"Impenetrable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sight of helpless Mexico, and the temptation of adding fresh slave soil to the United States South, through her spoliation; Calhoun confessed that, with the breaking out of hostilities between the two republics an impenetrable curtain had shut from his eyes the future. The great plot for maintaining the political domination of the South had miscarried. New national territory had become inevitable with the firing of the first gun. Seeing this, Calhoun endeavored to postpone the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... lady looked at her descendant, but Miss Ethel's glance was impenetrable. "I suppose you can fancy, my dear, why I ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... succeeded or not in reaching the summit of the mountains, the verdict accepted at that date was that they had not been passed; and until the year 1813, they were regarded as impenetrable. The narrative of the crossing of these mountains, and the chain of events that led up to the successful attempt is widely known, but only in a general way. It is for this reason that a longer and more detailed account is given in these pages; and as the expedition was successful in opening up ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... by the celebrated doctors of that day, Jean Gerson, Jean de Courtecuisse, and Pierre d'Ailli. They found him in his humble apartment, meanly clad, and eating porridge out of an earthen vessel; and with regard to his secret, as impenetrable as all his predecessors in alchymy. His fame reached the ears of the king, Charles VI., who sent M. de Cramoisi, the Master of Requests, to find out whether Nicholas had indeed discovered the philosopher's stone. But M. de Cramoisi took nothing by his visit; all his attempts to sound ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... west to east. Right in front of its opening, and half a league south from Goa, lies the pretty little village of Rungus, by which it is known. The exterior sides of the mountain and the fragments of its large crater are covered with impenetrable wood. Respecting its ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... steps and again a pause. Then he heard the soft jingle of keys in her hands; lock after lock she found swiftly in the dark until she must have shot back five or six bolts; a door opened before them. He could not see it, since beyond was a dark no less impenetrable, but caught the familiar creak of hinges. He heard the door close softly when they had gone through; he heard the several bolts shot back. Then Zoraida left him, groped a moment and thereafter the tiny flare ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... dwelt on the features of the squatter, when unexcited. Occasionally a gust of wind would fan the embers; and, as a brighter light shot upwards, the little solitary tent was seen as it were suspended in the gloom of the upper air. All beyond was enveloped, as usual at that hour, in an impenetrable body ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... impenetrable; though I suppose he will shut himself up like an oyster over the dubious pearl of his precious secret, and give me no end of trouble to extract his contents. But I possess a knife which is able to open his shell. He has answered my letter ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... a veil of darkness, although, had he but known it, this was not nearly so impenetrable to Isobel as to himself. Somehow—possibly Arthur Thorburn had friends with whom he corresponded in England who knew Isobel—she acquired information as to every detail of his career. Indeed when he came to learn everything he was absolutely amazed at the particulars with which she was acquainted, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... there, on this flat, that I beheld the most majestic, the finest virgin forest that existed in the world. It consists of gigantic trees, grown up as straight as a rush, and to a prodigious height. Their tops, where alone their branches grow, are laced into one another, so as to form a vault impenetrable to the rays of the sun. Under this vault, and among those fine trees, prolific nature has given birth to a crowd of climbing plants of a most remarkable description. The rattan and the flexible liana mount up to the topmost branches, and re-descending to the ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... mind that, old man," said Dicky lightly. (But I saw that Robin was laboriously relighting his pipe and surrounding himself with an impenetrable cloud of smoke.) "Listen to the yarn. The idea was to stake out a claim in some fairly busy road and stay there for a given time—say, six o'clock till tea-time—and kid the passing citizens that we were duly authorised to get in the way and mess up the traffic generally. If we ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... in different degrees, in the opprobrium and disgrace. The reverse of all this characterizes the manner of appointment in this State. The council of appointment consists of from three to five persons, of whom the governor is always one. This small body, shut up in a private apartment, impenetrable to the public eye, proceed to the execution of the trust committed to them. It is known that the governor claims the right of nomination, upon the strength of some ambiguous expressions in the constitution; but it is not known to what extent, or in what manner he exercises it; nor upon ...
— The Federalist Papers
... not readily to be credited against men who contended for a greater purity of gospel truth, nor against men of the practical and military knowledge of Lord Cobham. But over the whole of these transactions there hangs a veil of impenetrable mystery, and we can only say that the Lollards are charged with endeavouring to surprise the king and his brother at Eltham, as they were keeping their Christmas festivities there, and that this attempt failed through the Court receiving intimation of the design ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... her eyes in a longing for impenetrable night, for rest without an awakening; she would like to have been turned into a thing of stone so that she could neither ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... here was growth, he had worked at it day and night, and the business widening fast had revealed long ramifications which went winding and stretching away into every phase of American life. And this life was like a forest, boundless and impenetrable, up-springing, intertwining. How much could he ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... counsels, I would the rather suggest, most humbly suggest, that the defensive is your best course. Here in the copse you have an enclosure capable with a little trouble of being converted into an impregnable fortress. Already the ditches are deep, the curtain wall of hawthorn high and impenetrable, the approaches narrow. By retiring hither with your forces, occupying every twig, and opposing a beak in every direction, you would be absolutely safe, and it is easy to foresee ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... awful in their silence. The darkness deepened in the old parlor. There was a sound of voices passing in the street. The church bell broke the stillness. Softly the old calm crept over his brow, and he raised his face and looked at her with those great dark eyes—eyes of unfathomable tenderness and impenetrable fire, and she felt that her very soul stood naked before him. She trembled and sank on the couch at her side. His look was infinitely tender as he ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... across the field, visible even at that distance; so great the change in a few days, the hand of spring grows firm and takes a strong grasp of the hedges. My prison bars are but a sixteenth of an inch thick; I could snap them with a fillip—only the window-pane, to me as impenetrable as the twenty-foot wall of the Tower of London. A cart has just gone past bearing a strange load among the carts of spring; they are talking of poling the hops. In it there sat an old man, with the fixed stare, the animal-like eye, of extreme age; he is over ninety. About him there were some few ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... first discovered, it was found to be inhabited by a race of savages, divided into several tribes. They had no manufactures; they had no knowledge of art or science; they lived in the impenetrable woods in huts, having no pretension to architecture; they went almost entirely naked, were extremely warlike, and fond of hunting, and were known to devour the enemies they killed ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... Thinking that point not far from the head of the Mississippi, he predicted that Americans would soon find a short intracontinental way to the Pacific. He also predicted that these traders would soon open a new route between the Atlantic and the Pacific by the lake of Nicaragua. "No sea is impenetrable," he said, "to the navigating genius of the Americans. You see their flag everywhere displayed; you see them exploring all islands, studying their wants, and ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... The hostess had seated the new arrivals in chairs opposite Mrs. McMahon and Sadie. It was evident by their exclamations that Mrs. Flynn and Ruth were mystified and impressed by the Irishwoman's explanation. But Miss Johnson maintained an air of impenetrable reserve. ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... a village in Auvergne has found its way into the annals of witchcraft. "A gentleman while hunting was suddenly attacked by a savage wolf of monstrous size. Impenetrable by his shot, the beast made a spring upon the helpless huntsman, who in the struggle luckily, or unluckily for the unfortunate lady, contrived to cut off one of its fore-paws. This trophy he placed in his pocket, and made the best of his way homewards in safety. On the road he met a friend, to ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... motion of the Holy Ghost, threw off his clothes, and placed himself in his stead among the thirty-nine martyrs. Thus God heard their request, though in another manner than they imagined: "Which, ought to make us adore the impenetrable secrets of his mercy and justice," says St. Ephrem, "in this instance, no less than in the reprobation of Judas, and the election of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... wind has fallen. Later on, the snow-flakes flutter silently and sparely through the lifeless air. The most distant landscape is quite blotted out. After sunset the clouds have settled down upon the hills, and the snow comes in thick, impenetrable fleeces. At night our hair crackles and sparkles when we brush it. Next morning there is a foot and a half of finely powdered snow, and still the snow is falling. Strangely loom the chalets through the semi-solid whiteness. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Dominic[34]; And Boniface[35] disgraced, betrays the smack, In anno Domini, of Falstaff sack. Arms cross'd, brows bent, eyes fix'd, feet marching slow, A band of malcontents with spleen o'erflow; Wrapt in Conceit's impenetrable fog, Which Pride, like Phoebus, draws from every bog, 490 They curse the managers, and curse the town Whose partial favour keeps such merit down. But if some man, more hardy than the rest, Should dare attack ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... to go to Denmark for her standard Shakespeare, or whether she is to have one of her own is, as yet, a question impossible to answer. A pure Landsmaal translation cannot satisfy, and many Norwegians refuse to recognize the Riksmaal as Norwegian at all. In the far, impenetrable future the language question may settle itself, and when that happy day comes, but not before, we may look with some confidence for a "standard" Shakespeare in a literary garb which all Norwegians will ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... and that she might see it all no more she bent her head and glanced down on the gaping abyss in which Paris seemed to be engulfed. In its depths not a light could yet be seen; night had rolled over it and plunged it into impenetrable darkness. Its mighty, continuous rumble seemed to have sunk into ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... 'The preparations of the heart in man, &c., is from the Lord.' And again, 'God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me' (Job 23:16). The heart, as it is by nature hard, stupid, and impenetrable, so it remains, and so will remain, until God, as was said, bruiseth it with his hammer, and melts it with his fire. The stony nature of it is therefore said to be taken away of God. 'I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you,' saith he, 'an heart of flesh' ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... process of generation is still involved in impenetrable obscurity, conjectures may nevertheless be formed concerning some of its circumstances. First, the eggs of fish and frogs are impregnated, after they leave the body of the female; because they are deposited in a fluid, and are not therefore covered with a hard shell. It ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... slanting roof of this quickly-built and movable banqueting-hall, consisted of a strong, impenetrable carpet-stuff, woven at Thebes, and afterwards dyed purple at Tanis by the Phoenicians. Saitic artists had embroidered the vulture, one of the forms in which Necheb appears, a hundred times on the costly material with threads of silver. The cedar-wood ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... November, and the soil being extremely fertile, the increase of vegetation is too rapid, and the scanty population are hemmed in and overpowered by superabundant herbage. This mass of foliage, and grasses of ten feet in height interwoven with creeping plants and wild grape-vines, is perfectly impenetrable to man, and forms a vast jungle, inhabited by elephants, rhinoceros, and buffaloes, whose ponderous strength alone can overcome it. There are few antelopes, as those animals dislike the grass jungles, in which they have no protection against the lion or the leopard, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... her servant in the broad day. Clad in these, she was safe, as in a coat of mail, from the attack of the domestic aspirant, who was seldom able to obtain possession of the outworks of fashion beyond an Irish poplin or a Norwich crape. The silks and satins were a wall of separation, as impenetrable as the lines of Torres Vedras, or the court hoop and petticoat of a drawing-room in the reign of George III. The new liberal commercial system has entirely changed the position of the parties. ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... of implying a misgiving that if nourished upon similar meats, she might come to be like that charmer, which would be a fatal consummation. Aware of her enemy, Lady Tippins tries a youthful sally or two, and tries the eye-glass; but, from the impenetrable cap and snorting armour of the stoney aunt ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... before we yield our credence to a religious system. But the first step we take brings with it the instructive lesson of our incapacity, and teaches the wholesome lesson of humility. From arrogantly claiming a right to worship a deity we comprehend, we soon come to feel that the impenetrable veil that is cast around the Godhead is an indispensable condition of our faith, reverence, and submission, A being that can be comprehended is not a being to ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... there. The rivers run in the green valleys deep down. 'God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.' Let us see that we open our hearts to the reception of these quickening and cleansing influences, for it is possible for us to cover ourselves over with such an impenetrable covering that that grace cannot pass through it. Let us see to it that we keep ourselves in close contact with the foundation of all this grace, even Jesus Christ Himself, by desire, by faith, by love, by communion, by meditation, by approximation, by sympathy, by service. And let us see that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... troops or the abilities of their generals, but they did underrate the difficulties in conquering a population scattered over a vast extent of territory. They did not take into consideration the protecting power of nature, the impenetrable forests to be traversed, the mighty rivers to be crossed, the mountains to be climbed, and the coasts to be controlled. Nor did they comprehend the universal spirit of resistance in a vast country, and the power of sudden growth ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... not think so," said Therese. "He recognizes that one mind is impenetrable to another mind, and he suffers from this. He feels that he is alone when he is thinking, alone when he is writing. Whatever one may do, one is always alone in the world. That is what he wishes to say. He is right. You may always explain: ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... listen to him, seeing that his weighty confidences would not be brooked; and when he had finished—he said what he had to say in very few words—she glanced up at him with the same air of impenetrable indifference. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... then, with snail-paced precarious mails, and the only means of communication horses by land, and sailing ships by sea. How men and women had the courage to go on long journeys at all away from each other in those days is hard to realize, knowing what an impenetrable curtain of silence and mystery immediately fell between them with the winding of the coach horn, or the last wave of the plumed hat as it disappeared behind the last turning of the road—leaving those at home with nothing for company but the yearning horizon and the aching, uncommunicative ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... extensive view of his range. As the ascent was too fatiguing for the child, he left him on a small plain at the bottom, with strict injunctions not to stir from it till his return. Scarcely, however, had he gained the summit, when the horizon was darkened by an impenetrable mist. The anxious father instantly hastened back to find his child; but owing to the unusual darkness, he missed his way. After a fruitless search of many hours, he discovered that he had reached the bottom of the valley, and was ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... paid with flesh, and he looked at the tunal which ringed the moat as the moat ringed the squat white fortress. A deadly girdle was the tunal, of cactus and other thorny things, thick, wide, dark, and impenetrable, a forest of stilettoes, and for its kings the rattlesnake and viper. Nor naked Indian nor mailed white man might traverse that thicket, where wall on wall was met a spiked and iron growth. One opening there was, through which ran the road to the town, but a battery deemed impregnable commanded ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... circle; it did not declare the folly of riches, or show that the love of money is a root of all evil. It made sensual pleasure and outward prosperity the great aims of successful ambition, and hid with an impenetrable screen from the eyes of men the fatal results of a worldly life, so that suicide itself came to be viewed as a justifiable way to avoid evils that are hard to be borne; in short, it was a religion which, though joyous, was without hope, and with innumerable deities was without ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Chinese are a people whose "prepossessions and prejudices and cherished judgments are the growth of millenniums," they come to China hoping that miraculous assistance will aid them in their exposition of the Christian doctrine, in language which is too often impenetrable darkness to ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... work. But I have never reproached him for it with feelings of bitter resentment. Why not? Can we pronounce sentence, reader, in a suit whereof the most important facts still lie in impenetrable darkness? ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... above, the main body of the fleet sloped in echeloned ranks, hiding the threatened city with an impenetrable terraced wall of buzzing helios and massive forts. Up, back, up, back, the serried masses reached, till the rearmost were twenty-five thousand feet aloft. And farther behind, unmoving on their six-mile level, ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... water, a still surface which hid depths. At the prow of the boat shone a small lantern, which cast before the boat an arrow of light. And as the boat moved this arrow perpetually attacked the darkness in front. It was like the curiosity of man attacking the impenetrable mysteries of God. It seemed to penetrate, but always new darkness disclosed itself beyond, new darkness flowed ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... impenetrable! The instinctive fear of apprehension caused him to look in every direction for possible eye-witnesses. Every drop of blood in his body seemed turned to ice with horror. Down there in that black, chill water lay the body of his wife, the woman he had loved through all ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... very curious picture of them has been preserved. [Footnote: Vide Cusick's Five Nations, 2d edition, and Schoolcraft's Indian Tribes, vol. i p: 429.] Of them he remarks, "Who the giants are intended to symbolize is uncertain. They are represented as impenetrable by darts." The connection between the stone giants of the Indians, the Eskimo, and the Norsemen, if not historical, is at least identical in this, that they all typify ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... unknown, covert, impenetrable, obscure, undiscovered, unseen, dark, imperceptible, occult, unimagined, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... full horror of their position; but as long as he could shake even an unconscious murmur from his brother, it seemed like happiness compared with the utter desolation after the last whisper had died away, and he was left intolerably alone under the solid impenetrable shroud that enveloped him, and the senseless form he held on his breast. And if he tried to follow on by that clue which Armine had left him, whirlwinds of dismay seemed to sweep away all hope and trust, while he thought of wilfulness, recklessness, defiance, irreverence, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the attention of European adventurers exclusively to the coast; the small temptation which the continent of Africa held out, during the continuance of that trade, to internal commerce; and the almost impenetrable barrier raised up against Europeans in modern times, by the savage intolerance of ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... was broken upon sometimes by fantastic visions. But to-day he had no consciousness at all of Robin. The veil of death which hung between him and the child he had slain seemed to be of stone, absolutely impenetrable. And all his visions ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Rivers was not capable of receiving light or warmth from the simple aspects of nature. His soul, indurated by crime, was as insusceptible to the soothing influence of such aspects, as the cold rocky cavern where he had harbored, was impenetrable to the noonday blaze. The sun-glance through the barred lattice, suddenly stealing, like a friendly messenger, with a sweet and mellow smile upon his lips, was nailed as an angelic visiter, by the enthusiastic nature of the one, without guile in his own heart. Rivers would have regarded such a visiter ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... trees rose in a shadowy wall against the clear blue sky; there was no wind, and it was oppressively still. He could see about a quarter of a mile across the open, but the darkness of the wood was impenetrable and its silence daunting. The row of tracks was the only sign of life he had seen ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... green—green—green—as flutters in the vineyard down below the windows, that I never saw; nor yet such lilac, and such purple as float between me and the distant hills; nor yet—in anything—picture, book, or verbal boredom—such awful, solemn, impenetrable blue, as is that same sea. It has such an absorbing, silent, deep, profound effect, that I can't help thinking it suggested the idea of Styx. It looks as if a draught of it—only so much as you could scoop up on the beach, in the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... the door might be opened, doubtless for the disembodied spirit to pass out, all these rites were understood by Jacky to imply that the last scene was at hand. Why witness it? it would make him still more uncomfortable. Therefore he ran, and never once looked back, and plunged into the impenetrable ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... was deep enough to float a frigate. During the first two hours of the day, the scenery was as interesting and picturesque as can be imagined. The banks were literally covered with hamlets and villages; fine trees, bending under the weight of their dark and impenetrable foliage, everywhere relieved the eye from the glare of the sun's rays, and, contrasted with the lively verdure of the little hills and plains, produced the most pleasing effect. Afterwards, however, there was a decided change; the banks, which before consisted of dark earth, clay, or sand, were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... know who I am!" she continued, endeavouring to assume her usual tone of command, and talking now to an absolute and impenetrable darkness. "You may learn when it is too late that you have chosen the wrong person for this pleasantry. I am the Marquise de Montespan, and I am not one who forgets a slight. If you know anything of the court, you must know ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and a bulldog jaw shot out from under a fat beak of a nose. And over the broad expanse of countenance was spread a smile so sweet, so deep, so high that it gave the impression of obscuring the form of features entirely. In point of fact it was a thick and impenetrable veil that the Senator had for long hung before his face from behind which to view the world at large. And through his mouth, as through a rent in the smile, he was wont to pour out a volume of voice as musical in its drawl and intensified ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... softening his iron features, animating the blank stillness of his countenance. If any such expression had been visible, I was too late to detect it. Just as I looked at him he stooped down to poke the fire. When he turned towards me again, his face was the same impenetrable face, his eye the same hard, steady, inexpressive eye ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... this isn't my drawing-room." And she was almost frightened by the thought that that skull opposite to her was absolutely impenetrable, and that it would go down to the grave unpierced with all its collection of ideas ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... hot coffee made, and we sat about the fire watching the flashing light on the deep green of the pines and the beautiful russet of the oak leaves with the white of the tents beneath, the few square yards about us were made as lovely as a fairy scene shut in by the impenetrable gloom beyond. The old witchery of camp life now came over us, we forgot rain and cold, singing and chatting as merrily as if care were dead, till finally rolling in our blankets under our tents, we went to sleep as sweetly ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... would have been impracticable for any save the sure-footed iron-plated horses of the East. After traversing the valley for some miles, the rugged line of Piwa closed in upon us on the left, and a black impenetrable mountain seemed to bar our farther progress. After three quarters of an hour's ascent we were glad to halt. Clambering to a grassy knoll, we made a frugal meal of the hardest of biscuit soaked in muddy water, the only food, by the way, which the troops tasted from the time of ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... in one's breast, to touch the stars, to possess the Infinite!" The reverie of Senancour, on the bank of the Lake of Bienne, quoted by Matthew Arnold, reveals the same emotion: "Vast consciousness of a nature everywhere greater than we are, and everywhere impenetrable; all-embracing passion, ripened wisdom, delicious self-abandonment." In the coincidence of outer circumstance— the lake, the North Sea, night, the attitude of repose—may we not trace a dissolution of the self-background, ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... but nothing could be seen or heard; no blue light, nor indeed any light at all; no cry, nor gun, nor signal of distress—nothing but the howling of the wind as it swept up from the sea, the thundering of the surf upon the beach below; and all around, black darkness and impenetrable night. The blast caught the lattice from my hand as I closed the window, and banged it furiously. I turned to look at my mother. She had fallen forward on her knees, with her arms flung across the bed, speechless and motionless, in such sort that I speedily grew possessed with an awful ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... look back to-day I see, within the wall raised around my birthplace by the vigilance of the police, another wall, higher, thicker, more impenetrable. This is the wall which the Czar with all his minions could not shake, the priests with their instruments of torture could not pierce, the mob with their firebrands could not destroy. This wall within the wall is the religious integrity of the Jews, a fortress erected by the prisoners ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... trembling upon the broad vine leaf and reflecting millions of rainbowhued rays! How eagerly did my glance endeavour to penetrate the smoky distance! There the road grew narrower and narrower, the cliffs bluer and more dreadful, and at last they met, it seemed, in an impenetrable wall. ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... at this moment on the site of the ship-yard from which, in March, 1862, twenty-one years ago, went forth the unmasted and raft-like "Monitor," with its flat decks, its low bulwarks, its guarded mechanism, its heavy armament, and its impenetrable revolving turret, to that near battle with the "Merrimac," on which, as it seemed to us at the time, the destiny of the nation was perilously poised. The material of which the ship was wrought was largely that which ...
— Opening Ceremonies of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883 • William C. Kingsley
... of the enthusiast. The old man remained a moment in profound abstraction, gleams of eager intelligence bursting momentarily through the cloud of sombre meditation that covered his face. Then broke the broad light of a deep, impenetrable determination. There was something sinister in it, suggesting the sacrifice of something held sacred. After a struggle, ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... spent in dread of fog, in dread of ice, and the ship seemed to respond to the dread of the men as her horn called out into the impenetrable ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... twenty-one mortars, and four howitzers, besides the small arms; nevertheless, the loss of men within the fortress was very inconsiderable, the garrison being mostly secured in the subterranean works which were impenetrable to shells or shot. By the twenty-seventh day of June they had made a practicable breach in one of the ravelins, and damaged the other outworks to such a degree, that they determined this night to give a general assault. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of person and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending; and so long as it is worth defending a patriotic militia will cover it with an impenetrable aegis. Partial injuries and occasional mortifications we may be subjected to, but a million of armed freemen, possessed of the means of war, can never be conquered by a foreign foe. To any just system, therefore, calculated to strengthen this natural ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... impenetrable beyond the sex of women the dwellers on Olympus gave to you. There is no other woman of such stubborn spirit to stand off from the husband who, after many grievous toils, comes in the twentieth year home to his native land. Come, then, ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... no more guessed Paul's true name and nature than anyone else who had come in contact with him in his impenetrable disguise, and his motive for attempting to prevent an interview with the Doctor can only, I fear, be ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... myself to be an active and powerful force in society; it seemed to me at times that I had in part accomplished my purpose.... I dreamed of political resolutions, of social reorganization; I used to read such deep and impenetrable authors that their thoughts did not seem to be a part of them—and now a prostitute warmed me with her body, and I was in debt to a miserable, shameful creature, banished by a society that did not want to accord her a place. The wind blew ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... suspense, when he made up his mind, put on steam, and took it! He was fast in a minute, and kindly rushed out into the river, where I played him. Then I wound in my line and hauled him up till his head and mouth were out of the water. As there was an impenetrable screen of bushes between him and me I laid the rod down, trusting to the tackle, and ran round to where close by was a farm punt, made fast. It had been used during harvest time, and was full of what in the classics they call the "implements of Ceres." All of these that do not seem made to cut your ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... arms, consisting of a strong and broad-brimmed hat protecting the head and eyes, an immense leathern breastplate defending the chest and stomach, a padded case, also of leather, which shields the arm from wrist to shoulder, and an impenetrable cravat which protects the neck up to the ears. The nose, and a bit of each cheek, is all that can be possibly wounded. Thus equipped the heroes set to work, slashing away at each other, (it is forbidden to thrust,) shaving off pieces of their padded armour, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... testimony by an interpreter. Nothing could equal his ignorance and want of common capacity during these trials. His face was as free from every visible trace of meaning as if he had been born an idiot. No block was ever more impenetrable than he. ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... the foot-hills of the Andes to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean—that forest with scarcely a civilised settlement throughout all its wide extent—where no roads exist—whose only paths are rivers—whose dark jungles are in places so impenetrable that the Indian cannot enter them, and even the fierce jaguar, embarrassed by the thick underwood, has to take to the tree-tops in pursuit of his prey. Another day's journey or so would bring them to the borders of the "Montana"—for ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... minutes afterwards Mrs. Sandys was roused by a knock at the door, followed by the entrance of two mysterious figures. The female wore a boy's jacket turned outside in, the male a woman's bonnet and a shawl, and to make his disguise the more impenetrable he carried a poker in his right hand. They stopped in the middle of the floor and began ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... swimming strongly—and after a time a lurid flash of lightning showed him a black mass of trees close ahead. They vanished, the succeeding darkness was impenetrable, and the crash of thunder was deadened by the roar of water. For a moment or two his head was driven under, but when he got it clear, another dazzling flash revealed a high bank only a few yards away, and when thick darkness followed he felt the horse rise to its feet. Then he touched soft bottom, ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... is one of its fundamental ends; in few forms of convivial entertainment can he take part. Thus seeking an outlet for those social instincts which charge through his being, the deaf man finds himself among men, but as though surrounded by a great impenetrable wall against which ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... Wilkes, to whom Smollett applied on Johnson's behalf. Barker became an important member of Johnson's family, some of whom reproached him for his liberality to the nigger. No one ever solved the great problem as to what services were rendered by Barker to his master, whose wig was "as impenetrable by a comb as a quickset hedge," and whose clothes were ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... forest which we could see not far ahead. At length, on entering it, what a relief! We found ourselves in a moderately broad pathway or alley, where the branches of the trees crossed overhead and produced a delightful shade. The woods were at first of recent growth, dense, and utterly impenetrable; the ground, instead of being clothed with grass and shrubs as in the woods of Europe, was everywhere carpeted with Lycopodiums (fern-shaped mosses). Gradually the scene became changed. We descended slightly from an elevated, dry, and sandy area to a low and ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... they had no clear idea of where the fighting was, or what it was about, the theatre of the struggle being so far away and their ignorance of the world outside their own little communities so profound and impenetrable. We may be sure that when the echo of the great war did at length reach them it was quite undisturbed by any foolish pretence associated with the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand (that lie could only be expected to impose ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... scattered through the park of Schoenbrunn were not all irreproachable, those of nature fully made up the deficiency. What magnificent trees! What thick hedges! What dense and refreshing shade! The avenues were remarkably high and broad, and bordered with trees, which formed a vault impenetrable to the sun, while the eye lost itself in their many windings; from these other smaller walks diverged, where fresh surprises were in store at every step. At the end of the broadest of these was placed the menagerie, which was one of the most extensive and varied ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... veiled me round in an impenetrable mist. The figures vanished, the tumultuous singing ceased. A great silence encompassed me, and ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... problem which the excavation propounded to me when I first plied the tool in it,—a problem equally dark at the time in both its parts. I have since got on a very little way with the Old Red portion of the task; but alas for the boulder-clay portion of it! A bar of impenetrable shadow has rested long and obstinately over the newer deposit; and I scarce know whether the light which is at length beginning to play on its pebbly front be that of the sun or of a delusive meteor. But courage, patient ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... lifted, sobered, broadened. Our women do not vote. What is the result? Not one woman in a thousand has any interest in, and not one in two thousand has any acquaintance with, political affairs. Their ignorance would be laughable were it not sad. Every father, husband, brother, can testify to the impenetrable ignorance of his feminine belongings concerning matters of public moment. It forms the topic of universal comment in male circles. It is not because women are naturally incapable. It is because ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... Guelphs, Hapsburgs, and Hohenzollens of our European thrones; are things of yesterday compared with his Highness the Devil. The Caesars themselves, the more ancient rulers of Assyria, and even the Pharaohs of the first dynasty, are modern beside him. His origin is lost in the impenetrable obscurity of primitive times. Nay, there have been sages who maintained his eternity, who made him coeval with God, and placed upon his head the crown of a divided ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... Darkness, as of Egypt, fell upon us before we passed the Lizard, and the only things that showed above the raging waters were the beacon lights, and these looked dim and far away. Occasionally a flash of lightning threw the waters into relief, and then made the darkness more impenetrable. As we steamed beyond the Lizard and the protecting Cornish coast, the full force of the gale, from out the Irish Sea, struck us. We were going nearly with it, and the good ship pitched and reared like an angry horse, but did not roll much. Pitching is harder to ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... not unlike those cylinders preserved in the Babylonish deserts. Photography is bringing to us, as on parchment leaves painted with sunlight, the secrets of the depths of the seas and the skies; it is finding new stars, and with the telescopic camera likenesses may be snatched across spaces impenetrable by the naked eye. The aristocracy of intelligence becomes a democracy for the diffusion of the knowledge of the history of the day, which is the most important chapter that has been written, impartial, instantaneous, and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... dimly, but plainly, for the curtain of patterned filet-work hanging flat against the glass was almost transparent from within the house, though impenetrable from outside. Was it her imagination that saw him look cautiously round before leaving the protection of the doorway? Was it her imagination that watched while he crossed the pavement hurriedly, to spring into the automobile before he could be observed? Was it only ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... have secured for myself a haven, a yet more impenetrable shade than this, against the time when, having seen four generations of men, two behind and two beyond, I may consider in silence what is likely to be the end of it all. It is true that I am getting old, but I am not yet prepared for a lodge ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... of the baroness an answer to the confused presentiments which agitated his brain. But there was no longer any trace of the emotion which she had manifested when taken unawares. Having had time for reflection, she had composed for herself an impenetrable countenance. Somewhat surprised at M. ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... sailed along, sometimes over vast level plains on which grazed wild cattle, again over impenetrable jungles which they could never have gotten through in their ox carts. They crossed rivers and many small lakes, stopping each night on the ground, the airship securely anchored to trees. Tom could make the lifting gas on board so what was wasted by ...
— Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or, Marvelous Adventures Underground • Victor Appleton
... security were the dugouts of the Somme hills compared to the protection that could be provided here! When the first series of bursts announced the storm you could not descend a flight of steps to a cavern whose roof was impenetrable even by five-hundred-pound shells. Little houses of sandbags with corrugated tin roofs, in some instances level with the earth, which any direct hit could "do in" were the best that generous army resources could permit. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... passage they were indeed in a cave. For a few feet around the small opening daylight shone dimly in, but it was lost in impenetrable gloom above and to the rear. A mass of something dense loomed in front of them and Apple swimming boldly up declared, it to be a ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... neared the summit, and got under a vast canopy of sulphurous smoke, which, blown by the furious wind, rolled grim and black over the serrated edge, stretched its impenetrable mass between us and the sky, and then swooped down toward the bay, and dispersed in a vast mist. Most parts of the plain, too, were covered with a low ground-fog. It was a grand sight as we paused and looked back before the last effort. The whole ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... was, then, in front of me, and some one had fallen in. The poor wretch was doomed to drown in that horrid and impenetrable darkness. I shuddered at the thought of that fate, and moved faster under the whip of impulse. The next moment I brought sharply up against a stone post by which ships were warped in and fastened. Below was the water, and now ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... enemy. Others had followed because it is the instinct of cattle to join their running fellows in whatever crazed urgency they feel. There was a dense, pounding, horrible mass of running bulls and cows and calves; bellowing, wailing, grunting, puffing, raising thick and impenetrable clouds of dust which had everything but galloping beasts going past on ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... from exposure to hunger and exhaustion, and the freezing blasts of winter? Or, in their weakness, were they attacked by the famished wolves of the mountains? The dying scene of Petion and Buzot is involved in impenetrable obscurity. Its tragic accompaniments can only be revealed when all mysteries ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... quarters of oxen and gazelles which had just been sacrificed. They next carefully walled up the entrance into the passage, and filled the shaft to the top with a mixture of sand, earth, and stone chips. Being profusely watered, this mass solidified, and became an almost impenetrable body of concrete. The corpse, left to itself, received no visits now, save from the Soul, which from time to time quitted the celestial regions wherein it voyaged with the gods, and came down to re- unite itself with the body. The sepulchral vault was the abode of the Soul, ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... Benemerito of America turned to the grinning hyena-like old man who was his visitor. His own dark features were passionless, impenetrable. ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... as usual, travestied his appearance by the addition of false whiskers and a pair of large adhesive eyebrows. These lent him a shaggy and weather-beaten air, which, for one of his urbanity, formed the most impenetrable disguise. Thus equipped, the commander and his satellite sipped their brandy ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tender passions! yes, they would become those impenetrable features! Why, thou deceitful hag! I placed thee as a guard to the rich blossoms of my daughter's beauty. I thought that dragon's front of thine would cry aloof to the sons of gallantry: steel traps and spring ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... swamp was absolutely alive with animal life. The principal occupant of these marshes is the elephant, and hundreds of these monster animals may be seen in one herd, feeding like cattle in a meadow. Owing to the almost impenetrable nature of the reedy jungle, however, it is impossible to follow them, and anxious though Disco was to kill one, he failed to obtain a single shot. Buffaloes and other large game were also numerous in this region, and in the water crocodiles and hippopotami sported ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... last she fixed upon an oyster saloon in the Seventh Avenue, kept by a negro—an establishment of which she knew nothing save that she had noticed it in passing. She made an appointment with Morris Townsend to meet him there, and she went to the tryst at dusk, enveloped in an impenetrable veil. He kept her waiting for half an hour—he had almost the whole width of the city to traverse—but she liked to wait, it seemed to intensify the situation. She ordered a cup of tea, which proved excessively bad, and this gave her a sense ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... at the building and the tombs, always secretly, behind impenetrable barriers; and then came the troubles which led to the siege of Florence, following upon the banishment of Alessandro, Duke of Urbino, natural son of the very Lorenzo whom the sculptor was to dignify for ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... no-poets to comment on the greatest of poets! To make Othello say that he, who had killed his wife, was like Herod who killed Mariamne!—O, how many beauties, in this one line, were impenetrable to the ever thought-swarming, but idealess, Warburton! Othello wishes to excuse himself on the score of ignorance, and yet not to excuse himself,—to excuse himself by accusing. This struggle of feeling is finely conveyed in the word "base," which is applied to the rude ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... there seemed no loop-hole where I could insert a wedge for Matty's moral regeneration; she appeared to remain hard, impenetrable, and suspicious. ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... but when I look for men, I can find nothing but barbers, cooks, confectioners, fiddlers, dancers, and everything that is most unmanly and unfit for war; on the Grecian side, I discern none of the costly trifles, but I see iron that forms their weapons, and composes impenetrable arms. I see men who have been brought up to despise every hardship, and face every danger; who are accustomed to observe their ranks, to obey their leader, to take every advantage of their enemy, and to fall dead in their ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... met with, and quite indifferent to the many rebuffs she momentarily encountered. To me by what impulse driven Heaven knows this amorphous piece of womanhood seemed determined to attach herself. Whether in the smoky and almost impenetrable recesses of the cabin, or braving the cold and penetrating rain upon deck, it mattered not, she was ever at my side, and not only martyring me by the insufferable annoyance of her vulgar loquacity, but actually, from the appearance of acquaintanceship such constant association gave rise ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... knowledge of history, since it was ever a single day unguarded by armed men. Thirty generations of men at arms have stood sentry within its gates since Theodora Senatrix, the strong and sinful, flashed upon history out of impenetrable darkness, seized the fortress and made and unmade popes at her will, till, dying, she bequeathed the domination to her only daughter, and her name to the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... to ordinary modes of reckoning," he wrote, "a house of the wealth and standing of Phelps, Dodge and Company would be above the influences that induce the ordinary brood of importers to commit fraud. That same wealth and standing became an almost impenetrable armor against suspicion of wrong-doing and diverted the attention of the officers of the Government, preventing that scrutiny which they give to acts of other and less favored importers." Jayne went on to tell how he had proceeded with great caution in "establishing beyond question gross ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... tinted delicately. I noted that the pavilions were double—in a way, two-storied—and that they were oddly splotched with circles, with squares, and with oblongs of—opacity; noted too that over many this opacity stretched like a roof; yet it did not seem material; rather was it—impenetrable shadow! ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... were quite content to accept the situation. The neighbours were at first inclined to commiserate Big Anne, who was pronounced to be "a dacint, sinsible, poor woman," for the oddities of her household, the incalculable flightiness of Mad Bell, and the impenetrable silence of the Dummy. But to their condoling remarks she was wont to reply in effect—"Ah sure, ma'am, that's the way I'm used to them, the crathurs. Why, if Mad Bell said anythin' over-sinsible, or poor Winnie said anythin' at all, it's wond'rin' I'd be what was goin' to ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... meantime the American general had occupied a position facing the British, with the Mississippi on his right, and an impenetrable morass on his left, covering New Orleans, and rendering an advance on that town impossible, until his position had been carried by a front attack. The ground thus occupied, about 1000 yards in breadth, had been fortified so as to be almost impregnable. ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... "through the wilderness of this world" find it difficult to realize what an impenetrable wall there is around the town of Boyville. Storm it as we may with the simulation of light-heartedness, bombard it with our heavy guns, loaded with fishing-hooks and golf-sticks, and skates and base-balls, and butterfly-nets, the walls remain. If once the clanging gates ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... undoubtedly acquainted with the same process of reasoning; for, like the vesper-bird, she, too, nests in open, unprotected places, avoiding all show of concealment,—coming from the tangled and almost impenetrable parts of the forest to the clean, open woods, where she can command all the approaches and fly with ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... monk who had been made a Pope. The foul calumnies of that bygone age would be unworthy of even so much as this notice, if we did not trace in them the ineradicable Italian tendency to cynical insinuation—a tendency which has involved the history of the Renaissance Popes in an almost impenetrable mist of lies and exaggerations. Henry was in truth upon his road to Italy, but with a very different attendance from that which Gregory expected. Accompanied by Bertha, his wife, and his boy son Conrad, the Emperor elect left Spires in the condition of a fugitive, crossed Burgundy, spent ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... building of a completely impenetrable defense against attack is still not possible, total defensive strength must include civil defense preparedness. Because we have incontrovertible evidence that Soviet Russia possesses atomic weapons, this kind of protection ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... spent not only that day, but many preceding ones, in the most fatiguing exertion. I was very faint and sick, and almost out of hope. I had no guide even in the direction of home, for the sun still lingered behind an impenetrable veil. ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... in his journal, "have more traffic, and the mildness of the climate appears somehow or other not favourable to the growth of piety. They are zealous Protestants, and show me a thousand attentions, but they are at present absolutely impenetrable." The members of the congregation at Arvieux, indeed, complained of his spending so little of his time among them; but the comfort of his cottage at La Chalp, and the comparative mildness of the climate of Arvieux, were insufficient to attract ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... weapons, their numbers alone made them terrible; and had the castle been manned and victualled, it might have long defied their utmost strength. Drawing their falchions, the knight and his party keeping closely together, and thus forming an impenetrable wedge, cut their desperate path through the fierce swarm of opposing foes, who, like incarnate demons, rushed to the onslaught, and fell in heaps before the biting steel of these experienced soldiers. Pressing forward with unyielding bravery, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... affair; their gladness at finding a public entertainment where one's clothes were not obliged to be selected with a view to outshining those of every one else in the room; the students shrouded in a mystery, secret and impenetrable, of tobacco smoke. The spruce-looking school-boys from the Gymnasium and Realschule, the old captains and generals, the Fraeulein their daughters, the gnaedigen Frauen their wives; dressed in the disastrous plaids, checks, and stripes, which somehow none but German women ever got ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... not know that from these swamps of flattery, intrigue, envy, rivalry, and emulation there rises a miasma which scarcely the healthiest lungs can withstand. She did not know that though many may be indifferent to the tempting of men, few indeed are impenetrable to the smile and the sneer of women; that to live your own life in the midst of the world is a harder thing than it was of old to withdraw to the Thebaid; that to risk "looking strange" requires a courage perhaps cooler and higher than the soldier's or the saint's; and that to stand away ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... passions, sometimes even those of the worst kind, and which a sound judgment would most condemn, and endeavour to extirpate.—Man is a stranger to nothing, more than to himself;—the recesses of his own heart, are no less impenetrable to him, than the worlds beyond the moon;—he is blinded by vanity, and agitated by desires he knows not he ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... left as far as can be seen stretches the treeless plain to the foot of the eternal hills; not even the top of a tall pine thrusts itself above the dead level. Before you is Cheyenne—grim, glorious, but impenetrable. The conductor stops. "This is your place," he says. You see no place; you think he must ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... some deep water free from reeds and weeds. On the banks were tall trees; behind us was the rocky weir, over which the stream fell in a thousand little rivulets and runnels, and less than a hundred yards in front rose the seemingly impenetrable reedy forest. The spot so enclosed had a quiet beauty that would have been holy in days gone by when the mind of man peopled such solitudes with fluvial deities. Here the desire to swim became irresistible. What a ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... delectable. Like much of what we had already seen, the entire island was forest-clad, but the country was much more park-like in character; the trees grew less thickly together; they were not matted together by an impenetrable jungle of undergrowth, although many of them were almost smothered in what appeared to be innumerable varieties of orchids, and the soil was clothed with what looked like short, grey-green grass down to the inner edge of the narrow beach, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... and talked about them they were tender little shoots of green just modestly showing above the ground, and now they're a forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlock aren't in it with this impenetrable jungle liberally blotched with yellow, this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... defences had hardly been touched by the artillery preparation, and the 23rd Brigade in particular suffered dismally as they tore with their hands at the barbed wire and were shot down by the German machine guns. The defences unbroken by artillery were impenetrable by human bodies, and the defenders were also able to enfilade the troops which had got through farther south and were now attacking the second German line. The staff-work, too, was deplorable, and reserves were late or went astray, though it is ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... BRUIN march'd next him, With visage formidably grim, 250 And rugged as a Saracen, Or Turk of Mahomet's own kin; Clad in a mantle della guerre Of rough impenetrable fur; And in his nose, like Indian King, 255 He wore, for ornament, a ring; About his neck a threefold gorget. As rough as trebled leathern target; Armed, as heralds cant, and langued; Or, as the vulgar say, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... wall of cloud, massive and portentous, had been climbing up over the western hills, slowly but with ominous steadiness obscuring the moon-swept sky with its far, pale wreaths of stars, blotting it out with monstrous folds and convolutions of impenetrable purple-black. Along its crest fire played like swords in the sunlight, and now and again sheeted flame lightened the monstrous expanse so that it glowed with the pale ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... glad that you understand," he said simply. His gaze was set straight before him, keen, alert, anxious. They were riding through a dark stretch of forest; the foliage came down almost to their faces; there was an almost impenetrable green wall on either side of them. He knew, and she was beginning to suspect, that danger lurked ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... here. There are many of us who would have been glad of your coming; but I understand that we must hope to see you at another time and elsewhere. That travellers in our country need an escort you would not wonder if you could see how the roads run, among lofty mountains shrouded in impenetrable forests. These give cover to hordes of brigands, who prey upon travellers and merchants, robbing and killing indifferently. Almost every month there are punitive raids made from the towns, and brigands are captured and put to death. ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... mellow exuberance of autumn. In the distance, running down the centre of the island, rise the Blue Mountains, their tops dimly seen through the fleecy clouds, the greater portion of the range being covered with impenetrable forests, their sides often broken into inaccessible cliffs and abrupt precipices. These forests and cliffs have afforded for several centuries an asylum and fortress to fugitive blacks, who have there set pursuit at defiance, the game and wild ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... was dethroned and deported, and the capital and the whole of the river in the hands of the British, the bands of armed soldiery, unaccustomed to conditions other than those of anarchy, rapine and murder, took advantage of the impenetrable cover of their jungles to continue a desultory armed resistance. Reinforcements had to be poured into the country, and it was in this phase of the campaign, lasting several years, that the most difficult and most arduous ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Persia have made it a heinous, if not capital, offence for a wife to be seen abroad with her face not covered by an impenetrable veil? ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... the night wore slowly away. The intense impenetrable blackness, the roar and thunder of the sea, the terrible jerking, jolting and hurling beneath them, shook the nerves of the girls, keeping them constantly in a half-dazed condition that perhaps lessened the keenness of their suffering. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... spoke to us," went on Brown in a conversational undertone, "I had a sort of vision, a vision of him and all his universe. Yet he only said the same thing three times. When first he said 'I want nothing,' it meant only that he was impenetrable, that Asia does not give itself away. Then he said again, 'I want nothing,' and I knew that he meant that he was sufficient to himself, like a cosmos, that he needed no God, neither admitted any sins. And when he said the third time, 'I want nothing,' he said it with blazing eyes. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... me one keen look—and then again the impenetrable mask! "My wife will have to do as other women in her position do—pay no attention to ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... feeling: in that case there are two feelings, and not one. Another mind may know what I feel, but the knowledge of another's agony is (fortunately) a very different thing from the agony itself. It is fashionable in some quarters to ridicule the idea of 'impenetrable' souls. If 'impenetrable' means that another soul cannot know what goes on in my soul, I do not assert that the soul is impenetrable. I believe that God knows what occurs in my soul in an infinitely completer way than that in which any human being can know it. Further, I believe ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... gained admission to the Garden by overleaping the tangled thicket of shrubs and bushes which formed an impenetrable barrier and prevented any access to the enclosure within, he flew up on ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... sentiments and even the instincts of their kind obliterated for ever. And now we have several cases before us, occurring in India, of the same lapses from humanity, involving circumstances curious in themselves, but more important than curious, as throwing a strange light upon what before was an impenetrable mystery. It is to these we mean to direct our attention on the present occasion; but before doing so, it will be well just to glance at the natural history of the wild ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... the narrow seat of the little cabin. The Marchesino jumped aboard. The machine in the stern throbbed. They rushed forward into the blackness of the impenetrable night, the white of the leaping foam, the hissing of the rain, the roaring of the wind. In a blurred and hasty vision the lights of Frisio's ran before them, fell back into the storm like things defeated. Hermione ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... since he left the earth? I went close up to the dark curtain, but there was no opening,—no chink by which I could see into the world beyond. Will no kind hand draw the veil aside but for a moment? There it has hung unlifted age after age, concealing, with its impenetrable folds, all that mortals would most like to know. Myriads and myriads have passed within, but not one has ever given back voice, or look, or sign, to those they left behind, and from whom never before did they conceal thought or wish. Why is this? Do they not still think of us? ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... strewed with golden sands, rich and undulating prairies, ravines loved by the bounding deer and agile chamois, mountains wreathed with clouds or crowned with glittering coronets of stars, wandering and leaping torrents, impenetrable and gloomy forests,—let her ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of Discaria toumatoo, the Wild Irishman of the settlers, formed with the gigantic Aciphylla Colensoi, the Spaniard or Bayonet-grass, an often impenetrable thicket." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... commanded from several points on the east, and, according to the Confederate authorities, appeared to have been carelessly chosen. Meade's front, except at the extreme river-flank, was covered by impenetrable woods. The Mine road intersected his left flank, and the River road was parallel to and a mile ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... roared and crackled and sputtered, now illuminating the still forms, then enveloping them in fantastic obscurity. Hare shivered, perhaps from the cold air, perhaps from growing dread. Westward lay the desert, an impenetrable black void; in front, the gloomy mountain wall lifted jagged peaks close to the stars; to the right rose the ridge, the rocks and stunted cedars of its summit standing in weird relief. Suddenly Hare's fugitive glance descried a dark object; he watched intently as it ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... been either the fourth or fifth day since we left Port du Morts. The night before, we had camped at the mouth of a small stream, the surrounding forest growing down close to the shore, and so thick as to be almost impenetrable. The men had set up my tent so close to the water the waves broke scarcely a foot away, and the fire about which the others clustered for warmth was but a ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... of a black yawning gulf, that seemed to descend into the bowels of the earth. The end of a narrow plank rested on the edge of this gulf, and appeared to bridge it over, but the other end of the plank, and all beyond, were lost in impenetrable darkness. ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... appear to know that Edmund had any cause for care: he was not his solicitor, and he knew that his visitor had not come about his own affairs. But he could not conceal an added degree of respect, and liking even, under the impenetrable manner which hid his own aching sense of close personal suffering. Grosse answered the firm hand-grip ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... miles, we were to view the cross of St. Peter's glittering on the horizon, while the postilions rising in their stirrups, should point forward with exultation, and exclaim "ROMA!" But, O vain hope! who can controul their fate? just before we reached Baccano, impenetrable clouds enveloped the whole Campagna. The mist dissolved into a drizzling rain; and when we entered the city, it poured in torrents. Since we left England, this is only the third time it has rained while ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... leave at all, sail out of the harbor mouth, for in the other direction, that is, inland, one is confronted by the mighty tropical forests, the greater portion of which has never been looked upon by the eye of man; and between all the seaports the same impenetrable forest stretches. ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... of the naval forces of Germany less was known. Her greatest strength was concentrated in the North Sea, where the island of Helgoland, the Gibraltar of the north, and the Kiel Canal with its exits to the Baltic and North Seas, furnished excellently both as naval bases and impenetrable protection. Throughout the rest of the watery surface of the globe were eleven German warships, to which automatically fell the task of protecting the thousands of ships which, flying the German red, white, and black, were carrying freight and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... Regicide himself, was more formidable to him than all his other foes united. Warring there, we should have led our arms to the capital of Wrong. Defeated, we could not fail (proper precautions taken) of a sure retreat. Stationary, and only supporting the royalists, an impenetrable barrier, an impregnable rampart, would have been formed between the enemy and his naval power. We are probably the only nation who have declined to act against an enemy when it might have been done in his own country, and who, having an armed, a powerful, and a long victorious ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in some places impenetrable, and the treasure seekers would have found their progress very slow if it had not been for certain irregular trails that seemed to have been hewn through the woods at intervals. In some places these trails were many yards wide, while at others they narrowed to a foot or two. Nothing ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... blockade, obstruct &c (hinder) 706; bar, bolt, stop, seal, plumb; choke, throttle; ram down, dam, cram; trap, clinch; put to the door, shut the door. Adj. closed &c v.; shut, operculated^; unopened. unpierced^, imporous^, caecal [Med.]; closable; imperforate, impervious, impermeable; impenetrable; impassable, unpassable^; invious^; pathless, wayless^; untrodden, untrod. unventilated; air tight, water tight; hermetically ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and rushes rise upon a low island in the marshes; and all communication with neighbouring tribes and with the town in which they sell the product of their rice-fields, is carried on by boats. The brakes are more impenetrable than the thickest underwood, but the natives have cut alleys through them, along which they impel their large flat-bottomed teradas with poles.[23] Sometimes a sudden rise of the river will raise the level of these generally stagnant waters by a yard or ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... softly twinkling its beams. The sky was reflected in the water; the stars were bathing in its dark depths and trembling with the quivering eddies. The air was warm and still. . . . Here and there, far away on the further bank in the impenetrable darkness, several bright red lights were ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... all which we are able to say of the immediate catastrophe which decided the fate of England, and through England, of the world. The deep impenetrable falsehood of the Roman ecclesiastics prevents us from discovering with what intentions the game of the last few weeks or months had been played; it is sufficient for Englishmen to remember, that, whatever may have ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... concentrate upon Lame Gulch; and much of the sense of aloofness and security which was the chief element in Amberley's content came from the illusion which he carefully guarded, that that wall of giants really was impenetrable. He liked, too, to feel himself at a great altitude above the lower world where he had so long ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller |
