"Insoluble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... constipated; concrete &c. (hard) 323; knotted, knotty; gnarled; crystalline, crystallizable; thick, grumous|, stuffy. undissolved, unmelted[obs3], unliquefied[obs3], unthawed[obs3]. indivisible, indiscerptible[obs3], infrangible[obs3], indissolvable[obs3], indissoluble, insoluble, infusible. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... set at school who were ugly, stupid, and dull, and they were devoted to one another, though they none of them cared about her. Why had God sent her into the world, if she was not wanted? She found the problem insoluble, but a certain amount of light was thrown on it by one of ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... give up their rights in Bering Sea for a money payment, and to arrange for a measure of reciprocity in natural products and in a limited list of manufactures. But the question of the Alaskan boundary proved insoluble, and the Commission broke ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... There is a stove. The bell-rope hangs from the wire just to the right of my desk. Whoever rang it must have come right up to the desk to do it. But why should any criminal wish to ring the bell? It is a most insoluble mystery." ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... first sight presents a problem, I admit," he said, "but not so complete as to look absolutely insoluble. I have, as you may be aware, made a study of criminology, and in my researches, which have included criminality, have come across incidents which to the smartest detective brains were at the outset quite as baffling. Clement's tragic end is a great blow to me, and I am not going ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... which, though contrasting unfavourably with the L12,000 or L13,000 enjoyed by each of the Queen's Colleges, nevertheless would have seemed to cut the ground from under the feet of those who argued that the University question was insoluble since they would not countenance the application of public funds ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... centuries of agonizing wrestlings with nature, and of ceaseless questioning of the human heart, had yielded no results, then, at least, the lesson of their failure and defeat remained for the instruction of future generations. Either the problems they sought to solve were proved to be insoluble, or their methods of solution were found to be inadequate; for here the mightiest minds had grappled with the great problems of being and of destiny. Here vigorous intellects had struggled to pierce the darkness which hangs alike over the beginning and the end of human existence. Here profoundly ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... of problems of the soul,— Profound, insoluble, sublime; Some tell of Law's supreme control; And some retrace through distant time The evolution of mankind, And in its ever-broadening mind A hope for future ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... problems that the Japanese builders of the past had to face in the erection of a few of the great temples which still adorn the country have proved insoluble to many European engineers and architects. The erection and support of the magnificent pagoda at Nikko is an example in point. Dr. Dresser has referred to this and pointed out what he deemed a great waste of material in ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... monarchies. Equality here was not a name; it was a reality. Riches were not persecuted, because they were not envied. Here those problems connected with the labours of a working class, hitherto insoluble above ground, and above ground conducing to such bitterness between classes, were solved by a process the simplest,—a distinct and separate working class was dispensed with altogether. Mechanical inventions, constructed on the principles that baffled my research to ascertain, ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... are not here as those who face an insoluble riddle. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the resurrection of the dead; and with this key in our hand, we stand here at the grave's mouth, and looking backward, interpret the lesson of this closed life; and looking forward, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... washerwomen because they have to stand; farm labourers because they have to work in the cold; bakers because they have to work in the heat, &c. All workers would of course demand the maximum pay, and who could adjudicate on all the rival claims? The Wages Question seems likely to prove insoluble. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... part of the truth concerning the uncertainty of philosophy. There are many questions—and among them those that are of the profoundest interest to our spiritual life—which, so far as we can see, must remain insoluble to the human intellect unless its powers become of quite a different order from what they are now. Has the universe any unity of plan or purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is consciousness a permanent part of the universe, giving ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... solid, compact, impenetrable, unimpressible, unyielding, rigid, adamantine, dense, insoluble, flinty, indurate, indurated, infrangible; arduous, laborious, wearisome, onerous, burdensome, toilsome, tiresome, exhausting, difficult, knotty, intricate, puzzling, incomprehensible; irresistible, uncontrollable; severe, rigorous, unendurable, oppressive, unjust, grievous, calamitous, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... fate might be learned from the history of other nations. Thanks to the wisdom and independent spirit of our forefathers, this is not the case. Each State having sole charge of its local interests and domestic affairs, the problem, which to others has been insoluble, to us is made easy. Rapid, safe, and easy communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific will give cointelligence, unity of interest, and cooeperation among all parts of our continent-wide republic. The network of railroads which bind the North ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... problem of authorship partly as insoluble, partly as of slight importance for a literature which is manifestly popular. With even greater brevity may the problem of nationality be disposed of. Some critics have claimed an Italian, some an English, some a French, and some a German ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... adored Rosy. She tinctured all his thoughts; she was the compound extract of all that was chemically pure and officinal—the dispensatory contained nothing equal to her. But Ikey was timid, and his hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum of his backwardness and fears. Behind his counter he was a superior being, calmly conscious of special knowledge and worth; outside he was a weak-kneed, purblind, motorman-cursed rambler, with ill-fitting clothes stained with chemicals and smelling of socotrine ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... dead but showy white picked out sparingly with gold. Festoons of fruits and flowers finely carved in wood on some of the panels. These also not smothered in gilding, but as it were gold speckled here and there, like tongues of flame winding among insoluble snow. Ranged against the walls were sofas and chairs covered with rich stuffs well worn. And in one little distant corner of the long room a gray-haired gentleman and two young ladies sat round a small plain ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... faithful in bargain; is not, perhaps, from of old, his bias always toward France rather? And the Kaiser, what will the Kaiser say to it?" These are questions for a Britannic Majesty! Seldom was seen such an insoluble imbroglio of potentialities; dangerous to touch, dangerous to leave lying;—and his Britannic Majesty's procedures upon it are of a very slow intricate sort; and will grow still more so, year after year, in the new intricacies that are coming, and be a weariness to my readers ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... left him with a more insoluble perplexity on his hands; two, in fact—oh, half a dozen! What was she doing there? Did Rodney know? Well, those questions, and others in their train, could wait. But—what was he going ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... said my father, slowly taking his hand from his waistcoat, as if the effort were too much for him, and the problem were insoluble. "But this, begging your pardon, I do think, that before a young woman does really, truly, and cordially centre her affections on one object, she suffers fancy, imagination, the desire of power, curiosity, or Heaven ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... we endeavour to harmonise the antinomy of man's moral freedom and the doctrine of grace. However insoluble the mystery, it is not lessened by denying one side in the interest of unity. Scripture boldly affirms both truths. No writer insists more strenuously than the Apostle Paul on the sovereign election of God, yet none presents with greater fervour the free offer of salvation. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... the elements are due to the influence of light; for example, a sulphur soluble in carbon disulphide is converted into sulphur which is insoluble, and the rate of change of yellow phosphorus into the red variety is greatly accelerated by light. Hydrogen and chlorine combine under the action of light with explosive rapidity to form hydrochloric acid and there are many other examples of the synthesizing action of ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... hemispheres, either in the low regions, or in the alpine regions.) This phenomenon is one of the most curious in the history of organic forms. I say the history; for in vain would reason forbid man to form hypotheses on the origin of things; he still goes on puzzling himself with insoluble problems relating to the distribution ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... borne it, and could have found a reply. But such a charge as this was unanswerable. It certainly was very hard that she should not be able to sit down. But then how was it possible for him to find a chair in the woods? It was an insoluble problem. How in the world ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... unaesthetic, but amusing. I have not seen Ruth, by Mrs. Gaskell. I hear it much admired—and blamed. It is one of the many proofs of the desire women now have to friser questionable topics, and to poser insoluble moral problems. George Sand has turned their heads in that direction. I think a few broad scenes or hearty jokes a la Fielding were very harmless in comparison. They confounded nothing. . ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Street, which fords the Medway at Rochester, and the Thames at Lambeth and Westminster, or by the trackway we call the Pilgrims' Way along the southern slope of the North Downs, in which case he would have forded the Medway at Aylesford and the Thames at Brentford. The question is insoluble, Caesar himself giving ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... Newly Married" (De Nygifte). Goethe once made the remark that he was not a good dramatist, because his nature was too conciliatory. Without intending disparagement, I am inclined to apply the same judgment to Bjoernson. His sunny optimism shrinks from irreconcilable conflicts and insoluble problems; and in his desire to reconcile and solve, he occasionally is in danger of wrenching his characters out of drawing and muddling their motives. Half a dozen critics have already called attention to the ambiguity of Mathilde's position ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... produces sulfuretted hydrogen, the sulfid of tin may be formed on and around the fillings; it is of a yellowish or brownish color, and as an antiseptic is in such cases desirable. To offset the discoloration, we find that the sulfid is insoluble, and fills the ends of the tubuli, thus lending its aid in preventing further caries. A sulfid is a combination of sulfur with a metal or other body. A tin solution acted on by sulfuretted hydrogen (H{2}S) produces a dark-brown precipitate (SnS), stannous salt, ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... stand in awe of persons with logical minds will be reassured by Henry Adams' pertinent reflection that the mind resorts to reason for want of training. His definition of philosophy is also reassuring: "Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems." ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... Frewen. The reader must bear Mrs. Buckner in mind; it was by means of that lady that Fleeming Jenkin began life as a poor man. Meanwhile, the relationship of any Frewen to any Jenkin at the end of these evolutions presents a problem almost insoluble; and we need not wonder if Mrs. John, thus exercised in her immediate circle, was in her old age "a great genealogist of all Sussex families, and much consulted." The names Frewen and Jenkin may almost seem to have been interchangeable at will; and yet Fate proceeds with such particularity ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in one only these two duties, to cause to spring from the earth I cannot tell how many thousands of men who voluntarily accepted this burden, and who were not crushed by it—that is a problem which one might have been pardoned for thinking insoluble. We have not sufficiently considered it. We have not pictured to ourselves with sufficient vividness the Templars and the Hospitallers in the midst of one of those great battles in the Holy Land in which the fate of the world was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... not perfectly and with regularity performed, the balance of power must of necessity be lost, and disease engendered. The system then becomes charged with uric acid, which has a strong affinity for certain bases in the human organism, and forms salts either insoluble or only slightly so, which are with difficulty eliminated either by the skin or kidneys, and hence we have the formation of calculi in the bladder, nodosities on the joints, and tophi in the ears, indicating the ...
— Buxton and its Medicinal Waters • Robert Ottiwell Gifford-Bennet
... attitude of the Greeks may appear to be, especially by contrast with the Christian view, it would be a mistake to suppose that it was the only one with which they were acquainted, or that they had put aside altogether, as indifferent or insoluble, the whole problem of a future world. As we have seen, they did believe in the survival of the spirit, and in a world of shades ruled by Pluto and Persephone. They had legends of a place of bliss for the good and a place of torment for the wicked; ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... problem is necessarily insoluble (VII) does not deserve to be regarded as an hypothesis at all; for to suppose that the problem is necessarily insoluble is merely to exclude the supposition of ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... Napoleon. Her army was to be limited to 45,000 men, but her patriotism, notwithstanding the most ruthless application of every means of control, managed to raise an army four times as large. The question of disarmament is insoluble so long as men are ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... fell into this error, he approaches closely to it in "Fanshawe." There is some dark secret between the two villains of the piece, which he leaves to the reader as an exercise for the imagination. This is a characteristic of all his longer stories. There is an unknown quantity, an insoluble point, in them, which tantalizes ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... of a being existing in a holy but mutable state, and lapsing, under certain inducements, into sin. What the inducements were in the instance of the prince of darkness we are not told; and thus the question of the origin of evil seems to be insoluble by us. But the identification of it with the personal defection of Satan is far more intelligible and reasonable than the attempt to treat it as a metaphysical abstraction. All the representations of the Bible on the subject are instinct with the awful personality of the devil. He is ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... fossil remains of animals. After being dug from the mines the rock is kiln dried and then ground to a very fine powder called "floats" which is used on the soil. The phosphoric acid in the floats is insoluble and becomes available only as the phosphate decays. This is too slow for most plants so it is treated with oil of vitriol or sulphuric acid to make it available. The phosphoric acid in the ground rock is combined ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... presence of a film of moisture over the plate is a preventive of uniform chemical action, may be readily understood from the fact that iodine is almost insoluble in water, requiring seven thousand parts of water to dissolve one of iodine, or one grain to a gallon of water. Yet its affinities for silver and other substances are so powerful as to prevent its existing in an insulated state, hence we can account for the frequent occurrence of a ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... notable fact.—I farther remembered the numerous difficulties of harmonizing the four gospels; how, when a boy at school, I had tried to incorporate all four into one history, and the dismay with which I had found the insoluble character of the problem,—the endless discrepancies and perpetual uncertainties. These now began to seem to me inherent in the materials, and not to be ascribable ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... an expansion of the germ or embryo No. 10. This membrane is seen purposely removed from its contiguous parts, so as to render more visible its form and insertions. Under this tissue is found with the Nos. 7, 8, and 9, the endosperm or perisperm, containing the gluten and the starch; soluble and insoluble albuminoids, that is ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... and the anger of men, he appears no longer to me as I saw him last—a white speck catching all the dim light left upon a sombre coast and the darkened sea—but greater and more pitiful in the loneliness of his soul, that remains even for her who loved him best a cruel and insoluble mystery. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... level, is not a space-filling 'ghost,' but merely an hallucination. Such an appearance can, prima facie, suggest no reasonable inference as to the continued existence of the dead. On the other hand, the new studies have raised the perhaps insoluble question, 'Do not hallucinations of the sane, representing the living, coincide more frequently than mere luck can account for, with the death or other crisis of the person apparently seen?' If this could be proved, then there would seem ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... before the crystallization of the heavy mineral inclusions, held dissolved not only much larger quantities of mineral substances than can be taken up by water at ordinary temperatures, but also a substance like ferric oxide which is entirely insoluble under ordinary ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... both are equally, though in different methods, His acts. In the field of human affairs, as in the realm of nature, God is immanent, though in the former His working is complicated by the mysterious power of man's will to set itself in antagonism to His; while yet, in manner insoluble to us, His will is supreme. The very powers which are arrayed against Him are His gift, and the issues which they finally subserve are His appointment. It does not need that we should be able to pierce to the bottom of the bottomless in order to attain and hold ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... voters. Fifth on this latter committee was the name of S.A. Douglas of Sangamon.[77] The machinery of the party was thus created out of hand by a group of unauthorized leaders. They awaited the reaction of the insoluble elements in the party, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... simple problems ever intertwined, Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled. By each successive age insoluble, pass'd on, To ours to-day—and we pass on ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... agree with you,' he began: 'nature does not always urge us... towards love.' (He could not at once pronounce the word.) 'Nature threatens us, too; she reminds us of dreadful... yes, insoluble mysteries. Is she not destined to swallow us up, is she not swallowing us up unceasingly? She holds life and death as well; and death speaks in her as loudly ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... laboratory on the response of matter, and the unexpected revelations in plant life, have opened out very extended regions of inquiry in physics, in physiology, in medicine, in agriculture, and even in psychology. Problems hitherto regarded as insoluble have now been brought within the sphere ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... himself? That man had his heroic and his equivocal sides. Why had he not called for help? Why had he fled? Was he, or was he not, the father of the young girl? Was he, in short, the man whom Thenardier thought that he recognized? Thenardier might have been mistaken. These formed so many insoluble problems. All this, it is true, detracted nothing from the angelic charms of the young girl of the Luxembourg. Heart-rending distress; Marius bore a passion in his heart, and night over his eyes. He was thrust onward, he was drawn, and he could not stir. All had vanished, save ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... made by fermenting the tea leaves before they are dried. This fermentation turns them black and produces a marked change in their flavor. The process of preparation also renders some of the tannin insoluble; that is, not so much of it can be dissolved when the beverage is made. Some well-known brands of black tea are China congou, or English breakfast, Formosa, oolong, and the various pekoes. The English are especially fond of black tea, and the people of the United States have followed ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... calls it, has in many ways more affinity with the modern mind than any other in the Old Testament. It is weary with the weight of an insoluble problem. With a cold-blooded frankness, which is not cynical, only because it is so earnest, it faces the stern facts of human life, without being able to bring to their interpretation the sublime inspirations of ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... above the economic level of the county. The belief was expressed that it could maintain that position for three or four years. "I do not feel so much anxiety about the present condition of the people," my host said; "they are passive enough: but as to the future it is a difficult and almost insoluble question." ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... nursing his project, reprinted his "dissertation" as an appendix to his edition of Blackstone in 1803, where the people and the politicians let it remain buried. In public opinion, the problem as to the freedmen remained unsolved and insoluble. ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... visible.[dd] That ordinary black pencil-marks will endure on paper for two centuries may very likely be doubted by many readers, but without reason. Plumbago-marks, if not removed by rubbing, are even more durable than ink; because plumbago is an organic, insoluble substance, not subject to the chemical changes which moisture, the atmosphere, and fluids accidentally spilled, and solvents purposely applied, make in the various kinds of ink which are known to us. The writer discovered this in the course ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... tones in a certain order and rhythm pleasurable? asked Darwin in The Descent of Man, and he concluded that the question was insoluble. We see that, in reality, whatever the ultimate answer may be, the immediate reason is quite simple. Pleasure is a condition of slight and diffused stimulation, in which the heart and breathing are faintly excited, the neuro-muscular system receives additional tone, the viscera gently stirred, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... feet in thickness and grading from that down to the size of minute grains. Accompanying this lenticular epidote is a large development of quartz in lenses, which, however, do not attain quite such a size as those of epidote. Both the quartz and epidote are practically insoluble and lie scattered over the surface in blocks of all sizes. In places they form an almost complete carpet and protect the surface from removal. The resulting soil, where not too heavily encumbered with the epidote blocks, is rich and well adapted to farming, on account of the potash and calcium ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... or the immortality of the soul does not divide them so clearly; because such a question is entirely insoluble; and a vivid consciousness of its insolubility accompanies all argument. The question of race does not divide them so clearly; because both with regard to race and with regard to class the division is very largely a superficial thing, dependent upon public opinion ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... that phosphorus is changed by combustion into an extremely light, white, flakey matter; and its properties are entirely altered by this transformation: From being insoluble in water, it becomes not only soluble, but so greedy of moisture, as to attract the humidity of the air with astonishing rapidity; by this means it is converted into a liquid, considerably more dense, and of more specific gravity than water. In the state of phosphorus ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... possibility of growth or of liberty. This is dualism, which cuts us off from our Source of Life; and so long as we take this false conception for the true law of Being, we shall find ourselves hampered by limitations and insoluble problems of every description: We have lost the Key of Life and are consequently unable ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... summoned a united jury to give evidence of their constituents' readiness to grant certain sums of money. In reality the new scheme was sure to take root, because it held out a hope of getting rid of a constitutional difficulty which had hitherto proved insoluble—the difficulty, that is to say, of weakening the king's power to do evil without establishing baronial anarchy in its place. It was certain that the representatives of the freeholders in the counties would not use their influence for ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... sulphurous fumes when boiled with chips of wood, copper cuttings, or mercury. Dilute acid chars paper when the paper is heated; gives a white precipitate with nitrate or chloride of barium, and is entirely volatilized by heat. Dilute solutions give a white precipitate with barium nitrate, insoluble in hydrochloric acid ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... the very voice of Faith. Walton was, indeed, an assured believer, and to his mind, the world offered no insoluble problem. But we may say of him, in the words of ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... of the oyster the radical home cure for the living irritant or insoluble substance which had gained entrance between its valves is an encasement of pearl-film. If this encasement is globular or pear-shaped, or takes the form of a button and is lucid, lustrous, flawless, and of large size, it may be ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... as thoroughly, as suddenly, relieved from all sense of the spectral and unearthly; scorning also to wear out my brain with the fret of a trivial though insoluble riddle, I just bundled together stole, veil, and bandages, thrust them beneath my pillow, lay down, listened till I heard the wheels of Madame's home-returning fiacre, then turned, and worn out by many nights' vigils, conquered, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Werner Siemens, was a method of reproducing printed matter by transferring the print from paper to plates of zinc. Caustic baryta was applied to the printed sheet to convert the resinous ingredients of the ink into an insoluble soap, the stearine being precipitated with sulphuric acid. The letters were then transferred to the zinc by pressure, so as to be printed from. The process, though ingenious and of much interest at the time, has long ago ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... hare's-skin. The best qualities are made from the back of the animal, the second from the sides, the third from the belly. I confide to you these trade secrets because you are men of honor. But whether a man has hare's-skin or silk on his head, fifteen or thirty francs in short, the problem is always insoluble. Hats must be paid for in cash, and that is why the hat remains what it is. The honor of vestural France will be saved on the day that gray hats with round crowns can be made to cost a hundred francs. We could then, like the tailors, give credit. To reach that ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... is an application of one of the numerous and useful inventions for which photography is indebted to A. Poitevin. In 1863 he discovered that certain organic substances were rendered insoluble by ferric chloride, and that they again became soluble; when under the influence of light the ferric chloride has been reduced to a ferrous salt. This curious phenomenon is the base of the process now to be described. ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois
... who have written verse professionally can realize the extent to which music acts as a solvent upon apparently insoluble difficulties of rhyme and sentiment. It had become a habit with me to leave any such problem of prosody to one side and take it up again only when my friend opened his piano. Having completed an opera some time before, I had at this time no such trouble, and so, as he broke abruptly into that prodigious ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... a man who genuinely abhors violence confronts an almost insoluble dilemma. On the one hand he may be faced with the imminent triumph of some almost insufferable evil; on the other, he may feel that the only available means of opposing that evil is violence, which is in ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... indistinctly heard. It is Corkey crying to Lockwin to climb up the steps to the hurricane deck. Indeed it is a clever riddance of that uncomfortable man. Ouf! that brutal sneeze, that jargon, that tobacco, that quaking of head and hesitancy of expression! It distracts one's thoughts from an insoluble problem; How to shuffle off this coil—not of life, but of respectability, ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... ascertained, M'Munn's Elixir is simply an aqueous infusion of opium—procured by the ordinary maceration—and preserved from decomposing by the subsequent addition of a small portion of alcohol. Narcotin being absolutely insoluble in water is eliminated as the circular says. This fact alone would not account for the difference between its action and that of laudanum. This is explained by the fact that all the other alkaloids ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... confident affirmations as to the comparative influence of heredity and environment. We enter into learned disputations as to the blessing or the bane of an education such as his. But every such case is still a profound and insoluble mystery. The most comprehensive laws and the most careful generalizations meet with too many exceptions to enable us to form a science. The children of the good are too often bad and the children of the bad too often good to permit us to dogmatize about heredity. We ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... "unconsciously selected" from amidst the gravel in which it first lay with as much precision as if man had "consciously selected" it by the aid of a sieve. Physical Geology is full of such selections—of the picking out of the soft from the hard, of the soluble from the insoluble, of the fusible from the infusible, by natural agencies to which we are certainly not in the ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... has overreached himself. He has given you a choice of two problems, both of which he deems insoluble. Neither of them is insoluble. The only gleam of intelligence Old Cotangent showed was when he said that squaring the circle was too easy. He was right. It would have given you your Liebchen in five minutes. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... here is fortunate, almost providential. You can help us. Your interest in such things and your success in the solution of many apparently insoluble affairs is known to all of us. While we are between us able to cope with most of the things that arise, you, an outsider, without having your emotions involved may see more clearly than we, aside from your undoubted talents ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... the one insoluble problem is——, given a good and perfect God, where does sorrow come from, and why is there any pain? Men have fumbled at that knot for all the years that there have been men in the world, and they have not untied it yet. They have tried to cut it and it has ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have wished to imagine that our satellite is shaped like an egg, the more pointed end being directed away from us. We are here, of course, faced with a riddle, which is all the more tantalising from its appearing for ever insoluble to men, chained as they are to the earth. However, it seems going too far to suppose that any abnormal conditions necessarily exist at the other side of the moon. As a matter of fact, indeed, small portions of that side are brought into our view from time to ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... in the silence. The answer to my silent question may come to me in the most commonplace way days or weeks after it is asked. Some person may say something that will be the very clue I am seeking. We are not to be anxious or troubled if many questions perplex us, or many problems seem insoluble, but wait, trusting that 'he is faithful who promised.' We must not be wishing for the same signs or powers that others have, but appreciate what is given to us, for faithfulness shall receive its full reward in due ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... the King, although perpetually denounced by Winwood in his letters to his sovereign as tyrannical, over-bearing, malignant, and treacherous. He did his best to counsel moderation and mutual toleration, for he felt that these needless theological disputes about an abstract and insoluble problem of casuistry were digging an abyss in which the Republic might be swallowed up for ever. If ever man worked steadily with the best lights of experience and inborn sagacity for the good of his country and in defence of a constitutional government, horribly defective certainly, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... experiments, examined the effects of a solution of tan upon a solution of glue, observed that they were hardly mixed together before a white felamentous precipitate took place, owing to a combination of the glue with the tanning principle contained in the solution of tan. This precipitate is insoluble in water, either hot or cold, and acquires colour by being exposed to the light. The foregoing experiment furnishes a true explanation of the process of tanning; for it will easily be conceived that the solution of tan acts upon the hides (from ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... instinctively that he was not dreaming, and yet was powerless to solve the mystery. He was not, however, the man to puzzle himself for long over any insoluble problem. "Come what may," he presently exclaimed, "we will make up our minds for the future to ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... book I have condensed here are as alive to-day as are thousands of other Ginx's Babies in all our big cities. While philanthropists and politicians, priests and preachers, men and women theorize about the questions, the questions grow "more insoluble." What is to be done? is the first question. How is it to be done is a question which is secondary and its discussion is useless until the first is settled. Too much State drove Ginx's Baby into ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... takes place by the exposure of the infusions of many vegetable substances to the oxidising influence of the atmosphere; they become darkened on the surface, and this gradually spreads through the solution, and on evaporation, the same oxidised extractive matter will remain insoluble in water. Again, I had found that the green teas, when wetted and redried, with exposure to the air, were nearly as dark in colour as the ordinary black teas. From these observations, therefore, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... Therefore, this declaration—to use the common expression—entirely free from artifice or affectation, charmed Henri for one reason, yet, on the other hand, redoubled his perplexity. How could he conciliate his scruples of conscience with the aspirations of his heart? The problem seemed then as insoluble as when it had been presented the first time. But Valentine was saved. For the moment that was the essential point, the only one in question. The involuntary revelation of her secret had brought the color to her cheeks, the light to her eyes, ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... over what is to you a painful, insoluble problem! yet a little while and you shall see the mists of morning breaking everywhere, and the great conquering sun will enfold you too in its warm embrace: the humble laurels of the mountain's side, even as the great pines and cedars of the mountain's crest, have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... Circassians re-occupying deserted villages in the midst of the Bedawin, and he takes the fact as "valuable evidence that the problem of colonization by a foreign element, so far as the Arabs are concerned, is by no means insoluble."[71] He seems to forget that the traveller with empty pockets may whistle in the face of the highwayman. The Circassians are settling in abandoned villages by the wish of the authorities. They have the deep sympathy of all Moslems ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... conjecture, as the Garden of Eden." And in another place he thinks that "the site of Eden will ever rank with the quadrature of the circle, and the interpretation of unfulfilled prophecy among those unsolved, and perhaps insoluble, problems which possess so strange a fascination." It is, however, to be remarked, (1)that all that was written before Professor Delitzsch's researches were made known; and (2)that really a great mass of the conjecture and speculation has been purely in the air—undertaken without ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... acid in the lead battery; thus the cell may be designed with minimum distancing of plates and with the greatest economy of space that is consistent with safe insulation and good mechanical design. Again, the active materials of the electrodes being insoluble in, and absolutely unaffected by, the electrolyte, are not liable to any sort of chemical deterioration by action of the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... contact with the outside world. It was the effect which that influence had upon her as contrasted with her neighbours which made the difference. When we ask why this influence affected her differently we find no satisfactory answer, and are in the presence of a mystery—the world-old insoluble mystery of the superiority of one tribe or one individual over others apparently of the same class. Political history is wont to tell this chapter of Rome's story under the title of the "Rise of the Plebeians," but the presence of ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... factors in this perhaps insoluble problem were still more refractory than the constitutional. All the great questions of peace and war and other foreign relations were settled by the mother country, which was the only sovereign power and which alone possessed the force to make any British ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... at the colossal advertisements across the Hudson, at the freight trains below; I gazed upon the lordly Hudson itself, that majestic sewer which drains the Empire State, bearing within its resistless flood millions of tons of insoluble matter from that magic fairyland which we call "up-state," to the sea. And, thinking of disposal plants, I thought of that sublime paraphrase—"From the Mohawk to the Hudson, and from the Hudson to ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... fundamental question for any philosophy of ethics; but it receives no answer at all from the prevailing school of metaphysical thought. This school offers no solution of the problem which was found insoluble by the type of philosophy whose aim is to co-ordinate the results of science. A comparison of the purposes and results of the ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... which is believed to be produced by the decomposition of vegetable matters, and it is there crystallized and remarkably transparent; but when produced by artificial processes, carbon is always black, more or less porous, and soils the fingers. It is insoluble in water, burns readily, and is converted into carbonic acid. Carbon is the largest constituent of plants, and forms, in round numbers, about 50 per cent of their weight ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... districts of England, but they are of inferior quality, containing more oxide of iron and alumina. These give the tribasic phosphate of lime, which results from the application of sulphuric acid to the nodules, a tendency to "go back" to the insoluble condition. French nodules are of inferior quality from another cause. They contain very much silica, sometimes even forty per cent. The Cambridge coprolites are so much esteemed that buyers of artificial manure often stipulate ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... the general nature of the solutions of Ghatti gums, and from the fact that when allowed to stand portions of the apparently insoluble matter passed into solution, the hypothesis suggested itself that metarabin was soluble in arabin, although insoluble in cold water. If this hypothesis were correct, it would explain the apparent anomaly of Ghattis giving solutions of higher ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... little longer." "Then," he continues, "I was so tossed betwixt the Devil and my own ignorance, and so perplexed, especially at sometimes, that I could not tell what to do." At another time his mind, as the minds of thousands have been and will be to the end, was greatly harassed by the insoluble problems of predestination and election. The question was not now whether he had faith, but "whether he was one of the elect or not, and if not, what then?" "He might as well leave off and strive no further." And then the ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his slippered feet before the fire, "it appears to come to this: instead of discovering a way to drain 'the forty rods,' you have only provided us with another insoluble problem to puzzle our heads over. There seems to be no way that we can figure out—at present, anyhow—by which the water can be brought to the surface, and consequently our only resource is, apparently, to discover, if possible, where it first runs in ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... scarcely grudge to his sickly sensitive nature the anodyne of feminine sympathy. Why so close and tender a friendship never ripened into marriage is an inquiry that may be consigned to the limbo of questions insoluble. It is enough that in the checkered chronicle of the loves of the poets, "blue-eyed Patty Blount" has an immortality almost as secure as that ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... of the Deity, and indignantly rejected that Moloch of cruelty who is worshipped in the debased forms of Christianity. He was an Agnostic only in so far as he proclaimed the impossibility of solving the insoluble, and knowing the unknowable. His clear and fearless utterances upon these points place him in the rank of intellectual heroes. But his own soul, compact of human faith and love, was far too religious and too sanguine to merit either ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... come with bits of soil already attached and few are sterile in themselves. But extra soil ensures that there will initially be a sufficient number and variety of these valuable organisms. Soil also contains insoluble minerals that are made soluble by biological activity. Some of these minerals may be in short supply in the organic matter itself and their addition may improve the health and vigor of the whole decomposition ecology. A generous addition of rock dust may ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... Dr. Opimian. Very peculiar, certainly. Who on earth can have amused himself with drawing a misshapen flint? There must be some riddle in it; some aenigma, as insoluble to me as Aelia ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... spacious saloon panelled: dead, but snowy white picked out sparingly with gold. Festoons of fruit and flowers finely carved in wood on some of the panels. These also not smothered with gilding, but as it were gold speckled here and there like tongues of flame winding among insoluble snows.... Midway from the candle to the distant door its twilight deepened, and all became shapeless and sombre. The prospect ended half-way, sharp and black, as in those out-o'-door closets imagined and painted by Mr. Turner, whose Nature (Mr. Turner's) comes to a full stop as soon as Mr. Turner ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... slowly-innovating temper of the English. Large measures respecting charities, education, secondary punishments, and the transfer of land are in preparation, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer is at work on the difficult—I suspect the insoluble—problem of an equitable income tax. I foresee, however, a ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... cellulose and woody fibre are carbohydrates, but are little capable of digestion. They contain hydrogen and oxygen in the proportion to form water, the carbon alone being available to produce heat by combustion. Starch is the most widely distributed food. It is insoluble in water, but when cooked is readily digested and absorbed by the body. Starch is readily converted into sugar, whether in plants or animals, during digestion. There are many kinds of sugar, such as ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... better built than the average Hindu. Similarly, the Kasais or Muhammadan butchers are proverbially strong and lusty. But no evidence is forthcoming in support of such conjectures, and the problem is likely to remain insoluble. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Your would-be jest has discovered the proverbial truth. I need hardly tell you that it is only the insoluble that is finally baffling and this is very probably insoluble. You remember the awful smash on the Central and Suburban at Knight's Cross Station ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... sea-water upon the shells of Foraminifera. These shells, though mainly consisting of lime, also contain a certain proportion of alumina, the former being soluble in the carbonic acid dissolved in the sea-water, whilst the latter is insoluble. There would further appear to be grounds for believing that the solvent power of the sea-water over lime is considerably increased at great depths. If, therefore, we suppose the shells of Foraminifera to be in course of deposition over ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... had I been, the net-result of my Workings amounted as yet simply to—Nothing. How then could I believe in my Strength, when there was as yet no mirror to see it in? Ever did this agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous question, remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a certain Faculty, a certain Worth, such even as the most have not; or art thou the completest Dullard of these modern times? Alas, the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how could I believe? Had ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... soft or semi-fluid mass. In this the virus is suspended, and with this it lies or may be precipitated upon the living fibre beneath. Then there is danger of re-inoculation; and it would seem that this fatal process is often accomplished. The eschar formed by the lunar caustic is dry, hard, and insoluble. If the whole of the wound has been fairly exposed to its action, an insoluble compound of animal fibre and the metallic salt is produced, in which the virus is wrapped up, and from which it cannot be separated. In a short time the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... with a solution containing 30 or 40 per cent. of potash. This arrangement is similar to that of a Callaud element, with this difference—that the depolarizing element is solid and insoluble. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... much affected by general disbelief in the personality of Satan, and universal disbelief in that of Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. A far more vulnerable point is the failure of the purpose so ostentatiously proclaimed, "To justify the ways of God to men." This problem was absolutely insoluble on Milton's data, except by denying the divine foreknowledge, a course not open to him. The conduct of the Deity who allows his adversary to ruin his innocent creature from ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... their steps was now the problem, apparently insoluble. As to the military force of Persia in the field, indeed, not merely the easy victory at Kunaxa, but still more the undisputed march throughout so long a space, left them no serious apprehension. In spite of this great extent, population, and ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... What an insoluble enigma is woman! From the specimen of feminine delicacy and modest diffidence which we have just presented to the reader, who would imagine that Kate Hogan was capable of entering into the deep and rooted sorrow which Kathleen Cavanagh experienced when made acquainted with the calamity which ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the assistance he had at command, to marshal and move a column of a million or a million and a half of men, women, and children, without discipline or cohesion, and encumbered with their baggage, beside their cattle, is an insoluble mystery. "And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: ... And they spoiled the Egyptians. And ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... carry man on to scheme and to build for a future that extends beyond his grave,—all start up before you at the very moment your reason is overtasked, your imagination fevered, in seeking the solution of problems which, to a philosophy based upon your system, must always remain insoluble. The young man's conversation not only thus excites your fancies,—it disturbs your affections. He speaks not only of drugs that renew youth, but of charms that secure love. You tremble for your ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that has proved a weakness and a strength to it: a weakness because embarrassed with subtle, complicated, insoluble questions wherein mankind will always be involved, it was forced to engage in endless discussions wherein the bad or feeble reasons advanced by this or that votary compromised the whole work; a strength because whoever brings a rule of life is practically compelled to support it by general ideas ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... body is repeatedly shaken, but in vain; the tibiae or tarsi, unduly hard, refuse to yield to the patient saw. Sparrows and Mice grow dry and shrivelled, unused, upon the gibbet. Sooner in one case, later in another, my Necrophori abandon the insoluble problem in mechanics: to push, ever so little, the movable support and so to unhook the ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... of a definite scheme of republican church government which became as distinctive of the Calvinistic or "Reformed" churches as their doctrine of the Supper. It was at a later epoch still that those insoluble questions which press most inexorably for consideration when theological thought and study are most serious and earnest—the questions that concern the divine sovereignty in its relation to human freedom and responsibility—arose in the ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... who carried to a successful issue that difficult case in the family of the Sultan of Mingrelia (you will observe that I use a fictitious name). I can assure you, Lord Embleton, that polygamy presents problems almost insoluble; problems of ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... expressed them might be woven, it is clear that there could be but little cohesion between the members of the Christian communities. The problem arose and pressed for an answer: What should be the basis of Christian union? But the problem was for a time insoluble. For there was no standard and no court of appeal." From the very beginning, when the differences in the various Churches began to threaten their unity, appeal was probably made to the Apostles' doctrine, the words ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... there is no structural division between chancel and nave, is at Tansor in Northants. The perplexity which arises here is due to the plentiful re-use of old work by the builders, the presence of which in unexpected places makes the history of the building a nearly insoluble puzzle. The church reached its present length about 1140, when probably the Saxon nave was left as the west part of a church, which was now of the same width the whole way through, and had no chancel arch. Some forty years later, ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... keeping his house. Therefore it is that potentates are reluctant to draw the sword, and rather bear the ills they have than fly to other evils inevitably worse still. Whether the final outcome will be universal national bankruptcy or the millennium, is a problem as yet insoluble. ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... done satisfactorily under pressure. The bones of fish are composed of large quantities of harmless lime, bound by a matrix of collagen, which is insoluble under ordinary conditions. When subjected to a high temperature under pressure this collagen is converted into gelatin and dissolved, leaving the bones soft and friable and even edible. Bony fish, such as herring and shad, which ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... the insoluble mystery, which appeared so plainly before him, enveloped him completely, even as the water in high-flood covers the willow twigs on the shore,—a desire came upon him to pray. He felt like kneeling, but he was ashamed of the soldier and, folding ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... importance in the community, I dare say he has never comprehended to this day. As I had planned to do, I later endeavoured to explain to him that in North America persons were almost quite equal to one another—being born so—but at this he told me not to be silly and continued to regard my rise as an insoluble part of the strangeness he everywhere encountered, even after I added that Demosthenes was the son of a cutler, that Cardinal Wolsey's father had been a pork butcher, and that Garfield had worked on a canal-boat. I found him quite hopeless. "Chaps go dotty talkin' ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... may be removed by a simple washing with water, and on the Continent forms a valuable source of potash salts, since the ash after ignition contains 70 to 90 per cent. of potassium carbonate. The wool fat is insoluble in water, but dissolves readily in ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... international trade. Here in Utopia the World State cuts that away from beneath their feet; there are no imports but meteorites, and no exports at all. Trading is the earthly economists' initial notion, and they start from perplexing and insoluble riddles about exchange value, insoluble because all trading finally involves individual preferences which are incalculable and unique. Nowhere do they seem to be handling really defined standards, every economic dissertation ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... existence under the iron heel of Marmont, who forthwith proceeded to make some good roads and to vaccinate the Dalmatians; of how Napoleon tried to partition the Balkans, but found, with all his political and administrative genius, that he was face to face with an "insoluble problem"; of how that rough man of genius, Mahmoud II., hanged the Greek Patriarch from the gate of his palace, but between the interludes of massacres and executions, brought his "energy and indomitable force of will" to bear on the introduction of reforms; of how the Venetian ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... empire, however, none too surely held, were already involving it in insoluble difficulties and imminent dangers. On the one hand, in Asia, it had been found impossible to establish military fiefs in Arabia, Kurdistan, or anywhere east of it, on the system which had secured the Osmanli tenure elsewhere. ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... Vagina and Urethra. They consist of a group of secreting sacs, terminating at one extremity in a closed tube, while the other opens into a common duct. The mucus varies in composition in different parts of the body; but in all, it contains a small portion of insoluble animal matter. Its functions are threefold. It lubricates the membranes, prevents their injury, and facilitates the passage of food through ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... These attempted solutions of an insoluble problem may be found in brief in Schanz, Gesch. der roem. Lit. i. 37. Perhaps the boldest is that of Cantorelli, that the annales were constructed not out of the tabula but out of the commentarii; but this is in conflict with the passage in the scholiast ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... sandwiches are two feet square, and being piled one upon the other to a height of about six feet in an hydraulic press, are subjected to a pressure of some hundred tons. This disengages the pure oleaginous parts from the more insoluble portions, and the fat residue, being increased in hardness by its extra density, is mixed with stearine, and by a variety of preparations is converted into candles. The pure oil thus expressed is that known in the shops as ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... incompressible; constipated; concrete &c (hard) 323; knotted, knotty; gnarled; crystalline, crystallizable; thick, grumous^, stuffy. undissolved, unmelted^, unliquefied^, unthawed^. indivisible, indiscerptible^, infrangible^, indissolvable^, indissoluble, insoluble, infusible. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... deeply rooted in the instincts of humanity. Whether it was first enjoined by an external command, or was based on that sense of sin and lost communion with God, which is stamped by His hand on the heart of man—is an historical question, perhaps insoluble." ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Independence was that from that day each colony assumed the name of State; and the union changed its name of "The United Colonies" to the proud title of "The United States of America." Were the new States essentially different from the colonies? This is one of the insoluble questions connected with the formation of the Union. Calhoun later declared that the Declaration of Independence changed the colonies from provinces subject to Great Britain to States subject to nobody. Lincoln in his message of July 4, 1861, ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... experiment further since Julius had given up his attempts to locate the right box in the first choice and was apparently satisfied to discover it by a process of trial and error. He had, it would seem, satisfied himself that the problem was insoluble. These results obtained in problem 1a constitute a most interesting comment on the effects of problem 2 on the orang utan. Behavior similar to that which he developed well might have been obtained from a child of three to four years placed in a like situation and forced ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... already a somewhat renowned teacher. The fourth Gospel brings Jesus to John twice, the first time while yet unknown, the second time with a band of disciples. Without touching here the question of the precise journeys of Jesus (an insoluble question, seeing the contradictions of the documents and the little care the evangelists had in being exact in such matters), and without denying that Jesus might have made a journey to John when he had as yet no notoriety, we adopt the information furnished by the fourth ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... the far-reaching assumptions he makes. He assumes as axiomatic certainties and insoluble mysteries the existence of the spiritual life in man, the union of the human and divine, and the freedom of the spiritual personalities, though in a sense dependent upon the Universal Spiritual Life. This of course does not mean that he is in the habit of making unjustifiable assumptions. ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... actually added in the process of manufacture, and not to the percentage of gelatine or agar, as the case may be, present in the finished medium; the explanation being that the commercial products employed contain a large proportion of insoluble material which is separated off by filtration during the preparation of the ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... indignation they are laying up for you in every just English heart? Do you know what questions, not as to Corn-prices and Sliding-scales alone, they are forcing every reflective Englishman to ask himself? Questions insoluble, or hitherto unsolved; deeper than any of our Logic-plummets hitherto will sound: questions deep enough,—which it were better that we did not name even in thought! You are forcing us to think of them, to begin uttering them. The utterance of them is begun; and where will it be ended, think you? ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... himself beaten: there was absolutely no flaw in the alibi. And since his duty to his journal obviously forbade his wasting time on insoluble mysteries, he ceased to frequent Granice, who dropped back into a deeper isolation. For a day or two after his visit to Allonby he continued to live in dread of Dr. Stell. Why might not Allonby have deceived him as to the alienist's diagnosis? What if he were really being shadowed, not by a ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... melodious tears; that there are trivialities which might deserve (here is an example) "to line a box," or to curl some maiden's locks, that there are weaknesses of thought, that the poet now speaks of himself as a linnet, singing "because it must," now dares to approach questions insoluble, and again declines their solution. What is all this but the changeful mood of grief? The singing linnet, like the bird in the old English heathen apologue, dashes its light wings painfully against the walls of the chamber into which it has flown out ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... "whiteness," or whether white things are to be defined as those having a certain kind of similarity to a standard thing, say freshly fallen snow, is a question which need not concern us, and which I believe to be strictly insoluble. For our purposes, we may take the word "white" as denoting a certain set of similar particulars or collections of particulars, the similarity being in respect of a static ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... more stumbled, I might have still been groping for her at the dawn. My next business was to gain the shelter of a wood, for the wind was cold as well as boisterous. How, in this well-wooded district, I should have been so long in finding one, is another of the insoluble mysteries of this day's adventures; but I will take my oath that I put near an hour to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an admirable meal and one that is nutritious and easily digested. The white of eggs, almost pure albumin, is nutritious, and, when cooked in water at 170 degrees Fahrenheit, requires less time for perfect digestion than a raw egg. The white of a hard-boiled egg is tough and quite insoluble. The yolk, however, if the boiling has been done carefully for twenty minutes, is mealy and easily digested. Fried eggs, no matter what fat is used, are hard, tough and insoluble. The yolk of an egg cooks at a lower temperature than the white, and for this reason an egg ...
— Many Ways for Cooking Eggs • Mrs. S.T. Rorer
... questions to propose, then? None, or worse. He once officially put these learned Associates upon ascertaining for him "Why Champagne foamed?" They, with a hidden vein of pleasantry, required "material to experiment upon." Friedrich Wilhelm sent them a dozen, or certain dozens; and the matter proved insoluble to this day. No King, scarcely any man, had less of reverence for the Sciences so called; for Academic culture, and the art of the Talking-Schoolmaster in general! A King obtuse to the fine Arts, especially to the vocal Arts, in a high degree. Literary fame itself he regards ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle |
