"Adamantine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Brougham) was achieving the immortal victory, and the illustrious triumph, protecting innocence and truth by the adamantine shield of his prodigious eloquence, it has been my lot to discharge only a few random arrows at the defeated champions of this disgraceful cause." Dr. Lushington followed on the 26th of October, with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... any man was such, that he not only employed women as executioners, but refused to permit her a priest or monk, thus forcing her to die unshriven, and refusing her the benefit of any penitence that may have lurked in her adamantine heart." ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... in rutile. There are also important differences between the physical characters of anatase and rutile; the former is not quite so hard (H 5 1/2-6) or dense (sp. gr. 3.9); it is optically negative, rutile being positive; and its lustre is even more strongly adamantine or metallic-adamantine than that ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... infected, his former interests and anxieties fell away from him like an old garment. In Harley Street an attitude of stubborn disbelief continued amongst those still mortal. There is something magnificent in that adamantine spirit which refuses to recognize the new, even though it moves with ever-increasing distinctness before the very eyes of the deniers. I was not surprised. I was familiar with ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... finds no more pleasure in it; when he is seized with an irresistible desire to go forth in the world and by his prowess dazzle all mankind for the purpose of attracting one pair of eyes. The same occurs to the lady, and she determines to make all men fall at her feet by way of illustrating to one adamantine heart that he was a dullard to have passed over her charms. And this young lady of the rose and lily complexion, and knight of the bright-hued locks and herculean muscles, being young—sufficiently young to be downcast by imaginary stumbling-blocks—had ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... affability and prime manliness, besides those associations of sentiment and imagination which, if there must be an aristocracy, lend it an artistic consistency. But here, where everybody says that all men are equal, and everybody is afraid they will be; where there are no adamantine barriers of birth and caste; people are anxiously exclusive. And though the forms of aristocracy flourish more gorgeously in their native soil, the genuine virus can be found in New York almost as readily as in London, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... the throne and monarchy of God, Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud, With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms. Nine times the space that measures day and night To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew, Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, Confounded, though immortal. But his ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... the "Prometheus" are Strength, Force, Vulcan, Prometheus, Io, daughter of Inachus, Ocean and Mercury. The play opens with the appearance of Prometheus in company with Strength, Force and Vulcan, who have been bidden to bind Prometheus with adamantine fetters to the lofty cragged rocks of an untrodden Scythian desert, because he has offended Jupiter by stealing fire from heaven and bestowing it ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... our castle,' he said. And the Duchess replied by an angry outburst, a hailstorm of reproaches, before which Eberhard Ludwig remained silent, cold, rigidly self-contained. The Duchess paused; it was like beating one's hand against some adamantine barrier. She had the sensation that all she said, felt, suffered, passed unnoticed; the man before her was waiting for information, that was all. It was intolerable, and the hopelessness of any pleading ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... aimed the unswerving spear-thrust: aye she pierced The backs of them that fled, the breasts of such As charged to meet her. All the long shaft dripped With steaming blood. Swift were her feet as wind As down she swooped. Her aweless spirit failed For weariness nor fainted, but her might Was adamantine. The impending Doom, Which roused unto the terrible strife not yet Achilles, clothed her still with glory; still Aloof the dread Power stood, and still would shed Splendour of triumph o'er the death-ordained But for a ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... them, and wickedly denied. But indeed old Mrs. Verrall was no more capable of doubting the perfection of her family's right to dominate a wide country side, than she was of examining the Thirty-nine Articles or dealing with any other of the adamantine pillars upon which her ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... of it, has daily to be done. Which proved infinitely beneficial to the Crown-Prince, after all. Hereby, to his Athenian-French elegancies, and airy promptitudes and brilliancies, there shall lie as basis an adamantine Spartanism and Stoicism; very rare, but very indispensable, for such a superstructure. Well exemplified, through after life, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to this, has He established for animals; or, taking up the question in the ideal case, for man, the supreme of His creatures? We perceive that He has relied upon love, upon love strengthened to the adamantine force of insanity or delirium, by the mere aspect of utter, utter helplessness in the human infant. It is not by power, by means visibly developed, that this result is secured, but by means spiritual and ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... of his own discovering, we only laugh. There may be doubts about the third and fourth rank; but the first and the second are hardly open to discussion. The gates which lead to the Elysian fields may slowly wheel back on their adamantine hinges to admit now and then some new and chosen modern. But the company of the masters of those who know, and in especial degree of the great poets, is a roll long closed and complete, and they who are of it hold ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... surface than from the sapphire surface. The image of the light filament, as seen from the diamond, is much keener than as seen from the sapphire. The same disparity would exist between the diamond and almost any other stone. Zircon comes nearest to having adamantine luster of any of the other gems. The green garnet that is called "olivine" in the trade also approaches diamond in luster, hence the name "demantoid," or diamond ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... bodies of artillery in motion, forming themselves into solid phalanx, and giving more and more dreadful notes of preparation. Volleys tell when divisions join, and the light that announces them is as if the adamantine arch were riven, disclosing dread splendors unspeakable Most grand, most beautiful storm! New music—that of the delicious rain, and in such abundance that it washes away the very memory of the parched and burning day. No wild commotion, no terror! Sublime ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... guess by rumour, and but boast we know), Oh! say what heroes, fired by thirst of fame, Or urged by wrongs, to Troy's destruction came! To count them all demands a thousand tongues, A throat of brass and adamantine lungs. ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... the request of the District Attorney, Drake was to be taken "dead or alive," but according to an adamantine principle of the Force, he must be taken not only alive, but unscathed if that were humanly possible. This meant that he must not be given an opportunity to run and so render shooting necessary. If, however, he should break away, his chance of escape ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... rocks, I climbed in vain hope of at last seeing the summit. Still rocks piled on rocks faced my wearied eyes, vainly striving to pierce through some chink or cranny into the space behind them. Still rocks, rocks, rocks, against whose adamantine sides my feeble will dashed restlessly and impotently. My eyeballs almost burst, as it seemed, in the intense effort to strain through those stone prison-walls. And by one of those curious links of association by which two distant scenes are united as one, I seemed again to be sitting in my garret, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... appease great Zeus in Olympos, Though she with words very many and wiles close-woven entreat him. But I will tell thee this more, and will clench it with steel adamantine: Then when all else shall be taken, whatever the boundary 128 of Kecrops Holdeth within, and the dark ravines of divinest Kithairon, A bulwark of wood at the last Zeus grants to the Trito-born goddess Sole to remain unwasted, ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... drunk with blood to vomit crime;[nz] And fatal have her Saturnalia been[oa] To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime; Because the deadly days which we have seen, And vile Ambition, that built up between Man and his hopes an adamantine wall, And the base pageant[477] last upon the scene, Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall Which nips Life's tree, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... thronged piazzas, and to gardens gay; Another gives his nights and days to games, And feasts, and dances with the reigning belles: A smile perpetual is on his lips; But in his breast, alas, stern and severe, Like adamantine column motionless, Eternal ennui sits, against whose might Avail not vigorous youth, nor prattle fond That falls from rosy lips, nor tender glance That trembles in two dark and lustrous eyes; The most bewildering of mortal things, Most precious ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... probe of the French mind had dissected out a shade of feeling of which I had often been conscious. There is a coldness about all the luscious exuberance of Milton, like the wind that blows from, the glaciers across these flowery valleys. How serene his angels in their adamantine virtue! yet what sinning, suffering soul could find sympathy in them? The utter want of sympathy for the fallen angels, in the whole celestial circle, is shocking. Satan is the only one ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... What mov'd the heavens, that they could not make Me such a woman! but a man, a beast, That hath no bliss like others? Would to heaven, In wreak of my misfortunes, I were turn'd To some fair water-nymph, that set upon The deepest whirl-pit of the rav'nous seas, My adamantine eyes might headlong hale This iron world to me, and drown ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... strong on ev'ry side With treble walls, which Phlegethon surrounds, Whose fiery flood the burning empire bounds; And, press'd betwixt the rocks, the bellowing noise resounds Wide is the fronting gate, and, rais'd on high With adamantine columns, threats the sky. Vain is the force of man, and Heav'n's as vain, To crush the pillars which the pile sustain. Sublime on these a tow'r of steel is rear'd; And dire Tisiphone there keeps the ward, Girt in her sanguine gown, by night and day, Observant ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... a tailor's bill imperils a man's financial character. But a promise to political opponents that you will not give effect to your principles stands on the level of a card debt: it is a matter of honour to make good; and on this point Mr. Asquith in particular has always shown an adamantine resolution. ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... scene worthy the inspired pencil of the artist. The malignant, scowling Shawnees, steadily advancing upon the dauntless Huron, who, though his moccasins were soaked with the blood from his own wounds, stood as firm and immovable as the adamantine rock. His left leg was thrown somewhat in advance of his right, as if he were about to spring, but in such a manner that his weight was perfectly balanced. The knife was held firmly, but not as it ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... different conduct and superior wisdom, have avoided the misfortunes to which I am the victim. My fate has been governed by necessity, a hideous necessity. It required hands stronger than mine; stronger I do believe than any human force to break the thick, adamantine chain that has bound me, once breathing nothing but joy, ever possessed by a warm love & delight in goodness,—to misery only to be ended, and now about to be ended, in death. But I forget myself, my tale is yet untold. I will pause ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... all, and pursue my own way." He told Emerson so, whereupon they went and dined together. The independence of the poet probably impressed Emerson more than his yielding would have done, for had not he preached the adamantine doctrine of self-trust? "To believe your own thought," he says, "to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... evident, Sterling's thoughts had already, since the old days of the "black dragoon," much modified themselves. We perceive that, by mere increase of experience and length of time, the opposite and much deeper side of the question, which also has its adamantine basis of truth, was in turn coming into play; and in fine that a Philosophy of Denial, and world illuminated merely by the flames of Destruction, could never have permanently been the resting-place of such a man. Those pilgrimings ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... youthful freshness? Fetters thee that lovely mien? That glance so full of truth and goodness, With an adamantine chain? Vain the hardy wish to tear me From those meshes that ensnare me; For the moment I would flee, Straight my path leads back ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... And you were wrong in taunting me with my defenceless condition, and in saying that I might be accused or put to death or boxed on the ears with impunity. For I may repeat once more, that to strike is worse than to be stricken—to do than to suffer. What I said then is now made fast in adamantine bonds. I myself know not the true nature of these things, but I know that no one can deny my words and not be ridiculous. To do wrong is the greatest of evils, and to suffer wrong is the next greatest evil. He who would avoid the last must be a ruler, ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... set, Did seem to say how vain to knock At thy heart's door, for all within Was hard, as adamantine rock. ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... wandering here, In mournful terms, with sad and heavy cheer, 440 Complain'd to Cupid: Cupid, for his sake, To be reveng'd on Jove did undertake; And those on whom heaven, earth, and hell relies, I mean the adamantine Destinies, He wounds with love, and forc'd them equally To dote upon deceitful Mercury. They offer'd him the deadly fatal knife That shears the slender threads[23] of human life; At his fair-feather'd feet the engines laid, Which th' earth from ugly Chaos' den upweigh'd. 450 These he regarded ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... straight for the biggest outlying rock—a square, black boulder about the size of an ordinary railway car. He came up to it on the summit of a foaming wave; but just as I looked for him to be dashed to pieces against its adamantine sides, he threw his legs into the air and disappeared. A stealthy, satisfied smile glowed upon Samuela's rugged visage, and, as he caught my eye, he said jauntily, "Polly savee too much. Lookee him come on top one time!" I looked, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... these little poetic ways, which ran just on an even line between the gay and the pathetic, the more indignant she grew with the man that had brought all this sorrow. She felt a saintly vindictiveness, and a determination to place herself as an adamantine shield between him and her friend. There is no courage and no anger like that of a gentle woman, when once fully roused; if ever you have occasion to meet it, you ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... an important characteristic due to reflection, and of which there are six varieties:—([alpha]) adamantine (which some authorities, experts and merchants subdivide as detailed below); ([beta]) pearly; ([gamma]) silky; ([delta]) resinous; ([epsilon]) vitreous; ([zeta]) metallic. These may ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... river back from the ocean to its mountain springs. From the silt borne down on the flood-tide you can guess the fertile plains watered and far above the fertile plains, regions of eternal snow and glacial torrent warring turbulently through the adamantine rocks. You can guess the eternal striving, the forward rush and the throwback that have carved a way through the solid rocks; but until you have followed the river to its source and tried to stem its current you ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... such a prohibition? If their views are correct, then such a law would be a mere harmless superfluity. But, sir, this 'firebrand of freedom' is a thing more exalted and noble than a mere abstraction. It is wielded by men of strong arms, adamantine will, and hearts animated by the divine impulses of patriotism and liberty. They have registered a vow in Heaven to employ every lawful and constitutional means to roll back the dark tide of slavery from the temple of Freedom, and vindicate the character of ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... in the rock," Saint Bernard said, "Grave it on brass with adamantine pen! 'Tis God himself becomes apparent, when God's wisdom ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... me you have made up your mind," cried the lady hysterically, who knew from a twelve years' experience that John Temple's made-up mind was like an adamantine wall to all her ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... that misers have hidden in the earth need not trouble himself about stocks. Feel the strength of the hand that grasps you; poor wretch, doomed to shame! Try to bend the arm of iron! try to soften the adamantine heart! Fly from me if you dare! You would hear my voice in the depths of the caves that lie under the Seine; you might hide in the Catacombs, but would you not see me there? My voice could be heard through the sound of the thunder, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... blood for the rights of man? Not one of them has, as yet, come down to hell in glory; a proof that these people have no distinguished heads among them. Those are to my mind who wish to clear up every thing, who fight with the adamantine shield of individuality, against which all prejudices, earthly or heavenly, are shivered. Show me such a man who is willing to become great on earth at the expense of his soul, and I will ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... adamantine trunk Of a huge tree, whose root, with slaughter drunk Sends forth a scent of war, La Mancha's knight, Frantic with valor, and returned from fight, His bloody standard trembling in the air, Hangs up his glittering armor beaming ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... this fierce horizon, farther yet Than vision's wing could bear my gaze, I knew Hell's desolate kingdoms stretched their iron wastes, Hell's burning mountains waved their brands of flame, Hell's lava rivers plunged in fury down Their adamantine beds. ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... Phlegethon formed a fiery firmament: Part were sulphurous clouds involving, part Shining like solid ribs of molten brass; For the fierce element which else aspires Higher and higher and lessens to the sky, Below, earth's adamantine arch rebuffed. Gebir, though now such languor held his limbs, Scarce aught admired he, yet he this admired; And thus addressed him then the conscious guide. "Beyond that river lie the happy fields; From them fly gentle breezes, which when drawn Against yon crescent ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... that the widow cried out in her agony, "Well, sir, well; the day of reckoning will come;" and that the murderer replied, "To man I can answer for what I have done; and as for God, I will take him into mine own hand." Yet it was rumoured that even on his seared conscience and adamantine heart the dying ejaculations of his victim made an impression which was never ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had always been that she liked opposition, of a smart, rattling, almost cheeky, sort. One got on best with her by saying bright things. He searched his brain now for some clever quip that would strike sparks from the adamantine mood which for the moment it was her whim to assume. To cover the process, he smiled a little. Then her beauty, as she stood before him, her queenly form clad in a more stiffly fashionable dress than he had seen her wearing before, appealed ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... killed. I took to flight, and the bull, bristling with fury, pursued me closely. The pistol was soon ready, and then looking back, I saw his head five or six yards behind my horse's tail. To fire at it would be useless, for a bullet flattens against the adamantine skull of a buffalo bull. Inclining my body to the left, I turned my horse in that direction as sharply as his speed would permit. The bull, rushing blindly on with great force and weight, did not turn so quickly. As ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... It was one of those nights of the torrents of tears which wash away all save the adamantine within us, if there be ought of that besides the breathing structure. The reason why she wept with so delirious a persistency was, that her nature felt the necessity for draining her of her self-pitifulness, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... truth of Mr Whittlestaff, he was a man very open to such shafts of ridicule. The "robur et aes triplex" which fortified his heart went only to the doing of a good and unselfish action, and did not extend to providing him with that adamantine shield which virtue should of itself supply. He was as pervious to these stings as a man might be who had not strength to act in opposition to them. He could screw himself up to the doing of a great deed for the benefit of another, and could as he was doing so deplore with inward tears the punishment ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... ordered in those stormy hours His adamantine chains for one and all, Brute "Force" and soulless "Strength" the only Power On which he chose ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... alone was afforded To the man whom men know me, or deem me, to be. But, far down, in the depth of my life's mystery, (Like the siren that under the deep ocean dwells, Whom the wind as it wails, and the wave as it swells, Cannot stir in the calm of her coralline halls, 'Mid the world's adamantine and dim pedestals; At whose feet sit the sylphs and sea fairies; for whom The almondine glimmers, the soft samphires bloom)— Thou abidest and reignest forever, O Queen Of that better world which thou swayest unseen! My one perfect mistress! my all things in all! Thee by ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... side of the earth which was towards the sun. Observe, now, the vital office of humor in Hawthorne's thought. It gleams out upon us from behind many of the gravest of his conceptions, like the silver side of a dark leaf turning in the wind. Wherever the concretion of guilt is most adamantine, there he lets his fine slender jet of humor play like a lambent fire, until the dark mass crumbles, and the choragos of the tragedy begins his mournful yet hopeful chant among the ruins. This may be verified in the "Seven Gables," "Blithedale," and "The Marble ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... the stormy glories of the sixteenth century rose on awakened Europe. But Spain was the citadel of darkness,—a monastic cell, an inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce. She was the bulwark of the Church, against whose adamantine front the wrath of innovation beat in vain. In every country of Europe the party of freedom and reform was the national party, the party of reaction and absolutism was the Spanish party, leaning on Spain, looking to her for help. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... learned that it does not pay for the individual to assert himself against the dictates of the caste, or for the lower castes to rise in rebellion against their lot. They discovered that they were merely butting their heads against an adamantine rock. So they have lost every ambition and hope; and he who would lift them up must first remove that leaden despair which rests upon them ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... feeling of love, was bound in adamantine chains to her sister. Time and fortune, that shatter all human institutions and prove human feelings, consolidated the union of their hearts and their destinies. A stranger on stronger proof of the influence of sisterly ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... his blazing throne etherial fire, And, lantern'd in his breast, from realms of day Bore the bright treasure to his Man of clay;— High on cold Caucasus by VULCAN bound, The lean impatient Vulture fluttering round, 375 His writhing limbs in vain he twists and strains To break or loose the adamantine chains. The gluttonous bird, exulting in his pangs, Tears his swoln liver with ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... shores are a striking feature, and on the south side range from three hundred to four hundred feet in height, while on the north the hills, in places, attain an altitude of two thousand feet; and these adamantine walls, witnesses of many a stirring event in the history of California, are clothed in green in spring-time, while in autumn they are brown, and from the distance resemble huge lions, couchant, guardians of the Gate. But who gave it its name, and why is it so called? These were my questions. ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... these commands, the Creator remained in his own nature. And his children, receiving from him the immortal principle, borrowed from the world portions of earth, air, fire, water, hereafter to be returned, which they fastened together, not with the adamantine bonds which bound themselves, but by little invisible pegs, making each separate body out of all the elements, subject to influx and efflux, and containing the courses of the soul. These swelling and surging as in a river moved irregularly and irrationally in ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... portion of the earth if I had not snatched it from obscurity in the very nick of time, at the moment that those matters herein recorded were about entering into the widespread insatiable maw of oblivion—if I had not dragged them out, as it were, by the very locks, just as the monster's adamantine fangs were closing upon them for ever! And here have I, as before observed, carefully collected, collated, and arranged them, scrip and scrap, "punt en punt, gat en gat," and commenced in this little work, a history to serve as a foundation ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... his handiwork. It is no mere provincialism of this dwindling sphere of ours, but a fact and a law supreme, holding sway beyond the uttermost star, valid in infinity and eternity, at this hour, the sovereign law of life for whatsoever or whomsoever lives and knows, the adamantine foundation upon which all law, civilisation, religion and progress ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... accelerate, accentuate, acceptation, accessary, accession, accessory, acclamation, acclivity, accolade, accomplice, accost, acerbity, acetic, achromatic, acidulous, acme, acolyte, acoustics, acquiescence, acquisitive, acrimonious, acumen, adage, adamantine, addict, adduce, adhesive, adipose, adjudicate, adolescence, adulation, adulterate, advent, adventitious, aerial, affability, affidavit, affiliate, affinity, agglomerate, agglutinate, aggrandizement, agnostic, alignment, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish. Forgive me, then, and let us part, at least, as friends part. I have assailed thy resolution in vain, and mine own is fixed as the adamantine decrees of fate." ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... never stops Is mightier than the fiercest shock; The constant fall of water drops Will groove the adamantine rock; We feel our noblest powers decay In ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... stately citie was destroyd, That monument of great antiquitie, When his poore hart, with griefe and sorrow cloyd, Fled to his wife, last hope in miserie; Pyrrhus, more hard than adamantine rockes, Held him and halde him ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... old, and wrinkled, but her face was stamped with a species of beauty which never fades—the beauty of a loving look. Ah! the brow of snow and the peach-bloom cheek may snare the heart of man for a time, but the loving look alone can forge that adamantine chain that time, age, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... them,—nothing, indeed, but pitch-pine and cypress. Oak, pine, and cypress would fall into the same category, when contrasted with the imperishable iron. Some new agency of steel must be invented to cope with the adamantine iron. And it becomes our Government, both for the armament of our ships and for defence against iron steamers, to adopt at the earliest moment ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... pantaloons, he propelled me from the rear, counselling me to press my feet vigorously upon the paddles. But it all proved as the labour of Sisyphus, for the seat was of sadly insufficient dimensions and adamantine hardihood, and whenever the bicycle-man released his hold, I instantaneously endured ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... gazing on his adherents, tried veterans every man of them, case-hardened in the furnace of Sylla's fiery discipline, with proud confidence and triumph in his eye; and then addressed them in clear high tones, piercing as those of an adamantine trumpet. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... scoffed, and ridiculed, and forbade her? What could she do in the refashioning of a world-old wild—one woman against the established creeds of an iron wilderness? Where, now, were her dreams of empire, her ideals, and her castles in Spain? Was she to return, broken on the wheel? Crushed between the adamantine millstones of things as they ought ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... Mr. Goodworth was thinking profoundly, the rain was falling inveterately, the fog was thickening dirtily, and the austerity of the severe-looking parlor was hardening apace into its most adamantine Sunday grimness, as Zack was brought to say his lesson at his father's knees. He got through it perfectly again; but his childish manner, during this third trial, altered from frankness to distrustfulness; and he looked much ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... especially those whose contents are metaphysical in their nature. The Vajrasan, Diamond Throne or Thunderbolt seat, was the name applied to the most sacred part of the great temple reared by Asoka on the site of the bodhi tree, under which Gautama received enlightenment. "The adamantine truths of Buddha struck like a thunderbolt upon the superstitious of his age." "The word vagra has the two senses of hardness and utility. In the former sense it is understood to be compared to the secret ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... and visit every sprout With puissant words, and murmurs made to bless, 60 But els in deep of night when drowsines Hath lockt up mortal sense, then listen I To the celestial Sirens harmony, That sit upon the nine enfolded Sphears, And sing to those that hold the vital shears, And turn the Adamantine spindle round, On which the fate of gods and men is wound. Such sweet compulsion doth in musick ly, To lull the daughters of Necessity, And keep unsteddy Nature to her law, 70 And the low world in measur'd motion draw After the heavenly tune, which none can hear Of human ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... countenance, the features grew more sternly prominent than the reality, duskier in their depth and shadow, and more lurid in their light; the frown, that had merely flitted across his brow, seemed to have contorted it with an adamantine wrinkle. On meeting him again, I was often filled with remorse, when his deep eyes beamed kindly upon me, as with the glow of a household fire that was burning in a cave. "He is a man after all," thought I; "his Maker's own truest image, a philanthropic man!—not that ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the aunt of Chrysostom. To Amprucla the bishop wrote two letters still extant.[11] They are filled with words of consolation for the religious persecution she has undergone. In one of them he says: "Greatly did we sympathize with your manliness, your steadfast and adamantine understanding, your freedom of speech and boldness." "Manliness of soul" seems to have held a high place in the bishop's favorite qualities. In another place, writing to the same deaconess, he praises "your steadfast soul, true to God; yea, rather, your ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... after time I was taxed by military individuals, eager to secure incriminating evidence, but although they cajoled, coaxed and threatened I could not be induced to betray my secret. Indeed, at last, I point-blank refused to furnish any information upon this matter whatever, and with this adamantine decision they were forced to remain content. Doubtless they had their suspicions but it was impossible to bring anything home to me and so I was ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... the breath of life to this forlorn company; for, self-contained and stern as was his nature, he could soften, in times of extremity, to a gentleness that strongly appealed to the hearts of those around him; and though he could not impart, to minds of less adamantine temper, the audacity of hope with which he still clung to the final accomplishment of his purposes, the contagion of his courage touched, nevertheless, the drooping spirits of his followers. [Footnote: "L'egalite ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... according to the respective abilities of the parties. The laurels that grow within these precincts are to be gathered with no vulgar hands; they resist the unhallowed grasp, like the golden branch with which the hero of the AEneid threw open the adamantine gates that led ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... The adamantine steel! O shining light, O beacon, polestar, path and guide of all Who, scorning slumber and the lazy down, Adopt the toilsome life of bloodstained arms! To thee, great hero who all praise transcends, La Mancha's ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... those years he has lived a good life, devoted to study, instruction, and works of benevolence. He has been a teacher of the young, a helper of the poor, and he has gained respect, affection, and honourable repute. He is safe in the security of silence and in the calm self-poise of his adamantine will. His awful secret sleeps in his bosom and is at rest forever. He has suffered much and he still suffers; yet, lulled into a false security by the uneventful lapse of years and by that drifting, desolate, apathetic recklessness ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... appetite and drinking ("swilling" Fyne called it) gallons of ginger beer, which was procured for him (in stone bottles) at his request. The difficulty of keeping up a conversation with that being exhausted Mrs Fyne herself, who had come to the table armed with adamantine resolution. The only memorable thing he said was when, in a pause of gorging himself "with these French dishes" he deliberately let his eyes roam over the little tables occupied by parties of diners, and remarked that his wife did for a moment think of coming down with him, but ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Say shall the son of Sympathy pretend His cedar fragrance with our Chiefs to blend? There, where the gnarled monuments of sand Howl their dark whirlwinds to the levin brand; Conclusive tenderness; fraternal grog, Tidy conjunction; adamantine bog, Impetuous arrant toadstool; Thundering quince, Repentant dog-star, inessential Prince, Expound. Pre-Adamite eventful gun, Crush retribution, currant-jelly, pun, Oh! eligible Darkness, fender, sting, Heav'n-born ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... and I cannot say that she looked anything. She simply CLOUDED UP, if I may so express the effect that came and remained upon her countenance, which was now the countenance she had shown me the first evening I saw her, when I saw the Deerings cowering in its shadow. I had no need to look at the adamantine little man before her to know that he was softening into wax, and, in fact, I felt a sort of indecency in beholding his inteneration, for I knew that it came from his heart, and had its consecration ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the adamantine youth, "what is the name of the house with a big gate, about a half ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... head, and the weak-eyed mole plies his dark work; but thy soaring is even unto heaven. Or let me add (for my appetite for similes is truly canine at this moment), that as the Italian nobles their new-fashioned doors, so thou dost make the adamantine gate of Democracy turn on its golden hinges to most sweet ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... easy dwelling-place for the non-employee. Our worthy Uncle of the chin whiskers makes it quite plain that, while he may tolerate the mere visitor, he does not care to have him hanging around; makes it so plain, in fact, that a few weeks purely of sight-seeing on the Zone implies an adamantine financial backing. In his screened and full-provided towns, where the employee lives in such well-furnished comfort, the tourist might beat his knuckles bare and shake yellow gold in the other hand, and be coldly refused even a lodging for the night; and while he may eat a meal ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... which are those of nature, and logic, which are those of mind, be fully understood, no one will seek such an argument in the former but in the latter only, for they alone, as I have shown, are purposive, and they are wholly so. The only God that nature points to is an adamantine Fate. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... heretical doubt as to the sanctity of the established order of things—that fetish which has ruled Pan-Americans for two centuries, and which is based upon a blind faith in the infallibility of the prescience of the long-dead framers of the articles of Pan-American federation—and ending in an adamantine determination to defend my honor and my life to the last ditch against the blind and senseless regulation which assumed the synonymity of misfortune ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... swimmer, I doubted my ability to keep afloat for three or four hours, with a heavy sea pouring into the circular cavity, which would presently be filled with a whirlpool of seething, foaming water. I should be knocked and buffeted from side to side against the adamantine rocks till I was dead, then tossed and played with till the tide ran out and carried my body into the vast ocean beyond, as food for fishes. My friends would never hear of me again, and my animals on the island would starve till—yes, why ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... "Stonewall" attached to Thomas Jonathan Jackson and was peculiarly appropriate as indicating the adamantine, unyielding character ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... homeward him I love. E'en as I melt, not uninspired, the wax, May Mindian Delphis melt this hour with love: And, swiftly as this brazen wheel whirls round, May Aphrodite whirl him to my door. Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love. Next burn the husks. Hell's adamantine floor And aught that else stands firm can Artemis move. Thestylis, the hounds bay up and down the town: The goddess stands i' the crossroads: sound the gongs. Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love. Hushed are the voices of the winds ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... anything," answered Keyork, with twinkling eyes, "you would know that a theory is not a demonstration, but an explanation. But, by the hypothesis, since you are not I, you can know nothing certainly. Now my theory explains many things, and, among others, the adamantine, imperishable, impenetrable nature of the substance vanity upon which the showman, Nature, projects in fast fading colours the unsubstantial images of men. Why do you drag me through this ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... faith, and left its mark in gloom upon the characters of the people and the tenor of their laws. The Ironside quality of their creed showed itself in the cruelties with which they visited the Indians; the severity of their tenets was felt by all who could not readily adapt themselves to the adamantine ethics of men of the type of Endicott and Mather. There was not wanting, too, a spirit of lawlessness in the English America, curiously in contrast with the law-abiding character of the Non-conformist colonizations. Along the seaboard wild pirates nestled, skimmers ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... half afraid, The assembled deities surveyed. Great Pan, who wont to chase the fair, And loved the spreading oak, was there; 60 Old Saturn too, with up-cast eyes, Beheld his abdicated skies; And mighty Mars, for war renowned, In adamantine armour frowned; By him the childless goddess rose, Minerva, studious to compose Her twisted threads; the web she strung, And o'er a loom of marble hung: Thetis, the troubled ocean's queen. Matched with a mortal, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... simple in form, being usually bounded by four faces of a prism and four faces of a dome; they are brownish-yellow in colour owing to a stain of limonite. Crystals from some other localities, notably from Monteponi in Sardinia, are transparent and colourless, possessed of a brilliant adamantine lustre, and usually modified by numerous bright faces. The variety of combinations and habits presented by the crystals is very extensive, nearly two hundred distinct forms being figured by V. von ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... on which you are independent: you will not have the bay rum; you are a teetotaller. You say so in a weak voice which nevertheless has some adamantine quality that impresses him. He humors you; or perhaps your preference appeals to his ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... on at Lubeck, the same as it does everywhere else. The year turned and the months flew by. Winter gave place to spring, when the adamantine chains with which the ice-king had bound the rivers and waters of the north were loosed asunder by the mighty power of the exultant sun; the snow melted away from the earth, which decked itself in green to rejoice at its freedom, smiling in satisfaction with flowers; while ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding. The originality, the depth, and the compression of the thoughts; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance of the distinctions; the adamantine chain of the logic; and I will venture to add—(paradox as it will appear to those who have taken their notion of Immanuel Kant from Reviewers and Frenchmen)—the clearness and evidence, of the Critique ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... courage; the adornments of his mind, and the energies of his soul, all exerted to their uttermost stretch, could not roll back one hair's breadth the wheel of time's chariot; that which had been was written with the adamantine pen of reality, on the everlasting volume of the past; nor could agony and tears suffice to wash out one ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Ye would lie down and join your moans with mine. Let this poor wretch but pass, who war doth wage With heaven, the elements, the powers divine! I beg for pity or for death. No more! But open, ope Hell's adamantine door! ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Incapacitated as Garrison was to resort to physical resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law by his non-resistant doctrine, it seemed that all the energy and belligerency of the man went into the most tremendous verbal expressions. They were like adamantine projectiles flung with the savage strength of a catapult against the walls of slavery. The big sinners, like Webster and Clay, he singled out for condign punishment, were objects of his utmost severities of speech. It was thus that he essayed ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... crave the warm-blooded thing that is mine for the taking, but no more loves me than she loves the policeman who salutes her on his beat. I cannot take her. Something stronger than my passion opposes an adamantine barrier. I love her with my soul as well as with my body, and my soul cries out for the soul that the Almighty forgot when endowing ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... danger," he said, gazing into them with an earnestness almost rapt, which to Mrs Verloc, flying from the gallows, seemed to be full of force and tenderness. This devotion deeply moved her—and the adamantine face lost the stern rigidity of its terror. Comrade Ossipon gazed at it as no lover ever gazed at his mistress's face. Alexander Ossipon, anarchist, nicknamed the Doctor, author of a medical (and improper) pamphlet, late lecturer on the social aspects of hygiene to working ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... life, die to their own names even, that they may know nothing but their holy duties,—while men are torturing and denouncing their fellows, and while we can hear day and night the clinking of the hammers that are trying, like the brute forces in the "Prometheus," to rivet their adamantine wedges right through the breast of human nature,—I have been ready to believe that we have even now a new revelation, and the name of its ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... themselves against the eventual facts. Naturally, the minor speculators throughout the city—those who had expected to make a fortune out of this crash—raged and complained, but, being faced by an adamantine exchange directorate, a subservient press, and the alliance between the big bankers and the heavy quadrumvirate, there was nothing to be done. The respective bank presidents talked solemnly of "a mere temporary flurry," Hand, Schryhart, Merrill, and Arneel went still further into their pockets ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... July? Shall we help them to obliterate the associations that cluster around the glorious struggle for independence, or stultify the labors of the patriots who erected this magnificent political edifice upon the adamantine base of human liberty? Shall we surrender the fame of Washington and Laurens, of Gadsden and the Lees, of Jefferson and Madison, and of the myriads of heroes whose names are imperishably connected with the memory of a ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Mrs. Woffington, like Olympian Jove awaiting Juno. But he was mortal, after all; for suddenly the serenity of that adamantine countenance was disturbed; his eye dilated; his grace and dignity were shaken. He huddled his handkerchief into one pocket, his snuff-box into another, and forgot his cane. He ran to the door ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... sing, for only thus couldst thou rightly guard the golden knowledge, Truth, the delicate pearl and the adamantine jewel of the Law. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... the glory of his vanting plumes And to the ground casts of his high hang'd lookes. You gentle Heauens. O execute your wrath On vile mortality, that hath scornd your powers. You night borne Sisters to whose haires are ty'd In Adamantine Chaines both Gods and Men Winde on your webbe of mischiefe and of plagues, And if, O starres you haue an influence: 30 That may confounde this high erected heape Downe powre it; Vomit out your worst of ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... England flush'd To anticipate the scene; And her van the fleeter rush'd O'er the deadly space between. "Hearts of Oak!" our captains cried; when each gun From its adamantine lips Spread a death-shade round the ships, Like the hurricane ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... which his majesty swore at him for an idiot, and turned his back. Every word of this Mrs. Dove heard Colonel Mar tell my Lady—and then they fell to rating the poor youth, and trying to force out who this secret flame may be; but his is of the same stuff as his mother, adamantine and impervious. And now the Colonel keeps him on hard duty continually, and they watch him day and night to find out what places he haunts. But bless me, Mrs. Hunter, is the church clock striking? We must be gone, or my good man will be ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of to-morrow, flowing Between thy narrow adamantine walls, But beautiful, and white with waterfalls And wreaths of mist, like hands the pathway showing; I hear the ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... roll within my ravish'd breast, To me, no seer, the inspiring gods suggest; Nor skill'd nor studious, with prophetic eye To judge the winged omens of the sky. Yet hear this certain speech, nor deem it vain; Though adamantine bonds the chief restrain, The dire restraint his wisdom will defeat, And soon restore him to his regal seat. But generous youth! sincere and free declare, Are you, of manly growth, his royal heir? For sure Ulysses in your look appears, The same his features, if the same his years. Such ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... and bachelor of Oxford, of that dread sacrament by which Catiline bound the soul of his fellow-conspirators, in order that both by the daring of the deed he might have proof of their sincerity, and by the horror thereof astringe their souls by adamantine fetters, and Novem-Stygian oaths, to that wherefrom hereafter the weakness of the flesh might shrink. Wherefore, O Jack! we too have determined, following that ancient and classical example, to fill, as he did, a bowl with the lifeblood ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... recollection of Liszt is a vivid one: to me he was iron; Tausig, steel; Rubinstein, gold. This metallic classification is not intended to praise gold at the expense of steel, or iron to the detriment of gold. It is merely my way of describing the adamantine qualities of Liszt and Tausig—two magnetic mountains of the kind told of in Sinbad, the Sailor, to which was attracted whatever came within their radius. And Rubinstein—what a man, what an artist, what a heart! As Joseffy once put it, Rubinstein's was not a pianist's touch, but ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... to come, he hopes to see us less anxious to be governed, in the technical sense; each man shall govern himself in the interests of all; government without any governor will be, for the first time, adamantine. Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious; conservatism stands on man's limitations, reform on his infinitude. ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... house of Pelops: while diffidence, and the Muse who presides over the peaceful lyre, forbid me to diminish the praise of illustrious Caesar, and yours, through defect of genius. Who with sufficient dignity will describe Mars covered with adamantine coat of mail, or Meriones swarthy with Trojan dust, or the son of Tydeus by the favor of Pallas a match for the gods? We, whether free, or ourselves enamored of aught, light as our wont, sing of banquets; we, of the battles of maids desperate ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... madness—madness in which the separate entities of good and bad each had, in its turn, a perfect and distinct existence? He chose to think that this was the case. Who, within his inner consciousness, does not feel that same ferine, savage man struggling against the stern, adamantine bonds of morality and decorum? Were those bonds burst asunder, as it was with this man, might not the wild beast rush forth, as it had rushed forth in him, to rend and to tear? Such were the questions that Mainwaring asked himself. And how had it all ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... by glowing quotations from Mr. Swinburne and Walt Whitman and we cannot help admitting that for common hearts it stands in need of the commendation. The transfer of affection from an all loving Father to an adamantine universe is a process for which we may well seek all the aid that the witchery of poetry can supply. Unluckily we are haunted by the consciousness that the poetry itself is blindly ground out by the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... great; but was he good? His brain was right; how was his heart? He saw heaven; he looked down on hell. He saw Satan, and Sin his daughter, and Death their horrible offspring. Angels serried before him their battalions; the long lines of adamantine shields flashed back on his blind eyeballs the unutterable splendour of heaven. Devils gathered their legions in his sight; their dim, discrowned, and tarnished armies passed rank and file before him. Milton tried to see the first woman; but, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... his heart recoiled from its purpose, As from the verge of a crag, where one step more is destruction. Strange is the heart of man, with its quick, mysterious instincts! 570 Strange is the life of man, and fatal or fated are moments, Whereupon turn, as on hinges, the gates of the wall adamantine[38] "Here I remain!" he exclaimed, as he looked at the heavens above him, Thanking the Lord whose breath had scattered the mist and the madness, Wherein, blind and lost, to death he was staggering headlong. 575 "Yonder snow-white cloud, that floats in the ether above me, Seems like a hand that ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... colour. Aldebaran was a spot of blood-red fire, and Sirius condensed to one point the light of innumerable sapphires. And they shone steadily: they did not scintillate, they were calmly glorious. My impressions had an adamantine hardness and brightness: there was no blurring softness, no atmosphere, nothing but infinite darkness set with the myriads of these acute and brilliant points and specks of light. Presently, when I looked again, the little earth seemed no ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... philosophy at one time, and now let me apply it. When a murder is in the paulo-post-futurum tense, and a rumor of it comes to our ears, by all means let us treat it morally. But suppose it over and done, and that you can say of it,[Greek: Tetelesai], or (in that adamantine molossus of Medea) [Greek: eirzasai]; suppose the poor murdered man to be out of his pain, and the rascal that did it off like a shot, nobody knows whither; suppose, lastly, that we have done our best, by putting out our legs to trip up the ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... about for its coasting and the enthusiasm and ingenuity of the Ponkapoag coasters. On days and nights in the old-fashioned winters, when the sledding of big logs to the sawmill on Ponkapoag brook had made the course down the hill one glare of adamantine snow between deep rifts, the population of the village used to turn out; not the big and little boys and girls only, but the grown-ups even to the venerable gaffers of those days who could remember how they used to coast ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... angels sing for joy? Heaven must be compassed in a narrow space, And offer more than room enough for all That pass its portals; but the underworld, The godless realm, the place where demons forge Their fiery darts and adamantine chains, Must swarm with ghosts that for a little while Had worn the garb of flesh, and being heirs Of all the dulness of their stolid sires, And all the erring instincts of their tribe, Nature's own ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... that night, and when he climbed cautiously in at the window, he uncovered an ambuscade, in the person of his aunt; and when she saw the state his clothes were in her resolution to turn his Saturday holiday into captivity at hard labor became adamantine ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mouse on the day my house party arrived. Grim old doors took on new padlocks, keyholes were carefully stopped up; creaking floors were calked; windows were picketed by uncompromising articles of furniture deployed to keep my ruthless refugee from adventuring too close to the danger zone; and adamantine instructions were served out to all of my vassals. Everything appeared to be in tip-top shape for ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... decks and below. 'But your ship,' says Carlyle, 'cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting: the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed with adamantine rigour, by the ancient Elemental Powers, who are entirely careless how you vote. If you can by voting, or without voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will get round the Cape: if you cannot, the ruffian Winds will blow you ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... more be shaken by the puny attacks of men or devils than the everlasting mountains can be disturbed by the storm-blasts which howl around them. What more, then, is needed, than to shut up the wicked in a prison-house, through whose adamantine walls the accusing cry can never pierce, and whose doors are for ever barred by the holy decree of the Almighty? Ah! were it so, even this thought might possibly gratify pride and enmity, could a ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... defiance; they would have looked at a bright little bed, of the last new pattern, worthy of a child's delicious sleep; and they would only have discovered that the room was three hundred years old when they had drawn aside the window curtains, and had revealed the adamantine solidity of the outer walls. Or, if they had been allowed to pursue their investigations a little further, and had found their way next into Mrs. Linley's sitting room, here again a transformation ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... evening's vault that faery hall, As heaven low resting on the wave it spread Its floors of flashing light, Its vast and azure dome; And on the verge of that obscure abyss 225 Where crystal battlements o'erhang the gulf Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuse Their lustre through its adamantine gates. ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... filled him with longing to help others. "A sensitive, firm, wide-ranging, unresting spirit, he looks out mournfully over the throngs of men that fill the world, all of them totally depraved, all of them caught, from farthest eternity, in the adamantine meshes of God's decrees; the most of them also being doomed in advance by those decrees to an endless existence of ineffable torment; and upon this situation of affairs the excellent Michael Wigglesworth proposes to make poetry." His ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... known, must be loved. And though you have all the knowledge of a von Humboldt, and do not love her, you will never understand her or her teachings. You will go through life with her, and yet parted from her as by an adamantine wall. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... here On this sacred Ring must swear, [Puts it on his Finger, holds his Hand. By the Figure which is round, Your Passion constant and profound; By the Adamantine Stone, To be fixt to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... doubtless all for the best. But old women are never selfish in regard to the marriage of young women. That the young women belonging to them should be settled,—and thus got rid of,—is no doubt the great desire; but, whether the old woman be herself married or a spinster, the desire is founded on an adamantine confidence that marriage is the most proper and the happiest thing for the young woman. The belief is so thorough that the woman would cease to be a woman, would already have become a brute, who would desire to keep any girl belonging to her out of matrimony ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... antagonist of mine, nor can all the Rakshasas together bear the strength of my arms. Behold these strong arms of mine, each like unto the trunk of an elephant. Behold also these thighs of mine like unto iron maces, and this broad and adamantine chest. O beautiful one, thou shall today behold my prowess like unto that of Indra. O thou of fair hips, hate me not, thinking ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli |
