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Irreconcilable   /ɪrˈɛkənsˌaɪləbəl/   Listen
Irreconcilable

adjective
1.
Impossible to reconcile.  Synonym: unreconcilable.






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"Irreconcilable" Quotes from Famous Books



... is more than mock heroic to save him that precious shred of his respectability. That is about all I have left him to cherish. There are some human beings you simply cannot conceive of in certain situations. Albert Penny and divorce are irreconcilable. Tear his heart out if you will, but hands off his respectability. It may sound absurd in the face of the enormity of what I have done to him, but it is a great solace to me to be able to sacrifice that much to him and to drag ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... paper blankly and then at Cresswell and some inkling of the irreconcilable difference in the two natures leapt in both their hearts. Cresswell might gamble and drink and lie "like a gentleman," but he would never willingly cheat or take advantage of a white man's financial necessities. Taylor, on the other hand, had a horror of a lie, never drank nor played games of ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... Louis replied by insisting that the persons who had accompanied his royal sister to her new kingdom should be permitted to remain about her; in default of which concession he should thenceforward hold himself aggrieved, and become the irreconcilable enemy of ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... typical of God's people and power and kingdom. Babylon stands out likewise as typical of the power and kingdom always and innately opposed to God and to His people. The conflict between the two seems irrepressible and irreconcilable. It ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... Miss Howe.—Wonders not that her brother has weight to make her father irreconcilable.—Copy of Mr. Doleman's answer about London lodgings. Her caution in her choice of them. Lovelace has given her five guineas for Hannah. Other instances of his considerateness. Not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... at the Peace Conference at Bucharest, but it failed to receive any contractual solution. At the sitting of August 8th a scheme of religious, scholastic and cultural liberty was discussed, but no agreement was reached, owing to irreconcilable differences between the Patriarchists and the Exarchists. Moreover, the scheme as drawn up was confined to Christian communities (Protocol No. 10). At the sitting of August 5th, the question was raised in its wider aspects by a communication from the United States ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf

... facts undoubtedly does serve a very useful purpose and may help to demolish some of the stanchly conservative theories still held in some quarters by those who prefer to take Hebrew conceptions as a basis of their cosmology however irreconcilable with fact these may prove to be. Mere description, however, is not ultimate, some philosophy of Evolution must be forthcoming. "Nowadays," remarks Hoffding, "every philosopher has to take up a position with respect to the concept of Evolution. It has now achieved its place among the categories ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... felt perfectly certain the chimney was made for the winds to come down through, and still she knew it was intended for her to make a smoky kind of fire once in a while on its hearth, with which the winds quarrelled, and destroyed it. Here were two things irreconcilable. Often would she stand on the hearth, and look up the black throat of the chimney, wondering how this inconsistency happened, wishing again and again that the winds would like the fire, and let it burn well; but ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins

... placed themselves at fixed distances, these irreconcilable allies, preparing for the next murder which ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... less credible witness. If one desirous of opening a lock turns over and tries a bunch of keys till he finds one that will open it, he naturally supposes he has found the key of that lock. So, in explaining circumstances of evidence which are apparently irreconcilable or unaccountable, if a fact be suggested which at once accounts for all, and reconciles all, by whomsoever it may be stated, it is still difficult not to believe that such fact is the true fact belonging ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... that as a brave man he did not hanker to be the executioner of peasants; but he absolutely approved of the policy of his rulers, and had no scruple in carrying it out. It was the only thing that could be done, and it had better be done thoroughly; the sooner the turbulent and irreconcilable Covenanters were crushed and the country reduced to peace the better for Scotland. And it must be remembered that, though they were only a fraction of the nation, the hillmen were a very resolute and harassing fraction, and kept the western counties in a state of turmoil. ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... judgments were fast coming up with the offenders, they had so hardened themselves in error that a whole growth of false desires had sprung up, and of false beliefs, blind maxims, bad habits, bad connections, and proverbs, which found out a reconciliation of that irreconcilable truth with the foulest pollutions. The victims of temptation had become slow even to suspect their own condition. And, if some more enlightened did so, the road of existence was no longer easy. Error had woven chains about them. They were enmeshed. And it is but a faint emblem of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... philosophical, metaphysical, religious and scientific thought had reached the realization that all channels lead but to the same goal—Understanding. The many divergent factors, the ancient differing schools of philosophy and metaphysics, the supposedly irreconcilable viewpoints of religion and science—all this was recognized merely to be man's limitation of intellect. These were gropings along different paths, all leading to the same destination; divergent paths at the start, but ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... acknowledged, even while violating it, a rule of duty. The heart is not an accident, the conscience is not a prejudice: they are, and by the same right as the reason, constituent elements of our spiritual existence. If there exist an irreconcilable antagonism between science and life; if the heart, in its fundamental and universal aspirations, is the victim of an illusion, if the conscience in its clearest admonitions is only a teacher of ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... doth here declare unequivocally to be neither to our interests nor the Vizier's; and the "unqualified assent" given to the said article is now so qualified as wholly to defeat itself. That by such irreconcilable contradictions the said Hastings doth incur the suspicion of much criminal misrepresentation in other like cases of unwitnessed conferences; and in the present instance (as far as it extends) the said Hastings doth prove himself to have ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... his small figure, when he entered a room "it was apparent, from the respectful attention of the company, that he was a distinguished person." A contemporary, speaking of the opposite and almost irreconcilable traits of Hamilton's character, pronounced a bust of him as giving a complete exposition of his character: "Draw a handkerchief around the mouth of the bust, and the remnant of the countenance represents fortitude and intrepidity such as we have often seen in ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... these occupations are irreconcilable with home enjoyment, but it is certain that Mr. Bucket at present does not go home. Though in general he highly appreciates the society of Mrs. Bucket—a lady of a natural detective genius, which if it had been improved by professional exercise, ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... been followed a hundred years before by Solomon also. Elijah alone was strenuous in his opposition; the masses did not understand him, and were far from taking his side. To him only, but not to the nation, did it seem like a halting between two opinions, an irreconcilable inconsistency, that Jehovah should be worshipped as Israel's God and a chapel to Baal should at the same time be ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... amiss; not concern &c 10; mismatch; humano capiti cervicem jungere equinam [Lat.]. Adj. disagreeing &c v.; discordant, discrepant; at variance, at war; hostile, antagonistic, repugnant, incompatible, irreconcilable, inconsistent with; unconformable, exceptional &c 83; intrusive, incongruous; disproportionate, disproportionated^; inharmonious, unharmonious^; inconsonant, unconsonant^; divergent, repugnant to. inapt, unapt, inappropriate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the form of breakers on an even shore, there is difficulty of no less formidable kind. There is in them an irreconcilable mixture of fury and formalism. Their hollow surface is marked by parallel lines, like those of a smooth mill-weir, and graduated by reflected and transmitted lights of the most wonderful intricacy, its curve being at the same time necessarily of mathematical purity and precision; yet at the top ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... of feeling the warmest sympathy, but was liable also to conceive unwarrantable antipathies; her mind was of admirable quality, fairly well gifted and sensibly trained; though not marvelously quick to understand, yet tenacious and slow to forget. The constant attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable opinions of her mother and aunt had given Hermione a certain versatility of thought, and a certain capacity to see both sides of the question when not under the momentary influence of her enthusiasm. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... of the war are summed up and the importance of the war for the industrial interests is outlined. The chief cause of the war is assigned to the irreconcilable economic conflict between the German and Russian interests created by commercial treaties ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... record of discipline and of triumph, which the party had made when united beneath the dominion of imperious leaders, was over, and forever. Those questions which Lincoln obstinately and against advice had insisted upon pushing in 1858 had forced this disastrous development of irreconcilable differences. The answers, which Douglas could not shirk, had alienated the most implacable of men, the dictators of the Southern Democracy. His "looking-both-ways" theory would not fit with their policy, and their policy was and must be immutable; modification was in itself defeat. On the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... coat was buttoned high, and the fashionable collar, with a black satin cravat, beautifully tied and relieved with a rich pearl pin, set another unexpected but singularly charmful detail to an aggregate of apparently irreconcilable characteristics. ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... among natives of the Troad, who worshipped him as their heroic ancestor, was that after the capture of Troy he continued in the country as king of the remaining Trojans, on friendly terms with the Greeks. But there were other tales respecting him, alike numerous and irreconcilable: the hand of destiny marked him as a wanderer (fato profugus) and his ubiquity is not exceeded even by that of Odysseus. We hear of him at AEnus in Thrace, in Pallene, at AEneia in the Thermaic Gulf, in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... subject. In this manly form both essays were read at the next meeting of the society. The joint papers provoked instant discussion and prompt opposition. The world at large scarcely admitted a possible doubt of the fixity of species. Men generally believed the idea to be absolutely irreconcilable with their religious faith. Any question of the fact that the species of to-day exist practically as they had been handed down to the earth in the beginning by the Creator himself seemed to most men a direct blow at religion. At this time a very large number of natural ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... they were irreconcilable in matters of faith, there was one point in which all these sects agreed—ferocious hatred and persecution of each other. Arabia, an unconquered land of liberty, stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Desert of Syria, gave them all, as the tide of fortune successively turned, a refuge. It had been ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... Darwin but even against men like Asa Gray, Le Conte, and others, who had attempted to reconcile the new theory with the Bible: he insisted that "evolutionism and the scriptural account of the origin of man are irreconcilable"—that the Darwinian theory is "in direct conflict with the teaching of the apostle, 'All scripture is given by inspiration of God'"; he pointed out, in his opposition to Darwin's Descent of Man and Lyell's Antiquity of Man, that ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... sailor's life. The risks he runs, the adventures he encounters, have, as a rule, nothing of the romantic in them; they are mainly brought about by his own foolhardiness, by the proverbial carelessness that is utterly irreconcilable with the stern obligations of vigilance, alertness, and foresight imposed upon him by the nature of his calling, by the imbecility of shipmates, and much too often by drink. Yet no matter what the cause of most of the perils he meets with, his experiences, I take it, head the march of professional ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell

... the committee two years ago when I was down there was the most stupefying jumble of conflicting and apparently irreconcilable interests that was ever seen; and we all said "the case is hopeless, absolutely hopeless—out of this chaos nothing can be built." But we were in error; out of that chaotic mass this excellent bill has been instructed; the warring interests have been ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... very important and significant affair. I wish, on the day after to-morrow, to prepare an entertainment which in splendor and magnificence shall surpass anything hitherto seen. You know that the major-domos of the other diplomatists have become my irreconcilable enemies through envy; they cannot forgive me for having more inventive faculties and better taste than any of them! We must bring these major-domos to despair, and with a gnashing of teeth they shall acknowledge that in all things I am their master. You, however, must aid ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... repeatedly shown her willingness and desire to end the ancient feud, France has remained irreconcilable; and particularly the intellectual class of France cannot escape the charge that they have persistently and willfully kept alive the flame ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... forests: "un peuple est compte pour quelque chose le jour ou il s'eleve a la pensee de Dieu."[27] But the spirit of the age is unquestionably hostile to all these creeds from the highest to the lowest. In Europe there is a movement—of its breadth and strength I shall say more presently—the irreconcilable hostility of which to "all religion and all religiosity," to use the words of the late M. Louis Blanc, is written on its front. Thought is the most contagious thing in the world, and in these days pain unchanged, but with no ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... are thwarted, individuals sacrificed. What does that mean to progress? She goes her way, and the blood of those who fall enriches the soil whence spring her new shoots. The Dominicans themselves do not escape this law, and they are beginning to imitate the Jesuits, their irreconcilable enemies." ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... the natural propensity of man to be idle, but not to be inactive. Enjoyment is his aim, after he has secured the means of existence. Enjoyment and idleness are supposed, in many cases, to go hand in hand; at any rate, they can be reconciled, whereas inaction and enjoyment are irreconcilable. {70} ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... were those whose temperaments were opposed to acceptance of the new order of things—those to whom conquest by the hereditary enemy was intolerable. These irreconcilable spirits were mainly civil and military officers, seigneurial families, and emigres of the first generation. To them estates in the New World meant much, but the motherland and the Bourbon lilies meant yet more; and as for the more recent arrivals, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... with the Duke of Norfolk, Son to John of Gaunt, had some Years before been banished by Richard, to prevent a personal Combat: This King, worthy more propitious Stars, long agitated and afflicted by the Turbulence and irreconcilable Obstinacy of his British Subjects, perished at last under the impious Hands of Sir Pierce of Exton, who, at the Head of eight barbarous armed Assassins, rushed into his ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke

... story of Eve, the snake, and the apple—the amphibious idea of a man-god—the corporeal idea of the death of a god—the mythological idea of a family of gods, and the christian system of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three, are all irreconcilable, not only to the divine gift of reason, that God has given to man, but to the knowledge that man gains of the power and wisdom of God by the aid of the sciences, and by studying the structure of the universe that ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... philosophical theory completes that of Halley, and explains all those apparent anomalies which have hitherto seemed irreconcilable with the only rational account of the trade-winds. The rainless calms of the tropics are explained by this theory without that crossing and interference of winds which Lieut. Maury supposes; for the secondary circulation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... regulate commerce be allowed to control or terminate their importation? Vital questions these, which went not merely to the incidents but the fundamental powers of government. The slavery question seemed for months an element of irreconcilable discord in the convention. The slave-trade not only, but the domestic institution itself, was characterized in language which Southern politicians of later times would have denounced as "fanatical" and "incendiary." Pinckney wished ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... the whole is that Life is a thing of joy, tempered by the sense of responsibility. The latter idea is conveyed by the word 'judgment,' which throughout the Old Testament stands for the irreconcilable antagonism between good and evil, and the certain overthrow of evil: the recognition of this makes action responsible. With this limitation, the author urges that the very shortness of life and youth is so much incentive to make joyful what days ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... Great Britain in the War of Independence—half Washington's army was recruited from Irishmen in America; and in the same way the exiles of the nineteenth century became, and have remained even to the second generation, irreconcilable adversaries of the system of government which, by affording for too long no relief to the conditions in Ireland, was responsible for the flight from their home to a land which was, by comparison, flowing with ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... adaptations in Nature afford a large balance of probability in favor of creation by intelligence," as Mill concluded; and probability must needs be the guide of reason through these dark places. Still, the balancing of irreconcilable facts is not a satisfying occupation, nor a wholly hopeful one, while fresh weights are from time to time dropping into the lighter side of the balance. Strong as our convictions are, they may be overborne by evidence. We cannot rival the fabled woman of Ephesus, who, beginning ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... he had made use of the sectaries to crush the Commonwealth; he had spurned the sectaries in his last advance to power. These, with the Royalists and Presbyterians, forming in effect the whole people . . . were the perpetual, irreconcilable enemies of his administration' (Hallam ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... hollow, so dishonest, so lying, in which life is so blinked and blinded, so dodged and disfigured, that it makes my ears burn. It's two different ways of looking at the whole affair," he repeated, pushing open the gate. "And they're irreconcilable!" he added with a sigh. We went forward to the house, but on the walk, half-way to the door, he stopped and said to me: "If you're going into this kind of thing there's a fact you should know beforehand; it may save you some disappointment. There's a ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James

... Government in Ireland must have a corrupt motive. His colleague from West Belfast is not much wiser, to judge by the tone of his speech to-night; and I think Mr. DUKE, who is doing his best to reconcile the irreconcilable, must have been tempted to adapt one of MR. DILLON'S phrases and to say that Ireland was between the DEVLIN ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various

... utter threats against his life. But this old affair, scandalous enough to serve as a motive for a Greek tragedy, arose from the similarity of their characters. There are other tragedies, less scandalous and of a subtler poignancy, arising from irreconcilable differences and from that fear of the Incomprehensible that hangs over all our heads—over all ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... as large as possible a quantity of their own commodities; and as, in view of the disproportion above explained, such a market can be acquired and retained only at the expense of other producers. There necessarily exists a permanent and irreconcilable conflict of interest. It is different among us. We can always be sure of a sale, for with us no more can be produced than is used, since the total produce belongs to the worker, and the consumption, the satisfaction ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... effectively treated, even for the purpose of real history, if thrown into the form of an epic or romance. Accordingly he takes liberties with his authorities, deviating from them now and then, and even once or twice introducing incidents not reconcilable with either of them, if not irreconcilable also with historical and geographical possibility. Hence one may doubt sometimes whether what one is reading is to be regarded as history or as invention. On this point I can but repeat words I have already used: as it is, we are bound to be thankful. ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey

... means death, were untamable. Their necks could endure no yoke, political or purely ornamental. And so they perished far from the Onondaga firelight, far from the open doors of the Long House, self-exiled, self-sufficient, irreconcilable, and foredoomed. And of these the Mohicans were ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... says that we must always remember that the Teuton is the irreconcilable enemy of the civilization of the French and of all it stands for, and that he must always be kept at a distance. Durkheim's view is that Germany's ambition and energy and will antagonize the freedom of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... what a strange, impassioned spirit would take hold of the soul of their child, and carry it to the heights which separate generations in eternal struggle. They lived in a land and at a time when antagonism between parent and offspring was fated to find its most acute expression, irreconcilable hostility. In this tremendous struggle between fathers and sons—and especially between parents and daughters—there was no compromise, no weak yielding, no truce. The spirit of liberty, of progress—an idealism which knew no considerations and recognized no obstacles—drove the young generation ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... her; she insisted upon keeping her the remainder of the winter, promising to carry her back to the Hills in a few weeks. It was plain that refusing this request would renew the ire of Lady Jane, and render irreconcilable the quarrel between her ladyship and the Percy family. Caroline felt extremely unwilling to offend one whom she had obliged, and one who really showed such anxiety for ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth

... are common to German philosophers and critics and historians alike do not seem to derogate from their literary fame at home, and have even found imitators in England, like Coleridge and Carlyle. Nevertheless, obscurity and affectation are eternal blots on literary genius, since they are irreconcilable with art, which alone gives perpetuity to learning,—as illustrated by the classic authors of antiquity, and such men as Pascal, Rousseau, and Macaulay in our times,—although the pedants have always disdained those who write clearly ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord

... When two irreconcilable propositions are presented for assent the safest way is to thank Heaven that we are not as the unreasoning brutes, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... thou not see it to be one nest of incompatibilities? Do not the unity of its wholeness and the diversity of its parts stand in patent contradiction? Does it not both unite and divide things; and but for this strange and irreconcilable activity, would it be at all? The hidden dynamism of self-contradiction is what incessantly produces the static appearance by ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... look generally at this question of the status quo from the international point of view during the past two centuries, we find two divergent and irreconcilable lines of treatment. ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller

... answer. I was hearing again in my mind that desolate cry of "Philo! Philo! Philo!" which an hour or so before had rung down to me from Mrs. Ocumpaugh's open window. There had been a wildness in the tone, which spoke of a tossing head on a feverish pillow. Certainly an irreconcilable picture with the one just suggested by Mrs. Carew of the considerate friend sending out the toys of her lost one to a ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green

... have averted the catastrophe? There are few sadder and few more instructive pages in history than those which show how mistake after mistake was committed, till the rift which was once so small widened and deepened; till the two sections of the English race were thrown into an irreconcilable antagonism, and the fair vision of an United Empire in the East and in the West came ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... He represents Hood as fencing cautiously on the following day, keeping on the field, but avoiding a decisive encounter. This differs somewhat from the version of Hood himself, who mentions signalling a general chase to windward at 12.30 P.M. of the 30th. The two statements are not irreconcilable. Hood having coppered ships, had the speed of the French, whose vessels, being partly coppered and partly not, sailed unevenly. The British commander consequently could afford to take risks, and he ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan

... Combray was of a "haughty and imperious nature; her soul was strong and full of energy; she knew how to brave danger and public opinion; the boldest projects did not frighten her, and her ambition was unbounded." Such is the picture that one of her most irreconcilable enemies has drawn of her, and we shall see that the principal traits were faithfully described. But to complete the resemblance one must first of all plead an extenuating circumstance: Madame de Combray was a fanatical royalist. ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... be pursued by the help of those who will take it up good-humoredly and graciously: such help I will receive in the spirit in which it is given; entering into no controversy, but questioning further where there is doubt: gathering all I can into focus, and passing silently by what seems at last irreconcilable. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... prescribes a healthy hatred of scoundrels;—otherwise what am I, in Heaven's name, to make of it? Me, for one, it will not serve as a religion on those strange terms. Just hatred of scoundrels, I say; fixed, irreconcilable, inexorable enmity to the enemies of God: this, and not love for them, and incessant whitewashing, and dressing and cockering of them, must, if you look into it, be the backbone of any human religion ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... indicate a favorable turn in the president's mind. Days and weeks passed, however, and when the veto of the Civil Rights Bill was overridden in the Senate and, with the help of the votes of the senators from New York, the breach between the president and his party became irreconcilable, the movement for his impeachment began, which ended in the most sensational and perilous trial in ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... despises productivity for the same reason that the old robber barons did: it is less trouble to take money than to make it. The most outspoken popular leaders no longer conceal their contempt for and rejection of democracy. The socialists perceive the irreconcilable contradiction between the two ideas,[4] and they are right. Democracy postulates community of interest or loyal patriotism. When these are absent it cannot long exist. Syndicalism, which seems to be growing, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... Fisher and Mr. Churchill proved to be irreconcilable, and Lord Fisher sent in his resignation at the week-end. It is now hoped that he will withdraw his resignation, and the possibility of Mr. Churchill replacing Lord Crewe at the India Office or taking another ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... contrary, we believe that he, of all men, has retained the various impressions he has once received. Unlike so many others, who, in changing their views, have contradicted all their former utterances, disowned their former selves, undergone a sort of bisection into two irreconcilable halves, M. Sainte-Beuve has linked one opinion with another, modified each by its opposite, and thus preserved his continuity and cohesion. "Everything has two names," to use his own expression, and he has never been content with knowing only one of them. Guided by a sympathetic intelligence, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... and made her the paramount power in Germany. It was in fact his obvious policy to cede Hanover in perpetuity to Prussia, and have rendered thereby the breach between the Houses of Brandenburgh and Hanover irreparable and irreconcilable. This would have thrown Prussia necessarily into the arms of France, in whose system she must then have moved, and all British influence on the Continent would have been effectually put an end to. Another prime fault ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... grown contented with her lot, and that her aspirations after independence were over. For fifty years she had made no sign. Even the troubled time between the death of Artaxerxes I. and the accession of Darius II. had not tempted her to strike a blow for freedom. But still she was, in reality, irreconcilable. She was biding her time, and preparing herself for a last ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... their "warranted quarrel;" inasmuch as that quarrel was most unfortunate and disastrous. Chance is either fortunate or unfortunate. The epithet just, which might apply to the quarrel in question, is utterly irreconcilable with chance. Still this sense has pleased the editors, and they have made "of goodnesse" a precatory and interjectional expression. Surely it is far more probable that the poet wrote belike (belicgan, geliggen) as one word, and that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various

... kind of humanity and this new kind of world. The eternal vision of those invisible "sons of the universe," the proof of whose existence is a deduction from the encounters of all actual souls with one another, would seem to be entirely irreconcilable with any new complex vision whose ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... would discover to be Egyptian, another asserts to be Phoenician; a third brings from the North; a fourth from the Hebrews; and a fifth, with yet wilder imagination, from the far and then unpenetrated caves and woods of India. Accept common sense as our guide, and the contradictions are less irreconcilable—the mystery less obscure. In a deity essentially Greek, a Phoenician colonist may discover something familiar, and claim an ancestral god. He imparts to the native deity some Phoenician features—an Egyptian ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... miserable, lonely week, Skippy held to this irreconcilable attitude. During this time he touched the bottom of depression—he even doubted himself! Would he ever invent anything again? Had it been just a flash in the pan? Was it all a false start? What had become of the imagination which had blazed up so brilliantly? Perhaps after all ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... feared war and desired good feeling, had no further definite opinion upon the chief questions at issue; but it would have left a local majority in many of the Southern States and a local majority in many of the Northern States as irreconcilable with each other as ever. It was opposed also to the spirit of the Constitution. In a great country where the people with infinitely varied interests and opinions can slowly make their predominant wishes appear, but cannot really take counsel together and give a firm decision upon any emergency, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... motives, but he further allowed the unquestionable truth "that, though inconceivable, a motiveless volition would, if conceived, be conceived as morally worthless."[13] I say this is very instructive, because it shows that in Hamilton's view each theory was alike irreconcilable with "the deliverance of consciousness," and that he only chose the one in preference to the other, because, although not any more conceivable a solution, it seemed to him a ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... ontology—developed in the Analytic—which believed that it knew things in themselves through the concepts of the understanding, with a refutation of rational psychology, rational cosmology, and rational theology. It shows that the first is founded on paralogisms, and the second entangled in irreconcilable contradictions, while the third makes vain efforts to prove the existence of the ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... had ever entered their minds. Theirs was an "organ," and for the purposes for which they had started it they thought themselves abundantly able to run it. I, on my part, quickly grew high notions of editorial independence. Their purposes had nothing to do with it. The two views proved irreconcilable. They clashed quite regularly, and perhaps it was as much that they were tired of the editor as that the paper was a drag upon them that made them throw it up after the fall elections, in which they won. The press ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... trial of this issue, Job takes refuge in silence and submission; the Indian and the Greek, less wise perhaps, attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable and plead for the defendant. To this end, the Greeks invented Theodicies; while the Indians devised what, in its ultimate form, must rather be termed a Cosmodicy. For, although Buddhism recognizes gods ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... pathetic and sublime of gifted women, the tableaux so exciting to a youthful temper of military glory. And thus, by degrees, we found ourselves bewildered by the most vivid contrasts and apparently irreconcilable traits, until the original idea of a Frenchman expanded to the widest range of associations, from the ingenious devices of a mysterious cuisine to the brilliant manoeuvres of the battle-field; infinite female tact, rare philosophic hardihood, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... alt-Catholics. This was done, as was expressed, "on account of his complete deference to the State and his acknowledgment of its rights." In another letter, which was also made public, William I. recalled to mind those ancient Emperors of Germany who were the irreconcilable enemies of the spiritual supremacy of the Popes, and intimated that he was resuming the work of Frederick Barbarossa and Henry IV. The association was unfortunate. The chancellor's commentary was more so. "We shall never," ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... in its momentous results, was the emancipation charter of Abraham Lincoln. Both required a courage that was nothing less than heroic: but the proclaimers of the Declaration of Independence risked life, family, property; engaged in an irreconcilable conflict against enormous odds; defied the greatest naval power in the world, and the richest nation, in pursuit, not of the material gain to be derived from the abrogation of a tax, but of national liberties which they were determined to secure at every hazard. The Declaration, ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle

... if it be said that there are irreconcilable contradictions in this book which calls itself the oracles of God? Two things may be said: First, it should be expected that under "the scientific method" such contradictions should appear and constantly multiply. The Bible is a sensitive plant, which shuts itself up at ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon

... six or seven others would probably prove irreconcilable; but the vehemence and rancour shown by the great Nehemiah during the summer in the pursuit of his anti-Wharton campaign had to some extent defeated themselves. A personal grudge in the hands of a man of his type is not a formidable weapon. Wharton would ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the Cantilena of lawyers cannot make it law, unless it can be traced to some competent authority; and if it be irreconcilable, to ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... another look at that gentleman's organs." Keats and I hurried Lamb into the painting-room, shut the door and gave way to inextinguishable laughter. Monkhouse followed and tried to get Lamb away. We went back, but the comptroller was irreconcilable. We soothed and smiled and asked him to supper. He stayed though his dignity was sorely affected. However, being a good-natured man, we parted all in good-humour, and no ill ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... admit, for the sake of the argument, that it is not incompatible with free agency, it is still irreconcilable with civil government. Civil legislation prohibits various modes of acting. It assumes that the forbidden actions are wrong— injurious to society—whereas, this theory represents that all the actions that have been performed, or will be performed, were freely willed, purposed, ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson

... concur in the union. It was too late. During all the time that they had been making war on these Coues[99] they had grown to hate them. And possibly there already existed an English character and a French character which were irreconcilable. Even in Paris, where the Armagnacs were as much feared as the Saracens, the Godons[100] met with very unwilling support. What surprises us is not that the English should have been driven from France, but that it should have happened so slowly. Does this amount to saying that ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... he knew well, was irreconcilable with good form; but Jesson's tone had become grossly offensive. Something about the man repelled Sheard's naturally generous instincts, and no shade of compunction remained. A score of times, during the past quarter of an hour, he had all but determined to throw up ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... became known as the Holy Roman Empire, the heads of which from this on were the German kings (see p. 502). Here now were two world- powers, the Empire and the Papacy, whose claims and ambitions were practically antagonistic and irreconcilable. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... Ireland was never subdued till the rebellion in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. 2nd, For four hundred years before that period the two nations had been almost constantly at war; and in consequence of this, a deep and irreconcilable hatred existed between the people within and without the pale. 3rd, The Irish, at the accession of Queen Elizabeth, were unquestionably the most barbarous people in Europe. So much for what had happened previous to the reign of Queen Elizabeth; ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... with another display. The two countries differ, even in the nineteenth century, by characteristics wholly irreconcilable; and they are both of a sterner order as time advances with both. But, in the eighteenth century, each country in its public transactions approached nearer to the propensities and passions of the drama. The rapid changes of the English ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... occupation of their country. The real designs of the Whig Government are a different thing; and with these, as avowed by Lord Palmerston in Parliament, the intentions of Lord Ellenborough were wholly irreconcilable. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... convoy at times, without, in a military sense, endangering the communications. Such predatory operations have been carried on in all ages by the weaker maritime belligerent, but they by no means warrant the inference, irreconcilable with the known facts, "that neither Rome nor Carthage could be said to have undisputed mastery of the sea," because "Roman fleets sometimes visited the coasts of Africa, and Carthaginian fleets in the same ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... the other five, one had been an all-out hell-planet, and the rest had been the sort that get colonized by irreconcilable minority-groups who want to get away from everybody else. The Colonial Office wouldn't ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper

... and with the author of the plays and poems, it is difficult to see how there can remain any reasonable doubt; and, though the facts which prove this identity contain little to illuminate the vast intellect and soaring imagination which created Hamlet and Lear, they contain nothing irreconcilable with the personality, which these creations ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... being laid in some other one." At the same time Bonaparte, across the Channel, was illustrating in almost identical phrase the indomitable energy that was common to these two men, the exponents of the two opposing and irreconcilable tendencies of their age. "If the British ministry should intimate that there was anything the First Consul had not done, because he was prevented from doing it, that instant he would do it." "You have proved yourself too true ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... recent catastrophe it was everywhere strewed. In this work Caesar set out from the principle of the reconciliation of the hitherto subsisting parties or, to put it more correctly—for, where the antagonistic principles are irreconcilable, we cannot speak of real reconciliation— from the principle that the arena, on which the nobility and the populace had hitherto contended with each other, was to be abandoned by both parties, and that both were to meet together ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... Clergy have wrote better in Defence of the Reformation than ours; but others have certainly gone greater Lengths in it, as to Worship and Discipline in outward Appearance. The Difference between the Roman Catholicks and us seems to be less irreconcilable, than it is between them and the Reformed Churches of the united Netherlands and Switzerland; and I am fully persuaded, that the Mother Church despairs not of bringing back to her Bosom this run-away Daughter of hers, ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville

... yours defend them, with intolerance and by force of arms, and declare that the Papacy and liberty cannot live side by side? You ask Victor Hugo to point out to you an idea which has been worshipped for eighteen centuries. It is that idea which you have declared irreconcilable with the Papacy, and which was breathed into humanity by God; the idea which has withdrawn from Catholicism the half of the Christian world, the idea which has snatched from you Lammennais and the flower of the intellects of Europe, the idea ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... comic, Tom Bertram, not quite alone, because it was evident that Mary Crawford's wishes, though politely kept back, inclined the same way: but his determinateness and his power seemed to make allies unnecessary; and, independent of this great irreconcilable difference, they wanted a piece containing very few characters in the whole, but every character first-rate, and three principal women. All the best plays were run over in vain. Neither Hamlet, nor Macbeth, nor Othello, nor Douglas, nor The Gamester, presented anything that ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... in the right apprehension of the life of faith. Faith lifts above, and gives possession of, what is the very opposite of what we feel or experience. In the Christian life there is always a paradox: what appear irreconcilable opposites are found side by side at the same moment. Paul expresses it in the words, 'As dying, and, behold, we live; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things.' And elsewhere thus, 'When I ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray

... conjecture that Prince Buelow was deliberately building with a view to attacking the British Empire. I see no reason to doubt his sincerity when he says that he looked forward to a peaceful solution of the rivalry between Germany and ourselves, and that France, in his view, not Great Britain, was the irreconcilable enemy.[4] In building her navy, no doubt, Germany deliberately took the risk of incurring a quarrel with England in the pursuit of a policy which she regarded as essential to her development. It is quite another thing, and would require ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson

... moment a dripping sponge came spinning through the air and struck the young irreconcilable ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... mutually conciliatory spirit an agreement failed to materialize only proved how irreconcilable were the aims of the two parties. [Sidenote: September 22] The Diet voted that the Confession had been refuted and that the Protestants were bound to recant. The emperor promised to use his influence with the pope to call a general council to decide doubtful points, but if the Lutherans did not return ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life; it ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... the two-thirds vote required for victory. For more than fifty times the roll of the convention was called without a decision. Then in sheer desperation the convention adjourned to meet later at Baltimore. When the delegates again assembled, their passions ran as high as ever. The division into two irreconcilable factions was unchanged. Uncompromising delegates from the South withdrew to Richmond, nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for President, and put forth a platform asserting the rights of slave owners in the territories and the duty of the federal ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... that he was an absolute monarch, entitled to unreserved obedience, AND ACCOUNTABLE TO NONE; while Sir James Montgomery and Sir John Dalrymple, who conducted the debate on the other side, averred that the Parliament was neither competent to grant, nor the king to acquire, an absolute power, irreconcilable with the RECIPROCAL OBLIGATIONS DUE TO THE PEOPLE.' The doctrines of Buchanan prevailed; and the estates declared that James VII. having, through 'the advice of evil and wicked councillors, invaded the fundamental constitution ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... was afraid that I should be annoyed, should suspect, perhaps, a forcing of my hand, or some such manoeuvre. But I was not annoyed; I was interested to learn what effect the prospect had upon my little cousin. I was so different from the Grenadier, so irreconcilable ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... would only put themselves in the place of those who have to complain of them, if they would only reflect how many times they have themselves given way to humours, how many things they have forgotten! A single word spoken in disparagement of our intelligence is enough to make us irreconcilable, and yet how often have we been deceived in the very same matter. How many persons of understanding have we taken for fools? Why should not others have the same privilege as ourselves?... Ah, what address is needed to live together, to be compliant without cringing, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... and stray Socialistic notions, and the correct tone of the aristocratic salon and the free-and-easy, almost pot-house, manners of the young people that surrounded her. She dreamed of "giving happiness" and reconciling the irreconcilable, or, rather, of uniting all and everything in the adoration of her own person. She had favourites too; she was particularly fond of Pyotr Stepanovitch, who had recourse at times to the grossest flattery in dealing with her. But she was attracted by him for another reason, an amazing one, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... antagonistic to Christian faith and Christian ethics, in Northern Europe the new classical learning was harmonized with Christianity, and classical learning was applied to the interpretation of the Bible. It was the synthesis of what mediaeval Europe had regarded as irreconcilable opponents. That was the inspiration of the school reform, and this is the guiding principle of all higher education for the next three centuries. It was a movement that originally was not local ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... succeeded in subduing Sweden by force of arms; but he spoiled everything at the culmination of his triumph by the hideous crime and blunder known as the Stockholm massacre, which converted the politically divergent Swedish nation into the irreconcilable foe of the unional government (see CHRISTIAN II.). Christian's contempt of nationality in Sweden is the more remarkable as in Denmark proper he sided with the people against the aristocracy, to his own undoing in that age of privilege ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... traffic did not cease in the United States, although at the Treaty of Ghent (1815) it was declared that: "Whereas the traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the principles of humanity and justice," and the two countries (Great Britain and the United States) therein stipulated to use their best ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... ferocity by none among the princes of his time. Restlessly active, recognized as one of the most powerful political minds of the day, and free from the vices of the profligate, he concentrated all his powers, among which must be reckoned profound dissimulation and an irreconcilable spirit of vengeance, on the destruction of his opponents. He had been wounded in every point in which a ruler is open to offence; for the leaders of the barons, though related to him by marriage, were yet the allies of his foreign ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... compelled to commit some flagrant act of iniquitous personal hostility against some of them (such as an attempt to strip a particular friend of his family estate), by which the Cabal hope to render the parties utterly irreconcilable. In truth, they have so contrived matters, that people have a greater hatred to the subordinate instruments than to the ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... can see no reason to doubt but that the imposition of taxes, whether on trade, or on land, or houses, or ships, or real or personal, fixed or floating, property in the colonies, is absolutely irreconcilable with the rights of the colonies, as British subjects, and as men. I say men, for in a state of nature no man can take any property from me without my consent. If he does, he deprives me of my liberty and makes me a slave. The very act of taxing, exercised over those who ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... should or should not be put under instruction—such is the question before us. Of all those which we have discussed this is the only one which has two extremes and admits of no compromise. Knowledge and ignorance, such are the two irreconcilable terms of this problem. Between these two abysses we seem to see Louis XVIII reckoning up the felicities of the eighteenth century, and the unhappiness of the nineteenth. Seated in the centre of the seesaw, which he knew so well ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... comedy, "The Newly Married" (De Nygifte). Goethe once made the remark that he was not a good dramatist, because his nature was too conciliatory. Without intending disparagement, I am inclined to apply the same judgment to Bjoernson. His sunny optimism shrinks from irreconcilable conflicts and insoluble problems; and in his desire to reconcile and solve, he occasionally is in danger of wrenching his characters out of drawing and muddling their motives. Half a dozen critics have already called attention to the ambiguity of Mathilde's position and intentions in "The Newly Married." ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... frame, her irreconcilable repugnance affected her even physically; she felt a sort of numbness and could set about nothing; the least urgency, even that she should take her meals, was an irritation to her; the speech of others on any subject seemed unreasonable, because ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... modern historical criticism, ... it is not surprising to find that the famous embassy of John the Grammarian to the court of Baghdad must be rejected as a fiction irreconcilable with fact.'—Prof. Bury in the English Historical Review, April 1909. But he ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... the common supposition, has no plenary power to nullify unconstitutional laws. It can only do so when there is an irreconcilable and indubitable repugnancy between a law and the Constitution; but obviously laws can be passed from motives that are anti-constitutional, and there is a wide sphere of political discretion in which many acts ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... Who were the Romans? p. 12, where, among other remarkable statements, Janus is confidently said to have been introduced at Rome by the Sabine Numa, and therefore to have been a Sabine deity, an assumption quite irreconcilable with those of Dr. Frazer and Mr. Cook. In striking contrast with such speculations is a sensible paper on Janus in M. Toutain's Etudes de mythologie et d'histoire, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... of her husband. If she retired to her father's house without an explicit avowal of her rank, her situation was likely greatly to prejudice her character; and if she made such an avowal, it might occasion an irreconcilable breach with her husband. At Kenilworth, again, she might plead her cause with her husband himself, whom Janet, though distrusting him more than the Countess did, believed incapable of being accessory to the base and desperate means which his dependants, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... question which has excruciated philosophers and divines, beyond any other. I did not press it further, when I perceived that he was displeased[306], and shrunk from any abridgement of an attribute usually ascribed to the Divinity, however irreconcilable in its full extent with the grand system of moral government. His supposed orthodoxy here cramped the vigorous powers of his understanding. He was confined by a chain which early imagination and long habit made him think massy and strong, but which, had ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... whole country that Mr. Webster did so; and it is known to me that General Jackson personally thanked him for his powerful aid, that many of the President's best friends afterward sought to make a union between him and Mr. Webster, and that nothing continued to separate them but an irreconcilable difference of opinion about the questions relating ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... original of Mrs. Stowe's christian hero. The thought of leaving these dear friends, greatly troubled me, for I was going without the hope of ever returning to Baltimore again; the feud between Master Hugh and his brother being bitter and irreconcilable, or, at least, supposed ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... France and in the world at large. Her greatness is not in having been the wife of a great emperor, but in knowing how to adapt herself to the conditions in France into which she was suddenly thrust. As a conciliator and a mediator between two almost hopelessly irreconcilable classes of society, she deserves a prominent place among great ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... are mutually irreconcilable. Horncastle Fair was held from August 10 (the Feast of St. Lawrence) to August 21, and had 'just begun' on the day following his accident; but, as his journey lasted six days, this leaves no time at all for his experiences at the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... portions of the Old Testament history are given twice over, as in the Books of Kings and Chronicles, and the two accounts, in some cases, seem to be irreconcilable with each other. The numbers often differ, and some of them seem altogether too large. The accounts agree well enough, and the statements are credible enough, as a rule, on matters of great importance; but on smaller matters ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... have saved us, had the Flat-heads held out any longer; but the Black-feet, their irreconcilable enemies, seizing the opportunity, had entered their territory. They sued to us for peace, and then detachments from both war-parties hastened to our help. Of this we were apprised by our runners; and having previously concerted measures with ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat

... of popular attachment to Great Britain; both know the traditional and inbred loathing of the industrious masses for the horrible bloodshed and insensate waste of treasure in war. Both sets balance inwardly the chances that sentiments seemingly irreconcilable and about equally respectable may, after the war, urge Canadians either to draw politically closer to their world-scattered kin, or to cut ligaments that might pull them again and again, time without end, into the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... anything but reunite. The differences on the republican issues being fundamental were likewise irreconcilable. The Nationalists stood pat on secession while the South African Party remained loyal to its principles of Imperial unity. The ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... Articles II and XI, we read in Schaff's Creeds of Christendom: "There is an obvious and irreconcilable antagonism between Article II and Article XI. They contain not simply opposite truths to be reconciled by theological science, but contradictory assertions, which ought never to be put into a creed. The Formula ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... this marriage discussed, she spoke of the connection with the most supreme contempt; that he is certain of this fact; and that I was still more contemptuously spoken of than himself. In a word, he begs me to break off the treaty. But he has let me go too far; and now he will make these people my irreconcilable enemies. This has been put in his head by some of his flatterers; they do not wish him to change his way of living; and very few of them would be received by his wife." I tried to soften Madame, and, though I did not venture to tell her so, I thought ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... While, therefore, we do not deflect in the slightest degree from the course we then assumed and are still pursuing with mutual consent to restore a good understanding, we arc not to impute to them practices as irreconcilable to interest as to good faith, and changing necessarily the relations of peace and justice between us to those of war. These surmises are therefore to be imputed to the vauntings of the author of this enterprise to multiply ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson

... their country even more than they hated the evil of slavery. But these concessions failed, as I believe concessions to evil always do fail. These concessions failed to secure safety in that Union. There were principles at war which were wholly irreconcilable. The South, as you know, has been engaged for fifty years in building fresh ramparts by which it may defend its institutions. The North has been growing yearly greater in freedom; and though the conflict might be postponed, it was ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... than the others. The globe is inevitable. The cross is arbitrary. Above all the globe is at unity with itself; the cross is primarily and above all things at enmity with itself. The cross is the conflict of two hostile lines, of irreconcilable direction. That silent thing up there is essentially a collision, a crash, a struggle in stone. Pah! that sacred symbol of yours has actually given its name to a description of desperation and muddle. When we speak of men at once ignorant of each other and frustrated by each other, we say ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... believed to have been 'runner up' for the Newdigate prize poem, and might have won other laurels, but that he was found to do the female parts very fairly in the dramatic performances of the University, a thing irreconcilable with study. His father was a rural dean. Merton's most obvious vice was a thirst for general information. 'I know it is awfully bad form to know anything,' he had been heard to say, 'but everyone has his failings, and ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... man and a great deal short of the angels, the quarrel over the division of the joint product is irreconcilable. For the last twenty years in the United States, there has been an average of over a thousand strikes per year; and year by year these strikes increase in magnitude, and the front of the labor army grows more imposing. And it is a class struggle, pure and simple. ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London

... themselves. Evidently expected outburst of indignant refusal, long debate, and a big division. Some indignation, but little debate and no division. Everyone on Opposition Benches seemed to expect some one else to declare himself irreconcilable. When question put, a pause; no one rose to continue the successive brief speeches; before you could say JAMES FERGUSON, Government had, on this 16th of March, practically secured all working ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various

... you are not single-hearted like me. You want to please all the world, and reconcile the irreconcilable. It won't do: you will have to choose between your mother ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... they stood in the most irreconcilable opposition of principles to each other, were obliged to disguise their particular opinions, and to pretend an entire agreement with the sentiments of their master. Cromwell and Cranmer still carried the appearance ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... that these eight witnesses concur but in one single point,—that Tecumseh was killed in the battle of the Thames. As to the nature of his wounds, the mutilation of his body, the time when, the spot where, and by whose hands, he fell, these various statements are wholly irreconcilable with each other, and leave the main question involved in additional doubt ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake

... circumstances, the result was, that the strict rules of logic were evaded, as is usually the case when interests are opposed to arguments. A middle course was hit upon by the legislators, which brought together by force two systems theoretically irreconcilable. ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... when it stated that sin consisted in being found out; but conscience was the traitor within the gates; it fought in each heart the battle of society, and caused the individual to throw himself, a wanton sacrifice, to the prosperity of his enemy. For it was clear that the two were irreconcilable, the state and the individual conscious of himself. THAT uses the individual for its own ends, trampling upon him if he thwarts it, rewarding him with medals, pensions, honours, when he serves it faithfully; ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... a very sensible loss in Bishop Fox of Hereford, who had always possessed much influence over the King, but had died lately. An understanding between the two parties on questions which were dividing the whole world was not to be thought of; they confronted each other as irreconcilable antagonists. The debates were transferred on Norfolk's proposal to Parliament and Convocation; at last it was thought best that each of the two parties should bring in the outline of a bill expressing its own views. This was done: but first both bills were delivered to ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... other side Susanna and her husband, Dr. Hall. The removal of the dust to Westminster Abbey has been prevented by the profane imprecation of the inexplicable epitaph by which the tenant of the tomb, as if in anticipation of the irreconcilable mysteries posterity would discover in his history, bequeathed an undying curse to him who should ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... but still add the remark that Jugurtha aimed at something beyond the kingdom of Adherbal; namely, that he intended afterwards to attack the Romans themselves, because he saw that the acquisition of the kingdom of Adherbal was irreconcilable with the friendship of Rome. Plura non scribam nisi hoc intellego is an elliptical expression, equivalent to plura non scribam, nisi hoc scribam, me intellegere. [154] 'Whatever may have been our mutual ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)

... returned from that portion of the atmosphere towards which the trumpet was directed. They could not, under the circumstances, come from the glassy sea; while both their variation of direction and their perfectly continuous fall into silence, are irreconcilable with the notion that they came from fixed objects on the land. They came from that portion of the atmosphere into which the trumpet poured its maximum sound, and fell in intensity as the direct sound penetrated to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... fall of man, that cricket is moral training, and that Socialism is an outrage upon the teachings of Christ. A sort of dignified dexterity of evasion is the national reward. Germany, with a larger population, a vigorous and irreconcilable proletariat, a bolder intellectual training, a harsher spirit, can scarcely fail to drive us at last to a realisation of intolerable strain. So we may never fight at all. The war of preparations that has been going on for thirty ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells



Words linked to "Irreconcilable" :   inconsistent, hostile, unreconcilable, reconcilable



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