Sentence Examples:
This equivocal sentence brought the conversation to an impasse.
Philosophers are capable of treating this subject with quiet intellectual curiosity; but all living men and women?philosophers included?come, at moments, to a pitiless and adamantine "impasse" where the eternal "two ways" branch off in unfathomable perspective.
For example, there is no benefit in borrowing impasse when there exists already in English its exact equivalent, 'blind-alley', which carries the meaning more effectively even to the small percentage of readers or listeners who are familiar with French.
The troop, thrown into disorder, tried to check the panic-stricken flight; a brigadier, spurring forward to learn the cause of the hysterical stampede, drew bridle sharply, then whipped his pistol out of the saddle-holster, and galloped into an impasse.
At the end of this thoroughfare our unconscious guide plunged into a still darker and fouler impasse, hung across from side to side with rows of dingy linen, and ornamented in the center with a mound of decaying cabbage-leaves, potato-parings, oyster-shells, and the like.
Then a good broad clearing would turn out to be equally impracticable, on account of a belt of bog stretching across it, or a little ravine, which favored our journey for a time, would resolve itself into an impasse, and again we would have to turn back.
When Picasso has refined nature, that is, things outside him, to the last degree, to the simplest mode of expression in line and mass, he has reached an impasse, further progress is impossible, further scientific subdivision in unattainable, his art in that direction is finished.
The impasse is evidently well known, and the leaders of the field appear to be very much of the speaker's opinion; for instead of following the hounds down the middle of the pasture, they began to diverge on either side, the huntsman setting the example.
The cloisters of the two abbeys must have buzzed with excitement over the impasse and relations became so strained that the only method of determining the issue was by each side agreeing to submit to the result of a judicial combat between champions selected by the two monasteries.
Now that the fever had run its course, now that the one able leader of the repeal cause realized the impasse into which he had brought his beloved province, Macdonald saw that it was the time for him 'from the nettle danger to pluck the flower safety.'
It is asserted that it will be impossible to raise by taxation a revenue sufficient to pay the interest on the war debt after providing for indispensable national services; and there appears to be no way out of this impasse save by making a levy upon the accumulated wealth of the country.
Confronting this impasse, he was too racked with torment to face his people that night and run the gantlet of his mother's sad, reproachful glances, his father's silence, so eloquent of mental distress, and the studied scorn, amazement, and contempt in the very attitudes of his selfish and convention-bound sisters.
These reflections only lasted a few seconds, but during that short time Laurence, satisfied by the evident success of her armed reconnaissance, had cast about for some means of escape from the impasse in which she had so stupidly placed herself, thanks to that upsetting encounter with Neville Moray, and had come to a decision.
It is time to interpose an impasse to the further spread of this misapprehension of the nature and consequences of human acts, and to demonstrate the possibility, in humble walks of life, of virtues worth cultivating, and to erect models out of those who, while they may be derelict in their ethical duties, are still worthy of being imitated in other respects.
She flees, digs, as the male advances, cross-hatching tunnels in which her persecutor may end by losing his way; but the male also is educated by heredity: he does not follow the female, but circles round her, heads her off, ends by catching her in an impasse, and while she is still ramming her blind muzzle into the earth, he grips, operates, fecundates.
When Colonel House had informed me that "the League was on the rocks," it was more real than figurative; for at the session of the Commission on the League held the evening before, the French members having insisted among other provisions upon an international army to guard the frontier, and President Wilson having point-blank refused to agree to it, an impasse had been reached, since neither side would give way.
Now, the first thing to observe is that if we can succeed in finding out such a sequence of cause and effect as the one we are in search of, somebody else may find out the same creative secret also; and then, by the hypothesis of the case, we should both be armed with an infallible power, and if we wanted to employ this power against each other we should be landed in the "impasse" of a conflict between two powers each of which was irresistible.
Once fixed as Guinevere's lover, we can understand how the tale dropped out of the completed legend: alter the ending as they might the obstinate fact would remain that Lancelot voluntarily undertook an adventure the successful achievement of which would necessitate him becoming the husband of a stranger maiden; it was an impasse from which he could only escape at the cost of an insult to one or the other queen, and very wisely the compilers of his legend ignored the story.