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.

The way his red rubber lips were stretched across his pearly little teeth I thought he was only having a little joke, but, no, he wanted me to bend down from the roar of wind so he could roar something into my ear.

If you tell him I made a pass at you he might think you misunderstood something I said or did, so instead of just telling him I made a pass, say I tried to date you and that you agreed so you could prove to him what a louse I really am.

Old Commodore Forsythe, who had once lost a fifty-dollar bet on whether he could get both motors started and turn on the running lights without accidentally turning on something else first.

He said that Mr. Wright was not in, and so could not be arrested on something called a peace warrant that Miriam was waving in the air.

It was the last time in history anybody could do something gloriously like that ''.

He thought that if once, only once, he could talk with Simms Purdew, something about his own life, and all life, would be clear and simple.

Since ordinary breakfast-table conversation was impossible, it was at least something that they were able to offer Eugene the sugar bowl with their sugar in it, and the plate of bread and butter, and that Eugene could return the pitcher of hot milk to them handle first.

I would hope that we could create the recognition in the Department and overseas that those who come across little things going wrong have the responsibility for bringing these to the attention of those who can do something about them.

`` If I could only think of something at the studio, near me, to absorb his boundless energy '', I said.

Or am I taking something that could really apply to almost anybody, and forgetting that many other people probably have had a similar experience ''??

From the lioness' point of view, this strange creature on the back of another creature, lashing out with its long thin paw, very likely appeared as something she could not at first cope with.

as long as she could do nothing constructive about the situation she was in, she would think about something else.

Even then, as you go into the house oppressed by the knowledge that something is cooking and that your house has passed under this unaccountable, official control, could you go on forgetting that you still had that ridiculous hat on your head and you were still carrying that childish horn in your hand??

It's too bad I didn't call you, and it's too bad I let Schaeffer use Accacia when he could have had a boy who'd be glad to learn something of Homicide procedure.

Of course On Thursday, Haney mailed the monthly check for separate maintenance to his wife Lolly, and wished the stranger could do something about her

But if he was the real thing, he could do something about Lolly.

) 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.

But Theodore Parker, commencing his mission to the world-at-large, disguised as the minister of a `` twenty-eighth Congregational Church '' which bore no resemblance to the Congregational polities descended from the founders ( among which were still the Unitarian churches ), made explicit from the beginning that the conflict between him and the Hunkerish society was not something which could be evaporated into a genteel difference about clerical decorum.

Here was what was called the American dream, namely, the effort to build a structure which would be something new in history and to do so in such fashion that God could bless it.

He might have been hoping, to all appearances, that this relatively sunny symphony, in conjunction with the Choral Fantasy at the end of the program, could amount to something like the Ninth ; ;

In desperation Maggie consulted Eugenia one afternoon: `` Do you think you could find me something I could do here at home to make some money, so I could still watch the baby and do the rest of the things ''??

`` I have plenty of odd moments when I could be doing something '', Maggie said.

Even at a car's length I could sense that something was wrong, and so I followed her up to the turnaround in front of the house.