He stood looking down at her for a moment, wondering what could have reduced her to this condition.

) hung on a hook on the wall, and underneath it I could see his tie, knotted, ready to be slipped over his head, a black badge of frayed respectability that ought never to have left his neck.

I was at once disappointed, although just what I had expected him to look like I could not have explained.

As he lowered himself on the chair behind his desk I wondered what this dapper, slightly ridiculous man could possibly have to do with the workings of the hall.

No man could have reached his spot nor held it without being ruthless, and Hague had made a virtue of ruthlessness all of his life.

At once my ears were drowned by a flow of what I took to be Spanish, but -- the driver's white teeth flashing at me, the road wildly veering beyond his glistening hair, beyond his gesticulating bottle -- it could have been the purest Oxford English I was half hearing ; ;

with more time I could have loosened a small burr or cotter pin --

She realized I'd have to notify the police, but fervently hoped I could avoid mentioning her name.

They were married over the week-end, though he was easily sixty and she could not have been even thirty.

Her form was silhouetted and with the strong light I could see the outlines of her body, a body that an artist or anyone else would have admired.

If it were not that I knew who it was I could have mistaken it for my Aunt so well did her clothes fit him.

This was the worst thing I could have said.

and I have heard many say that they are content to earn a half or a third as much as they could up North because they so much prefer the quieter habits of their home town.

What steps have been taken to guard against the one sort of mishap that could trigger the destruction of continents??

This and other fears of the solar system have disappeared gradually, first, with the Ptolemaic system and its built-in concept of periodicity and then, more firmly, with the Newtonian innovation of an universal force that could account quantitatively for both terrestial and celestial motions.

The conversation that ensued may have been engrossing but it could hardly be called world-shattering.

The part of the mind that preserves dates and events may remonstrate, `` It could have been like that for only a little while '' ; ;

I have no picture in my mind of the garden as a whole -- that I could not see -- but certain aspects of certain corners linger in the memory: wind-blown, frost-bitten, white chrysanthemums beneath a window, with their brittle brown leaves and their sharp scent of November ; ;

Such problems are of extreme interest as well as importance and are so much like fighting in a rain forest or guerrilla warfare at night in tall grass that we might have to re-examine primitive conflicts for what they could teach.

Any attempt to reconcile this statement of the central issue in the campaign of 1956 with the nature of the man who could not conceive it as the central issue will at least resolve our confusions about the chaotic and misleading results of the earnestness of both doctors and President in a situation which should never have arisen.

Actually, you could wish for some passion, now and then, but when you look around the world and see the little volcanos of current history which partisan social passions have wrought, you are glad that in these pamphlets there is at least some civilized calm.

Given the conceptual context within which ancient thought thrived, how could anyone have questioned this principle??

He might have been the man in the moon for all you could have understood him.

If you had screamed right there in the street where we stood, I could not have felt more fear.

A hell of an altitude for a barrel roll, but it could be done.

With the rapid rate of closure, the approach from below, the side, and ahead, there would be only a moment when damage could be done.

Faulkner culminates the Southern legend perhaps more masterfully than it has ever been, or could ever be, done.

When Nan Patterson, a stunning and money-minded chorus girl who had appeared in a Floradora road show, rode down Broadway in a hansom cab with her married lover, Frank Young, she stopped the cab to disclose that Young had been shot dead, tearfully insisting that he had shot himself although experts said he could not have done so.

To document his charge, Pike set up two parallel columns in The Advocate showing the price charged by The Gazette and the considerably lower price for which the work could be done elsewhere.

Later, rising ninety, he was beset by publishers for the story of his life and miracles, as he put it, but, calling himself the Needy Knife-grinder, he had spent his time writing short articles and long letters and could not get even a small popular book done.

If only this could be done more often -- with such heartening results -- many of the earth's `` big problems '' would shrink to the insignificances they really are.

It is extremely doubtful that the handful of Albanians who call themselves Communists could have done this without the direct approval of their Chinese friends.

He could no longer build anything, whether a private residence in his Pennsylvania county or a church in Brazil, without it being obvious that he had done it, and while here and there he was taken to task for again developing the same airy technique, they were such fanciful and sometimes even playful buildings that the public felt assured by its sense of recognition after a time, a quality of authentic uniqueness about them, which, once established by an artist as his private vision, is no longer disputable as to its other values.

Half the manhours you pay for on most jobs are wasted because the job was not planned right, so the right tools were not handy at the right place at the right time, or the right materials were not delivered to the handiest spots or materials were not stacked in the right order for erection, or you bought cheap materials that took too long to fit, or your workmen had to come back twice to finish a job they could have done on one trip.

They could be done or left undone and nobody really gave a damn.

That could be easily done, but there is little reason in it.

He had done all he could and that was that.

Without any definite plan in mind, she went to a judge to see what could be done.

) But Speaker Sam Rayburn, after huddling in Palm Beach with President-elect Kennedy, decided that this year something had to be done about the Rules Committee -- and that he was the only man who could do anything effective.

Had it done so, the blot on its escutcheon would have remained indelible, nor could the Harvard Divinity School assemble today to honor Parker's insurgence other than by getting down on its collective knees and crying `` peccavi ''.

It was terribly off key, and poorly done, and Tommy could never admit to herself that male companionship was a very natural and important thing, but all at once she felt lonesome and put-upon.

I had done all I could.

Mercer read it, and so had a few of the others, but they could not tell which man had done it.

" Harris and other staff officers removed Johnston from his horse and carried him to a small ravine near the " Hornets Nest " and desperately tried to aid the general by trying to make a tourniquet for his leg wound, but little could be done by this point since he had already lost so much blood.

Power generated by muscles, however, is limited by force – velocity relationship, and even at the optimal contraction speed for power production, total work done by the muscle will be less than half of what could be done if the muscle were contracting over the same distance at very slow speeds, resulting in less than 1 / 4 the projectile launch velocity possible without the limitations of the force – velocity relationship.

Gauntlett turned down the role of a KGB colonel in the film, however: " I would have loved to have done it but really could not afford the time.