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More "Insurmountable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... limit his own sense of justice imposes: for the justice that soars aloft, keeping pace with the intellect, creates new boundaries around all it throws open, while at the same time strengthening and rendering more insurmountable still the ancient barriers of instinct. The moment we cross the primitive frontier of equity all things seem to fail us; one falsehood gives birth to a hundred, and treachery returns to us through a thousand channels. If justice be in us we may march along boldly, for there ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... consolation and encouragement: "You knew beforehand just how it would be." Still, unpleasantness seldom arrives in exactly the manner expected, and the unexpected is always the hardest to bear. Thus it was with me in this case; my situation seemed to contain insurmountable difficulties. I sought the basis for them in imperfect culture; and the cause of the disconnected nature of the culture I had been able to attain, lay, so I perceived, in the interruptions which marred my university career. Educator ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... say, the thing aimed after does not come out as a recognisable success. False tendencies are more easily perceived in others than in ourselves—especially when ambition, interest, or vanity is involved in the consideration; and on this account the difficulty, perhaps, might not be insurmountable, if the charge of it could be committed to a really judicious educator. But to say anything further on the subject would be out of place at present; and, accordingly, we return to what is more ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... been remarkable in all its particulars. The obstacles which had to be overcome seemed insurmountable. There were walled cities to be taken, fortified mountain passes to be carried by storm, and frowning castles with cannon on the battlements to be assaulted by regiments whose valor and impetuosity ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... found only in the Master's degree, which it was intended should be in imitation of the greater Mysteries; and in it were to be unfolded, explained, and enforced the great doctrines of the unity of God and the immortality of the soul. But here there must have at once arisen an apparently insurmountable obstacle to the further continuation of the resemblance of Masonry to the Mysteries of Dionysus. In the pagan Mysteries, I have already said that these lessons were allegorically taught by means of a legend. Now, in the Mysteries ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... barrier is insurmountable! An adamantine wall, reaching to the skies! I remember what she said, at her proud uncle's table—'I have an abhorrence, Mr. Clifton, of the errors in which you are now indulging.'—Abhorrence was the word, Fairfax!—It has been at my tongue's end ever ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... into its mountainous regions.* The annexation of Aramaean territory beyond the Tigris, and the conquest of Babylon by Tiglath-pileser III., at length broke through the barrier and brought the two powers face to face at a point where they could come into conflict without being impeded by almost insurmountable natural obstacles, namely, in the plains of the Umliash and the united basins of the Lower Ulai and the Uknu. Ten years' experience had probably sufficed to convince Khumban-igash of the dangers to which the neighbourhood of the Assyrians exposed his subjects. The vigilant watch which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to utilize this natural power, we only require machinery to turn the variable into a constant velocity—no insurmountable difficulty. ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... acknowledgment of the services which you have already rendered me; namely, first, in having brought together so widely scattered a collection—a difficulty which in my own hands by too painful an experience I had found from nervous depression to be absolutely insurmountable; secondly, in having made me a participator in the pecuniary profits of the American edition, without solicitation or the shadow of any expectation on my part, without any legal claim that I could ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... separating him from other animals. Through domestication and taming he has changed the original nature and habits of life of many animals. The dog, the companion of man, is the summit of human achievement in association with animals. Nevertheless, the barriers that separate the dog and his master are insurmountable. Even if "a candidate for humanity," the dog is forever debarred from any share in human ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... conception,—that of making a treaty between this magnificent Indian confederacy and New England for the purpose of introducing civilization and religion; and for a moment he lost sight of the insurmountable ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... true readings. On the contrary, instances of defective grammar, harsh elisions, strained metaphors, and incomplete expressions are multiplied. The difficulty of comprehending the sense is rather increased than diminished, and the obstacles to a translator become still more insurmountable than Wordsworth found them.[413] This being undoubtedly the case, the value of Guasti's edition for students of Michael Angelo is nevertheless inestimable. We read now for the first time what the greatest ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... turned his food in his mouth, and turned his head sideways to bring his strongest fangs to bear upon it, he looked terribly like a hungry old dog. If I had begun with any appetite, he would have taken it away, and I should have sat much as I did,—repelled from him by an insurmountable aversion, and gloomily looking ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... honour, virtue, gratitude, religion, and pride of birth, her heart was already engaged by the tenderest ties of love and obligation, to a man whose person and acquired accomplishments at least equalled his own; and whose connexion with him was of such a nature as raised an almost insurmountable bar to his design; because, with what face could he commence rival to the person whose family had raised him from want and servility, and whose own generosity had rescued him from the miseries of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... contrive in some way to make for ourselves a lamp, as we could never live in our cave in darkness; and here was a difficulty apparently even more insurmountable than the others,—as much so as appeared the making of a fire in the first instance,—for while we had a general idea that we might capture some seals, and get thus a good supply of oil, and that we might also get plenty of fox-skins ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... had been made too painfully aware that his son's position was desperate, and that he must at once be saved by a desperate effort, or given over to utter ruin. And, to tell the truth, so heavy were the new debts of which he heard from day to day, so insurmountable seemed the difficulties, that he all but repented that he had not left him to his fate. The attempt, however, must again be made; he was there, in the house, and could not be turned out; but Lord Cashel determined that at any rate ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... charitable uses." We suppose an intelligent personality, a free will, indispensable to responsibleness and alone amenable to retributions. Besides, if the body must be raised to undergo chastisement for the offences done in it and by means of it, this insurmountable difficulty by the same logic confronts us. The material of our bodies is in a constant change, the particles becoming totally transferred every few years. Now, when a man is punished after the general judgment for a certain crime, he must be in the very body he occupied when ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the deliberation, whenever our [Russian] plenipotentiaries found themselves in the presence of insurmountable difficulties, they appealed to the personal intervention of this sovereign [Napoleon], and had only to congratulate themselves on the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... have passed from the stage of action, who have not left in the history of their lives indelible marks of ambition or folly, which produced insurmountable reverses, and rendered the whole a mere caricature, that can be examined only with disgust and regret. Such pictures, however, are profitable, for "by others' faults wise ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... him for the sake of party unity, and for the sake of the country, to allow the Prime Minister to cancel the agreement of the day before; to accept a peerage and the War Office in lieu of the Exchequer and the leadership of the House. The Premier gave a full account of the insurmountable difficulties in the way of the completion of the Government, which had disclosed themselves during the course of the afternoon and evening following his interview with Ferrier. Refusals of the most unexpected kind, from the most unlikely quarters; letters and visits of protest from persons impossible ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... philosophy has caused to be taken for miraculous effects, and black magic, what is the simple effect of white magic, and the secrets of a philosophy hidden from the ignorant and common herd of men. Moreover, I confess that I see insurmountable difficulties in explaining the manner or properties of apparitions, whether we admit with several ancients that angels, demons, and disembodied souls have a sort of subtile transparent body of the nature of air, whether we believe them ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... in the very first of her acquaintanceship with Lawford Tapp the supposition that his social position was quite inferior to her own. She was too broadly democratic to hold that as an insurmountable barrier between them. ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... remainder of that day our minds were chiefly occupied with the question of how, after our visit to the Conconil lagoons, we were to make our way to Port Royal; and the more carefully we considered the question the more numerous and insurmountable appeared to be the difficulties in our way. It was not as though we were going to touch at a civilised port; in that case, if it came to the worst, we might have run away from our craft and taken our chance of getting another to suit us. But this, under the circumstances, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... for selecting him to be the Catholic King than for selecting the Margrave of Baden or the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Something was said about Victor Amadeus of Savoy, and something about the King of Portugal; but to both there were insurmountable objections. It seemed, therefore, that the only choice was between a French Prince and an Austrian Prince; and William learned, with agreeable surprise, that Lewis might possibly be induced to suffer the younger ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the country may already—IF SHE IS DETERMINED TO DO SO—obtain very much the same intellectual instruction which her own brother receives. If that education is a highly advanced one she will, no doubt, have some special difficulties to contend against; but those difficulties are not insurmountable. The doors of most colleges and universities are closed, it is true, against women, and we can not doubt that this course is taken for sound reasons, pointed out by good sense and true sagacity. It is impossible not to believe that between the ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... avowal that the Entente belligerents are spending their substance and pledging their credit for the common cause. Among the Americans, the chief of the neutral nations, this is coming to be recognised more and more overtly. So that, in this instance at least, no insurmountable reluctance to take over their due share of the common burden should fairly be looked for, particularly when it appears that the projected league, if it is organised on a footing of neutrality, will relieve the republic of virtually all outlay ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... had now reached the beach, but the difficulty of effecting a passage, through the bands of wild Indians that crowded, yelling, in every direction, to take a nearer view of the prisoners, would, perhaps, have proved insurmountable, had it not been for the interference of one who alone possessed the secret of restraining their lawlessness. Tecumseh had descended to the beach, eager to be the first to congratulate his young friend. He pressed the hand promptly extended to receive his, and then, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... transactions and documents were there over which I could but lament!—how many measures, contrary to my views, to my principles, and to my character!—while the best intentions were incapable of overcoming difficulties which a most powerful and decided will rendered almost insurmountable. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse potentate unless the townsmen gave their consent thereto.' Now, what would the military engineers of Chatham and Paris and Berlin, who are now at their wits' end, not give for a secret like that! A wall impregnable and insurmountable and not to be sapped or mined from the outside: a wall that could only suffer hurt from the inside! And then that wonderful wall was pierced from within with five magnificently answerable gates. That is to say, the gates could neither be burst in ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... case; but this is not the season for its disclosure, neither, I am bound to say, does the circumstance so materially alter the apparent posture of affairs as to remove all difficulty. On the contrary, it leaves an insurmountable ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of Aries, when that sphere was constructed, he infers, by calculations of their retrograde motion from their place then till the year A.D. 1690, that the expedition took place in 937 before Christ. To this, however, there seem to be insurmountable objections, which it is surprising did not occur to this great man. The chief star in Argo is only 37 degrees from the south pole; and the greatest part of the constellation is much nearer. The course of the Argonauts from Greece to Colchis, necessarily lay between ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... ever befallen his arms, and foreseeing that unless the Spanish insurrection were crushed ere the Patriots had time to form a regular government and to organise their armies, the succours of England, and the growing discontents of Germany, might invest the task with insurmountable difficulties, determined to cross the Pyrenees in person, at the head of a force capable of sweeping the whole Peninsula clear before him "at one fell swoop." Hitherto no mention of the unfortunate occurrences in Spain had been made in ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... difficulty is experienced, I believe, in approaching Foo Chow, owing to the strength of the currents in the neighbourhood; but, as a seventy-four-gun ship has got over that difficulty, it is proved to be not an insurmountable one. ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... the patriarchal period, the father of the family seems also to have exercised the functions of a criminal judge; but the uniting of the two sets of duties in one person does not appear to have inspired the children with insurmountable awe, for laws are found both in Numbers and Deuteronomy fixing the penalty of disobedience, and of the striking of ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... first under a Saxon name, Andredeswald, whence we get our name of the Weald, and we find it always spoken of not only by the Saxons, but by the Romans before them as an obstacle, though not, it would seem, an insurmountable one. It was, in fact, a wild forest country of clay containing much woodland, everywhere covered with scrub, and traversed by various sleepy and shallow streams. That it was difficult to cross we have Roman evidence; that it was a secure hiding- place we know from the Saxons; but as we look ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... for this instrument. In fact, the accuracy with which the capacity of the instrument is gauged is one of the most striking peculiarities of the last sonatas and other late works of this master. Meanwhile, piano technique has advanced to a point where these great works no longer present the insurmountable difficulties that they did when first composed. Their general acceptance has been delayed by the foolish notion that there was about them something sacred and secluded from the apprehension of ordinary readers. This is not the case. They are within ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... five miles from it when we became involved in low marshy ground, traversed by deep sluggish streams, the banks of which were encumbered by a dense vegetation. Such a country, though admirably adapted both for commerce and agriculture, offered almost insurmountable difficulties to first explorers, at least to such as were compelled to move rapidly. We at last became so completely entangled in a marsh that further progress was hopeless, and we halted to prepare breakfast whilst a party searched ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... did not find it safe to remain), Park proceeded down the river to Silla, a large town distant about seventy or eighty miles, on the banks of the Niger. He was now reduced to the greatest distress, and being convinced by painful experience, that the obstacles to his further progress were insurmountable, he reluctantly abandoned his design of proceeding eastwards; and came to the resolution of going back to Sego, and endeavouring to effect his return to the Gambia by a different route from that by which ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... 1917, the Provisional Government made distinct progress, considering the almost insurmountable obstacles inherent in such a situation as it had to face. From now on there was very little friction between the cabinet and the council; they worked together with comparative harmony. The fact that the radical elements were now so well represented in the ministry probably was the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... his bank account down to the irreducible minimum and borrowed on his securities up to the insurmountable maximum. It was a bad time for his children to tap him. But here they were—Jno. P., Jerry, and Julia—all very unctuous over the home-coming, and yet all of them evidently cherishing an ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... and a loose overblouse, but she was certainly not only a woman, but a very young and attractive one. Also, at the present moment, an exceedingly angry one. And behind that anger was fear, the fear of one fighting hopelessly against insurmountable odds. But as she eyed Travis ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... canals, partially in use, and the rest in building, which would open up a route to the Ohio River at Pittsburgh. But engineers had looked the ground over, and given it as their opinion that Baltimore was hedged in by insurmountable difficulties. Prophecies were made that soon ships would cease to come to Baltimore at all. And under this lowering commercial sky, Peter Cooper saw his Baltimore investments fading away ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... influential. Still worse for us, he had in his district the State Agricultural College, which the founding of Cornell University must necessarily wipe out of existence. He might rise above the first of these difficulties, but the second seemed insurmountable. No matter how much in sympathy with our main aim, he could not sacrifice a possession so dear to his constituency as the State College of Agriculture. He felt that he had no right to do so; he knew also that to do so would be to sacrifice his political future, and we felt, as he did, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... of Mar had now had an opportunity of throwing himself at the feet of the King, which, as he expressed, "is the thing in the world he had longed most for." But still, the difficulties in his path seemed to be rendered more insurmountable than ever by the arrival ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... the centre of the country and becomes merely a line of low hills, connecting Gebel Ansarieh with the Lebanon proper; beyond the latter it continues without interruption, till at length, above the narrow Phoenician coast road, it rises in the form of an almost insurmountable wall. Near to the termination of Coele-Syria, but separated from it by a range of hills, there opens out on the western slopes of Hermon a valley unlike any other in the world. At this point the surface of the earth has been rent in prehistoric times by volcanic ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... languages, which last I am also studying with a master, I can order and discourse more than enough for a reasonable man. Besides, the perpetual lamentations after beef and beer, the stupid, bigoted contempt for every thing foreign, and insurmountable incapacity of acquiring even a few words of any language, rendered him, like all other English servants, an incumbrance. I do assure you, the plague of speaking for him, the comforts he required (more than myself by far), the pilaws (a Turkish dish of rice and meat) which he could not eat, the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... let into the secret of the boys' disappearance, will perceive that Deerfoot was hovering around the truth, though he was still barred by difficulties almost insurmountable. ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the "Law and Order" party were to be sheathed; and the Yankees in the country were only a handful of men, and were therefore powerless; but between them and these bloody-minded chieftains was interposed a barrier that proved insurmountable. The great mass of the squatters were just from the other side of the river. Sometimes a son had left a father, and crossed the river to get a claim; or a brother had left his brother, or a girl had married a young ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... come in right at this point and declare that we ought not to believe so much; that until they have actually proposed marriage, often they themselves do not know their own minds; that a man has a perfect right to withdraw, a la Hamlet, if he finds insurmountable flaws in the girl's nature, or, what is oftener the case, somebody whom he likes better; and they intimate pretty strongly that broken hearts, or even slightly damaged affections, are largely our own fault, which, from their standpoint, is true enough, and ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... satisfied with these results, the Germans on their part now attempted an invasion of large sections of West Russia, pursuing their defeated foes until they reached the Niemen and its chain of fortresses which they found insurmountable obstacles. It was once more the turn of the Russians, who now not only drove back the invading Germans to the border, but who by the beginning of October, 1914, faced again an invasion of their East Prussian province. However, less than two weeks sufficed this time ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... began to remove the furniture. Risler watched them at work with an indifferent air, as if he were in a stranger's house. That magnificence which had once made him so happy and proud inspired in him now an insurmountable disgust. But, when he entered his wife's bedroom, he was ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... and more important mining village of Daiquiri, which, before the war, was the shipping-port of the Spanish-American Iron Company. There is no harbor, shelter for vessels, or safe anchorage at any of these places; but as the rampart, everywhere else, presents an almost insurmountable barrier, an invading force must either disembark in these notches, or go eastward to the Bay of Guantanamo and march forty miles to Santiago through the foot-hills. General Shafter, after inspecting the coast, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... in the first place, that the glaciation seems to have come long after the elevation. The difficulty does not seem to be insurmountable. The reduction of the atmospheric vapour would be a gradual process, beginning with the later part of the elevation and culminating long afterwards. The reduction of the carbon-dioxide would be even more gradual. It is impossible to say how long it would take these processes to reach a ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... frontier. Something within her breast cried out for those shining, gone-by moments, something seemed to close down on her throat, something flooded her eyes with a softness that rolled up from her entire being. Their line! Their insurmountable barrier! An absurd yet ineffable longing to fall down and kiss that line came over her with ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... very well to join them, but speaking to them proved quite as much as ever an effort beyond my strength—offered, in close quarters, difficulties as insurmountable as before. This situation continued a month, and with new aggravations and particular notes, the note above all, sharper and sharper, of the small ironic consciousness on the part of my pupils. It was not, I am as sure today as I was sure then, my mere infernal ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... between Borrow and Sir Richard Phillips. Neither appeared to have realised the supreme folly of entrusting to a young Englishman the translation into German of an English work. A novel would have presented almost insurmountable difficulties; but a work of philosophy! The whole project was absurd. The diction of philosophy in all languages is individual, just as it is in other branches of science, and a very thorough knowledge of, and deep reading in both ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... that young men of our age indulge in, all the same. Perhaps you think there would be difficulties in the way. They would not be insurmountable, I can assure you; those matters go smoothly enough here. You slip your arm round her waist, give her a good, sounding salute, and the acquaintance is begun. You have ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... quickly. He was never beaten until the last vote was counted on a roll call. He knew that, no matter how apparently insurmountable an opposition was, a way to overcome it might often be found by the man who exercises strong self-control and a trained brain. This corrupt victor in scores of bitter political engagements on the battlefield of Washington was now in his most dangerous ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... not my brother's enemy, Captain Jekyl," said Tyrrel—"I have never been so—His friend I cannot be, and he knows but too well the insurmountable barrier which his own conduct ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... systematic, continuous, intensive use practised by the farmer, except where nature presents positive checks to the transition. The most obvious check consists in adverse conditions of climate and soil. Where agriculture meets insurmountable obstacles, like the intense cold of Arctic Siberia and Lapland, or the alkaline soils of Nevada and the Caspian Depression, or the inadequate rainfall of Mongolia and Central Arabia, the land can produce ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... years of patient toil which must have preceded his first request for food, and I contemplated with astonishment the indefatigable perseverance which has borne him triumphant through the acquirement of such a language. If the simple request for something to eat presented such apparently insurmountable obstacles to pronunciation, what must the language be in its dealings with the more abstruse questions of theological and metaphysical science? Imagination ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the sea subsides, and the boat is loaded.—To pack so many men together, with material, in so small a space as the canoe affords, seems a difficulty almost insurmountable. Still it is effected. I litter down amidships, with my bedding spread on reeds, in so short a compass that my legs keep slipping off and dangling in the bilge-water. The cook and bailsman sit on the first bar, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... night were of a reluctant, nightmarish passage down a huge groove, a monotonous groove, whose smooth, insurmountable sides offered no hint of variety.... As he looked ahead he could see nothing but this straight groove stretching into infinity. Always he was disturbed and made wretched by a consciousness of movement, of varied life and activity, of adventure, of thrill, outside the groove, ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... Le Kain a disadvantageous countenance, a thick and rough voice, a short figure, and, indeed, appeared to oppose almost insurmountable obstacles to his success: but art developed the feelings concentered on his heart, animated his whole person, suggested to him the most graceful attitudes, strengthened his voice, and impressed in every motion of his body the grand character of passion. Indeed, in the parts of Orosmanes, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... desperate. Jersey is a strong place yet. In those days of sailing ships and weak artillery it was a gigantic fortress, if only held by a wholehearted and determined garrison. Had that but been now the case, which, however, it was not. The population in general had no insurmountable feeling of hostility towards the de facto government of England. On the other hand, the hearts of the Cavalier party were not high. A rumour had been spread—not traceable to any distinct source—that Charles had been taken after the rout of ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... bribes meant much more than a sinister vote. It called into existence a champion of every inveterate abuse that weighed on the resources of the country. There is a well-known passage in the speech on Economical Reform, in which the speaker shows what an insurmountable obstacle Lord Talbot had found in his attempt to carry out certain reforms in the royal household, in the fact that the turnspit of the king's kitchen was a member of Parliament. "On that rock his whole adventure split,—his whole scheme ...
— Burke • John Morley
... reading your work on Wild Wales, and cannot refrain from writing to thank you for the very lifelike picture of the Welsh people, North and South, which, unlike other Englishmen, you have managed to give us. To ordinary Englishmen the language is of course an insurmountable bar to any real knowledge of the people, and the result is that within six hours of Paddington or Euston Square is a country nibbled at superficially by droves of holiday-makers, but not really better ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... in cases where the Aborigines are said to be the aggressors, who can tell what latent provocation existed for perpetrating it? Of the numerous cases that could be cited, the following from a recent journal of an assistant protector, Mr. Parker, of the Lodden, will suffice to shew the insurmountable difficulty, I may add the impossibility, of bringing the guilty parties to justice, for in nine cases, I may say, out of ten, where natives are concerned, the only evidence that can be adduced is that ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... Belfast we soon found ourselves marching through Helvetia, the Switzerland of South Africa, a region of insurmountable precipices and deep defiles, where scarcely any foliage was found, and in that winter season no verdure. There rose in all directions towering hills, which sometimes bore upon their brow a touch of real majesty; and when crowned, as we saw them, with ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... Holy Ghost. It is the attraction of all hearts to one heavenly Saviour, and the submission of all wills to one holy law. Looking at the past condition or the present aspect of society, we may think the difficulties in the way of such unity altogether insurmountable; but it will, in due time, be brought about by Him "who doeth great things and unsearchable, marvellous things without number." Its realization will present the most delightful and impressive spectacle ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... face of it, this was a futile undertaking, no matter how praiseworthy its motive. Nations, no more than individuals, are convinced by what other nations say of themselves; it is only by what they do. In this particular case the difficulty was rendered more insurmountable by the fact that these erroneous impressions prevailed among those who did not care enough about the matter to investigate it seriously, and who would be certain in most cases to refrain from investigating it at all, had they a suspicion that their preconceived beliefs would ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... Cymon Tuggs opposed an insurmountable objection. All the coaches had been upset, in turn, within the last three weeks; each coach had averaged two passengers killed, and six wounded; and, in every case, the newspapers had distinctly understood that 'no blame whatever was attributable to ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... completed the round, they agreed that there were but two spots where it seemed to them that an ascent was barely possible, and they were very doubtful whether the difficulties, when examined more closely, would not prove to be absolutely insurmountable. ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... learning and talents, had sufficient penetration to know, that, in the ways of the world, she was herself the better skilled of the two. For a moment she thought of Edward Walcott; but he was light and wild, and, which her delicacy made an insurmountable objection, there was an untold love between them. Her thoughts finally centred on Fanshawe. In his judgment, young and inexperienced though he was, she would have placed a firm trust; and his zeal, from whatever cause it arose, she could ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... himself of this, in order to prove that on their own grounds the Mosaic was of dignity inferior to the Christian dispensation. To get rid of this no-difficulty in a single verse or two in the Epistles, Skelton throws an insurmountable difficulty on the whole ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Wilkes's election for Middlesex[380], and of the unconstitutional taxation of our fellow-subjects in America[381], must have been a powerful advocate in any cause. But here, also, the want of a degree was an insurmountable bar. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... dispense with. No furnace can supply the place of it; for, though the furnace is an indispensable auxiliary in severe cold, and though, well managed, it need not vitiate the air, yet, like all contrivances for supplying heated air instead of heat, it has the insurmountable defect of not warming the body directly, nor until all the surrounding air be warmed first, and thus stops the natural reaction and the brace and stimulus derived from it. Used exclusively, it amounts to voluntarily incurring the disadvantage of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... question whether, when once produced, they would be capable of propagating themselves in other media, such as a gas at ordinary pressure, or even in an absolute vacuum. Experiment alone could answer this question, but there were difficulties in the way of this which seemed almost insurmountable. The rays are stopped by glass even of slight thickness, and how then could the almost vacuous space in which they have to come into existence be separated from the space, absolutely vacuous or filled with gas, into which it was ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... another occurrence, which, however, relates only indirectly to the Pope's stay in Paris. It is known that David was ordered by the Emperor to execute the picture of the coronation, a work which offered an incredible number of almost insurmountable difficulties, and which was, in fact, one of the masterpieces ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... translated, two books of Ariosto, at the rate, nearly, of 100 lines a day; but so much meaning has been put by Michael Angelo into so little room, and that meaning sometimes so excellent in itself, that I found the difficulty of translating him insurmountable. I attempted, at least, fifteen of the sonnets, but could not anywhere succeed. I have sent you the only one I was able to finish: it is far from being the best, or most characteristic, but the others were too much ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... poverty and barrenness of their country, and their pertinacious adherence to their seal-skin dresses, which no argument of ours could induce them to exchange for the less comfortable articles of European clothing, were insurmountable obstacles. The Honourable Company, while they wished to supply the wants of the Esquimaux, still urged the expediency of securing ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... Westmore was nothing to him, that all he asked was to see her happy.... But it was not true, and his manhood revolted from the deception. Besides, its effect would be only temporary—would wear no better than her vain efforts to simulate an interest in his work. Between them, forever, were the insurmountable barriers of character, of education, of habit—and yet it was not in him to believe that any ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... being settled, I next bethought me of the nature of my refrain. Since its application was to be repeatedly varied, it was clear that the refrain itself must be brief, for there would have been an insurmountable difficulty in frequent variations of application in any sentence of length. In proportion to the brevity of the sentence would of course be the facility of the variation. This led me at once to a single word as ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... describe the physical and moral sufferings to which he is exposed who undertakes without proper preparation to cross this inhospitable district. To the weakness caused by lack of air soon succeeds an insurmountable lassitude. The feet sink in a soft, tenuous dust which every step sends up in clouds; it covers you, penetrates your skin, and parches your mouth even more than thirst. Little by little all energy ebbs away, a dumb dejection seizes you, sight and thought become alike ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... he to Langevin, "there is one person still needed to complete our reunion. A few mutual wrongs, and those smoothed over by time, ought not to build an insurmountable barrier between us. May I venture to request the favor of being presented ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... most wholesome advice a single man ever gave to families and the heads of families, whose laugh was so cheery and spontaneous,—and face so uncommonly grave and sad at times,—had a faculty for manner. With astonishing suddenness he could raise insurmountable barriers; and people, not of his order, who occasionally presumed on his simplicity of life and habits, found themselves put distinctly ill at ease by a quiet, curious look in his eye. No man was ever more the recluse and at the same time the man of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... are imperfect, and the best of them are more profuse in speculation and surmise than in solid fact. The information possessed has been drawn bit by bit from the reluctant Japanese. The difficulties of investigation have been almost insurmountable,—no visitor, during two hundred years, having been allowed the slightest freedom of association with the people, or opportunity for travel. With very few exceptions, foreigners have been confined to the extremest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... maddening! Lilly, can't you see what I haven't the words to tell you? For years—since that night at the Waldorf—I—I have been living for this moment. I realized it to-night as you read that play. Lilly, is what is between us insurmountable?" ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... "excuse me for interrupting you, but how has this been brought about? The obstacles you told me of on Saturday appeared even to me to be quite insurmountable; how ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... effort she had just made seemed to have changed her. By making it she felt as if, unwittingly, she had built up an insurmountable barrier between herself and youth. She had not know, perhaps, what she was doing, but ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... had done already I knew that Viola would forgive, even though it grieved and distressed her. If I went further I did not know that she would ever forgive, and that made an insurmountable barrier that nothing Veronica could do ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... consideration—for 'Iceland,' to Londoners, seems much the same in point of compass as the moon! And there really is some similarity in the volcanic surface of both. Here, however, the similarity ends, for while the luminary is indeed inaccessible, the island can easily be reached without any very insurmountable difficulty. ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... extension to the Spiritual sphere be counted an extravagance? Does not the Principle of Continuity demand its application in every direction? To carry it as a working principle into so lofty a region may appear impracticable. Difficulties lie on the threshold which may seem, at first sight, insurmountable. But obstacles to a true method only test its validity. And he who honestly faces the task may find relief in feeling that whatever else of crudeness and imperfection mar it, the attempt is at least in harmony with the thought and ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... heightening glow of the eastern sky promised the speedy rise of the sun, expected at every turn that the increasing light would expose them to the view of the vengeful pursuers, or present some dangerous and insurmountable obstacle to the prosecution of their journey. Wayland Smith perceived her uneasiness, and, displeased with himself for having given her cause of alarm, strode on with affected alacrity, now talking to the horse as one expert in the language of the ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... because I like Cedarcrantz, and Cedarcrantz has cut his lucky? This is a little tragedy, observe well - a tragedy! I may be right, I may be wrong in my judgment, but I am in treaty with my honour. I know not how it will seem to-morrow. Lloyd thought the barrier of honour insurmountable, and it is an ugly obstacle. He (Cedarcrantz) will likely meet my wife three days from now, may travel back with her, will be charming if he does; suppose this, and suppose him to arrive and find that I have sprung a mine - ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suzerainty no real infringement of the independence which the Free State has so happily enjoyed. It is premature to speculate now on the best form which a scheme for South African Confederation may take. All that need here be pointed out is that the obstacles now perceived are not insurmountable obstacles, but such as may be overcome by a close study of the conditions of the problem, and by reasonable concessions on the part of South African statesmen in the ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... throwing aside those that they consider as worthless. These pale, emaciated creatures, I looked at with the greatest interest. How strong is the impulse that carries them through, in spite of these almost insurmountable obstacles! It is beyond our knowledge, why, in coming in from the sea, they pass certain streams to enter others; but this they are known to do, so perfectly do they understand the ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... conceived to be a sufficient examination of its evidence for a divine origin. He had terminated an examination of the controversy with the Deists to his own satisfaction, i.e. he felt convinced that their objections were not insurmountable, when he turned his attention to the consideration of the ancient, and obscure controversy between the Christians and the Jews. His curiosity was deeply interested to examine a subject in truth so little known, and to ascertain the causes, and the reasons, which had prevented a people more interested ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... swept by Boer fire, and no advance could be made over its bare expanse save at a considerable loss. The infantry clung in a long fringe to the edge of the position, but for two hours no guns could be brought up to their support, as the steepness of the slope was insurmountable. It was all that the stormers could do to hold their ground, as they were enfiladed by a Vickers-Maxim, and exposed to showers of shrapnel as well as to an incessant rifle fire. Never were guns so welcome as those of the 82nd battery, ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... result of excavations the centre is nothing but a mass of rubbish, and an insurmountable barrier guards the entrance; in any case no one dare penetrate into the midst of these dangerous ruins. But was it possible to be in Rome and not go down to the real Coliseum? No, indeed! And I no longer listened to the guide's explanations: one thought only filled my mind—I must ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... become of me? My Father could not take me with him from hotel to hotel and from lecture-hall to lecture-hall. Nor could he leave me, as people leave the domestic cat, in an empty house for the neighbours to feed at intervals. The dilemma threatened to be insurmountable, when suddenly there descended upon us a kind, but little-known, paternal cousin from the west of England, who had heard of our calamities. This lady had a large family of her own at Bristol; she offered to find room in it for me so long as ever my Father ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... entire trend of the conversation from his parishioner to himself and found nothing insurmountable in his own problem, the good bishop would chuckle mischievously at finding his eminent self quite human after all, and would suggest their going in to find Mrs. Bishop, and having a cup of tea. These women, always restless and dissatisfied, were a part of his work; he prided ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... Sir, I have been for several years trying to reconcile my mind to the Colonizing of Africans in Liberia, but there have always been, and there still remain great and insurmountable objections against the scheme. We are an unlettered people, brought up in ignorance, not one in a hundred can read or write, not one in a thousand has a liberal education; is there any fitness for such to be sent into a far country, among heathens, to convert or civilize ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... negotiation was as speedy and satisfactory, as it has been and will be important in its consequences. M. Marbois truly observes, "the cession of Louisiana was a certain guarantee of the future greatness of the United States; and opposed an insurmountable obstacle to any design formed by the English of becoming predominant in America." In relation to the stipulations in the treaty, that the inhabitants should be incorporated in the Union, and, in due time, be admitted as a state, &c. M. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... I wanted was that we two should go forward together on the road towards freedom—always forward, and further forward! But there was that gloomy, insurmountable barrier between you ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... disappointed because Minnie had not come over, or asked her father to carry a message. Evidently, whatever it may have been that had come between Minnie and her former friends, the Allens, it was proving an insurmountable barrier. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... she still steadfastly refused to look at him, her memory kept losing its hold on the appalling fact facing them. She realised fully only that she was in a great, unwarrantable, and insurmountable difficulty, but until she actually lifted her eyes for a moment she had not fully realised what that difficulty was. She got up with a sudden and horrible nausea. 'One moment,' she said, 'I will see if the ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... assembled. It is impossible to feed a population of 60,000,000, even if funds and stores of food are unlimited. With the most perfect system of harbours, canals, railways, &c., the distribution of food for 60,000,000 people offers insurmountable obstacles. Plague is caused by infection, and may be stamped out by the observance of those sanitary rules which Indians refuse to observe. Cases of plague are not reported to the authorities, but ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... it?" she said, instead of giving a direct answer, feeling an almost insurmountable repugnance, doubtless because of her love for Michel, which the sick man had declared in her stead. While she had consented in principle to marrying him and had allowed the preliminary steps to be taken, she had never replied definitely ...
— The Inferno • Henri Barbusse
... line of the southern coast. It was at first questionable whether, and soon after it became certain, that the schooner could never beat through such dangers. Had the wind been fair, the difficulty would have been insurmountable; but ahead, and blowing a little gale, the matter was out of the question. Some other course must ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... placed even perpendicularly. There was no attempt made to take one up. Though the projection could not be discerned from below, Karl, standing on the topmost round of the last ladder that had been planted, saw at once, with the eye of an engineer, that the difficulty was insurmountable. It would be as easy for them to fly, is to stand a ladder upon that ill-starred ledge; and with this conviction fully impressed upon his mind, the young plant-hunter returned slowly and sorrowfully to the ground to ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... after plan, but they all seemed crowded with insurmountable difficulties. We knew it was unlawful for any public conveyance to take us as passengers, without our master's consent. We were also perfectly aware of the startling fact, that had we left without this consent the professional ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... muttered. 'Oh, I don't much care.' Again his vagueness jarred on me; there seemed to be some bar between us, invisible and insurmountable. And, after all, what was I doing here? Roughing it in a shabby little yacht, utterly out of my element, with a man who, a week ago, was nothing to me, and who now was a tiresome enigma. Like swift poison the old morbid ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... them the gate of dreams? Your Dante, when he drew my likeness, forgot my attributes. When he gave me that useless tail, he did not see that I held the shepherd's staff of Osiris; that from Mercury I had inherited his caduceus. In vain have they thought to build up an insurmountable wall between the two worlds; I have wings to my heels, I have flown over. By a kindly rebellion of that slandered Spirit, of that ruthless monster, succour has been given to those who mourned; mothers, ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... found in the pitch-blende seemed to indicate the presence of some hitherto unknown body. The search proved a most difficult one on account of the peculiar nature of the object in question, but the tireless enthusiasm of Madame Curie knew nothing of insurmountable obstacles, and soon drew her husband into the search with her. Her first discovery was that of the substance polonium—so named by Madame Curie after her native country, Poland. This proved to be another of the radio-active substances, differing from any other yet discovered, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... balancing the powers of the Federal and State authorities difficulties nearly insurmountable arose at the outset and subsequent collisions were deemed inevitable. Amid these it was scarcely believed possible that a scheme of government so complex in construction could remain uninjured. From ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... slums of that city. Three others with myself were deputed to open this work. Everything connected with it was entirely new to me; but most helpful and inspiring I found it. For in face of tremendous difficulties, that seemed to my inexperienced eyes insurmountable, I learned that prayer was the secret which overcame every obstacle, the key that ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... this sense of responsibility which far overtops all the arithmetic and history that he ever learned. The man who carried the message to Garcia is another fitting illustration of this same principle. In executing his commission he overcame difficulties that would have seemed insurmountable to a less intrepid man. He kept his eye on the goal and endured almost unspeakable hardships in pressing forward toward this goal. Somehow and somewhere in his life he had learned the meaning of responsibility and so felt that he must not fail. The world came to know him as a hero because he was ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... enjoy the peace and quiet of country life. I must remain in the noise and turmoil of the world, and see what will become of poor Prussia. I intend going to Kolberg; the fortress is strong and impregnable; it will be an insurmountable bulwark against the enemy, and I have several intimate friends at the fortress. I will stay with them till ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the dream of a life of affection, of peace, the want of loving and of being loved, which a fast man so often feels between thirty and forty. His insurmountable lassitude of that circle of pleasure in which he has turned, like a horse in a circus, the voids in his existence which the marriage of his bachelor friends cause, and which in his selfishness he looks upon as desertion, and whom he, nevertheless, envies, which had at last ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... trough; mounted to another field of crumbled stones; and rose unevenly to a barrier that he remembered with a pang of chagrin. This was what at the first glance would have appeared to be a solid and insurmountable wall of rock, perhaps fifteen feet in height, and stretching away to the very edge of the plateau at his right, and to a wilderness of granite on the left. But directly ahead of him the wall was cleft, and there was a narrow pathway climbing up between ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... admiration from De Witt's marvellous diplomatic dexterity, and from the skill and courage with which he achieved his end in the face of obstacles and difficulties that seemed insurmountable; but for the course of double-dealing and chicanery by which he triumphed, the only defence that can be offered is that the council-pensionary really believed that peace was an absolute necessity for his country, and ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... of you to say so,—the first part, I mean,—if you could possibly have helped it. But there are insurmountable obstacles on that Dixville road—to us. There's a lion in the way. Don't you see we should be like the little ragged boys running after the soldier-company? We couldn't think of putting ourselves in that 'bony light,' especially before the eyes of Mrs.—Grundy." ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... encountered in order to gain their experience; have no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made, of the undaunted efforts they have put forth, of the faith they have exercised, that they might overcome the apparently insurmountable, and realize the Vision of their heart. They do not know the darkness and the heartaches; they only see the light and joy, and call it "luck". They do not see the long and arduous journey, but only behold the pleasant goal, and call it "good fortune," ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... correspondents would enjoy exceptional opportunities, enabling them to get mental snap-shots of picturesque events and to acquire valuable first-hand information for writing magazine articles or books, but that from a newspaper standpoint there would be insurmountable difficulties preventing them from getting their "news to market," that is to say, in getting their despatches on the wires for their respective papers. However, Mr. Herrick is doing everything he can to obtain all possible facilities for Mr. Davis ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... raving?" said she; "I have no right to question your selection of a lover or doubt your power, Angelique. But are you sure there exists no insurmountable obstacle to oppose these high aspirations? It is whispered that the Intendant has a wife, whom he keeps in the seclusion of Beaumanoir. Is ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... therefore difficulties insurmountable, and such as I knew not what to do in. I had such strong impressions on my mind about discovering myself to my brother, formerly my husband, that I could not withstand them; and the rather, because it ran constantly in my thoughts, that if I did not ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... academic career, and was ready to enter into the office of the ministry, his progress was obstructed by a difficulty which, for a time, proved insurmountable. Being conscientiously convinced that the prelatic system of church government is of human invention, and not of Divine institution, and having seen the bitter fruits it bore in Scotland, he would not submit to receive ordination from a bishop, and ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... not believe the dervish, who spoke like an honest man. My insurmountable desire of seeing at my will all the treasures in the world and perhaps of enjoying those treasures to the extent I coveted, had such an effect upon me, that I could not hearken to his remonstrances, nor be persuaded of what was however ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... harbour destined for South Carolina. I do not go in her. With unspeakable regret, therefore, the projected visit is abandoned—wholly and absolutely abandoned. The pain of my own disappointment leaves me no room for any sympathy with yours. There is one insurmountable obstacle, which I leave you to conjecture. If that were removed, it would yet, for other reasons, be barely possible for me to go at this time. But enough of disappointment; let us talk ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... the student," replied the oracle smiling. "One must not look for linguists everywhere. In my own especial case—if one may cite one's self as an example—I found no great, no insurmountable difficulty in mastering, ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... valiant parts and qualities. So was her heart subdued to an implicit devotion to the man she had selected for a husband that his very color, which to all but this discerning lady would have proved an insurmountable objection, was by her esteemed above all the white skins and clear complexions of the young ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... which avarice shall receive its appropriate and most severe punishment. For you know that the grand test by which we shall be judged is charity. "I was hungry, and ye gave me meat"; and of all the constructions of charity covetousness is the most obstinate and insurmountable. ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... but insurmountable aversion to open spaces. The victims are oppressed by a terrible anxiety when crossing a field. I have known a man who would be terrified at the idea of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the present case—show the necessity of the remedy clearly, and urge it respectfully without pretending to find fault with the Judges; merely say that their interpretation of the laws of evidence laid down for their guidance, however conscientious, forms an insurmountable obstacle to the conviction of offenders by hereditary profession, whose system has been founded upon the experience of their ancestors in the most successful modes of defeating these laws, and the technicalities ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... treatise upon the compilation of the Gospels would be a work of itself. Thanks to the excellent researches of which this question has been the object during thirty years, a problem which was formerly judged insurmountable has obtained a solution which, though it leaves room for many uncertainties, fully suffices for the necessities of history. We shall have occasion to return to this in our Second Book, the composition of the Gospels having been one of the most important facts for the ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... it is just this which, even in its beginnings, goes beyond the time at which this pretended vaticinium post eventum is placed by Tuch, Bleek, and Ewald; for, by this assumption of theirs, they are necessarily limited to the time before David, if they wish to avoid the insurmountable difficulties which arise from what is said of Levi and of Joseph. But to the man who looks deeper, vers. 8-10 are just the seal of the divinity, and hence of the genuineness also, of this prophecy, and, with all his heart, he ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... basis of the immediate impression of feeling, but we cannot say how much stronger it is, nor with reason assert that it is twice or half as intense. Herbart's mathematical psychology was wrecked by this insurmountable difficulty. The demand for exactness which it raised, but which it was unable to satisfy with the means at its disposal, has recently been renewed, and has led to assured results in psycho-physics, which works on a different basis and ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... the stimuli that triggered UFO sightings, while not an insurmountable task, was a long, tedious process. The identification of known objects was routine, and caused no excitement. The excitement and serious interest occurred when we received UFO reports in which the ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... some inches above the soil. Slung by the labourer's spade, which has just broken his back, the Mole falls here, there, anywhere, at random; and where the body falls, no matter what the obstacles, provided that they be not insurmountable, there ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... for the existence of such insurmountable obstacles, is it to be supposed that persons who have resided above twenty years within sight of this Alpine chain of hills, would have so long suppressed a a curiosity, of the existence of which every day gives some evidence, and have ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... Morillo. Yet the Royalist cause made no progress. Morillo's dominion was like that famous Haarlem lake which occupied so large an extent of the lands of Holland; it might be great and threatening, but barriers insurmountable, though unpretending, forbade its expansion, and perseverance gradually succeeded in curtailing its limits. Whatever the hand of Morillo covered, he possessed; but his authority ceased outside the range of his guns. His men were growing weary of the struggle; few reinforcements ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... we could get but little foothold upon them even in their least precipitous parts; in some places, where the ascent was nearly perpendicular, the difficulty was, of course, much aggravated; and, indeed, for some time we thought insurmountable. We took courage, however, from despair, and what, by dint of cutting steps in the soft stone with our bowie knives, and swinging at the risk of our lives, to small projecting points of a harder ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that a born coward's make and temperament would be an absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... other, looked with great surprise, and some marks of disgust, at our people, and at last went away altogether, expressing by signs that they suspected the strangers of eating human flesh. Our officer endeavoured to free himself and his shipmates from this suspicion; but the want of language was an insurmountable obstacle to his undertaking, even supposing it possible to persuade a set of people, who had never seen a quadruped ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... winter-evening was cold; and today he wisht for the presence of his fellow traveller, though at other times wont to avoid his society; for on this evening he purpost to disclose a secret to him and ask his advice. The timid, shy Emilius found so many difficulties, such insurmountable hinderances, in every affair he was engaged in, and in every event that befell him, that it almost seemed as if his destiny had been in an ironical mood when it threw him and Roderick together, Roderick being in all things the reverse of his friend. ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... these problems were not bad enough, the internal organization of the medical department of the army was so chaotic that, even if adequate supplies were available and if the almost insurmountable problems of communications and transportation were solved, it is almost certain that shortages would have developed at least during the campaign of 1776. Add to this the fact that any retreating army is subject to loss of ...
— Drug Supplies in the American Revolution • George B. Griffenhagen
... the fortress within the city, which was held for him. And although Niccolo drove the Genoese from the mountains, took from them the valley of Pozeveri, where they had entrenched themselves, and obliged them to seek refuge within the walls of the city, he still found such an insurmountable obstacle in the resolute defense of the citizens, that he was compelled to withdraw. On this, at the suggestion of the Florentine exiles, he commanded Niccolo to attack them on the eastern side, upon ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... the minutes elapsed and the time for the departure of the east-bound express drew near. For the success of the desperate venture turned upon this: that the receiver's special must leave ahead of the passenger train. With the express blocking the way the difficulties became insurmountable. ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... full before Zillah's mind one galling yet undeniable truth, which showed her an insurmountable obstacle in the way of her plan. To one utterly unaccustomed to control of any kind, the thought added fresh rage, and she now sought refuge in thinking how she could best encounter her new enemy, Lord Chetwynde, and what she might say to show how she scorned him and his son. She succeeded ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... therefore possible that the Selenites have planted their flag on at least one of their poles, whereas the Parrys and Franklins of England, the Kanes and the Wilkeses of America, the Dumont d'Urvilles and the Lamberts of France, have so far met with obstacles completely insurmountable, while in search of those unknown points of our ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... be carried at least twenty miles to the westward, and every foot of the ground apparently as good as that on which they were now at work; but we found here, that although the land was tolerable, there would be great, and I think an insurmountable difficulty, in attempting an extensive farm, chiefly for ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... glamour of the cash was irresistible. Each felt that he must see his treasure separate with the eye of flesh, handle it in the hard coin, mark it for his own, and stand forth to himself the approved owner. And here an insurmountable difficulty barred the way. There were some seventeen shillings in English silver, the rest was Chile; and the Chile dollar, which had been taken at the rate of six to the pound sterling, was practically their smallest coin. It was decided, therefore, to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were the same. When in search of what really existed he sometimes found it; when in pursuit of a chimaera he could not but fail; but in either case he displayed the same great qualities, and that obstinate perseverance which must conquer all difficulties except those really insurmountable." ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... objections, too, to reserving the Bill which I think I shall consider insurmountable, whatever obloquy I may for the time entail on myself by declining to lend myself even to this extent to the plans of those who wish to bring ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... indeed shared, though in different degrees and forms, by the whole little party—the soul of one in it totally absorbed. But owing to some insurmountable obstacles, occasioning delays, by the exhausted state of the overwrought Lady Albina; and notwithstanding the necessity of getting on as fast as possible, to be out of the reach of the enraged earl, should he have missed and traced his daughter ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... however, there is an insurmountable barrier surrounding them, the matter of language. The knowledge of Greek and Latin that we acquired at school has become painfully rusty. Is it worth while slogging away laboriously with grammar and dictionary at the expense of valuable time which might otherwise be ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... the right by the rocks of Mount Oeta, and flanked on the left by impassable morasses, which finally lose themselves in the waters of the gulf of Mulia. A few narrow and difficult tracts traverse the ridge of Oeta; but these, though passable to a small body of infantry, present insurmountable obstacles to the advance of an army. To the pass of Thermopylae, in the spring of the year 280 B.C., the Brenn directed his march. Aware of its vital importance, the Athenians, Boeotians, Locrians, Phocians, and Megarians, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... careful consideration. It comprises a brief but clear sketch of Darwin's views, followed by an enumeration of the leading difficulties in the way of their acceptance; difficulties which would appear to be insurmountable to Professor Kolliker, inasmuch as he proposes to replace Mr. Darwin's Theory by one which he terms the 'Theory of Heterogeneous Generation.' We shall proceed to consider first the destructive, and secondly, the ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... bird's nest-building—are so complex and so finely adjusted to an end, that it is straining belief to suppose that they could have arisen gradually by reflex adaptation alone. There is also a further difficulty with the reflex theory which has seemed insurmountable to many of the ablest psychologists of animal life; the difficulty, namely, that many of the instincts require the action of a great many muscles at the same time, so acting in "correlation" with or support of one another that it is impossible to ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... likeness, forgot my attributes. When he gave me that useless tail, he did not see that I held the shepherd's staff of Osiris; that from Mercury I had inherited his caduceus. In vain have they thought to build up an insurmountable wall between the two worlds; I have wings to my heels, I have flown over. By a kindly rebellion of that slandered Spirit, of that ruthless monster, succour has been given to those who mourned; mothers, lovers, have found comfort. He has taken pity on them in defiance ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... sir, that the matter has gone no further on either side," Brunner answered gravely. "I had no idea that Mlle. Cecile was an only daughter. Anybody else would consider this an advantage; but to me, believe me, it is an insurmountable ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... different kinds in the same substratum, and therefore the mixture not only of different sorts of mycelia, but also that different kinds of spores are sown. With some care and patience, these difficulties are in no way insurmountable, and they must at any rate be overcome; the organic continuity or non-continuity must be cleared up, unless the question respecting the course of development, and the series of forms of special kinds, be laid ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... which States incrust themselves with, once in a century, if so often, a poetic act and record occur. These are the jets of thought into affairs, when, roused by danger or inspired by genius, the political leaders of the day break the else insurmountable routine of class and local legislation, and take a step forward in the direction of catholic and universal interests. Every step in the history of political liberty is a sally of the human mind into the untried future, and has the interest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... in no respect veiled over; she is an ambiguous being made up of royal pride, female vanity, luxury, inconstancy, and true attachment. Although the mutual passion of herself and Antony is without moral dignity, it still excites our sympathy as an insurmountable fascination:— they seem formed for each other, and Cleopatra is as remarkable for her seductive charms as Antony for the splendour of his deeds. As they die for each other, we forgive them for having lived for each other. The open ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... explorations into every bay and inlet of the Central American isthmus, to discover, if possible, a short route to the Indies, or "from Cadiz to Cathay," the human mind has not been willing to rest content and accept as insurmountable the natural obstacles on the Isthmus which prevent uninterrupted communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Excepting, possibly, Arctic explorations, in all the romantic history of ancient and modern commerce, in all the annals of the early navigators ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... all who approved the secession of Kentucky, was her isolated position. Not only did the long hesitation of Virginia and Tennessee effectually abate the ardor and resolution of the Kentuckians who desired to unite their State to the Southern Confederacy, but while it lasted it was an insurmountable, physical barrier in the way of such an undertaking. With those States antagonistic to the Southern movement, it would have been madness for Kentucky to have attempted to join it. When at length, Virginia and Tennessee passed their ordinances of secession, Kentucky had become ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... certificates, schedules, and other columned documents, I had hours of walking to perform, and most courteous and tedious attention to endure, and then paid for sanitary dues, "two sous per ton," that was threepence. Finally, there was this insurmountable difficulty, that though all my ship's papers were en regle, they must be signed "by two persons on board," so I offered to sign first as captain and then as cook. They never troubled me again in any other port, probably ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... who can help him. Is our cathedral forgotten? I do not believe it. You are not the woman to forget. The time is not far off when we will crown our cathedral hand in hand. Only when your love dies can the barrier between us become insurmountable. If your love lives, then, as surely as there is a God in Heaven, I will come and ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... too—that settles it—not a word, mind; if it's sprung upon her at a few days' notice it may come off. If she has time to think she'll discover insurmountable difficulties. Strategy, my dear, strategy must be ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... beckons over insurmountable barriers to uninhabitable realms; promises insupportable possibilities; lures to an ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... saw very plainly that a false step might be fatal in the brutal whirl of waters, which came rushing in from afar with dizzy speed and broke against the insurmountable obstacle, and in receding dashed against other waves which followed them. From this cause proceeded the perpetual fusillade of waters which rushed into the crevasse without danger ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... relative position of the two boys toward the work in hand was reversed. At first, when the mechanical difficulties seemed insurmountable, Bobby's perseverance had been inexhaustible, while Johnny was a dozen times inclined to let the whole problem go smash. Now, when the task of feeding into the press the thousand necessary to fill orders seemed endless, Johnny's patience rose more than adequate to the occasion, while ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... too, because he always hid it in his turned-up collar. He wore dark spectacles and flannel vests, stuffed up his ears with cotton-wool, and when he got into a cab always told the driver to put up the hood. In short, the man displayed a constant and insurmountable impulse to wrap himself in a covering, to make himself, so to speak, a case which would isolate him and protect him from external influences. Reality irritated him, frightened him, kept him in continual agitation, and, perhaps to justify his timidity, his aversion ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... say so,—the first part, I mean,—if you could possibly have helped it. But there are insurmountable obstacles on that Dixville road—to us. There's a lion in the way. Don't you see we should be like the little ragged boys running after the soldier-company? We couldn't think of putting ourselves in ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... city and must possess hundreds of sweet young girls within its borders. Could he contemplate without wonder the fact that he had been led to the door of the one above all others between whom and himself Fate had set such an insurmountable barrier? He must have been struck deeply by the coincidence; he must ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... criminal he is apt to transmit to his offspring a physical defect which will make it difficult for him to adapt himself to the conditions of the society in which he is placed. This difficulty becomes almost, though not quite, insurmountable when the environment is one in which the practice of vice and dishonesty is easier than that of virtue ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... kept free? Beheld I not The road of duty close beside me—but One little step, and once more I was in it! 20 Where am I? Whither have I been transported? No road, no track behind me, but a wall, Impenetrable, insurmountable, Rises obedient to the spells I muttered And meant not—my own doings tower behind me. 25 A punishable man I seem, the guilt, Try what I will, I cannot roll off from me; The equivocal demeanour of my life Bears witness on my prosecutor's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... hurdle which often floors the rider, and Thomas too was doomed to find the final ordeal an insurmountable one. As he crossed the room some evil chance made him think of the gossip outside and of his allusion to the abstruse substance known as cacodyl. Once let a candidate's mind hit upon such an idea as this, and nothing will ever get it out of his thoughts. Tom felt his head buzz round, ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... swiftly as in their younger days. There was not the slightest hesitation in their direction, though there were indeed, frequent pauses during which the Indian's keen hearing was strained for an expected sound. After each such halt Pedro would resume his path, climbing over rocks which looked insurmountable and skirting others by ledges less than a span's width. Over this part of the canyon wall none of the Sobrante ranchmen had ever come; though below it, along a smoother portion, ran the flume that watered the ranch ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... her own chance with young Delvile, Miss Belfield she was sure could not have any: neither her birth nor education fitted her for his rank in life, and even were both unexceptionable, the smallness of her fortune, as Mr Monckton had instructed her, would be an obstacle insurmountable. ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... is not till that vivid face and that piercing voice thrill her sight and her ear again that all misgiving vanishes. There is nothing in life that can compensate for long partings. There ought to be few or no insurmountable obstacles to the frequent meetings, however short, of those who love each other. No duties and no privileges can be of more importance than the preservation, in all their entireness, of ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... political, diplomacy of the Government may be most justly complimented for its mastery of prejudices and impediments, which, under the circumstances, and in view of the peculiar system to be combated, appeared almost insurmountable. Common honesty and candour must compel this acknowledgment, even from men so desperate in their antipathies to the political system of Russia, as Mr Urquhart or Mr Cargill—antipathies, by the way, with which we shall not hesitate to express a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... our leader suddenly came to a dead halt. I was next to him, and coming up as close as I could, I found that one step further would have precipitated the adventurous guide into an abyss, the bottom and sides of which were undistinguishable; after gazing for a moment into this apparently insurmountable obstacle to our further progress, I could just perceive a narrow ledge about sixteen feet below me, that the eye could trace for a few yards only, beyond which it was lost in the deep gloom surrounding us. Our conductor ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... encouraged the freed convicts to leave Sydney and form little communities inland. But his greatest achievement in the way of road-making was the highway across the Blue Mountains. This range had for years presented an insurmountable barrier. Many persons—including the intrepid Bass—had attempted to cross it, but in vain; the only one who succeeded even in penetrating far into that wild and rugged country was a gentleman called Caley, who stopped at the edge of ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... basis," said Kate, "just one more question and we'll proceed with our drive. From the same standpoint: would you say from your observation and experience that the mother of the man had any insurmountable objection ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... itself. But consequences were associated with it which might affect me more seriously still. In so far as the attainment of the one object of my life might yet depend on my personal association with Miserrimus Dexter, an insurmountable obstacle appeared to be now placed in my way. Even in my husband's interests, ought I to permit a man who had grossly insulted me to approach me again? Although I was no prude, I recoiled from the thought ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... again. The tragedy of giving birth to a child—ah, she could not go through that a second time, at least under the same conditions. She could not bring herself to tell him about Vesta, but she must voice this insurmountable objection. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... practiced for years among Endbury ladies without having some knowledge of them and a corresponding readiness of mind in meeting the difficulties they declared insurmountable. "I'll buy you a white marseilles bedspread on our way back from the ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... fortunately were succeeded by other men of character, and the good work went steadily on. In looking back to the problems that confronted the appointed board and the first elected board, also headed by Dr. Taylor, they seem insurmountable. ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... whole science of housekeeping, tersely and clearly written, with a flavor of experience about it that makes one accept it as authoritative. It is a staff upon which the young housekeeper may confidently lean, and by the aid of which she may overcome obstacles which without it would seem insurmountable. Mrs. Power does not believe in a house keeping itself. It requires continual care and oversight, and a clear knowledge of what is to be done. She believes, too, that a house can be well kept as easily as badly kept, and that a bright, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... sorrows and acquainted with grief,' and had to endure 'the contradiction of sinners.' He was poor, and suffered hunger and fatigue. He was tempted by the devil. His path was obstructed with apparently insurmountable difficulties from the outset. His words and miracles called forth the bitter hatred of the world, which resulted at last in the bloody counsel of death. The Pharisees and Sadducees forgot their jealousies and quarrels in opposing him. They rejected and perverted his testimony; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... till it wellnigh circumnavigated the vast head. It seemed first of all to make straight for the ears on either side. Then, quite suddenly, finding these obstacles insurmountable, it dodged underneath them, and the scared observer could almost imagine its two ends meeting with a click somewhere in the wilderness at the back of that unseen hemisphere of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... Russian Riessers applied themselves to their task, they met with insurmountable difficulties. When the Razswyet, which was edited by Osip (Joseph) Rabinovich, attempted to lay bare the inner wounds of Jewish life, it encountered the concerted opposition of all prominent Jews, who were of the opinion that an organ employing the language of the country ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... the Government of the French Republic I tender my warmest and most sincere wishes that the Czecho-Slovak State may speedily become, through the common efforts of all the Allies and in close union with Poland and the Jugoslav State, an insurmountable barrier to Teutonic aggression and a factor for peace in a reconstituted Europe in accordance with the principles of justice and ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... by the wind along the crisscross lines of bone-white wood left high on the beach, forming a wall of flame between him and the interior, not, however, an insurmountable barrier to ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... over its bare expanse save at a considerable loss. The infantry clung in a long fringe to the edge of the position, but for two hours no guns could be brought up to their support, as the steepness of the slope was insurmountable. It was all that the stormers could do to hold their ground, as they were enfiladed by a Vickers-Maxim, and exposed to showers of shrapnel as well as to an incessant rifle fire. Never were guns so welcome as those of ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... little time at my disposal, the difficulties connected with these new experiments would have been insurmountable had I not found a mode of practicing without neglecting my business. It was the fashion in those days to wear coats with large pockets on the hips, called a la proprietaire, so whenever my hands were not otherwise engaged they slipped naturally into ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... I presently espied that for which I had looked —a gate set in the midst of the hedge, but it was closed, and never did a gate, before or since, appear quite so high and insurmountable; but, with the desperation of despair, I turned, ran at it, and sprang, swinging my arms above my head as I did so. My foot grazed the top bar—down I came, slipped, stumbled, regained my balance, and ran on over the springy turf. I heard a crash behind me, an oath, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... balked by the insurmountable wall of convention. She had ridden horses, to be sure, in her younger days; but when the foreman, at Rosalind's request, offered her a pony, she sniffed scornfully and marched down the slope toward the private ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... less at peace than at this moment. The more his heart felt that it was painful, the more his reason told him it was necessary that he should part from Grace Nugent. To his union with her there was an obstacle, which his prudence told him ought to be insurmountable; yet he felt that, during the few days he had been with her, the few hours he had been near her, he had, with his utmost power over himself, scarcely been master of his passion, or capable of concealing ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... to consider,—to consider how it is. I will try to keep the balance true. Of what use to take the chair, and glibly rattle off theories of societies, religion, and nature, when I know that practical objections lie in the way, insurmountable by me and by my mates? Why so talkative in public, when each of my neighbors can pin me to my seat by arguments I cannot refute? Why pretend that life is so simple a game, when we know how subtle and elusive ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of the Chilian officers now began to propound schemes, each of which was promising enough—up to a certain point, at which somebody was certain to point out an insurmountable difficulty. One suggested a concerted attack by the entire Chilian squadron; but this was manifestly impossible, in face of the enormously powerful guns which the Peruvians could bring to bear. Another put forward the suggestion that an assault could be delivered in the rear ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... temporarily drawn his bank account down to the irreducible minimum and borrowed on his securities up to the insurmountable maximum. It was a bad time for his children to tap him. But here they were—Jno. P., Jerry, and Julia—all very unctuous over the home-coming, and yet all of them evidently cherishing an ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... view which we take of the theory of natural selection itself. If we understand this theory to set forth natural selection as the sole cause of organic evolution, then all the above objections to the theory are not merely, as already stated, valid and formidable, but as I will now add, logically insurmountable. On the other hand, if we take theory to consist merely in setting forth natural selection as a factor of organic evolution, even although we believe it to have been the chief factor or principal cause, all ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... then, as inconsistent as vice? and can the same character be thus high-souled, thus nobly disinterested with regard to riches, whose pride is so narrow and so insurmountable, with respect to ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... impressed with frightful visions. At other times, on the contrary, I felt a sort of quiescence, in the idea that, having once pronounced my vows, I should be delivered for ever from the burden of thought and will. Then I abandoned myself to an insurmountable torpor, like those unfortunate wretches, who, surprised by a snow-storm, yield to a suicidal repose. Thus I awaited the fatal moment. At last, according to the rule of discipline, choking with the death rattle,(17) I hastened the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... you are!" she cried again, catching Eugene's hand. "You are just beginning life; you find barriers at the outset that many a man finds insurmountable; a woman's hand opens the way and you shrink back! Why, you are sure to succeed! You will have a brilliant future. Success is written on that broad forehead of yours, and will you not be able to repay me my loan of to-day? Did ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... another, and his cause never advanced. Each day he found the citadel he was besieging girt in by new and intricate defences. The reason was simple enough: the girl was not in love with him. Her objections, her arguments, her reasons were as absurd as he proved them to be. But they were insurmountable because they were really various disguises of the fact that she did not care for him. They were disguises to herself as well as to him. He was so altogether a good fellow, so earnest, honest, and desperate a lover that the primary fact that she did not want his love did not present itself, and she ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... have also offered an almost insurmountable obstacle to the production of any work from an American hand until very recently. The Boston Symphony Orchestra has been a noble exception to this rule, and has given about the only opening possible to the native writer. The Chicago Orchestra, in eight seasons ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... states of social feeling, rather than to perform specific social functions. War is seized upon by the social consciousness, so to speak, as an opportunity to extend itself and become more intense, and indeed in war we see the social consciousness performing a work of genius, overcoming apparently insurmountable obstacles and aversions. Under such circumstances, social feeling becomes strongly fortified against many suggestions that tend to break it down. An intense ferocity is directed toward any disloyal member ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... and his relatives won't hear of his going on the stage. Alexandre Dumas, after listening to him, offered to pay all necessary expenses to enable him to attend the Conservatoire, but it was of no use: they are very religious in the family, and have an insurmountable horror of theatres. He is, himself, a very simple, good-natured fellow, and does not require much pressing to sing whenever he is asked. I know some of his friends, and the lady organist of the church particularly; and if you wish to hear him at ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... insurmountable obstacles are there in the way of committing and profiting by crime! On leaving Belley, Louis Rey, according to Peytel's statement, knowing that his master would return with money, provided himself with a holster pistol, which Madame Peytel had once before perceived ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... men have passed from the stage of action, who have not left in the history of their lives indelible marks of ambition or folly, which produced insurmountable reverses, and rendered the whole a mere caricature, that can be examined only with disgust and regret. Such pictures, however, are profitable, for "by others' faults wise ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... homesteads—show every variety of savage grandeur and soft beauty till we gradually reach the threshold of Gavarnie. This is aptly called "chaos" which we might fancifully suppose the leavings, "the fragments that were left," of the semicircular wall now visible, thrown up by transhuman builders, insurmountable barrier between heaven and earth. No sooner does the awful amphitheatre break upon the view, than we discern the white line of the principal fall, a slender silvery column reaching, so it seems, from star-land and moon-land to earth; river of ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... don't much care.' Again his vagueness jarred on me; there seemed to be some bar between us, invisible and insurmountable. And, after all, what was I doing here? Roughing it in a shabby little yacht, utterly out of my element, with a man who, a week ago, was nothing to me, and who now was a tiresome enigma. Like swift poison ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... day and night, in the black hole, is to inflict on the Marquesan torture inexpressible. Even his robberies are carried on in the plain daylight, under the open sky, with the stimulus of enterprise, and the countenance of an accomplice; his terror of the dark is still insurmountable; conceive, then, what he endures in his solitary dungeon; conceive how he longs to confess, become a full-fledged convict, and be allowed to sleep beside his comrades. While we were in Tai-o-hae a thief was under prevention. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Munich. It was not indeed until 1845, when the impost which had so long hampered their efforts was removed, that the optical artists of these islands were able to compete on equal terms with their rivals on the Continent. In the case of reflectors, however, there seemed no insurmountable obstacle to an almost unlimited increase of light-gathering capacity; and it was here, after some unproductive experiments with fluid lenses, that Lord Oxmantown ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... of plan after plan, but they all seemed crowded with insurmountable difficulties. We knew it was unlawful for any public conveyance to take us as passengers, without our master's consent. We were also perfectly aware of the startling fact, that had we left without this consent the professional slave-hunters would ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... good will of the architect whose guest he was; but he set it aside, for he was accustomed to owe all he gained to his own exertions, and though he still keenly felt in Hadrian the superiority of a powerful mind, their expedition through the city had not brought him any nearer to the Roman. Some insurmountable barrier stood fixed between himself and this restless, inquisitive man, who required so many answers that no one else had time to ask a question, and who when he was silent looked so absorbed and unapproachable that no one would ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Staggering through the wind and snow of the ever-increasing storm, he ran unexpectedly upon a lofty wall of rock looking to him like a high cliff. He had evidently lost the path, for here was an insurmountable obstacle. Clinging to the rough surface, he cautiously felt his way along the rock for some yards. He was still ascending, but the ground was rough and piled with small stones, which had crumbled off from ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... had gone steadily forward; but it was in Algeria that the extension of French influence had been most marked. The movement of expansion southwards was inevitable. With the progress of exploration it became increasingly evident that the Sahara constituted no insurmountable barrier between the French possessions in North and West Central Africa. But France had not only the hope of placing Algeria in touch with the Sudan to spur her forward. To consolidate her position in North-West Africa she desired to make French influence supreme in Morocco. The relations between ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Olynthians were likewise anxious to enrol Amphipolis as a member of their confederacy, and accordingly proposed to the Athenians to form an alliance for the purpose of defending Amphipolis against their mutual enemy. An alliance between these two powerful states would have proved an insurmountable obstacle to Philip's views: and it was therefore absolutely necessary to prevent this coalition. Here we have the first instance of Philip's skill and duplicity in negotiation. By secretly promising the Athenians that he would put Amphipolis into their hands if they would give him possession ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... Zichy," she noted in her diary, "is very good-looking in uniform, but not in plain clothes. Count Waldstein looks remarkably well in his pretty Hungarian uniform." With the latter young gentleman she wished to dance, but there was an insurmountable difficulty. "He could not dance quadrilles, and, as in my station I unfortunately cannot valse and gallop, I could not dance with him." Her birthday present from the King was of a pleasing nature, but it led to a painful domestic ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... performance, Mr. Hart asked the wandering Violoncellist if he was disposed to sell his instrument. "I have no objection, if I can get enough to buy another and something over," was the answer. The terms not being insurmountable, a bargain was struck, and the dealer in Fiddles walked away, taking his newly-acquired purchase under his arm. The itinerant trio, having become a duet, gave ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... Feeling—flushed with the victory it had obtained over its old antagonist, Reason—seemed, in every sense of the word, to have gained the day, and, despite all the 289 difficulties that lay before me—difficulties which I knew must appear all but insurmountable, whenever I should venture to look them steadily in the face—the one idea that Clara Saville loved me was ever present with me, and rendered me ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... said to be the aggressors, who can tell what latent provocation existed for perpetrating it? Of the numerous cases that could be cited, the following from a recent journal of an assistant protector, Mr. Parker, of the Lodden, will suffice to shew the insurmountable difficulty, I may add the impossibility, of bringing the guilty parties to justice, for in nine cases, I may say, out of ten, where natives are concerned, the only evidence that can be adduced is that of ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... an energetic nature," retorted the mistress, compassionately; "but she is so weak, so gentle! Ah! Jeanne, think what I have been to you; raise some insurmountable barrier between yourself ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to white, as a colour, in large spots or masses in landscape, especially in a mountainous country, are insurmountable. In Nature, pure white is scarcely ever found but in small objects, such as flowers: or in those which are transitory, as the clouds, foam of rivers, and snow. Mr. Gilpin, who notices this, has also ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... impression; and now she felt the annoyance of a rather wearied swimmer who, on nearing shore, to land, finds a smooth straight wall of rock when he had counted upon a clean firm beach. Her power, in the American air, seemed to have lost its prehensile attributes; the smooth wall of rock was insurmountable. "Surely je n'en suis pas la," she said to herself, "that I let it make me uncomfortable that a Mr. Robert Acton should n't honor me with a visit!" Yet she was vexed that he had not come; and she was ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... abolition of excise taxes would almost inevitably prove a serious if not an insurmountable obstacle to a thorough revision of the tariff and to any ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... he led the way to one of the large windows which stood open on the night. "You observe," he went on, "there is an iron ring in the upper masonry, and reeved through that a very efficacious rope. Now, mark my words: if you should find your disinclination to my niece's person insurmountable, I shall have you hanged out of this window before sunrise. I shall only proceed to such an extremity with the greatest regret, you may believe me. For it is not at all your death that I desire, but my niece's establishment ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all has been clear, each party, with increasing confidence, having insisted on their own position, and denounced their adversaries. A difficulty now arises which, at first sight, appears insurmountable. As the chapters are at present printed, the entire of the twenty-seventh is assigned to Job, and the paragraph from the eleventh to the twenty-third verses is in direct contradiction to all which he has maintained before—is, in fact, a concession ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... as proud and reserved as that of their mother. They did not associate with the youth of the Ghetto; it seemed as though they were not of their kind, as though an insurmountable barrier divided them. And many a bitter sneer was hurled ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... difficulty in aero-locomotion, is that of steering; because the atmosphere seems to present no substantial fulcrum which can be pushed against. But that this difficulty is not altogether insurmountable, is evident from the single fact, that birds really do steer their way through the air. This fact suggests, that a fulcrum is not necessarily a palpable substance: it may be pliant or movable. For instance, if we fasten the string of a kite to a ball, this ball, which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... the brow of a hill, after a long and gradual ascent, a richly cultivated and finely wooded hollow, surrounded by mountains, opened upon our view. As the abrupt faces of these eminences form an insurmountable barrier on three sides of the basin just alluded to, we fancied that the grotto must be there. But no! we had to descend, cross it, and mount again towards the south, by a steep path that wound up the least precipitous side ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... those reflections produced, are here given in his own words. "Worn down by sickness, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, half naked, and without any article of value, by which I might procure provisions, clothes, or lodging, I was now convinced, that the obstacles to my further progress were insurmountable. The tropical rains were already set in, the rice grounds and swamps were every where overflowed, and in a few days more, travelling of every kind, except by water, would be completely obstructed. The kowries, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... navy and in that of the Confederate States. To a European nation the argument must have been quite decisive; for to it, as distant, or more distant than Spain from Cuba, such an intermediate station would have been an almost insurmountable obstacle while in an enemy's hands, and an equally valuable base if wrested from him. To the United States these considerations were applicable only in part; for, while the inconvenience to Spain would be the same, the gain to us would be but little, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... obvious to common sense that any attempt on the part of the clergy or the laity of Upper Canada to crush the free exercise of religious belief, would be met not only with difficulties absolutely insurmountable, but by the withdrawal of all support from the home government; for, as the Queen of England is alike queen of the Presbyterian and of the Churchman, and is forbidden by the constitution to exercise power ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... not seem to have a ring of difficulty about it: but it is difficult—hedged around by it, but not, even to a nervous amateur or novice, insurmountable. Do all the work clean as lies in your power; have everything ready to your hand; act firmly as you can, and rapidly, whenever you have glueing in hand, and the result, be sure, will be in accordance. The second set of ribs is treated in every respect ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... the insurmountable height before them, and hastened with Dante to inquire the way of a troop of souls coming towards them. As they talked, Dante recognized one, blond and smiling, with a gash over one eyebrow and another over his heart. It was Manfredi, King of Apulia and Sicily, who was slain at Benevento by Charles ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... novel, has been rewarded with success. Even those works in which the desire to illustrate a principle has been the aim, when the picture has been brought within this homely frame, have had to contend with disadvantages that have been commonly found insurmountable. The latter being the intention of this book, the task has been undertaken with a perfect consciousness of all its difficulties, and with scarcely a hope of success. It would be indeed a desperate undertaking, to think of ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... cavalry—whose horses needed the sure-footedness of mules to get along, their riders having to dismount and lead their steeds—while for the little train of chariots the difficulties were almost insurmountable. The pony-like pairs that drew them were safer footed and got on better than the heavier animals that bore the Roman mounted men, but the chariots were always in need of help. Sometimes one wheel would be high in the ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... enemy. Trenches were opened, the roads and paths were obstructed, the bridges were broken up, and in the only practicable defiles large trees were cut in such a manner on both sides of the road as to fall across and lengthwise, which, with their branches interwoven, presented an insurmountable barrier; in a word, this wilderness, of itself by no means easy of passage, was thus rendered almost absolutely impenetrable. Nor did Schuyler rest satisfied with these precautions; he directed the cattle to be removed to the most distant places and the stores and ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... wish whatever to be rude to Mr. Morrow, I was much too initiated not to tend to more diplomacy; but I had a quick inspiration, and I entertained an insurmountable, an almost superstitious objection to his crossing the threshold of my friend's little lonely shabby consecrated workshop. "No, no—we shan't get at his life that way," I said. "The way to get at his life is to—But wait a moment!" I broke off and went ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... Massachusetts Historical Society, in whose library they now are, open to the examination of those interested in the subjects of which they treat. The collection was begun forty-five years ago, and its formation has been exceedingly slow, having been retarded by difficulties which seemed insurmountable, and for years were so in fact. Hence the completion of the series has required twice the time that would have ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... not amount to an offer; and the reason is, I think, sufficiently plain why the offer was not made: namely, that he had been staggered at what, I fear, is an insurmountable difficulty, with respect to the lead of the House of Commons. W. Pitt would certainly not hear of it, after his second peremptory refusal of the Treasury; T. Pitt as certainly not, after his refusal, for the second time, together with the comment afforded by a very long ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... I can still feel rising in me all the fever of my early years, all the enthusiasm of long ago, and that I should still be no less ardent a worker were not the weakness of my eyes and the failure of my strength to-day an insurmountable obstacle. ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... poor Paz, "to put an insurmountable barrier between us. Tell you good of Adam?" he said aloud. "I love him; you would not believe me; and I am incapable of telling you harm. My position ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... did not offer a single incident worthy of note, could stand it no longer. His usually active mind was occupied with one sole thought—how he might get out of Richmond at any cost. Several times had he even made the attempt, but was stopped by some insurmountable obstacle. However, the siege continued; and if the prisoners were anxious to escape and join Grant's army, certain of the besieged were no less anxious to join the Southern forces. Among them was one Jonathan ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... Jasper, being in such failing health, really depended on Polly to cheer him up. That removed the last straw that made it "putting one's self under an obligation," which to Mrs. Pepper's independent soul, had seemed insurmountable. ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... Hell he meets with any peculiarly difficult or precipitous track, frequently compares it to some road well known to his countrymen, which fallen rocks had blocked up, or a wintry flood had rendered impermeable. Spain presented, as it presents at this day, to the engineer, almost insurmountable difficulties. The Moorish provinces of the south alone possessed any tolerable roads; nor were the ways of Arragon or Castile mended after the wealth of Mexico and Peru had been poured into the Spanish ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... related; that ignorance of pure philosophy has caused to be taken for miraculous effects, and black magic, what is the simple effect of white magic, and the secrets of a philosophy hidden from the ignorant and common herd of men. Moreover, I confess that I see insurmountable difficulties in explaining the manner or properties of apparitions, whether we admit with several ancients that angels, demons, and disembodied souls have a sort of subtile transparent body of the nature of air, whether we believe them purely spiritual and disengaged from all ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... full harmony and rhythm, which made us laugh very much. During recreation he willingly joined our games, and he was not awkward, but he played with such feverish enthusiasm, and yet he was so absent-minded, that some of us felt an insurmountable aversion towards him. ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... reluctance to ask for assistance has not been sufficiently explained, there is one more consideration which might alone have sufficed to account for her conduct. Between her and Greif's mother there existed a great and wholly insurmountable antipathy. She could not understand how Greifenstein could have married such a woman. There was a mystery about it which she had never fathomed. Greifenstein himself was a stern, silent man of military appearance, a mighty hunter in the depths of the forest, a sort of grizzled ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... myself were deputed to open this work. Everything connected with it was entirely new to me; but most helpful and inspiring I found it. For in face of tremendous difficulties, that seemed to my inexperienced eyes insurmountable, I learned that prayer was the secret which overcame every obstacle, the key that ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... obtained than the ratifications. Execution was surrounded with insurmountable difficulties which in negotiation had been lightly skipped over at the stroke of a pen. At the very first step, that of military evacuation, there was a stumble. Maurice and Spinola were expected to withdraw their forces, and to undertake to bring in no troops in the future, and to make ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... uniformly small and strikingly similar throughout the large and very natural group. The family distinctions or features are quite pronounced and unmistakable, and it is the determination of the genera which presents obstacles—serious, indeed, but not insurmountable. "By their fruits shall ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... spacious, prairie-like glacier, with its many tributaries extending far back into the snowy recesses of its fountains, made a magnificent display of its wealth, and I was strongly tempted to go and explore it at all hazards. But winter had come, and the freezing of its fiords was an insurmountable obstacle. I had, therefore, to be content for the present with sketching and studying its main features at ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... not only the wealth of expedient which had hitherto distinguished him, but also an imperturbable tenacity, particularly in the Wilderness and on the march to the James, without which the almost insurmountable obstacles of that campaign could not have been overcome. During it and in the siege of Petersburg he met with many disappointments—on several occasions the shortcomings of generals, when at the point of success, leading to wretched failures. But ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... which he stood was the last of the ridges, for the elevation that lay directly across was a noble range of foothills, timbered, canyoned, apparently insurmountable for horses. Gray cliffs stood out of the green, crags of yellow ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... provinces may, in some degree, be ascribed to the policy of Constantine, as the barbarians of the Euxine, who in the preceding age had poured their armaments into the heart of the Mediterranean, soon desisted from the exercise of piracy, and despaired of forcing this insurmountable barrier. When the gates of the Hellespont and Bosphorus were shut, the capital still enjoyed within their spacious enclosure every production which could supply the wants, or gratify the luxury, of its numerous inhabitants. The sea-coasts of Thrace and Bithynia, which languish ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... promised to write as soon as there was anything definite to say, and had left her his address, and asked her to write also. But the address frightened her. It was in New York, at a club with a long name in Fifth Avenue: it seemed to raise an insurmountable barrier between them. Once or twice, in the first days, she got out a sheet of paper, and sat looking at it, and trying to think what to say; but she had the feeling that her letter would never reach its ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... sweetest possible scenery to ride or walk through, with a river and boats, and every accessory the frankest hospitality could furnish, might reasonably be presumed attractive enough to arrest a wayfarer in search of comfort: one drawback alone was to me insurmountable, mine ancient and implacable foes the musquito tribe were in full possession. These verdant shades form a portion of their hunting-ground on the Hudson; with them the war-hatchet is never buried; I had ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... far overtops all the arithmetic and history that he ever learned. The man who carried the message to Garcia is another fitting illustration of this same principle. In executing his commission he overcame difficulties that would have seemed insurmountable to a less intrepid man. He kept his eye on the goal and endured almost unspeakable hardships in pressing forward toward this goal. Somehow and somewhere in his life he had learned the meaning of responsibility ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... fever fast gained on the unfortunate hunter, racking his body and adding physical torture to his mental anguish. Still he struggled to overcome the insurmountable obstacles in his way. But, while a firm resolve may do many things there is also a limit to all things, and there came a day when Oomah could go no further. He had already wandered far from the country so well known to him. Around him grew castanha trees with nuts in shells like cannon-balls ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... in all its particulars. The obstacles which had to be overcome seemed insurmountable. There were walled cities to be taken, fortified mountain passes to be carried by storm, and frowning castles with cannon on the battlements to be assaulted by regiments whose valor and impetuosity were their ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... confirmation is it to the sincere, humble Christian, and what an insurmountable barrier does it present to the infidel, to perceive, in the list of Christian believers, the exalted and venerable name of Newton! a man who must be acknowledged to be an ornament of human nature, when we consider the wide compass of his abilities, the ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... are," his companion as ardently pursued; "our convictions, our susceptibilities. We may be wrong, we may be hollow, we may be pretentious, we mayn't be able to say on what it all rests; but there we are, and the fact's insurmountable. It's simply impossible for us to live with vulgar people. It's a defect, no doubt; it's an immense inconvenience, and in the days we live in it's sadly against one's interest. But we're made like that and we must understand ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... an insurmountable horror of anything that would tend to bring my own personality, my most transitory, spectral unimportant being into the limelight. To see my name printed or to hear it discussed was quite indifferent to me, even very disagreeable. I should be willing to bear it for Christ's ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... of a powerful French corps d'armee towards Barcelona, Lord Cochrane blew up the roads along the coast, and taught the Spanish peasantry how to do so inland. By blowing up the cliff roads, near Mongat, Lord Cochrane interposed an insurmountable obstacle between the army and its artillery, capturing and throwing into the sea a considerable number of field-pieces, so that the operations of the French were rendered nugatory. For these services, Lord Cochrane, notwithstanding the strong representations of Lord Collingwood to the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... first few clashes the early Terran explorers had endeavored to promote a truce between the species, only to discover that between Throg and man there appeared to be no meeting ground at all—total differences of mental processes producing insurmountable misunderstanding. There was simply no point of communication. So the Terrans had suffered one smarting defeat after another until they perfected the grid. And now their colonies were safe, at least when ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... the metamorphosis of the young backwoodsman, but not so easily that of Sure-shot. The nez retrousse, thin yellow hair, and green-grey eyes appeared to be insurmountable obstacles to the Indianising of the ex-rifleman. Peg-leg, however, proved an artist of skill. The chevelure of Sure-shot, well saturated with charcoal paste, assumed a different hue. A black circle around each eye neutralised the tint of both iris and pupil. To his face was ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... that some insurmountable difficulty, the fatigue, perhaps, or the disobedience, of the conquerors, prevented Claudius from completing in one day the destruction of the Goths. The war was diffused over the province of Maesia, Thrace, and Macedonia, and its operations drawn out into a variety ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... calmly over what I have written. I would not have written on the subject even to you, till the matter was quite settled, if I had not thought that you ought to have full time to make up your mind. If you feel an insurmountable aversion to India, I will do all in my power to make your residence in England comfortable during my absence, and to enable you to confer instead of receiving benefits. But if my dear sister would consent to give me, at this great crisis ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... with much interest to the first woman member of Congress, Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who reviewed the almost insurmountable difficulties of amending many State constitutions for woman suffrage and made an earnest plea for the Federal Amendment. Senator Charles S. Thomas of Colorado, who for the past twenty-five years had been a consistent ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... her in his presence, endeavoring to present to him a mask of cold indifference. Yet her curiosity, as well as her affections, had been greatly stirred by his remark. What was it that he was about to say to her? Did he intend, in spite of the insurmountable obstacles between them, dared he, ask her to marry him? Tremblingly she waited for what he ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... weeks had passed through many phases of jealousy, hope, despair, and self-delusion. The joy she felt on seeing him again, the pride she took in him, the disgust Helen caused her, the relief she had not dared to own even to herself, when she fancied fate had put an insurmountable barrier between Paul and his cousin, the despair at finding it only a fancy, and the anguish of hearing him declare his unshaken purpose to marry his first love—all these conflicting emotions had led to this ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... variety of example for us, when He chooses some lives, and laying upon them, what seems to be a heavy burthen of sickness and infirmity, or filling them with a great modesty and retiringness of spirit, or shutting them up within very narrow and insurmountable barriers of circumstance, says to them, in a voice which it is impossible to misinterpret, "Serve Me in darkness and in silence; and let it be enough that I accept the faithfulness which is unknown ...
— Beside the Still Waters - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... cliff my fate was certain. I was almost exhausted, and my heart sank as I searched in vain for a way up. The distance was not great now, a bare fifty feet separating me from the topmost pinnacle, but though I walked along the bottom of this barrier for some distance it still presented the same insurmountable difficulties. ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... exercises of such a nature that no deviation from the established routine could be thought of was pernicious. But he showed that if any teacher had the temerity to turn from the traditional paths, the daring pioneer was likely to find insurmountable obstacles placed in the way of his advancement. The studies were "imprisoned" within the limits of a certain set of authors, and originality in thought or teaching was to be neither contemplated ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Vincent, have reached the ears of Melissa's father. I know the old gentleman too well to believe he will consent to receive you as his son-in-law, under your present embarrassments. Money is the god to which he implicitly bows. The case is difficult, but not insurmountable. You must first see Melissa; she is now in the next room. I will introduce you in; converse with her, after which I will lay ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... inveterate habit of never seeing or hearing anything which was disagreeable to him, unless it touched upon his personal affections. The beings who did not think as he did, were only phantoms in his eyes. As his manners were polished and graceful, it was easy to mistake his cold disdain or insurmountable aversion ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the subject are imperfect, and the best of them are more profuse in speculation and surmise than in solid fact. The information possessed has been drawn bit by bit from the reluctant Japanese. The difficulties of investigation have been almost insurmountable,—no visitor, during two hundred years, having been allowed the slightest freedom of association with the people, or opportunity for travel. With very few exceptions, foreigners have been confined to the extremest limit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... effected. The height of the ordinary rooms in which the work-people in manufactories are engaged is not more than from nine to eleven feet; and these are built in stories, the heat and effluvia of the lower rooms communicated to those above, and the difficulty of ventilation insurmountable. At Mr Trafford's, by an ingenious process, not unlike that which is practised in the House of Commons, the ventilation was also carried on from below, so that the whole building was kept at a steady ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... like Cedarcrantz, and Cedarcrantz has cut his lucky? This is a little tragedy, observe well - a tragedy! I may be right, I may be wrong in my judgment, but I am in treaty with my honour. I know not how it will seem to-morrow. Lloyd thought the barrier of honour insurmountable, and it is an ugly obstacle. He (Cedarcrantz) will likely meet my wife three days from now, may travel back with her, will be charming if he does; suppose this, and suppose him to arrive and find ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as smooth as a sloping roof, but even to the naked eye a shadow crossed it near the top. That shadow was a tremendous ridge of overhanging snow more than a hundred feet deep; and Samson now paused as he realised that it was insurmountable. He looked down and undoubtedly saw a part of the regiment waiting for him below. He turned and plodded slowly under the overhanging ridge until he came to the precipice at his left. It was a thousand feet sheer down. He retraced his steps and ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... does I am of opinion that we will be able to turn out a very saleable article. The growing of grapes here certainly requires considerable experience of a practical nature. This is not at all hard to obtain, and there are no insurmountable difficulties to the beginner, once he has learnt how to work his land so as to cause it to retain moisture during a dry spell, and to plant and prune his vines. These are matters in which any beginner can obtain practical ...
— Fruits of Queensland • Albert Benson
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