken from the animal is chronologically improbable, as the word is first recorded in ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... few things in Europe more improbable than the return of the Kaiser. He might come back before he died. But it would be as the result of some strange turn of affairs in Europe. He will probably die in Holland. And then will he not come back and receive ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... are wrong," Sir Kersley said. He was looking straight up into Max's face with eyes of shrewd kindliness. "I think it is extremely improbable that she never will remember. And I think, moreover, that it is hardly to be ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... in the great oak-paneled dining-room of the castle, prepared by the Earl's French chef, Louis La Violette; and we passed the evening in the library, sipping away several more bottles of the Earl's best vintages and listening to the more or less improbable tales of their adventures in the three faraway realms of the world by Messrs. Tooter, Hicks, and Budd, while Holmes managed to pump Harrigan on the Q. T., and found out from him that the Earl was rated at two million pounds, ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... told with a solemn face And a tender, melancholy grace. Improbable 'twas, no doubt, When you came to think it out, But the fascinated crowd Their deep surprise avowed And all with a single voice averred 'Twas the most amazing thing they'd heard— All save one who spake never a word, But sat as mum As if deaf and dumb, Serene, indifferent ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... It was only from the third order—that of the commons—that Philip had to expect any opposition. Already, during the war, it had shown some discontent, and had insisted on the nomination of commissioners to control the accounts and the disbursements of the subsidies. But it seemed improbable that among this class of men any would be found capable of penetrating the manifold combinations of the king, and ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... suggests that Vaughan was at Rowton Heath, not as a combatant, but as a physician. The description which he gives of the battle reads like that of a man who saw it from some commanding point of view, but was not himself engaged. I think it not improbable that Vaughan was one of the garrison of Beeston Castle, which is described to me as "a sort of grand stand for the battle-field." Beeston Castle was invested by the Parliamentarians in the course of September 1645. On the approach of Charles the troops were drawn off on 19th ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... become extinct as wild birds. Considering how carefully wild pigeons have been collected throughout the world, and what conspicuous birds they are, especially when frequenting rocks, it is extremely improbable that eight or nine species, which were long ago domesticated and therefore must have inhabited some anciently known country, should still exist in the wild state and ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... reduced to $300,000,000, and the treasury was supported by a reasonable reserve, specie payments could be resumed and maintained. Besides, no one believes that $100,000,000 of bank notes will be issued under this act, and this provision only relieves some people from an idle fear of an improbable event. You must have noticed that when banks retire their notes, as they have done and will do rapidly, this is a reduction of the currency, while every issue of notes to new or old banks involves a retirement of a ratable amount of United States notes. What you say about ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... exceedingly improbable that Miss Jessup had any agency in this affair,—a volatile, giddy, thoughtless character, who betrayed her purposes on all occasions, from a natural incapacity to keep a secret. And yet had not this person succeeded in keeping her attachment to Mr. Talbot from the knowledge, and even the suspicion, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... with since his first visit to Belmont! And, even now, when they had departed, or were absent, what influence were they not exercising over his life, and the life of those most intimate with him! Had it not been for his pledge to Theodora, it was far from improbable that he would now have been a member of the Roman Catholic Church, and all his hopes at Brentham, and his intimacy with the family on which he had most reckoned in life for permanent friendship and support, ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... herself a great deal agitated as she thought of the platform at the station. Who would be there,—how should she be met? With all her heart she hoped that there would not be anything like a formal reception, and yet this was not improbable. Everybody knew she was coming; everybody knew by what train she would arrive. She had written to Willy Croup, and she was very sure that everybody knew everything that she had written. More than this, everybody knew that she was coming home rich. How rich they ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... by, Cargrim also began to notice the persecution of Mother Jael, and connecting her with Jentham and Jentham with the bishop, he began to wonder if she knew the truth about the murder. It was not improbable, he thought, that she might be possessed of more important knowledge than she had imparted to the police, and a single word from her might bring home the crime to the bishop. If he was innocent, why did she haunt him? But again, if he was guilty, why did she avoid him? To gain an answer ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... were reported to Csar, which is not at all improbable, considering the earnestness with which his friends labored to dissuade him from his purpose of meeting the senate on the approaching Ides of March, it is very little to be doubted that it had a considerable effect ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... kernels decomposed, and containing particles of olivine. There were also pebbles of a quartzose conglomerate, and others of decomposed porphyry, the base consisting of granular felspar, with crystals of common felspar. It is not improbable that good millstones might be obtained from the range of Nundewar. The grass was fortunately much better here ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... officer, who had been collecting rushes in a cove up the harbour, found and brought to the hospital the bodies of two convicts who had been employed for some time in cutting rushes there, pierced through in many places with spears, and the head of one beaten to a jelly. As it was improbable that these murders should be committed without provocation, inquiry was made, and it appeared that these unfortunate men had, a few days previous to their being found, taken away and detained a canoe belonging to the natives, for which act ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... thus enabled to observe the relation of specific elements in a situation. We are, furthermore, enabled to observe phenomena which are so rare in occurrence that it is impossible to form generalizations from them or improbable that we should even notice them: "We might have to wait years or centuries to meet accidentally with facts which we can readily produce at any moment in a laboratory; and it is probable that many of the chemical substances ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... One of his letters to his employer is signed impransus; and whether or not the dinnerless condition was in this case accidental, or significant of absolute impecuniosity, the less pleasant interpretation is not improbable. He would walk the streets all night with his friend, Savage, when their combined funds could not pay for a lodging. One night, as he told Sir Joshua Reynolds in later years, they thus perambulated St. James's Square, warming themselves by declaiming against Walpole, and nobly resolved ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... than the exception, and such things as registers were never heard of in far-out parts. His trained mind, going through the various questions that a cross-examiner would ask, and supplying the requisite answers, decided that, though it might seem a trifle improbable, there was nothing contradictory about Peggy's story. A jury would sympathise with her, and the decisions of the Courts all leaned towards presuming marriage where certain circumstances existed. By settling the case ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... mere pretexts, deliberately adopted with a view to aggravate the quarrel and prevent a reconciliation. It is difficult to admit any other explanation of the extraordinary policy of the Southern leaders. It is not improbable that they will henceforward acknowledge such to have been the motive of their principal political acts for many years past. The terrible events now passing before our saddened eyes, are too solemn and weighty, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... reply. He was watching, not only Ruth, but those about her. In particular he observed the other women in the cast. It seemed not improbable that among them he would find the one whose envy had led to the sending of the threats ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... at once novel and entertaining. * * * All the book is lively, and the voyagers have some adventures, the telling of which is as entertaining as any book of Jules Verne's, besides having nothing in them that is improbable or extravagant.—Philadelphia Bulletin. ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... first sight, seems, in the light of recent biology, to be more and more improbable. The second principle is one of anthropomorphic interpretation. No arrangement that for us is "disorderly" can possibly have been an object of design at all. This principle is of course a mere assumption in ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... that could secure the success of our efforts," said Theodora, "and that event was so improbable, that I had long rejected it from calculation. It has happened, and Rome calls ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... The False Count, or a New Way to Play an Old Game. The prologue attacks the Whigs most furiously, and the epilogue, spoken by Mrs. Barry, is very indecent. The plot of this play, or rather farce, is very improbable, and the language is more than free. Julia, in love with Don Carlos, afterwards Governor of Cadiz, was forced by her father to marry Francisco, a rich old man, formerly a leather-seller; the latter going with his family to sea on a party of pleasure, are taken prisoners ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... qualities—singularity of appearance, wit, rudeness even, count doubly in a democracy. But neither his own talent nor the bold self-assertion learned from Whistler helped him to earn money; the conquest of London seemed further off and more improbable than ever. Where Whistler had missed the laurel how could he or indeed anyone be ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... Death himself for a host, it is impossible to imagine. That the practice of thus preserving their kings must have been an ancient one is evident from the number, which, allowing for an average reign of fifteen years, supposing that every king who reigned was placed here—an improbable thing, as some are sure to have perished in battle far from home—would fix the date of its commencement at four ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... marches would have been healthy for our army, and a bloodless victory would have been obtained by the taking of the seemingly undefended Fredericksburg. A dense cloud enveloped this whole enterprise, and it is not even improbable, that the campaign may become a dead failure even before it has accomplished the half of its projected and loudly vaunted course. But bold conceptions, and energetic movements to match them, are just about ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... declined the opening. Indeed, he had never referred to Lady Helen since that first surprising time. But, if the gossip of the Diplomatic set, which, of course, reached the Court promptly, were at all reliable, another International marriage was not improbable. I admit I was a bit curious as to the matter—and here I saw ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... reasonable request for some particle of evidence that the existing species of animals and plants did originate in that way, as a condition of my belief in a statement which appears to me to be highly improbable. ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... varieties have arisen; and that they are nothing else than the Early Charlton Pea, considerably modified in character from the effects of cultivation and selection. Although this idea may seem far-fetched, it is not improbable, especially when we take into consideration the susceptibility of change, from cultivation and other causes, which the Pea is ascertained to possess. Thus if the Early Charlton, or any other variety, be sown for several ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... so much to the brave man who conducted it, as to Sir George Cockburn, at whose suggestion it was undertaken. To the great gallantry and high talents of Sir George Cockburn no one who served within the compass of the Bay of Chesapeake will refuse to bear testimony, nor is it improbable that in attributing to him the original, design of laying Washington itself under contribution, common report speaks truly. But with whomsoever the idea first originated, to General Boss belongs the undivided of having, carried it into effect. ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... of a gradual Rise in Beings, from the meanest to the most High, be not a vain Imagination, it is not improbable that an Angel looks down upon a Man, as a Man doth upon a Creature which approaches the nearest to the rational Nature. By the same Rule (if I may indulge my Fancy in this Particular) a superior Brute looks with a kind of Pride on one of an inferior Species. If they could ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... If it rain, the work will be delayed. 4. Though it rain to-morrow, we must march. 5. If there be mountains, there must be valleys between. 6. Though honey be sweet, one can't make a meal of it. 7. If my friend were here, he would enjoy this. 8. Though immortality were improbable, we should still believe in it. 9. One may doubt whether the best men be known. 10. I wish the lad were taller. 11. Oh! that I were a Samson in strength. 12. It were better for him that a millstone were hanged ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... both knew the crime which he had committed? Had they meant to take legal steps against him they would not have returned the forgeries to his own hands. Brehgert, he thought, would never tell the tale;—unless there should arise some most improbable emergency in which he might make money by telling it; but he was by no means so sure of Croll. Croll had signified his intention of leaving Melmotte's service, and would therefore probably enter some ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... overreach him! Though one might have expected that his life of ceaseless watchfulness would make him skeptical and suspicious, his confidence was given heartily, without reservation, and often most imprudently. If he gave his trust at all, you might ply him, by the hour, with the most improbable and outrageous fictions, without fear of contradiction or of unbelief. He never questioned the superior knowledge or pretensions of any one who claimed acquaintance with subjects of which he ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... l'Arche eut fait le tour du monde pendant l'espace de six mois."—Supplement to Dictionary. He gives no authority for this improbable notion.—Ed. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Pathfinder aside, when he assured him that the admission of Jasper concerning the spies was "a circumstance," and "a strong circumstance," and as such it deserved his deliberate investigation; while his account of the canoes was so improbable as to wear the appearance of brow-beating the listeners. Jasper spoke confidently of the character of the two individuals who had landed, and this Cap deemed pretty strong proof that he knew more about them than was to be gathered from a mere ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... deliberately put his eye to the key-hole, and saw Harry secrete the pistols and dagger about his person. Each, also, brought his gun at the suggestion of Harry, who said, that although they went out merely to course, yet it was not improbable that they might get a random shot at the grouse or partridge as they went along. Upon all these matters Barney made his comments, although he said nothing upon the subject even to Charles, from whom he scarcely ever concealed a secret. That Harry ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... "It's quite improbable that their landlady would have bedrooms for us," said Cousin Clare. "So in any case we should be obliged to stop at an hotel. In this crowded season I shall engage ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... residence of the Methwold family, and adds: "If there were any grounds for the tradition, it may be that Henry Cromwell occupied it before he went out to Ireland the second time." This seems a likely solution, for it is improbable that a name should have impressed itself so persistently upon a district without some connection, and as Henry Cromwell was married in Kensington parish church, there is nothing improbable in the fact of his having lived in the parish. Faulkner follows ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... to see the stall in the choir which had belonged to Charles Kingsley, and was much disturbed to find that under the seat the monks of the fifteenth century had carved the subject of one of Baron Munchausen's most improbable tales. ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... of the Actiniae we can say nothing, because, if their soft, gelatinous bodies have left any impressions in the rocks, none such have ever been found; but their absence is no proof that they did not exist, since it is exceedingly improbable that animals destitute of any hard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... revolutionary barricades were assembling points for heroism. The improbable was simple there. These men did ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of this ode, it seems not improbable that the author wrote it about the time when he left the university; when, weary with the pursuit of academical studies, he no longer confined himself to the search of theoretical knowledge, but commenced the scholar of humanity, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... think this rather improbable, I must add that we had our swords in our hands. I set off at once for Paris to make peace with the king, Anjou not seeming to me very ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... which, being complied with, it was afterwards considered by the bulk of the audience to be a great improvement." Mr. Parke proceeds to record, by way, perhaps, of fortifying his story: "Although this may appear ridiculous and improbable, an occurrence of a similar kind took place several years afterwards at Covent Garden Theatre, when Cooke, the popular actor, having got drunk, the favourite afterpiece of 'Love a la Mode' was performed before a London audience (he being ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Alexander, and still less that it is the work of Lysippus. It is difficult to imagine that the favored and devoted artist of the mighty conqueror would choose to portray his great master in a painful and impotent struggle with disease and death. This consideration makes it extremely improbable that it was executed during the lifetime of Alexander, and the whole character of the work, in which free pathos is the prevailing element, and its close resemblance in style to the heads on coins of the period of the Diadochi, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... erected amid the most magnificent scenery his kingdom afforded, veritable fairy castles. The reality even of the beauty of the things themselves, as well as of the places, did not satisfy him. He invented, he created, in these improbable manors, factitious horizons, obtained by means of theatrical artifices, changes of view, painted forests, fabled empires, in which the leaves of the trees became precious stones. He had the Alps, and glaciers, steppes, deserts of sand made hot by a blazing ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... United States soldiers, on Humber Island. It was one of the chain of forts that guarded the approaches to Rock Haven. And Bessie had an idea that she would be able to find someone at the fort to believe her story, wild and improbable as she knew it must sound. The great problem now was to get out ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... wrong," Sir Kersley said. He was looking straight up into Max's face with eyes of shrewd kindliness. "I think it is extremely improbable that she never will remember. And I think, moreover, that it is hardly to be ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... be much relied upon for events which took place a thousand years ago, but where there is clearly nothing improbable in them they are at least worth mentioning. We may note, then, that according to Somersetshire tradition, first collected by Dr. Giles—himself a Somersetshire man, and one who, besides his Life of Alfred and other excellent works bearing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... all these hieroglyphs have the same meaning, notwithstanding their variations. Taking into consideration the frequency of the variations of other hieroglyphs of gods and of the hieroglyphs in the Maya manuscripts in general, it is quite improbable from the nature of the case, that a hieroglyph, which displays so great an agreement in its essential and characteristic elements, should denote several different gods. The dissimilarity which Seler thinks he finds between ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... also detracts from the realistic authority of the work. For by the time you have got to the end of "A Set of Six" you have met a whole series of men who all talk just as well as Mr. Conrad writes, and upon calm reflection the existence of a whole series of such men must seem to you very improbable. The best pages in the book are those devoted to the ironical contemplation of a young ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... cavalry, and engineers. If any thing, the infantry has been increased in value. The danger of cavalry attempting to charge infantry armed with breech-loading rifles was fully illustrated at Sedan, and with us very frequently. So improbable has such a thing become that we have omitted the infantry-square from our recent tactics. Still, cavalry against cavalry, and as auxiliary to infantry, will always be valuable, while all great wars will, as heretofore, depend chiefly on the infantry. Artillery is more valuable ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... for conciliation with America. It was too late. There could be no conciliation short of the acknowledgment of American independence, and a renewal of war between France and England became certain. If the conquest of the United States had been improbable, it now had become impossible, with both France and Spain as their allies. But the English government, with stubborn malignity, persevered ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... reporter if he wished to accompany Herbert and himself to the forest, where they were going to try to hunt. But on consideration, it was thought necessary that someone should remain to keep in the fire, and to be at hand in the highly improbable event of Neb requiring aid. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... downward jolt of this kind. Failing a gloomy 14 Palace Gardens, supposing the girl to be happily situated, it was horribly improbable that she would give him a moment's thought. This was a most chilling idea. Shivering beneath the douche, George's mind ran back along the episode of their meeting to discover arguments that would build up ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... five months now since the news of her severe illness had almost induced him to throw everything aside and go to her. He had only been deterred from this by a very serious letter from Dr. Jim, strongly advising him to remain where he was, since it was highly improbable that he would be allowed to see Daisy for weeks or even months were he at hand, and she would most certainly be in no fit state to return with him to India. That letter had been to Will as the passing knell of all he had ever hoped or desired. Definitely it had told him very ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... I have digged this well. Wherefore he called that place Beer-sheba; because there they sware both of them."[115] The design of thus using the number being to give confirmation, such also must have been the end of using the oath. It is not improbable that the number seven may have been employed because that in seven days, according to the pattern set in the period of creation, and consequent sabbath, there are included the six days appointed for labour and the sabbath of rest. But, however that may be, we have the testimony of an inspired ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... and planted one of their own in its place. Next they sought out the island of St. Croix, seized a quantity of salt, and razed to the ground all that remained of the dilapidated buildings of De Monts. They crossed the Bay of Fundy to Port Royal, guided, says Biard, by an Indian chief,—an improbable assertion, since the natives of these coasts hated the English as much as they loved the French, and now well knew the designs of the former. The unfortunate settlement was tenantless. Biencourt, with some of his men, was on a visit to neighboring ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... not Brahmans, since Himu is variously described by Muhammadan writers as a corn-chandler, a weighman and a Bania. Colonel Dow in his history of Hindustan calls him a shopkeeper who was raised by Sher Shah to be Superintendent of Markets. It is not improbable that Himu's success laid the foundation for a claim to a higher position, but the matter does not admit of absolute proof, and I have therefore accepted the decision of the majority of the caste-committees and ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... cause, and as the United States is in friendly relations with all the Powers, there is no reason to fear foreign invasion. Even should a foreign power successfully attack her and usurp a portion of her territories, a supposition which is most improbable, would the enemy be able to hold what he seized? History shows that no conquered country has ever been successfully and permanently kept without the people's consent, and there is not the least chance ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... shillings and fivepence, which he had expended in postage on the advance sheet and complete copy sent to John. To judge from the subsequent financial arrangements between the Society and its agent, it is very improbable that he was given work to do ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... with the rural population, and it is possible that his name was given to the stealthy animal formerly called the bawson (Chapter I.), brock or gray (Chapter XXIII). That Badger is a nickname taken from the animal is chronologically improbable, as the word is first recorded in ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... Attis and Adonis, whatever their original character (and it seems to me highly improbable that there should have been two youths each beloved by a goddess, each victim of a similar untimely fate), long before we have any trace of them both have become so intimately identified with the processes of Nature that they have ceased to be men and become gods, and as such alone can ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... the title of, Earl of Cambridge, which really appertained to his brother, only a short time before his death; for up to December 5th, 1414, he is styled in the state papers Richard of York. The accusations brought against him, by which he was done to death, were so absurdly improbable as to be incredible. It was asserted that Charles the Sixth of France had sent over "a hundred thousand in gold," (which probably means crowns) to Richard Earl of Cambridge, Henry Lord Scrope of Upsal, and Sir Thomas Grey de Wark, urging them to betray Henry the Fifth into his hands, or murder him ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... punishing the sentry for having let the prisoners escape, or were they beginning to fight among themselves? The latter was improbable, as non-commissioned officers are usually chosen from petty chiefs and the men under them, as far as possible, from their own village. Had they captured Mungongo or one of the others? Birnier listened again. Another scream ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... and his German deliverer. Coming, however, at length to a heath, he found some of those marauders usually to be met with in the rear of armies, prowling about, and at intervals amusing themselves with shooting at a mark. For want of a better, it seemed not improbable that a large German head might answer their purpose. Certain signs admonished him of this, and the old gentleman crept back to Frankfort. Not many hours after came back also the comte, by no means creeping, however; on the contrary, crowing with ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... his love, there might possibly have been the usual shyness and hesitation in declaring himself to the object of his affection. But although he and Clara had long deeply and silently loved and understood each other, yet neither had dared to hope for so improbable an event as the doctor's favoring their attachment, and now, under the exciting influence of the surprise, joy and gratitude with which the doctor's magnanimity had filled his heart, Traverse forgot all shyness ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... of the three States of New Grenada, Venezuela, and Equador, forming the Republic of Colombia, seems every day to become more improbable. The commissioners of the two first are understood to be now negotiating a just division of the obligations contracted by them when united under one government. The civil war in Equador, it is believed, has prevented even the appointment of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... in the Jesuit colleges to be the best yet known in the world, and had warmly expressed his regret that so admirable a system of intellectual and moral discipline should be subservient to the interests of a corrupt religion. [105] It was not improbable that the new academy in the Savoy might, under royal patronage, prove a formidable rival to the great foundations of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester. Indeed, soon after the school was opened, the classes consisted of four hundred boys, about one half of whom were Protestants. The Protestant ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... queries, equally wild, assailed the escort and the occupants of the wagons; for this was the rabble: poor citizens, freedmen, slaves, for whom no story of Hannibal and Carthage was too improbable. Nevertheless Sergius imagined he could discern a spirit of irony underlying ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... order to bring the profit of labour at the mine into equilibrium with the average profit of the country, we would proceed to the last resource and expropriate the mine for the benefit of the commonwealth. By no means would even such a very improbable contingency present any serious difficulties to the carrying out of our principles. For you will certainly admit that the undertaking of a really monopolist production by the commonwealth is not ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... Semitic-Babylonian word kalumum, "young animal, lamb," the latter zukakibum, "scorpion"; cf. Poebel, Hist. Texts, p. 111. The occurrence of these names points to Semitic infiltration into Northern Babylonia since the dawn of history, a state of things we should naturally expect. It is improbable that on this point Sumerian tradition should have merely reflected the ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... "but depend upon it before night I shall be released and restored to office." "I wish it may be so," replied the sultan; "but upon what ground do you build an expectation, the gratification of which appears to me so improbable?" "Be seated, good dervish, and I will tell you," rejoined the vizier, and began as follows: "Know then, my friend, experience has convinced me that the height of prosperity is always quickly succeeded by adverse fortune, and the depth ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... experienced nothing but the smiles of fortune; and it was she who deceived you, because she stayed with me longer than she commonly does with her favorites. But, fated as we are, we must bear this reverse, and make another trial of her. For it is no more improbable that we may emerge from this poor condition and rise to great things again, than it was that we should fall from great things into ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... fight in earnest. If he will content himself with taking our lives, we are ready to give them for the sake of the city. We know that we have a strong body of friends in every town, and should it come to blows, methinks it is not improbable that all Flanders will join, and if we are supported by England, we may well hope to withstand both ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... that of seven hundred and ten, in the month of July. It would appear from some authorities, also, that the galleys of Taric cruised along the coasts of Andalusia and Lusitania, under the feigned character of merchant barks; nor is this at all improbable, while they were seeking merely to observe the land, and get a knowledge of the harbors. Wherever they touched, Count Julian despatched emissaries, to assemble his friends and adherents at an appointed place. They gathered together secretly at Gezira Alhadra, that ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... question, if it could be shown, that, in order to controvert it, we were driven to the necessity of admitting long written poems, in the ninth century before the Christian aera. Few things, in my opinion, can be more improbable; and Mr. Payne Knight, opposed as he is to the Wolfian hypothesis, admits this no less than Wolf himself. The traces of writing in Greece, even in the seventh century before the Christian aera, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... even of eye-witnesses, would not suffice to justify belief in a large and essential part of their contents; on the contrary, these reports would discredit the witnesses. The Gadarene miracle, for example, is so extremely improbable, that the fact of its being reported by three, even independent, authorities could not justify belief in it, unless we had the clearest evidence as to their capacity as observers and as interpreters of their observations. ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... The discovery, however, by Mr. Collier of the First Part in a MSS. temp. James I., with the initials "G.W." affixed to it, has disposed of Erskine's claim to the honor of the entire authorship. G.W. is supposed to be George Wither; but this is purely conjectural, and it is not at all improbable that G.W. really stands for W.G., as it was a common practice among anonymous writers to ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... voluntary flight, at first, it seems, to the destruction of herself and child; but the angel of the Lord, who had before sent her back, now rescues her again, that Ishmael also may become a great people, and that the most improbable of all promises may be ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... she was doing what we used to do, trying to detect a resemblance. Now, if we in all these years with the boys, constantly watching their ways and listening to their voices, could detect no resemblance, it is extremely improbable that she was able to do so from merely seeing them a score of times walking in the streets. I do not say that it is impossible she could have done so; I only say it is extremely improbable; and I think it much more likely that, finding she could see ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... has more than once been put forward that the surface of the moon is covered with a thick layer of ice. This is generally considered improbable, and consequently the idea has received very little support. It first originated with the late Mr. S.E. Peal, an English observer of the moon, and has recently been resuscitated by the German ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... at all improbable in that," returned the captain. "This fish belongs to a species that is found in all latitudes and in all seas. It is the 'balance-fish,' or hammer-headed shark, if I am not much mistaken. But if your Lordship has no objections, and it would give the smallest pleasure to Lady Helena to ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... tree himself, deprecates the idea of there being anything impossible in the matter, and if we come to consider that the large forest panther, which commonly ascends trees, is really often nearly as heavy as a small-sized tigress, there is nothing at all improbable in the tiger doing so. I myself have never seen a tiger in a tree, but one of my managers did, who once went out after a tiger which he had wounded. He then ran on to cut him off, and tried to get up into a tree, but not succeeding in the attempt, went and took a ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... gaining no ground and suffering practically no casualties. Towards the end of the tour the Canadians gained a footing on the Southern corner of the slag-heap and established a post there, and at the same time took the whole of the Generating Station and the high ground round it. It seemed improbable that the Boche could hold Boot and Brick trenches much longer, so the General brought the 5th Lincolnshires into the line on the evening of the 18th to make a new attack on Fosse 3. This attack was to take the form of ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... ankle-deep in water for three hours; the remainder of the way is dry, the ground gently rising. As the lower parts of this spacious plain put on somewhat the appearance of a lake during the periodical rains, it is not improbable but that this is the place which hath given rise to the supposed existence of the famed Lake Parima, or El Dorado; but this is ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... night, and where they had got into the cart. The wreck of the speronare had been found, and had been recognised, and it was considered by the inhabitants that the padrone and his crew had perished in the gale. Had they found our two midshipmen and questioned them, it is not improbable that suspicion might have been excited, and the results have been such as our hero had conjured up in his dream. But, as we said before, there is a peculiar ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... himself justified in taking these liberties with the Muse of History by his anxiety to construct a narrative that should not overstep the bounds of probability. As if all history were not a chain of improbabilities, and what is most improbable were not often that which is most certain! But if, at Mr. Wilson's summons, we reject as improbable a series of events supported by far stronger evidence than can be adduced for the conquests of Alexander, the Crusades, or the Norman conquest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... be impossible: the arteries would then have to fill while they contracted, to fill, and yet not become distended. But if it be said: during diastole, they would then, and for two opposite purposes, be receiving both blood and air, and heat and cold, which is improbable. Further when it is affirmed that the diastole of the heart and arteries is simultaneous, and the systole of the two is also concurrent, there is another incongruity. For how can two bodies mutually ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... must still ascribe the strong treatment of the massive knight in armour on his war horse to the same artist who conceived the dead figure lying in its shroud beneath; and whether that artist were Pilon or Jean Cousin, it is most improbable that it should have been Goujon, for whom the work would have been just as much too early for his own age, as that of Pilon would have been too late for the suggested date of the entire monument. That the contrast of the dead and ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... after this Francis abstained from late excursions in the gondola. It was improbable that he or Giuseppi would be recognized did their late passenger meet them. Still, it was possible that they might be so; and when he went out he sat quietly among the cushions while Giuseppi rowed, as it would be ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... likewise confirms this result gained from the Edict of Cyrus (Stuhr, die Religionssysteme des alten Orients, S. 373 ff., proves that in the time of Cyrus, and by him, an Israelitish element had been introduced into it);—there will certainly not be any reason to consider our supposition to be improbable, or the result ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... was not a woman to waste time in retrospection. She had not been in her room five minutes before her mind was made up. It was improbable that Kirk and his guilty accomplice had sought so near and obvious a haven as the studio, but it was undoubtedly there that pursuit must begin. She knew nothing of his way of living at that retreat, but she imagined that he must have appointed some successor to George Pennicut as general factotum, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... arbitration and (c) neither party wishes arbitration.[10] Clearly a dispute which had reached that stage would be one upon which unanimous agreement by an arbitral tribunal of representatives of from eight to ten governments would be improbable. ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... that a year must pass between the sentence and the execution. And long before the year passes, the public sympathy has turned in the criminal's favour. Endless petitions go up for his pardon. Of course he gets off. And indeed it is not improbable that he may receive a public testimonial. It cannot be denied that the natural transition in the popular feeling is from applauding a man to hanging him, and from hanging a man to ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... inasmuch as our information in this respect hardly touches the lower classes, while among the upper classes there was naturally far less temptation to be rid of the burden of maintaining such few children as most families produced. On the whole it appears highly improbable that in the truly Roman part of the empire there was any considerable destruction of infant life or exposure of infants. It does not follow that, because the strict law does not prevent you from doing a thing, you will ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... all improbable, sir, but what I could, sir;" replied Mr. Bouncer; "but, perhaps, sir, you'll first favour me with your name, and your ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... against attacks which had been made on it apparently with success. It was with much pleasure that I discovered that the story told of Johnson's listening to Dr. Sacheverel's sermon is not in any way improbable[22], and that Johnson's 'censure' of Lord Kames was quite just[23]. The ardent advocates of total abstinence will not, I fear, be pleased at finding at the end of my long note on Johnson's wine-drinking that I have been obliged to show that he thought that the gout ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... great part is one of the easiest things in the world; while to avoid going in again is one of the most difficult. In my time I have both come out and gone in again; and though I am not disposed to tax my modesty for defences, or to offer prophecies for the future, it is not improbable that I may repeat the experience in its completeness. I suppose that the pursuit of the successful actor is the most fascinating in the world. Here and there one learns that it has been distasteful in an individual ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... at noon that day I began my fight. I presented myself at the editorial rooms of The Record and asked for Mr. Carmody. In my hand I held a letter to him from Boller, recommending me in such high terms that it seemed highly improbable that he could refuse me his good offices. To support Boller's assertions as to my acquirements I had also letters from Doctor Todd and Mr. Pound. According to Doctor Todd, the journal which secured the services of David Malcolm was to be congratulated; he recited my high achievements, ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... of titles, and it is a ripping good tale from Chapter I to Finis—no weighty problems to be solved, but just a fine running story, full of exciting incidents, that never seemed strained or improbable. It is a dainty love yarn involving three men and a girl. There is not a dull or ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... assembly of the malcontents was a grassy hollow surrounded on all sides with woods, and called the tomb of Asdrubal, from a mound of masonry which bore that name, although it was utterly improbable that Asdrubal, who had been slain a hundred miles to the northeast on the Marecchia water, should have been buried in the Valdedera at all. But the place and the name were well known in the district to hundreds of peasants, who knew no ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... to be party to any such plan seemed to him altogether improbable, since all she had to do to insure them both comfort was to return home like a sensible woman, put on the best clothes she possessed—the more attractive the better, and she certainly was fetching in that wrapper—and be reasonably polite to such of his friends as chose to drop in evenings ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... could do no harm; it was too outrageously improbable to come home to anybody's feelings. Dreams were like broken mosaics,—the separated stones might here and there make parts of pictures. If one found a caricature of himself made out of the pieces which had accidentally come together, he would smile at it, knowing that it was an accidental ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and going to Governor's houses to swill sack; never"—but here the voice of the discontented woman, who, in her excitement, had risen from her seat and walked away, was lost in the pantry, or rather subdued into an inarticulate grumble; and Spikeman, after waiting awhile, and finding it improbable that the conversation would be resumed, knocked in a peculiar manner on the door, which was almost immediately ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... issue of his legislative attempts, we next hear of Theseus less as the monarch of history than as the hero of song. On these later traditions, which belong to fable, it is not necessary to dwell. Our own Coeur de Lion suggests no improbable resemblance to a spirit cast in times yet more wild and enterprising, and without seeking interpretations, after the fashion of allegory or system, of each legend, it is the most simple hypothesis, that Theseus really departed ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... goes beyond the utterances of Jesus even in the fourth Gospel. But it is no advance beyond these, especially in the religious view and speech of the time, when it is announced that the relation of the Father to the Son lies beyond time. It is not even improbable that the sayings in the fourth Gospel referring to this, have a basis in the ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... and eyes so full of intelligence. It seemed to her that moment as if the fate of these two children would be jostled together—as if they, so unlike, would travel the same path and suffer with each other. Nothing could be more improbable than this; but it was a passing thought, full of pain, which the mother could not readily fling from her heart. For a moment it made her breathe quick, and she sat down gazing upon the strange child as if fascinated, holding the warm hand of ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... the time of Halley's comet, 1682, that modern astronomy began to consider the question of the possibly periodic character of cometic motions with attention. (For my own part, I reject as altogether improbable the statement of Seneca that the ancient Chaldean astronomers could calculate the return of comets.) The comet of 1680, called Newton's, was the very first whose orbital motions were dealt with on the principles of Newtonian ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... takes the liberty to send by this post to the Editor a New Zealand newspaper for the very improbable chance of the Editor having some spare space to reprint a Dialogue on Species. This Dialogue, written by some [sic] quite unknown to Mr. Darwin, is remarkable from its spirit and from giving so clear and accurate a view of Mr. D. [sic] ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... bite." He adds in a note, "I will not affirm that they have ever devoured a living man, but many young cattle, such as lambs and calves, have been worried out of their lives by them. All the people of Lapland declare that young birds are killed by them, and this is not improbable, for birds are scarce after seasons when the midge, the gnlat, and the mosquito are numerous."—Om ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
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