While he canvassed the whole position, bringing to bear his really profound knowledge of naval equipment and routineand incidentally helping me greatly to realise the improbability of my own guesswork solutionI was able to maintain an air of lofty superiority.

" Captain Willoughby had found occasion to punish the Tuscarora, in the course of his services; and as the parties understood each other perfectly well, the former saw the improbability of the latter's daring to trifle with him.

To the safe and shop-resorting inhabitants of Christendom, The Corsair seems to present many improbabilities; nevertheless, it is true to nature, and in every part of the Levant the traveller meets with individuals whose air and physiognomy remind him of Conrad.

To a mind like that of Charles, eager to multiply experiments, and prone to believe improbabilities, the hostile position of these parties opened a new field for intrigue.

The whole of this short history was delivered with a composure as great as that which had just been displayed by Pippo and the pilgrim; and it was impossible for any present to detect the slightest improbability or contradiction in the tale.

It is easy enough to discover improbabilities in such a yarn as this, but the only important question is whether one wants to discover what happens in the end, and I confess without a blush that I did want to follow Mr. J.S. FLETCHER to the last page.

We may disregard the improbability, seeing that the alternative theories are almost equally improbable, and the fact that emerges, and that gratifies me more than I can tell you, is that you are gifted with enough scientific imagination to construct a possible train of events.

Swift succeeded in endowing the wildest improbabilities with an air of veracity rivalling Defoe himself.

She demanded an audience of the queen, and laid before her the whole series of his mother's cruelty, exposed the improbability of her accusation of murder, and pointed out all the circumstances of her unequall'd barbarity.

Do you not know society better than to fancy this improbability, child?" "I know that our own sex would better consult their own dignity and respectability, my dear Mrs. Bloomfield, if they talked less of such matters; and that they would be more apt to acquire the habits of good taste, not to say of good principles, if they confined their strictures more to things and sentiments than they do, and meddled less with persons.

On the other hand, chance carries no probabilities with it, can never be developed into a consistent system; but, when applied to the explanation of orderly or beneficial results, heaps up improbabilities at every step beyond all computation.

If, on the other hand, we conclude that he has died suddenly, or has been killed by an accident or otherwise, we are adopting a view that involves no inherent improbabilities and that is entirely congruous with the known facts; facts that will be proved by the testimony of the witnesses whom I shall call.

No one would nowadays think of justifying a gross improbability in the antecedents of a play by Ibsen or Sir Arthur Pinero, by Mr. Galsworthy or Mr. Granville Barker, on the plea that it occurred outside the frame of the picture.

The head of the earl was sent as a signal of the victory by Roger de Mortimer to the countess; but his body, together with that of his son Henry, was interred in the Abbey of Evesham; thus leaving the improbability of the legend without a shadow of doubt.

By limiting the improbability to a part of the story, it is possible to give an air of reality to the whole.

Whence I conclude, that a certain degree of probability is necessary to prevent us from revolting with distaste from unnatural images; unless we are otherwise so much interested in the contemplation of them as not to perceive their improbability.

The aim of it and of the school to which it belonged abroad was to find a setting for a story which should leave the author perfectly free to plant in it any improbability he liked, and to do what he liked with the relations of his characters.

But, my lords, the arguments alleged to prove the improbability of such a confederacy, are so weak in themselves, that they require no such illustrious evidence to overbalance them.

A greater fault, perhaps, is his passion for anecdote; he cannot forbear from repeating stories the improbability of which he is the first to recognize, which, nevertheless, by mere repetition, leave unjust impressions.

Here, even more than in its various and violent changes of fortune, rests the improbability of the novel.

But, if we adopt the latter alternative we must accept too the improbability that this expense should have been incurred when the inadequacy of the old narrow nave of 15½ feet compared with a chancel of 33 feet must have been so obvious.

"I do not speak this to endeavour to alter your opinion, but to shew the improbability of his agreeing to it.

Even if they admit the improbability of this at present, they are comforted and encouraged by the recollection of the lengthy period of humiliation that the Prophet himself had to suffer before Allah bestowed victory upon his arms; and they fervently join with the Friday preacher, when he pronounces the prayer, taken from the Qorân: "And lay not on us,

Clennam tried to argue to himself the improbability of Little Dorrit loving him, but he wasn't altogether successful.