"Penetrable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... temper by which right taste is formed is characteristically patient. It dwells upon what is submitted to it. It does not trample upon it,—lest it should be pearls, even though it look like husks. It is good ground, penetrable, retentive; it does not send up thorns of unkind thoughts, to choke the weak seed; it is hungry and thirsty too, and drinks all the dew that falls on it. It is an honest and good heart, that shows ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... we attempted to move. Still, I had also judged the jungle of both banks quite impenetrable—and yet eyes were in it, eyes that had seen us. The riverside bushes were certainly very thick; but the undergrowth behind was evidently penetrable. However, during the short lift I had seen no canoes anywhere in the reach—certainly not abreast of the steamer. But what made the idea of attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the noise—of the cries we had heard. They ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... was! Little could the first pioneer who had traversed it have ever imagined that the fairest prairies and the most lush water pastures were valueless compared to this gloomy land of black crag and tangled forest. Above the dark and often scarcely penetrable woods upon their flanks, the high, bare crowns of the mountains, white snow, and jagged rock towered upon each flank, leaving a long, winding, tortuous valley in the centre. Up this the ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... return to their southern plantations. The mountains are left bleak and sere. Solitude settles down upon them in drizzling mists. The traveller is beset, at perilous turns, by dense masses of fog. He emerges for a moment into more penetrable air; and passing some gray, abandoned house, sees the lofty vapors plainly eddy by its desolate door; just as from the plain you may see it eddy by the pinnacles of distant and lonely heights. Or, dismounting from his frightened ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... enough to grieve any penetrable heart. But I know no task more difficult than that of administering to their wants, without encouraging their vices. Of these wants I consider instruction as the greatest; and to that I pay the greatest attention. Food, cloathing, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... slower than Tom's had been. They had to stop frequently to make sure that all were together, and, as ill luck would have it, Tom found that he was leading them through a part of the forest where the entanglements were more intricate and less penetrable than those he had formerly encountered. But he plodded on doggedly, speaking to no one of his anxiety when a glance at his watch told how time was fleeting. If they did not reach the camp of the savages before dawn their toil and fatigue ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... where none can understand their language; and men only stare at their darting, inexplicable ways, as at the gyrations of the circus. Watch their little traits for hours, and it only tantalizes curiosity. Every man's secret is penetrable, if his neighbor be sharp-sighted. Dickens, for instance, can take a poor condemned wretch, like Fagin, whose emotions neither he nor his reader has experienced, and can paint him in colors that seem made of the soul's own atoms, so that each beholder feels as if he, personally, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... seem to involve necessarily the conclusion that matter fills all space, or at least all space to which gravitation extends; for gravitation is a property of matter dependent on a certain force, and it is this force which constitutes the matter. In that view matter is not merely mutually penetrable;[1] but each atom extends, so to say, throughout the whole of the solar system, yet always retaining its own centre ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... of the coast and to form a barrier which would at least delay an invader until reinforcements arrived. In its original condition it was an excellent first line of defence of South Kent; and, unless the French flotilla brought over pontoons, it formed a barrier not easily penetrable, which fully justified its ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... that they were glad to rest undisturbed,—being far too self-important to confuse a considerate regard for their repose with neglect. And many of them were really quite valuable as decoration, because of their fine old coats of gilded leather; and such were ranged in the more penetrable shadows or even in the lamp-light. Theophilus would point to them as to a portrait-gallery of dead ancestors. One might admire the quaint and distinguished cut of their clothes without dreaming of wearing the same,—and indeed ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... at long range. Word was sent back, and the advance of the whole army was at once commenced. As we came up we were deployed in like manner. I was with the right wing, and led my company through the thicket wherever a penetrable place could be found, taking advantage of any clear spot that would carry me towards the enemy. At last I got pretty close up without knowing it. The balls commenced to whistle very thick overhead, cutting the limbs ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... Green, or of some other Colour than Blew, assist me to guess whether it self were sincere or no. But finding the Glass impervious to so faint a Light, I then thought it fit to try whether that hard Bodies would not by Attrition increase the Diamonds Light so as to become penetrable thereby, and accordingly when I rubb'd the Glass briskly upon the Stone, I found the Light to be Conspicuous enough, and somewhat Dy'd in its passage, but found it not easie to give a Name to the ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle |
