"Invisible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... several years ago, on the bank of the Potomac river. An old soldier had taken me to visit the Great Falls, and as we were clambering over the rocks this Grosbeak began to sing; and soon, without any hint from me, and without knowing who the invisible musician was, my companion remarked upon the uncommon beauty of the song. The Cardinal is always a great singer, having a voice which, as European writers say, is almost equal to the Nightingale's; but in this case ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... discourse, in which the lights on "raw midshipmen," "pessimist out and out," "devil take the hindmost," and "Heine's dragoon," were so high, while the "good things" he was kind enough to say about me lay in the deep shadow of the invisible. And I can assure Dr. Abbott that I should not have dreamed of noticing the report of his interesting lecture, which I read when it appeared, had it not been made the subject of the leading article which drew the attention of all the world to ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... right; it would have been lost time: so I followed their advice, though it was a formidable undertaking at my age, considering that the general character of science had greatly changed. By the improved state of the microscope, an invisible creation in the air, the earth, and the water, had been brought within the limits of human vision; the microscopic structure of plants and animals had been minutely studied, and by synthesis many substances had been formed of the ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... said of the infamous Lord Jeffries, that when pre-determined upon a conviction he always wore a red cap. In such cases juries were useless appendages to his court. Justice Hunt, through this trial, wore an invisible red cap which only came ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... walked by the open end of Carter's Alley, he dimly discerned two figures, which seemed plastered against the wall in the dense shadow, where they were invisible to all passers-by, unless their suspicion was directed to ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... tapers, carried in brackets of engraved gold and silver and many-colored glasses. The ceiling of the room was a soft mass of silken draperies, depending edgewise from above, thousands of yards of the most expensive fabrics of the world. From these, as they were gently swayed by the breath of invisible fans, there floated delicious, languorous perfumes, intoxicating to the senses. On any hand within the great room, removed at some distance from the table, were ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... events, all that we positively know of man, is that he is an invisible internal power, which evolves an outward shape, which we call a human being. The material through which the organism is built up is the blood, and the centre from which the blood flows into all parts of the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... us, 'Never was prince more wealthy than Atlas [eldest son of Poseidon by Cleito]. His land was fertile, healthy, beautiful, marvellous; it was terminated by a range of gold-yielding mountains.' Lyon, speaking of the western Sudan, uses almost the very words of Herodotus. 'An invisible nation, according to our informant, inhabit near this place, and are said to trade by night. Those who come to traffic for their gold lay their merchandise in heaps and retire. In the morning they find a certain ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... conception left, all its self-assertion vanished under the file of the air and the gnawing of the worm. True, the hand of the restorer had been busy, but it had wrought lovingly and gently, and wherein it had erred, the same influences of nature, though as yet their effects were invisible, were already at work—of the many making one. I will not trouble my reader, I say, with any architectural description, which, possibly even more than a detailed description of natural beauty dissociated from human feeling, would ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... for a moment, Ken on the lower step. The step was half sunk into the earth and mint grew thickly about and over its edge. Often crushed by so many passing feet it gave out its essence freely, and the spicy odour hung round them like a soundless, invisible benediction. Ken looked up at Rilla, whose hair was shining in the moonlight and whose eyes were pools of allurement. All at once he felt sure there was nothing in that ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... mingle with the earth, they give it the dark color, which usually extends down for two or three feet. As this vegetation changes, or decays, as we usually say, it furnishes a number of substances which supply food to the roots of growing plants. One of the most important of these is nitrogen, an invisible gas. ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... stacks. Beyond the mosses were level lines of greyish white, where the looping rivers passed into the sea—lines more luminous than the sky at this particular moment of a damp March afternoon, because of some otherwise invisible radiance, which, miles away, seemed to be shining upon the water, slipping down to it from behind a curtain of ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and sudden jealousy now. Although she was to be his wife, he was jealous of those invisible bonds of mutual understanding which had linked her to Peter Mallory—bonds which, had they two been free to marry, would have made of their marriage a perfect thing—the beautiful mating ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... prints which adorned the walls; but became riveted in the cheap overmantel which surmounted the fire-place. For, in the slip of mirror which formed the centre of that ornament, Inspector Chippenfield caught sight of the features of Mrs. Hill frowning and shaking her head at somebody invisible. He turned his head warily, but she was too quick for him, and her features were impassive again when he looked at her. Following the direction indicated by the mirror, Inspector Chippenfield saw Mrs. Hill had been signalling through a window which looked into the back yard. He reached ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... Indians dancing sideways to avoid the enemy's aim, they had broken from rank to fight in bushman fashion when Braddock {229} came galloping furiously from the rear and ordered them back in line. What use was military rank with an invisible foe? As well shoot air as an unseen Indian! Again the Virginians broke rank, and the regulars, huddled together like cattle in the shambles, fired blindly and succeeded only in hitting their own ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... disastrous battle of the Guadalete. Others suggested that it might be the seat of the terrestrial paradise, the place where Enoch and Elijah remained in a state of blessedness until the final day; and that it was made at times apparent to the eyes, but invisible to the search of mortals. Poetry, it is said, has owed to this popular belief one of its beautiful fictions, and the garden of Armida, where Rinaldo was detained enchanted, and which Tasso places ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... eyes gazed like the eyes of a dead man straight into the sunrise. So motionless were they, so utterly void of expression, that she thought they must be blind. There was something fateful, something terrible in the aloofness of him. It was as if an invisible circle surrounded him ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... that this solemn engagement was no mere passing whim of the moment, it had to be read in the hearing of the household god, who happened to be the Goddess of Mercy. She would then be an everlasting witness of the transaction, and with the invisible forces at her command would visit pains and penalties on the one who broke his oath. Standing in front of her shrine, Shih-Kung read out the articles of agreement, word by word, in a slow and measured tone suited to the solemnity of the occasion. He then lighted the paper ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... pretended to have seen the fairies, and who related the stories in the first place, believed all they said, I have no doubt. But they were generally ignorant persons, very superstitious, and easily imposed upon. There are, it is true, invisible inhabitants in this world. Those who believe the Bible, can hardly doubt the presence of angels among us. But angels, as they are represented in the Scriptures, are a very different class of spirits from ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... and in possession of incontrovertible theories. Powell felt in that way the more because the captain of a ship at sea is a remote, inaccessible creature, something like a prince of a fairy-tale, alone of his kind, depending on nobody, not to be called to account except by powers practically invisible and so distant, that they might well be looked upon as supernatural for all that the rest of the crew knows ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... follows: Reinforced concrete setting in dry air undergoes considerable shrinkage during the first few days, when it has very little resistance. This tendency to shrink being opposed by the reinforcement at a time when the concrete does not possess the necessary strength or ductility, causes invisible cracks or planes of weakness in the concrete. These cracks open and become visible at very low unit ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... his conceptions of himself, and, considering that every thing he does is determined by his own pleasure, regards all passing events as depending on the arbitrary volition of a superior but invisible power. He gives to the world a constitution like his own. His tendency is necessarily to superstition. Whatever is strange, or powerful, or vast, impresses his imagination with dread. Such objects are only the outward manifestations ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... changed us. The law that is over us decreed that we must become strangers one to the other; and for this we must reverence each other the more, and for this the memory of our past friendship becomes more sacred. Perhaps there is a vast invisible curve and orbit and our different goals and ways are parcel of it, infinitesimal segments. Let us uplift ourselves to this thought! But our life is too short and our sight too feeble for us to be friends except in the sense of this sublime possibility. So, let us believe ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... account, that they came upstairs under pretence of asking whether they could do anything, and found Eve and Mme. Chardon in tears; the three whose life had been so straightforward hitherto were overcome by the thought that David must go into hiding. And how, moreover, could they hope to escape the invisible spies who henceforth would dog every least movement of a man, unluckily ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... that, if I had stretched out my hand, I believe I could have caught hold of their clothes, without so much as changing my posture. As no part of the overhanging earth intervened between me and them, I could see them entire, though the deepness of the shade rendered me almost completely invisible. I heard them say to each other, in tones of vehement asperity, "Curse the rascal! which way can he be gone?" The reply was, "Damn him! I wish we had him but safe once again!"—"Never fear!" rejoined the first; "he cannot have above half a mile the start of us." They were presently ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... stirrup, she reined in and faced him, after a hurried glance that told her her duenna had failed her. The old woman was invisible. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... early in Islam a belief that there was always in existence some individual in direct intercourse with God and having the right and duty of teaching and ruling all mankind. This individual might be visible or invisible; his right to rule continued. This is the basis of the Ism[a]'[i]lite and Sh[i]'ite positions (see MAHOMMEDAN RELIGION and MAHOMMEDAN INSTITUTIONS). The [S.][u]f[i]s applied this idea of divine right to the doctrine of saints, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... was so heavily wooded, that it was impossible to pass close under its shore without entering the water. Once within this and in a stooping position, a person would be invisible to any one on the same bank, although he could be plainly seen from the opposite shore. Oonomoo now commenced his descent of the river with the intention of recovering his canoe. This was necessarily a tedious and prolonged operation, as a single misstep, a slip ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... Friday nights and on Festival nights, and at home as well, particularly at Passover, on the first two evenings of which his little wine-glass was replenished no less than four times with mild, sweet liquid. A large glass also stood ready for Elijah the Prophet, which the invisible visitor drank, though the wine never got any lower. It was a delightful period altogether, this feast of Passover, from the day before it, when the last crumbs of bread and leavened matter were solemnly burnt (for no one might eat bread for eight days) ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... their aged limbs and guide him to the Gorgons' den. By the dark stream, where the yellow light brooded everlastingly, he reached at last that cave of horrors. Well was it then for Perseus that he was invisible, for the snakes that were Medusa's hair could see all round. But at that time Medusa was asleep and the snakes asleep, and in the silence and twilight of the land where there is "neither night nor day, nor cloud nor breeze nor ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... discovered to him distinctly the form of a man sitting in an open carriage drawn by a black horse. But in truth I saw no such thing. The man's fancy was doubtless at fault. It is a very common thing for the imagination to paint for the senses, both in the visible and invisible world. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... the inn, but his breath was short and quick; his knees were failing, an invisible hand seemed to be on his chest making him go slower and slower; yet still he struggled on, till the mountain tops danced before his eyes, cascades rushed into his ears, the earth seemed to rise up and stop him; but through it all he heard a voice say, "Hullo, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seven sisters, daughters of Atlas, transformed into stars, six of them visible and one invisible, and forming the group on the shoulders of Taurus in the zodiac; in the last week of May they rise and set with the sun till August, after which they follow the sun and are seen more or less at night till their conjunction with ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... length, that she might alter it when she went in, and then she noticed the pretty light summer things displayed in the window, and ached to possess some. She was miserably conscious of her old ill-cut skirt, more especially of the invisible dirt on it, and she did so yearn for something new and sweet and clean. Her mother had a bill at that shop—should she—should she just go in and ask about prices? No, she could not in that horrid old frock; the shopman would not respect her. She had intended to ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... time on all was plain. Straker had led out the horse to a hollow where his light would be invisible. Simpson in his flight had dropped his cravat, and Straker had picked it up—with some idea, perhaps, that he might use it in securing the horse's leg. Once in the hollow, he had got behind the horse and had struck a light; but the creature frightened at the sudden glare, and with the strange ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the island the wharves and quays of Timber Town stretched along the shore, backed by hills which were dotted with painted wooden houses, nestling amid bowers of trees. Beyond these hills lay Timber Town itself, invisible, sheltered, at the bottom ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... refurbished early poem in Philodemus' manner pictures a Vergil—apparently the poet—as the pet of the fashionable world. But these things had no attraction for him. Rome indeed appealed to his imagination, Roma pulcherrima rerum, but it was the invisible Rome rather than the fumum et opes strepitumque, it was the city of pristine ideals, of irresistible potency, of Anchises' pageant of heroes. When he walked through the Forum he saw not only the glistening monuments in their new marble ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... no perspective, the distance invisible, nearer outlines blurred. The world was a uniform tint, walls of gray marching in a slant across a foreground embroidered with pools. Water ran, or dripped, or stood everywhere. The river, its surface roughened by the spit of angry drops, ran swollen among ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... one has not; I am too sensible that it is not I who give them to me, for they are born without my orders. Who produces them in me? whence do they come? whither do they go? Fugitive phantoms, what invisible hand produces you and causes you ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... approaching the holy table for the first time at the Pope's mass. That prelate, one of the noblest figures of which the French bishopric has had cause to be proud, since Monseigneur Pie, was one of those grand Christians for whom the hand of God is as visible in the direction of human beings as it is invisible to doubtful souls. When Fanny, already devoted to her charities, confided in him the serious troubles of her mind and the discord which had arisen between her and her father on the so essential point of ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... been awed to silence? But why argue, my dear Philip? Shall I not now be with you? and while with you I will attempt no more. You have my promise; but if separated I will not say but I shall then require of the invisible a knowledge of my husband's motions, when in ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... no one could guess where forty mountain boys and as many girls might be living. Nevertheless they have been discovered, and it was none too soon. Missionary Dodge did not locate in Pleasant Hill before the time. He realized this. He looked about him and looked up and down. He saw things which were invisible. He saw castles in the air. It must be confessed that the office at Reade Street, fearing lest it might "trust the churches" too much, had not the faith which could take hold of these castles in the air and anchor them to the soil of Pleasant Hill; ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 5, May, 1889 • Various
... backwards, and goes off at a smart trot. They are drawn by one, two, or three men, according to the speed desired by the occupants. When rain comes on, the man puts up the hood, and ties you and it closely up in a covering of oiled paper, in which you are invisible. At night, whether running or standing still, they carry prettily-painted circular paper lanterns 18 inches long. It is most comical to see stout, florid, solid- looking merchants, missionaries, male and female, fashionably- dressed ladies, armed with card cases, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... of smell is not so keen as that of a dog, who can detect the tiny quail while they are still invisible; nor have we the piercing sight of the eagle who spies the grouse crouching hundreds of feet beneath his circling flight; but when we walk through the bare December woods there is unfolded at last to our eyes evidence of the late presence of our summer's feathered ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... situation that nobody thought of leaving the decks to don warmer clothing. The fog, caused by the immense berg chilling the warmer ocean currents, was now so thick that of the mighty berg itself they could perceive nothing. The knowledge that the peril was invisible did not make the minds of those on board the drifting vessel ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... petty importunities of life. With him, feminine tyrannies have free play. No one is more easily conquered and subdued. Only, beware! He must not be made to feel the yoke too heavily. If one day the invisible bonds with which he is surreptitiously fettered are drawn too tight and arrest the artistic effort, he will all at once tear them asunder, and, mistrusting his own weakness, will fly like our sculptor, over the ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... Middle passed into the modern age, there came a great literary foregleam of the new life upon which the world was about to enter. From Italy, where the European ferment, both in its political and its spiritual character, mainly centred, came the prophecy of the new day, in a poet's "vision of the invisible world"—Dante's Divina Commedia—wherein also the deeper history of the visible world of man was both embodied from the past and in a measure ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... you," she said. "It's not your field and you haven't been exposed to the lengths to which charlatans go, just to prove they are supermen. The simpler explanation is that there was someone else in the alley, carefully dressed in dull black to stay invisible in the darkness. The second prodding of a gun in your spine was pure suggestion—you'd been so well-sold by that time you were ready to ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... when she went to comfort him, all his cry was, "I want my father! oh, I want my father!" for the tie between the two had been a very tender one, and the child's heart bled when it was broken. But time was kind to him, and slowly he came to feel that father was not lost, only invisible for a while, and sure to be found again, well and strong and fond as ever, even though his little son should see the purple asters blossom on his grave many, many times before they met. To this belief Demi held fast, and in it found both help and comfort, because it led him unconsciously ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the door; a light appeared at a window; I was told to conceal myself behind the police; then came more knocks and a cry of "Open in the name of the law!" At that terrible summons bolts and locks gave way before an invisible hand, and the moment after the subprefect was in the passage, confronting a waiter half dressed and ghastly pale. This was the short ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... The touch of her fingers sent the blood rushing through his veins insanely; and understanding his condition, she took pleasure in touching him, to watch the little shiver of desire that convulsed his frame. In a very self-restrained man love works ruinously; and it burnt James now, this invisible, unconscious fire, till he was consumed utterly—till he was mad with passion. And then suddenly, at some chance word, he knew what had happened; he knew that he was in love with the wife of his good friend, Pritchard-Wallace; and ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... goods and bads got into the bed-quilt in spite of you, and there they are to tell their own story. The bun and the lost tail, the posy you took to poor Lizzie, and the trouble you bore so sweetly. It is just so with our lives, though we don't see it quite as clearly as this. Invisible hands paint our faults and virtues, and by-and-bye we have to see them, so we must be careful that they are good and lovely, and we are not ashamed to let the eyes that love us best read there the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... the curtain for a moment, and when it was pulled back by invisible hands—(broom wire handled by Mary) she was discovered sitting robed in purple (one of the girls had brought her mother's Japanese dressing-gown) with a homemade but very effective crown on her head. Her throne was an arm-chair, raised on ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... thing. At last we got our wooden miners to obey us, and to perform their several tasks at the word of command; that is to say, at the pulling of certain strings and wires, which we fastened to their legs, arms, heads, and shoulders: which wires, being slender and black, were at a little distance invisible to the spectators. When the skeletons were perfect, we fell to work to dress and paint them; and I never shall forget the delight with which I contemplated our whole company of puppets: men, women, and children, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... neared the eye, my heart slowly ascended into my mouth, only to drop with a fatal swiftness into my boots as the triumphant needle scored another victory. I began to imitate FUSSELL's every movement. I threaded invisible needles by the gross with imperceptible cotton. I felt in my own breast all the ardour of the chase, all the bitter sorrow of repeated failures. My two companions in misfortune were similarly affected, and there we sat, three sane and ordinary men, feverishly going through all these itching ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... money when we got to Lima, which I certainly should not see my way to do—anyhow, until I got to England, when I could, of course, sell out some of my stock. There is nothing here that we could use as invisible ink. If there were, I would risk writing a message with it; but even then it is fifty to one against their bringing it to light. Well, here goes!" and he wrote in ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... glimpses, a sort of thin, unreal, crystalline distinctness that I have not often seen excelled. As the sun began to go down over the valley between the new town and the old, the evening grew resplendent; all the gardens and low-lying buildings sank back and became almost invisible in a mist of wonderful sun, and the Castle stood up against the sky, as thin and sharp in outline as a castle cut out of paper. Baxter made a good remark about Princes Street, that it was the most elastic street for length that he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pathology, that all parts of the body, the highest and the lowest, have a sympathy with one another more intelligent than conscious intelligence can yet, or perhaps ever will, conceive; that there is not an organic motion, visible or invisible, sensible or insensible, ministrant to the noblest or to the most humble purposes, which does not work its appointed effect in the complex recesses of the mind, and that the mind, as the crowning achievement of organization, and the consummation and outcome ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... he knows my voice! (Letting go with one hand, he pretends to turn an invisible key. Solemnly): Cric! Crac! Assume thou, Cyrano, to serve the turn, The accent of thy native Bergerac!. ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... But above all, don't be frightened. Because you might be surprised yourself. You must understand that just as we live here, so a whole world of invisible spirits live ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... steal away alone at sunset, and in some lonely spot lean out towards the flaming instrument to hear if any music rose from them. The legend that one of the Mighty Men of the Kimash Hills came here to play, with invisible hands, the music of the first years of the world, became a truth, though a truth that none could prove. And by-and-by, no man ever travelled the valley without taking off his hat as he passed the Golden Pipes—so had a cripple with his whimsies ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... rectangle, and this would naturally be so if there were no other reason for it than because the smallest factor of the book, the type, is in the cross-section of its body a rectangle. The printed page is really built up of tiny invisible rectangles, which thus determine the shape of the paper page and of the cover. A page may be beautiful from its paper, its proportions, its color effects, even if it is not legible; but the book beautiful, really to satisfy us, must neither strain the eye with too ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... Monongahela and ascended the banks of the river between two hidden ravines. Suddenly they were greeted by a terrible fire on the front ranks, which almost immediately spread to the right flank, and then followed a horrible massacre of huddled troops, who fired volleys of musketry at an invisible foe, and then miserably perished. When St. Clair started his ill-fated march upon the Miami towns in 1791, his movements were observed every instant of time by the silent scouts and runners of the Miamis. ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... of happiness came over his soul. The long ride through the lonely woods, day after day, no longer seemed tedious. He was absolutely alone, but he never felt the least bit lonely. It was as if Someone were journeying with him all the way, the invisible Friend whose Voice he knew ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... craft upon the water; and beyond, dwarfed in the distance, was a confusion of streets, of flat, puffing roofs, stretching from the shining river to the far, misty hills, which lay beside the sea, invisible and mysterious. ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... because you wish you were home, and home is far away. It does not come of your rare and lucky idleness, in which you have to do nothing but enjoy yourself; generally a sufficient reason for melancholy, though rarely so in my own case. No, Africa itself is the reason. There is an invisible emanation from its soil, the aura of evil in antiquity. You cannot see it, at first you are unaware it is there, and cannot know, therefore, what is the matter with you. This haunting premonition is different from mere wearying and boredom. It gets worse, the longer ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... dome of the ship's nose allowed the gleaming points of light from the star field ahead to shine down on those beneath through the heavy, transparent shield of the cast transite and the invisible ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the spiritual body would have to be material enough to reflect light waves, but where is the evidence that it is not? There seems to be much evidence, on the contrary, that it is. It must be remembered that the camera will disclose innumerable things quite invisible to the naked eye, or even to the eye aided by the strongest glasses or telescopes. Normally, we can see but a few hundred stars in the sky; with the aid of telescopes, we can see many thousand; but the photographic camera discloses more than twenty million! ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... my infatuation for the beautiful Ella Rogers. This was Charlotte Cushman. The acquaintance then begun was renewed in Italy, and maintained till the end of her life. Such is the power of the spiritual in nature and character to dominate and even render invisible the physical, that I was astonished, in after years, to hear Charlotte referred to as a woman of plain or unattractive features. To me, won from the first by the expression, the voice, the sphere, the warmth, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... shifting the position from which she looked at the gratification of her own desires, of taking her stand out of herself, and looking at her own life as an insignificant part of a divinely-guided whole. She read on and on in the old book, devouring eagerly the dialogues with the invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength, returning to it after she had been called away, and reading till the sun went down behind the willows. With all the hurry of an imagination that could never rest in the present, she sat in the deepening twilight forming plans of ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... full of water from the rain and covered with thin ice. Yet they scrambled through it, and when the three hundred of the outer guard approached with torches, they suddenly found themselves assailed with arrows and javelins from a foe invisible in the darkness. They were thus kept back till the last Plataean had crossed the ditch, when the bold fugitives marched speedily away, leaving but one of their number a prisoner in the hands of ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... I mean a man who lets you know something about him and does not barricade himself against you. But a man who puts up the shutters in front of his virtues and faults bothers me most terribly, and I always seem to be bumping my head against something invisible whenever I see him, which ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... suddenly, as though pulled down by a stealthy invisible hand. The twilight deepened, and in the lengthening shadows the rocks assumed crouching menacing shapes which seemed to watch the solitary figure standing near the ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... us, and we go; Invisible hands restrain us, and we stay; Forces, unfelt by our dull senses, sway Our wavering wills, and hedge us in the way We call our own, because ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... of Utah of some forty years ago when Mormon authority ruled. In the persecution of Jane Withersteen, a rich ranch owner, we are permitted to see the methods employed by the invisible hand of the Mormon Church to break ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... played by an invisible band. Squirrels sprang at intervals from one tree to another, spreading out their bushy tails and uttering strange cries like ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... sad, old, endless ballad not far off. It seemed to be about love and a bel amoureux, her handsome sweetheart; and I wished I could have taken up the strain and answered her, as I went on upon my invisible woodland way, weaving, like Pippa in the poem, my own thoughts with hers. What could I have told her? Little enough; and yet all the heart requires. How the world gives and takes away, and brings sweethearts near only to separate them again into distant and strange lands; but to love is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was purely theoretical. In a practical point of view, they listlessly abandoned the matter, as being the business of some other Britons unknown, somewhere, or nowhere. In like manner, at home, great numbers of Britons maintained, for as long as four-and-twenty consecutive hours, that those invisible and anonymous Britons 'ought to take it up;' and that if they quietly acquiesced in it, they deserved it. But of what class the remiss Britons were composed, and where the unlucky creatures hid themselves, and why they hid themselves, and how ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... harmony which brings all other things. Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, and thus is its own answer, as the sincere desire made active and accompanied by faith sooner or later gives place to realization; for faith is an invisible and invincible magnet, and attracts to itself whatever it fervently desires and calmly and persistently expects. This is absolute, and the results will be absolute in exact proportion as this operation of the thought ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... piece of wood, with a cross-piece fixed on to the end of it. Two strings stretch from the tip of the cross-piece to the end of the long piece. The instrument is rested on the knee, and the gut of the bow, which is between the two strings, is drawn first across one and then the other. An invisible vocalist, in the adjoining cabin, gave us a song to the accompaniment of the violin. I should imagine that it was a sentimental song, as it sounded very doleful; it must surely have been the tune that the old cow ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... heavenly multitude, 5 Who hymned the song of Peace o'er Bethlehem's fields! Yet thou more bright than all the Angel-blaze, That harbingered thy birth, Thou Man of Woes! Despisd Galilaean! For the Great Invisible (by symbols only seen) 10 With a peculiar and surpassing light Shines from the visage of the oppressed good man, When heedless of himself the scourgd saint Mourns for the oppressor. Fair the vernal mead, Fair the high grove, the sea, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... asseverations of the substantive reality of his Invisible King have been quoted above, it would be easy to lengthen their array. There is nothing on which he is so insistent. For example, "God is no abstraction nor trick of words....[3] He is as real as a bayonet thrust or an embrace" (p. 56). And again, on the same page: "He feels us and knows ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... central laws of the movements of the heavenly bodies established the truth of that which Copernicus, first, assumed only as a hypothesis, and, at the same time, brought to light that invisible force (Newtonian attraction) which holds the universe together. The latter would have remained forever undiscovered, if Copernicus had not ventured on the experiment—contrary to the senses but still just— of looking for the observed movements not in the heavenly bodies, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... acceleration made breathing a little uncomfortable, but it was not too bad. The chief effect was to make Rip feel as though a ton of invisible feathers were crushing him against the vertical brace. He accepted a bite of the bittersweet vegetable candy and munched thoughtfully. Koa seemed to take it for granted that the spacemen would give them ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... From the law of Covenanting comes all the consistency of the union of believers—the family that is named in heaven. That family, by displaying God's covenant, invites to its communion many who would have perished. The invisible Church cannot have associated to it any thing dissimilar to itself, but it binds to it those who are congenial to it. It is to the fellowship of the Church visible that the members of the Church of the ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... upon the Caliph that the strange and invisible substance which he had picked up in the dungeon, and which he still carried in his hand, possessed indeed the marvellous property of rendering him entirely invisible to other men. This accounted for the remarkable panic of his jailer, who, when he looked into, and even entered his dungeon, failed ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... ridge at all. The tree against which they were posted had a dark shadow cast upon it by the intervention of an enormous pine that grew between it and the fire, a circumstance which alone would have rendered objects within its cloud invisible at any distance. This Deerslayer well knew, and it was one of the reasons why he had selected this ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... a tremor ran through her frame, and a blush slowly mantled her cheek. Her hands fell, and her bosom heaved. As if drawn by some invisible power, she rose from her instrument and went toward the door. In the centre of the room she stopped and pressed her hands ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the air, going over a wall. Another was just rising to the leap. A string of others, headed by a lady, were tearing across a meadow bounded by a little brook, and beyond that streamed the hounds following the invisible fox. It was like one of Muybridge's instantaneous photographs of "The Horse in Motion," for the moment that it lasted; and Katy put it away in her memory, distinct and brilliant, as ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... piercing black eyes that the deep color of her tresses would lead him to expect, he would have beheld two large, mild, blue orbs, that seemed to float in a liquid so pure as to be nearly invisible and which were more remarkable for their tenderness and persuasion, than for the vivid flashes that darted from the quick ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... part of the plateau which was invisible from the plain, and here in feverish haste they built a little cairn. Many flaky slabs of stone were lying about, and it did not take long to prop the largest of these against a rock, so as to make a lean-to, and then to put two side-pieces to complete ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the just man, who never consents to do evil that good may come. It would seem that the highest good of the world grows and thrives quite independently of all human virtues or vices, according to laws of its own, by some invisible and unknown power, just as the heavenly bodies run through their appointed course, independently of all human effort; and that this power absorbs into its own higher plan all human designs, whether good or ill, and, by its superior strength, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... above rejoice, Let the earth take up the measure; All the world, and all therein, Join the festival of pleasure; All things visible unite With invisible in singing; For the Christ is risen indeed, Everlasting ...
— Hymns of the Greek Church - Translated with Introduction and Notes • John Brownlie
... of light that objects are made visible; but unless light falls directly upon the eye they are invisible, and are not sensibly felt until after a certain series of operations upon the various coverings and humors of the eye. Smooth and polished surfaces reflect light most powerfully, and send to the eye ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... I, "the noblest part of us, the self, that invisible core which we call soul, is just a drop, as it were, in a great soul-ocean, whose waves wrap creation, and into which we shall fall. What's the ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... adopt some measure on the decree for removing the Councils to St. Cloud. But they were disappointed; for Barras, whose eyes had been opened by my visit on the preceding night, did not join them. He had been invisible to his colleagues from the moment that Bruix and M. de Talleyrand had informed him of the reality of what he already suspected; and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... earth was invisible, and the moon appeared very small; and now, leaving the sun on my right hand, I flew amongst the stars, and on the third day reached my journey's end. At first I intended to fly in just as I was, thinking that, ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... to be done? I blessed the accident which rendered me invisible; but, at the same time, asked myself ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... young is to live in the present. Reflection belongs to older heads; spontaneous action is more characteristic of youth. Therefore, they specially need to make efforts to bring clearly to their thoughts both the unseen future and Him who is invisible. The advice is specially suitable for them; for what is begun early is likely ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... religious texts will convince the reader that the Egyptians believed in One God, who was self-existent, immortal, invisible, eternal, omniscient, almighty, and inscrutable; the maker of the heavens, earth, and underworld; the creator of the sky and the sea, men and women, animals and birds, fish and creeping things, trees and plants, and the incorporeal beings who were the messengers ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... me in a manner that is at all possible, you will see that "goddess" does not suit me. "Star" I would I were now, with a wide eye to carry my looks to you over this horizon which keeps you invisible. Choose one, if you will, dearest, and call it mine: and to me it shall be yours: so that when we are apart and the stars come out, our eyes may meet up at the same point in the heavens, and be "keeping company" ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... Again, when we enter orphan asylums, or other institutions for the unfortunate and destitute of every description, we may view them as mirrors which reflect the moral goodness of the soul; but the soul herself as she is, we cannot see. She is as invisible to ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... she was waited on by invisible hands, as though she had been a queen. Beautiful music came to her ears without her being able to see the musicians, but the magic looking-glass was best of all, for in it she could see whatever she wished. As the days went by, and her slightest wish was granted, almost before she knew what she ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... is superior to them—the body, for instance, when vivified by the soul, the air when illumined by the sun. Now the human mind needs—if it would be united to God—the guidance of the things of sense; for, as the Apostle says to the Romans[66]: The invisible things of Him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. Hence in the Divine worship it is necessary to make use of certain corporal acts, so that by their means, as by certain signs, man's mind may be stirred ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... ablaze with them for acres, and there deepening with growing grain, or snowed over with myriads of daisies. Music and song, too, are not wanting; hundreds of birds are in the hedges. The lark, "from his moist cabinet rising," rains down his trills of incessant song from invisible heights of blue sky; and whenever one passes the wayside groves, a nightingale is sure to bubble into song. The oranges, too, are in blossom, perfuming the air; locust-trees are tasselled with odorous flowers; and over the walls of the Campagna ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... have equal powers with ourselves, the problem of merely producing an illumination which could be seen in our most powerful telescope would be beyond all the ordinary efforts of an entire nation. An unbroken square mile of flame would be invisible in our telescopes, but a hundred square miles might be seen. We cannot, therefore, expect to see any signs of the works of inhabitants even on Mars. All that we can do is to ascertain with greater or less probability whether the conditions necessary to life ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... I wished I had been brave enough to be a coward this time, for indeed it is no proper shame to be afraid of ghosts, seeing how helpless the living are in their hands. And then these ghosts were invisible, which made the matter the worse, as it seemed to me. They might be in the room with us at that moment—we could not know. I felt airy touches on my shoulders and my hair, and I shrank from them and cringed, and was not ashamed to show this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... screen modes of {EMACS}, for example, were directly inspired by WAITS's 'E' editor —- one of a family of editors that were the first to do 'real-time editing', in which the editing commands were invisible and where one typed text at the point of insertion/overwriting. The modern style of multi-region windowing is said to have originated there, and WAITS alumni at XEROX PARC and elsewhere played major roles in the developments that led to the XEROX Star, the Macintosh, ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... talk'd of, and sometimes 'Mongst quiet kindred that had nothing left By their dead parents: 'Stay,' quoth Reputation, 'Do not forsake me; for it is my nature, If once I part from any man I meet, I am never found again.' And so for you: You have shook hands with Reputation, And made him invisible. So, fare you well: I will never ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... eyes, but an invisible power dragged her hand down and made her watch. She was in time to see Perris whisk out of the saddle before Rickety struck the dirt. His hat had been snapped from his head. The sun and the wind were in his flaming hair. Blue eyes and white teeth ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... hidden in this labyrinthine tangle and armed with arrows whose slightest scratch meant death, could strike down every man of this expedition without even a wound in return; for of what avail were high-power guns, automatic pistols, and machetes against invisible enemies? Yet there was assurance in Lourenco's confident air, and reassurance in the thought that these tribemen would be unlikely to assail a band avowedly on its way to visit their chief. Besides—Knowlton smiled grimly—even if the Mayorunas hungered for human flesh ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... there was his studying. Had not Bob assumed an obligation that must be lived up to and that was quite as binding as if it existed on paper instead of in a mere invisible point of honor? He was very grateful to Bob and had given bond that he would live up to the pledge his chum had made for him. Now he must fulfil his promise, Van argued. So although the call of the springtime was strong and difficult to resist he had been ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... a horrible cracked yelling voice, he would retire to his own apartment, or gloomily pace the barrack-yard, or madly whip and spur a grey mare he had on the road to Leamington, where his Jemima (although invisible for him) still dwelt. ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ourselves in an inevitable necessity of doing something, we can make shift for that time to conceal our apprehensions by setting a good face on the business, though the heart beats within; and whoever had the use of the Platonic ring, which renders those invisible that wear it, if turned inward towards the palm of the hand, a great many would very often hide themselves when they ought most to appear, and would repent being placed in so honourable a post, where necessity must make ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... wishes and prayers for your health and happiness. May the Invisible Hand which has been your safeguard thus far, continue its protecting care. May the Supreme Disposer, the Witness and Judge of character and conduct, having appointed you a long and tranquil evening of days, receive you to the final ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... light it is a Kingdom, in the world, though not of the world, extending through different and widely-separated countries, often seemingly divided by outward circumstances, but, in reality, having all its parts subject to the same Invisible King, governed by laws which He has given, and by means of those whom He has appointed to be His ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... everywhere used by the monks of old, says Cassian, who called this short prayer the formula of piety, the continual prayer. The Church repeats it often in her Office. St. John Climacus says it is the great cry of petition for help to triumph over our invisible enemy, who wishes to distract us and to mar our prayer. It should be said with humility and with confidence in God. In repeating these holy words we make the sign of the Cross; for, all grace comes from the sacrifice of the Cross; and besides, it is a holy and an ancient practice ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... too much to say (he thought) that the man was transfigured by malevolence, so that he blazed with it, so that hatred fairly flowed, an invisible yet manifest current of poisoned fire, between him and the girl with the ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... my enchanting Lines and Circles I've chang'd your Form; and unto Oriana's Eyes, No more the Prince of Thrace, But Amadis, you shall appear. And both of you shall be invisible to him. ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... electro-magnetic influence. Faraday's mind, like that of Newton and many other philosophers, rejected the idea of action at a distance, and he felt convinced that the phenomena of magnetism and of electric induction told strongly for the existence of an invisible plenum everywhere in space, which might very probably be the same plenum that carries the undulations of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... published alarming rumors about proposed organized attacks upon the Jews of that region. These rumors were based on facts. A sinister agitation was rife among the lowest elements of the Russian population, while invisible hands from above seemed to push it on toward the commission of a gigantic crime. In the same month of March, mysterious emissaries from St. Petersburg made their appearance in the large cities of South Russia, such as Yelisavetgrad (Elizabethgrad), Kiev, ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... followed the shore ice down, and, dying there, fell through into the water when the ice melted during the summer. Nutargeark, however, said that there were plenty of bodies lying upon the ground on King William Land, which would be invisible in winter from being covered with snow. To verify these statements was the ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... the blistering scarp of the cliff. I lay down, and crawling to the edge, looked over. Two hundred feet below me—straight down as a pebble drops—a watery Inferno raged, and far-flung whirlwinds all but exhausted with the dizzy upward reach, whisked cool, invisible mops of mist ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... had said it was "the nation"; and in entirely altered circumstances, with some qualifications. Dr. Arnold said the same. It was "the Establishment" according to the lawyers and politicians, both Whig and Tory. It was an invisible and mystical body, said the Evangelicals. It was the aggregate of separate congregations, said the Nonconformists. It was the parliamentary creation of the Reformation, said the Erastians. The true Church was the communion of the Pope, the pretended Church was a legalised schism, ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... other sign of them to be seen, however, and if the launch was lying anywhere about, it was at all events invisible from the sea. I refreshed my memory with a long, careful scrutiny of the entrance to the creek, and then handing the glasses back to Joyce I again ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... up with those objects that are most familiar to their senses, beyond which they are apt to think all is but fairy-land; while those that are devoutly religious scorn to set their thoughts or affections on any things below, but mount their soul to the pursuit of incorporeal and invisible beings. The former, in their marshalling the requisites of happiness, place riches in the front, the endowments of the body in the next rank, and leave the accomplishments of the soul to bring up the rear; nay, some will scarce believe there is any such thing ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... muttered Darrin, leading the way. He did not run, but he certainly walked fast, and in a direction away from Main Street. His two companions followed him. The "unknown midshipman," taking Darrin's shrewd hint, had already made himself invisible. ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... were severally hauled to the scales shed, weighed, and then shoved upon a section of track that, after they were chained, sharply tilted and discharged the loads into a pit from which the endless belt of a cane carrier wound into the invisible roller crushers. The heavy air was charged with the smooth oiled tumult of machinery, the blast whistles of varied signals, and the harshness of escaping steam. Other houses, smaller than Daniel's but for the rest resembling it, were strung along ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was I indebted for my second interview with my worthy landlady, Donna Teresa Lopez, who had been invisible since the day on which my lucky stars first guided me to her roof. This worthy woman, who was somewhere between forty and sixty years of age, (Mexican women, be it understood, when once they pass thirty, enter on a career of the most ambiguous antiquity,) had ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various |
