"Adamantine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... honourable title. There is an honest love, I confess, which is natural, laqueus occultus captivans corda hominum, ut a mulieribus non possint separari, "a secret snare to captivate the hearts of men," as [4712]Christopher Fonseca proves, a strong allurement, of a most attractive, occult, adamantine property, and powerful virtue, and no man living can avoid it. [4713]Et qui vim non sensit amoris, aut lapis est, aut bellua. He is not a man but a block, a very stone, aut [4714]Numen, aut Nebuchadnezzar, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... below, followed by more shrieks and one or two heavy falls; and as I rapidly increased my distance from the scene of action the varied sounds merged into a fierce and whirling din, such as might have arisen had Pandemonium opened its adamantine gates, and poured out upon the hapless chateau a legion of destroying fiends. On entering the saloon I found Francesca on her knees, ready equipped for a journey, and with a small gold crucifix in her hands, which she had removed from her neck. As I entered the apartment ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... resting on the wave it spread Its floors of flashing light, Its vast and azure dome; And on the verge of that obscure abyss 225 Where crystal battlements o'erhang the gulf Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuse Their lustre through its adamantine gates. ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... see clearly, and the moonlight still held. My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the gasp of Arthur, as we recognized the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... religion since nothing has been said about embodying it in a cult. It comes to us commended by glowing quotations from Mr. Swinburne and Walt Whitman and we cannot help admitting that for common hearts it stands in need of the commendation. The transfer of affection from an all loving Father to an adamantine universe is a process for which we may well seek all the aid that the witchery of poetry can supply. Unluckily we are haunted by the consciousness that the poetry itself is blindly ground out by the same illimitable ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... its adamantine lips, Spread a death-shade round the ships Like the hurricane's eclipse ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... his majority. Russia is one grand conspiracy against you, and your enemies have pitched their tents at the foot of your throne. They may well hate the only man who stands between you and destruction. Their arrows have glanced harmlessly from the adamantine shield of his loyalty, and there remained but the alternative of calumniating him to his empress. Oh, Catharine, my angel; beware of Paul, who has never forgotten how his father lost his life! Beware of Orloff, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... threshold of the house of joy and hearing the bars shoot into their sockets I might thoroughly know my ineffectual self and leave untouched the forbidden latch. So far I came in my dream times without number; and always on the verge of joy there came that doom, and the shooting of those adamantine bolts. ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... matters in general, both above decks and below. 'But your ship,' says Carlyle, 'cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting: the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed with adamantine rigour, by the ancient Elemental Powers, who are entirely careless how you vote. If you can by voting, or without voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will get round the Cape: if you cannot, the ruffian Winds will blow ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Mrs. Spade with adamantine firmness of tone. "I ain't a weak woman, thank the Lord, an' as far as that goes, you might split to pieces inside and out right here befo' my eyes an' I wouldn't be a party to sendin' you a step nearer damnation. I ain't afeard of seein' ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... beautiful image to the Mantuan muse, of the Grecian soldier remembering in the last struggles of death his pleasant Argos. It is this which makes us revert, with ever verdant freshness, to our homes and native places, and binds us to the land of our birth with adamantine links. From the burning desarts of sunny Africa—from the wild tornados of the gusty West—from the mountains of ice piled by a thousand ages, like impassable barriers round each frozen pole—from the fertile plains and trackless forests of Australia, frequently rises, like a breeze ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... "Stonewall" attached to Thomas Jonathan Jackson and was peculiarly appropriate as indicating the adamantine, ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... can all the Rakshasas together bear the strength of my arms. Behold these strong arms of mine, each like unto the trunk of an elephant. Behold also these thighs of mine like unto iron maces, and this broad and adamantine chest. O beautiful one, thou shall today behold my prowess like unto that of Indra. O thou of fair hips, hate me not, thinking ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... whom all the world has been talking, exposed her beautiful, adamantine, soft, and lovely person, for the first time at Smock Alley Theatre in the bewitching, melting, and all tearful character of Isabella. From the repeated panegyrics of the impartial London newspapers, we were taught ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... fall by ranks, The Infantry an adamantine wall on the flanks, Close up briskly on right and left receive The enflading fire from the brazen crest, breathe They not a word in complaint, freedom's impulse obey, Following Butler to New Market ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... you enter here On this sacred Ring must swear, [Puts it on his Finger, holds his Hand. By the Figure which is round, Your Passion constant and profound; By the Adamantine Stone, To be fixt to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... men or devils than the everlasting mountains can be disturbed by the storm-blasts which howl around them. What more, then, is needed, than to shut up the wicked in a prison-house, through whose adamantine walls the accusing cry can never pierce, and whose doors are for ever barred by the holy decree of the Almighty? Ah! were it so, even this thought might possibly gratify pride and enmity, could a condemned, though not judged spirit for ever carry with it a conviction of ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... Impossible." He was stern, adamantine. She hastily went on. "So you're very keen—interested in the ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... of the nave; the harmony of design dependent on rightly maintained proportions of each granite block, large or small—and all this marvellous structure was the product of the rude granite veins in The Gore! That adamantine mixture of gneiss and quartz, prepared in nature's laboratory throughout millions of years, was now furnishing the rock which, beneath human manipulation, was flowering into the great cathedral! And that perfect ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... tenor of their laws. The Ironside quality of their creed showed itself in the cruelties with which they visited the Indians; the severity of their tenets was felt by all who could not readily adapt themselves to the adamantine ethics of men of the type of Endicott and Mather. There was not wanting, too, a spirit of lawlessness in the English America, curiously in contrast with the law-abiding character of the Non-conformist colonizations. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... susceptible to one line of treatment, some to another. His own reading of Celia had always been that she liked opposition, of a smart, rattling, almost cheeky, sort. One got on best with her by saying bright things. He searched his brain now for some clever quip that would strike sparks from the adamantine mood which for the moment it was her whim to assume. To cover the process, he smiled a little. Then her beauty, as she stood before him, her queenly form clad in a more stiffly fashionable dress than he had seen her wearing before, appealed afresh and overwhelmingly ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... and now let me apply it. When a murder is in the paulo-post-futurum tense, and a rumor of it comes to our ears, by all means let us treat it morally. But suppose it over and done, and that you can say of it,[Greek: Tetelesai], or (in that adamantine molossus of Medea) [Greek: eirzasai]; suppose the poor murdered man to be out of his pain, and the rascal that did it off like a shot, nobody knows whither; suppose, lastly, that we have done our best, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and sing, for only thus couldst thou rightly guard the golden knowledge, Truth, the delicate pearl and the adamantine jewel of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... Knew ye the cause of this my pilgrimage, Ye would lie down and join your moans with mine. Let this poor wretch but pass, who war doth wage With heaven, the elements, the powers divine! I beg for pity or for death. No more! But open, ope Hell's adamantine door! ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... respective abilities of the parties. The laurels that grow within these precincts are to be gathered with no vulgar hands; they resist the unhallowed grasp, like the golden branch with which the hero of the AEneid threw open the adamantine ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... to the sacred field of Mavors, and ranged themselves on the hills. In the midst of the assembly sat the king himself, arrayed in purple, and distinguished by a sceptre of ivory. Behold! the brazen-footed bulls breathe forth flames[14] from their adamantine nostrils; and the grass touched by the vapors is on fire. And as the forges filled {with fire} are wont to roar, or when flints[15] dissolved in an earthen furnace receive intense heat by the sprinkling of flowing water; so do their breasts ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... honour was engaged; on which his majesty swore at him for an idiot, and turned his back. Every word of this Mrs. Dove heard Colonel Mar tell my Lady—and then they fell to rating the poor youth, and trying to force out who this secret flame may be; but his is of the same stuff as his mother, adamantine and impervious. And now the Colonel keeps him on hard duty continually, and they watch him day and night to find out what places he haunts. But bless me, Mrs. Hunter, is the church clock striking? We must ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are mine no more—Time hath them all, Time and his adamantine gaoler Death: Despoilure vast—yet seemeth it but small, When unto thee I turn, thy bloom and breath Filling with light and incense the last shrine, ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... world and by his prowess dazzle all mankind for the purpose of attracting one pair of eyes. The same occurs to the lady, and she determines to make all men fall at her feet by way of illustrating to one adamantine heart that he was a dullard to have passed over her charms. And this young lady of the rose and lily complexion, and knight of the bright-hued locks and herculean muscles, being young—sufficiently young to be downcast by imaginary stumbling-blocks—had ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... the night. It was one of those nights of the torrents of tears which wash away all save the adamantine within us, if there be ought of that besides the breathing structure. The reason why she wept with so delirious a persistency was, that her nature felt the necessity for draining her of her self-pitifulness, knowing that it nourished the love whereby ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... due to reflection, and of which there are six varieties:—([alpha]) adamantine (which some authorities, experts and merchants subdivide as detailed below); ([beta]) pearly; ([gamma]) silky; ([delta]) resinous; ([epsilon]) vitreous; ([zeta]) ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... his office door, he locked this adamantine, quibbling, frankly penurious, tyrannical man of business inside, and the chameleon does not change its color with greater ease than Sprudell took on another and distinct personality. On the instant he became ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... young lady to leave the shelter of our castle,' he said. And the Duchess replied by an angry outburst, a hailstorm of reproaches, before which Eberhard Ludwig remained silent, cold, rigidly self-contained. The Duchess paused; it was like beating one's hand against some adamantine barrier. She had the sensation that all she said, felt, suffered, passed unnoticed; the man before her was waiting for information, that was all. It was intolerable, and the hopelessness of any ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... speculate, or marvel! He was beginning to tremble before the unknown. The sense of shrinking, of miracle, of being, perhaps, too small to contain the thing decreed, bore hard upon him. With it came a keen impression of the unreality of the material universe,—of Buddhist illusion. Even these adamantine records of death, rising on every side to challenge him,—even these might recombine their particles before his very eyes,—might shiver into mist and float down to the plain to mingle with the smoke of cooking as it rose from ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... might be called infinitely little, and yet its meaning for Archie was immense. "I did not know the old man had so much blood in him." He had never dreamed this sire of his, this aboriginal antique, this adamantine Adam, had even so much of a heart as to be moved in the least degree for another - and that other himself, who had insulted him! With the generosity of youth, Archie was instantly under arms upon the other side: had instantly created a new image of Lord Hermiston, that of a man who was all iron ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... disobey all, and pursue my own way." He told Emerson so, whereupon they went and dined together. The independence of the poet probably impressed Emerson more than his yielding would have done, for had not he preached the adamantine doctrine of self-trust? "To believe your own thought," he says, "to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... of England flush'd To anticipate the scene; And her van the fleeter rush'd O'er the deadly space between. "Hearts of Oak!" our Captains cried; when each gun From its adamantine lips Spread a death-shade round the ships, Like the hurricane ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... to you, Adelbert, that your wife made a mistake also? Did it ever bore itself through your adamantine skull that it is not an unbroken round of gayety for a young girl to shut herself up in a lonesome house for three years, gradually acquiring children, and meantime being "sassed" by her husband because she ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... altered: in spite of one's disgusts, the dull work, to the last item of it, has daily to be done. Which proved infinitely beneficial to the Crown-Prince, after all. Hereby, to his Athenian-French elegancies, and airy promptitudes and brilliancies, there shall lie as basis an adamantine Spartanism and Stoicism; very rare, but very indispensable, for such a superstructure. Well exemplified, through after life, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... innocent, and the suffering under private wrongs; if their learning and genius can, with almost superhuman witchery, unfold the mazes and intricacies by which the minute links of title are chained to the adamantine pillars of the law;—how much more glory belongs to them when this eloquence, this learning, and this genius, are employed in defence of their country; when they breathe forth the purest spirit of morality and virtue in support of the rights of mankind; ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... coils,—with both hands she had grasped the creature's throat in her frenzy, striving to thrust back its quivering fangs from her breast, whereon the evil "Eye of Raphon" still gleamed distinctly with its adamantine chilly stare, . . at her feet lay the body of the King her lover, dead and wrapped in a ring of flames! ... Alone—all, all alone, she confronted Death in its most appalling shape.. her countenance was distorted, yet beautiful still with the beauty of a maddened Medusa, . . white and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... colossal, adamantine impudence, "I've just got it back from a two-years' visit to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition; there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... have robb'd, you may lash them Hours before they will confess the Fact; however, were they not to look upon every White Man as their Tormentor; were a slight Fault to be pardon'd now and then; were their Masters, and those adamantine-hearted Overseers, to exercise a little more Persuasion, Complacency, Tenderness and Humanity towards them, it might perhaps, improve their Tempers to a greater Degree of Tractability. Such Masters and such Overseers, Maryland may with Justice ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... with new life, the nations gave birth to a progeny of heroes, and the stormy glories of the sixteenth century rose on awakened Europe. But Spain was the citadel of darkness,—a monastic cell, an inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce. She was the bulwark of the Church, against whose adamantine wall the waves of innovation beat in vain. [19] In every country of Europe the party of freedom and reform was the national party, the party of reaction and absolutism was the Spanish party, leaning on Spain, looking to her for help. Above all, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... has enslaved himself with a thousand superstitious observances which to us appear absurd; but his sincerity should awaken in us an affectionate interest in his behalf, not engender the bitter hatred which at present forms an adamantine barrier between us. If the Protestant would give up a little of his bigotry, and the Catholic a part of his superstition, and they would consent to meet each other half way, as brothers of one common manhood, inspired by the same Christian hope, and bound to the same heavenly ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... God's management for destroying routine within the law of stated revolution, and for bringing the mind constantly into contact with fresh influences. The soul, encased by a wall of adamantine circumstances, and driven around a track of unvarying duties, shrivels, or gets diseased. But these circumstances need not imprison the farmer, nor these duties become the polished pavement of his cell. He has his life among the most beautiful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... earth. This alone was afforded To the man whom men know me, or deem me, to be. But, far down, in the depth of my life's mystery, (Like the siren that under the deep ocean dwells, Whom the wind as it wails, and the wave as it swells, Cannot stir in the calm of her coralline halls, 'Mid the world's adamantine and dim pedestals; At whose feet sit the sylphs and sea fairies; for whom The almondine glimmers, the soft samphires bloom)— Thou abidest and reignest forever, O Queen Of that better world which thou swayest unseen! My one perfect mistress! my all things in all! Thee by no vulgar name known to men ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... of God, Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud, With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms. Nine times the space that measures day and night To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew, Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, Confounded, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Deville's adamantine boron burns in the same manner, but with more difficulty, becoming fluoride or boron. The small quantity of carbon and aluminum which it contains impedes the combination. Arsenic and antimony in powder combine with this gaseous body with ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... heaven. He, wandering here, In mournful terms, with sad and heavy cheer, Complained to Cupid. Cupid for his sake, To be revenged on Jove did undertake. And those on whom heaven, earth, and hell relies, I mean the adamantine Destinies, He wounds with love, and forced them equally To dote upon deceitful Mercury. They offered him the deadly fatal knife That shears the slender threads of human life. At his fair feathered feet the engines laid Which th' earth from ugly Chaos' den upweighed. ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... those who begin by trying to expunge the sacred memory of the fourth of July? Shall we help them to obliterate the associations that cluster around the glorious struggle for independence, or stultify the labors of the patriots who erected this magnificent political edifice upon the adamantine base of human liberty? Shall we surrender the fame of Washington and Laurens, of Gadsden and the Lees, of Jefferson and Madison, and of the myriads of heroes whose names are imperishably connected with the memory of a united ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... vibrating rigging, peering far ahead for a streak of open water, studying the movement of the floes which pressed against us, I would hear him shouting to the ship below us as if coaxing her, encouraging her, commanding her to hammer a way for us through the adamantine floes: ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... religion as a serious scourge, and by the simple process of reducing it to a petty nuisance. For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. The more stupid the man, the larger his stock of adamantine assurances, the heavier his load of faith. When Copernicus proved that the earth revolved around the sun, he did not simply prove that the earth revolved around the sun, he also proved that the so-called revelation of God, as ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... favored him with a frown, and the back view of a sharp shoulder blade. To her mid-Victorian mind Sinclair Spencer was not conducting himself as a gentleman should, and her half-considered resolve to drop him from her visiting list became adamantine as she observed his appearance. Slipping her hand inside Kathleen's arm she led ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... to regale himself, we can not avoid recurring to the loaded tables and delicious morsels of other days, and are likely at such times to put hard crackers and glory on one side, the good things of home and peace on the other and owing probably to the unsubstantial quality of glory, and the adamantine quality of the crackers, arrive at conclusions not at all favorable to ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... inner keep, Scanning Death's lone, illimitable deep, Spread outward to the far immortal shore! While the vault sleeps, from the upheaving deck, Thou see'st the adamantine reefs that wreck, And Life's low shoals, where ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... face had taken upon itself that appalling and exasperating calmness of very good people who never get angry, but drive others to frenzy by the simple occlusion of an adamantine veil between their own feelings and their opponents'. "I'll tell you all about it after I've put up the horse," he said hurriedly, glad to escape until the veil was lifted again. "I suppose ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... Guile and her companion preferred to travel alone to Paris. They had a private compartment, over which a respectful but adamantine conductor exercised an authority that irritated R. Schmidt beyond expression. The rest of the train was crowded to its capacity, and here was desirable space going to waste in the section occupied by the selfish Miss Guile. He couldn't understand it in her. Was it, after all, ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... whose hat fitted too tightly; and that mark, gentlemen, had the undulating outline of nothing more nor less than a tiara, and on the apex of the uppermost extremity was a deep indentation about the size of a shilling, that could have been made only by some adamantine substance! The mystery was solved! The robber of the Duchess of ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... away a little at the top,—the water surged in and out with a thunderous, muffled sough and moan, like a Titan under the earth, pinned down eternally in pain. It was awfully impressive,—so impressive that I reflected neither upon it nor on myself. With this immitigable, adamantine wildness about me, and that abysmal, booming stifle of plaint, to which all the air trembled, sounding from below, I became another being, and the very universe was no longer itself; past and future were not, and I was a dumb atomy creeping over the bare peaks of existence, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... Sabiniana was the aunt of Chrysostom. To Amprucla the bishop wrote two letters still extant.[11] They are filled with words of consolation for the religious persecution she has undergone. In one of them he says: "Greatly did we sympathize with your manliness, your steadfast and adamantine understanding, your freedom of speech and boldness." "Manliness of soul" seems to have held a high place in the bishop's favorite qualities. In another place, writing to the same deaconess, he praises "your steadfast soul, true to God; yea, rather, ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... forlorn company; for, self-contained and stern as was his nature, he could soften, in times of extremity, to a gentleness that strongly appealed to the hearts of those around him; and though he could not impart, to minds of less adamantine temper, the audacity of hope with which he still clung to the final accomplishment of his purposes, the contagion of his courage touched, nevertheless, the drooping spirits of his followers. [Footnote: "L'egalite d'humeur du Chef rassuroit tout le monde; et il trouvoit des resources ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... off at speed. Beneath his off-hand words to Mrs. Buckingham Smith he was conscious of a quickly growing, tender sympathy for Marguerite Haim. The hardness in him was dissolved almost instantaneously. He saw Marguerite, who had been adamantine in the difference which separated them, as the image of pliancy, sweetness, altruism, and devotion; and he saw her lips and the rapt glance of her eyes as beautiful as in the past. What a soft, soothing, assuaging contrast with the ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... rooms of the palace three beautiful females, clothed in cerulean robes spangled with stars, and their heads adorned with golden crowns, were at work together. One held a distaff, from which the second spun; and the third wielded an enormous pair of adamantine shears, with which she perpetually severed the labours of her sisters. Tall were they in stature and beautiful in form. Very fair; an expression of haughty serenity pervaded their majestic countenances. Their three companions, however, though apparently of the same sex, were of a ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... individuals, eager to secure incriminating evidence, but although they cajoled, coaxed and threatened I could not be induced to betray my secret. Indeed, at last, I point-blank refused to furnish any information upon this matter whatever, and with this adamantine decision they were forced to remain content. Doubtless they had their suspicions but it was impossible to bring anything home to me and so ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... might know salvation who in Hades' prison were pent, In His mercy condescending through Hell's gloomy gates He went; Bolt and massy hinge were shattered, adamantine portals rent. ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... their duties to the state they must never forget their responsibility to the Most High. Wuczicz, dressed in the coarse frieze jacket and boots of a Servian peasant, heard, with a reverential inclination of the head, the discourse of the prelate, but nought relaxed one muscle of that adamantine visage: the finer but more luminous features of Petronevich were under the control of a less powerful will. At certain passages his intelligent eye was moistened with tears. Two deacons then prayed successively for the Sultan, the Emperor of Russia, and the Prince,—and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... lean on the strong Stay, complain not when the weak one crumbles to dust beneath your weight. And if you choose to swing over the profound depth at the end of a piece of pack-thread, instead of holding on by an adamantine chain wrapped round God's throne, you must be prepared for its breaking and your being smashed to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... which might be one with theirs through all eternity, like twin stars in one common atmosphere, for ever giving and receiving wisdom and might, beauty and bliss, and yet are barred from their bliss by some invisible adamantine wall, against which they must beat themselves to death, like butterflies against the window-pane, gazing, and longing, and unable to guess why they are ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... profoundest prophet could be holden to his words, and the hearer who is ready to sell all and join the crusade could have any certificate that tomorrow his prophet shall not unsay his testimony! But the Truth sits veiled there on the Bench, and never interposes an adamantine syllable; and the most sincere and revolutionary doctrine, put as if the ark of God were carried forward some furlongs, and planted there for the succor of the world, shall in a few weeks be coldly set aside by the same speaker, as ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... quite hid from thine eyes. These tears will then be the last issues of (even defeated) love, of love that is frustrated of its kind design. Thou mayst perceive in these tears the steady, unalterable laws of heaven, the inflexibleness of the divine justice, that holds thee in adamantine bonds, and hath sealed thee up, if thou prove incurably obstinate and impenitent, unto perdition; so that even the Redeemer Himself, He that is mighty to save, can not at length save thee, but only weep over thee, drop tears ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... the young women belonging to them should be settled,—and thus got rid of,—is no doubt the great desire; but, whether the old woman be herself married or a spinster, the desire is founded on an adamantine confidence that marriage is the most proper and the happiest thing for the young woman. The belief is so thorough that the woman would cease to be a woman, would already have become a brute, who would desire to keep any girl belonging to her ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... Our guns and our ships are not, perhaps, very good now. But they would be much worse if any thirty or forty advocates for this gun or that gun could make a motion in Parliament, beat the department, and get their ships or their guns adopted. The "Black Breech Ordnance Company" and the "Adamantine Ship Company" would soon find representatives in Parliament, if forty or fifty members would get the national custom for their rubbish. But this result is now prevented by the Parliamentary head of the ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... of victory on the belief that, under the strain of war, the far-flung British Empire, with its heterogeneous elements and racial jealousies, would promptly crumble. It was a vital error. Instead of crumbling it hardened into a unity which is adamantine. Canada has already contributed half a million men to the British armies, Australia three hundred thousand. South Africa, by undertaking her own defense, released the imperial regiments stationed there. She not only suppressed the German-fomented rebellion, but she conquered ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... everlasting Light, a stream from the fountain of heavenly Wisdom and Love. This is the evidence which sustains the faith of thousands, who never read and cannot understand the learned books of Christian apologists, who want, perhaps, words to explain the ground of their belief, but whose faith is of adamantine firmness, who hold the gospel with a conviction more intimate and unwavering ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... prudence supplied the place of all other divinities, and that happiness is the unfailing consequence of virtue. But surely the quiver of Omnipotence is stored with arrows against which the shield of human virtue, however adamantine it has been boasted, is held up in vain; we do not always suffer by our crimes; we are not always protected by our innocence.' The Adventurer, No. 120. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... the truth of Mr Whittlestaff, he was a man very open to such shafts of ridicule. The "robur et aes triplex" which fortified his heart went only to the doing of a good and unselfish action, and did not extend to providing him with that adamantine shield which virtue should of itself supply. He was as pervious to these stings as a man might be who had not strength to act in opposition to them. He could screw himself up to the doing of a great deed for the benefit of another, and could as he was doing so deplore with inward ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... seemed my family, the office, the world, as I listened to my guru in the high Himalayan solitudes. Yet adamantine truth rang in his words; I submissively agreed to leave this blessed haven of peace. Babaji instructed me in the ancient rigid rules which govern the transmission of the yogic ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... the orphan's features, and shivered the smoothness of her usually sweet voice, touched the old lady's sympathy, and she wept silently; straining her imagination for some argument that would make an impression on the adamantine will with which she found her own ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... brass, iron, and adamantine rock, reaching high to the mighty roof, and most horrible were ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... conversing with the doorman. That adamantine individual, unaccustomed to being addressed as a human being, was startled at first, surly and distrustful. But he mellowed under Hosey's simple and friendly advances. They became quite pals, these two—perhaps two as lonely men as you could find in ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on my forehead, my obstinacy was adamantine. I reflected for some time, and then answered as if I had discovered a new ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... at, he laughs again; and stricken hard, Turns to his stroke his adamantine scales, That fear no discipline of ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... creature sat expecting Mrs. Woffington, like Olympian Jove awaiting Juno. But he was mortal, after all; for suddenly the serenity of that adamantine countenance was disturbed; his eye dilated; his grace and dignity were shaken. He huddled his handkerchief into one pocket, his snuff-box into another, and forgot his cane. He ran to the ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... beginning less fluid than pahoehoe, and that they advance very slowly, being full of solid points, or centres of cooling: that a- a, in fact, grains like sugar. Its hardness is indescribable. It is an aggregate of upright, rugged, adamantine points, and at a distance, a river of it looks like a ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Crape, ever true and trusty known, Stole from the maid's bed to his own, Then in the spirituals of pride, Planted himself at Dulman's side. Thrice did the ever-faithful slave, With voice which might have reach'd the grave, And broke Death's adamantine chain, On Dulman call, but call'd in vain. 1210 Thrice with an arm, which might have made The Theban boxer curse his trade, The drone he shook, who rear'd the head, And thrice fell backward on his bed. What could be done? Where force hath fail'd, Policy often hath prevail'd; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... in blue brocaded satin. The fit is scrupulous, yet no woman's figure is revealed. You are decorously shapeless. Your satin trousers even are lined with fur. Your hair is stiff and lustrous as polished ebony, bound at the neck in an adamantine knot, in which dull pearls ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... immediate simplification of houses. It was odd to observe how, once a man became infected, his former interests and anxieties fell away from him like an old garment. In Harley Street an attitude of stubborn disbelief continued amongst those still mortal. There is something magnificent in that adamantine spirit which refuses to recognize the new, even though it moves with ever-increasing distinctness before the very eyes of the deniers. I was not surprised. I was ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... The adamantine steel! O shining light, O beacon, polestar, path and guide of all Who, scorning slumber and the lazy down, Adopt the toilsome life of bloodstained arms! To thee, great hero who all praise transcends, La Mancha's lustre and Iberia's star, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of the infernal spirit, bound in avenging fire by adamantine chains, lying vanquished nine times the space that measures night and day to mortal men; of the darkness visible of the eternal prisons and the burning ocean where the fallen angels float. Then, his voice, now powerful, began the address of the fallen angel. "Art thou," he said, "he who ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... to winning in the end their comprehension and approval, though this was later and long after I had quitted the situation. It was ten or eleven years afterwards—that is, four or five years after my departure—that the mother of these lads expressed her entire approval of the adamantine perseverance I ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... nature. The Vajrasan, Diamond Throne or Thunderbolt seat, was the name applied to the most sacred part of the great temple reared by Asoka on the site of the bodhi tree, under which Gautama received enlightenment. "The adamantine truths of Buddha struck like a thunderbolt upon the superstitious of his age." "The word vagra has the two senses of hardness and utility. In the former sense it is understood to be compared to the secret truth which is always in existence and not to be broken. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... mere provincialism of this dwindling sphere of ours, but a fact and a law supreme, holding sway beyond the uttermost star, valid in infinity and eternity, at this hour, the sovereign law of life for whatsoever or whomsoever lives and knows, the adamantine foundation upon which all law, civilisation, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... perchance his only child! Thus struggling in the abyss of despair, To sin indebted for a life of woe. Still worse, if worse can be! the thought must sting (If e'er reflection calls it from the bed Of low oblivion) that ignoble wretch, The cruel instrument of all their woe; Sure it must cut his adamantine heart More than ten thousand daggers onward plung'd, With all death's tortures quivering ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... these pages, is this: to assert that we must instantly begin all over again, and begin at the other end. I begin with a little girl's hair. That I know is a good thing at any rate. Whatever else is evil, the pride of a good mother in the beauty of her daughter is good. It is one of those adamantine tendernesses which are the touchstones of every age and race. If other things are against it, other things must go down. If landlords and laws and sciences are against it, landlords and laws and sciences must go down. With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... hours the company was so well amused that few were driven away by the cold—and it was an intensely cold night The ringing of the skates on the almost adamantine ice revealed the fact that Jack Frost had a tight clutch on the ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... twinkling eyes, "you would know that a theory is not a demonstration, but an explanation. But, by the hypothesis, since you are not I, you can know nothing certainly. Now my theory explains many things, and, among others, the adamantine, imperishable, impenetrable nature of the substance vanity upon which the showman, Nature, projects in fast fading colours the unsubstantial images of men. Why do you drag me through ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... prayer to bed; Dungeon-beams, from quenchless head; Poets, making earth aware Of its wealth in good and fair; And the benders to their intent, Of metal and of element; Of flame the enlightener, beauteous, And steam, that bursteth his iron house; And adamantine giants blind, That, without master, ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... Creator remained in his own nature. And his children, receiving from him the immortal principle, borrowed from the world portions of earth, air, fire, water, hereafter to be returned, which they fastened together, not with the adamantine bonds which bound themselves, but by little invisible pegs, making each separate body out of all the elements, subject to influx and efflux, and containing the courses of the soul. These swelling and ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... enthusiasm and ingenuity of the Ponkapoag coasters. On days and nights in the old-fashioned winters, when the sledding of big logs to the sawmill on Ponkapoag brook had made the course down the hill one glare of adamantine snow between deep rifts, the population of the village used to turn out; not the big and little boys and girls only, but the grown-ups even to the venerable gaffers of those days who could remember how they used to coast ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... name you will, Gabriel Tar, or Gibraltar, that infinitesimal scrap of territory over which the Union Jack floats, is supremely unpalatable and insolently insulting to the Spaniard. It is a bitter pill to swallow, an adamantine nut to crack. I suppose he is welcome to take it—when he can; but he knows better than to try. It is the gate of the Mediterranean. Logically, it is an injustice that a stranger should sit in the porter's lodge and swing the key at his girdle; but it is as well that the porter is one ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... that, when described, it was too late to alter the helm. Its giant shape filled the foreground, towering high above the masts, grim and gaunt and ghastly, immovable as the adamantine buttresses of a frowning seaboard, while the liner lurched and staggered like a wounded thing in agony as her engines slowly drew her back from the rampart against which she ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... adamantine trunk Of a huge tree, whose root, with slaughter drunk Sends forth a scent of war, La Mancha's knight, Frantic with valor, and returned from fight, His bloody standard trembling in the air, Hangs up his glittering armor beaming far, With that fine-tempered ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the Almighty power, Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal power, Who durst defy th' Omnipotent ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... practises her doves; Calls round her laughing eyes in playful turns, The glance that lightens, and the smile that burns; 100 Her dimpling cheeks with transient blushes dies, Heaves her white bosom with seductive sighs; Or moulds with rosy lips the magic words, That bind the heart in adamantine cords. ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... lava load the gale, The furnace quiver and the mountain quail? Say shall the son of Sympathy pretend His cedar fragrance with our Chiefs to blend? There, where the gnarled monuments of sand Howl their dark whirlwinds to the levin brand; Conclusive tenderness; fraternal grog, Tidy conjunction; adamantine bog, Impetuous arrant toadstool; Thundering quince, Repentant dog-star, inessential Prince, Expound. Pre-Adamite eventful gun, Crush retribution, currant-jelly, pun, Oh! eligible Darkness, fender, sting, Heav'n-born Insanity, courageous ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... write it in the rock," Saint Bernard said, "Grave it on brass with adamantine pen! 'Tis God himself becomes apparent, when God's wisdom ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... in the coarse frieze jacket and boots of a Servian peasant, heard with a reverential inclination of the head the elegantly polished discourse of the gold-bedizened prelate, but nought relaxed one single muscle of that adamantine visage; the finer but more luminous features of Petronievitch were evidently under the control of a less powerful will. At certain passages of the discourse, his intelligent eye was moistened with tears. Two deacons ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... he not only employed women as executioners, but refused to permit her a priest or monk, thus forcing her to die unshriven, and refusing her the benefit of any penitence that may have lurked in her adamantine heart." ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... fire, And, lantern'd in his breast, from realms of day Bore the bright treasure to his Man of clay;— High on cold Caucasus by VULCAN bound, The lean impatient Vulture fluttering round, 375 His writhing limbs in vain he twists and strains To break or loose the adamantine chains. The gluttonous bird, exulting in his pangs, Tears his swoln ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... him, to find himself quietly studied and calmly measured by those thoughtful blue eyes; he felt, with his fine, instinctive tact, that the soul within was infolded in some crystalline sphere of protection, transparent, but adamantine, so that he could not touch it. What was that secret poise, that calm, immutable centre on which she rested, that made her, in her rustic simplicity, so unapproachable and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... praise. Great Pompey; Great, while Fortune did him raise, Nowe vailes the glory of his vanting plumes And to the ground casts of his high hang'd lookes. You gentle Heauens. O execute your wrath On vile mortality, that hath scornd your powers. You night borne Sisters to whose haires are ty'd In Adamantine Chaines both Gods and Men Winde on your webbe of mischiefe and of plagues, And if, O starres you haue an influence: 30 That may confounde this high erected heape Downe powre it; Vomit out your worst of ills Let Rome, growne proud, with her vnconquered strength, Perish and ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... sapphire surface. The image of the light filament, as seen from the diamond, is much keener than as seen from the sapphire. The same disparity would exist between the diamond and almost any other stone. Zircon comes nearest to having adamantine luster of any of the other gems. The green garnet that is called "olivine" in the trade also approaches diamond in luster, hence the name "demantoid," or diamond like, sometimes ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... killed. I took to flight, and the bull, bristling with fury, pursued me closely. The pistol was soon ready, and then looking back, I saw his head five or six yards behind my horse's tail. To fire at it would be useless, for a bullet flattens against the adamantine skull of a buffalo bull. Inclining my body to the left, I turned my horse in that direction as sharply as his speed would permit. The bull, rushing blindly on with great force and weight, did not turn so quickly. As I looked back, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... present circumstances he had a few, fine, adamantine rules for conduct, which he was going to steadfastly apply, and he thought no more of the girl's feelings under them than one thinks of the inanimate parcel one is cording with what one ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... not quite of this world, in the tender lightness that seemed to come into his heart. "His whole appearance, poise and bearing," says one of his observers, "had marvelously changed. He was, in fact, transfigured. That indescribable sadness which had previously seemed to be an adamantine element of his very being, had been suddenly changed for an equally indescribable expression of serene joy, as if conscious that the great purpose of his life ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... By frantic exertions I worked myself backward, and was sliding down behind—too late. The bush broke, causing the mule to fall back forcibly against the inner bank, with myself sandwiched between the adamantine wall of the mountain and the well-shod heels of the mule. The animal, being as much scared as myself, started up the trail at a gallop. I had saved my life but lost my mule. I have no taste for overtaking runaway mules on a steep and interminable up-grade. ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... with my defenceless condition, and in saying that I might be accused or put to death or boxed on the ears with impunity. For I may repeat once more, that to strike is worse than to be stricken—to do than to suffer. What I said then is now made fast in adamantine bonds. I myself know not the true nature of these things, but I know that no one can deny my words and not be ridiculous. To do wrong is the greatest of evils, and to suffer wrong is the next greatest evil. He who would avoid the last must be ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... would say that they could, by a different conduct and superior wisdom, have avoided the misfortunes to which I am the victim. My fate has been governed by necessity, a hideous necessity. It required hands stronger than mine; stronger I do believe than any human force to break the thick, adamantine chain that has bound me, once breathing nothing but joy, ever possessed by a warm love & delight in goodness,—to misery only to be ended, and now about to be ended, in death. But I forget myself, my tale is yet untold. I will pause a few moments, wipe my dim eyes, and endeavour to lose the present ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... husbands, are redeemed at last by the queenly patience and wisdom of the wives. In Measure for Measure, the foul injustice of the judge, and the foul cowardice of the brother, are opposed to the victorious truth and adamantine purity of a woman. In Coriolanus, the mother's counsel, acted upon in time, would have saved her son from all evil; his momentary forgetfulness of it is his ruin; her prayer, at last granted, saves him—not, indeed, from death, ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... French mind had dissected out a shade of feeling of which I had often been conscious. There is a coldness about all the luscious exuberance of Milton, like the wind that blows from, the glaciers across these flowery valleys. How serene his angels in their adamantine virtue! yet what sinning, suffering soul could find sympathy in them? The utter want of sympathy for the fallen angels, in the whole celestial circle, is shocking. Satan is the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... The cry of the old and weary, and he built Houses of refuge. Even so he kept His prentice vows of Duty, Industry, Obedience, words contemned of every fool Who shrinks from law; yet were those ancient vows The adamantine pillars of the State. Let all who play their Samson be well warned That Samsons perish, too! ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... d'Alagna, a beautiful chaste statue of ice who loved him; whereas I crave the warm-blooded thing that is mine for the taking, but no more loves me than she loves the policeman who salutes her on his beat. I cannot take her. Something stronger than my passion opposes an adamantine barrier. I love her with my soul as well as with my body, and my soul cries out for the soul that the Almighty forgot ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... variously coloured "serpentine" rocks; it is granite, and granite alone, that appears everywhere—granite, less lofty and less eccentric in form than the "serpentine" cliffs and crags; but presenting an appearance of adamantine solidity and strength, a mighty breadth of outline and an unbroken vastness of extent, nobly adapted to the purpose of protecting the shores of Cornwall, where they are most exposed to the fury of the ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... the adamantine mountain, one mile in height, one mile in breadth, and one mile deep; and thither comes a bird once in every thousand years which rubs its beak against the hill, and, when the whole shall be rubbed away, then will the first second ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... pavement beneath it at defiance; they would have looked at a bright little bed, of the last new pattern, worthy of a child's delicious sleep; and they would only have discovered that the room was three hundred years old when they had drawn aside the window curtains, and had revealed the adamantine solidity of the outer walls. Or, if they had been allowed to pursue their investigations a little further, and had found their way next into Mrs. Linley's sitting room, here again a transformation scene would have revealed more modern luxury, presented in the perfection which ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... dwelling-place for the non-employee. Our worthy Uncle of the chin whiskers makes it quite plain that, while he may tolerate the mere visitor, he does not care to have him hanging around; makes it so plain, in fact, that a few weeks purely of sight-seeing on the Zone implies an adamantine financial backing. In his screened and full-provided towns, where the employee lives in such well-furnished comfort, the tourist might beat his knuckles bare and shake yellow gold in the other hand, and be coldly refused even a lodging for ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... hold a different opinion. I, for my part, should have said that Winifred's story proclaimed her aunt to be a worthy member of a flunkey society like this of ours—a society whose structure, political and moral and religious, is based on an adamantine rock of ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the celestials—the dreadful thunderbolt. And inspiring the Gandiva with mantras, I, aiming at the locality of the crags, shot sharpened iron shafts of the touch of the thunder-bolt. And sent by the thunder, those adamantine arrows entered into all those illusions and into the midst of those Nivata-Kavachas. And slaughtered by the vehemence of the thunder, those Danavas resembling cliffs, fell to the earth together in masses. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... below, But guess by rumour, and but boast we know), Oh! say what heroes, fired by thirst of fame, Or urged by wrongs, to Troy's destruction came! To count them all demands a thousand tongues, A throat of brass and adamantine lungs. ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... portrayed so fair, Ere Sin or Sorrow scathed it: such the air That characters thy youth. Shall time efface These lineaments as crowding cares assail! It is the lot of fall'n humanity. What boots it! armed in adamantine mail, The unconquerable mind, and genius high, Right onward hold their way through weal and woe, Or whether life's brief lot be high ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... hanging and a whirl day and night through the Karoo, would almost favour the suspension of the constitution! But apart from physical inconvenience, the idea of forsaking their homes and husbands was too ridiculous. The notion of living in tents on potted beef and adamantine biscuits was shuddered at. The whole project was voted a wild-cat scheme (and Mr. Rhodes agreed). After the spartan bravery they had displayed for two months, the ladies regarded this new and wanton strain on their loyalty as inhuman. Their protest was loud and dignified; ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... snatched it from obscurity in the very nick of time, at the moment that those matters herein recorded were about entering into the widespread insatiable maw of oblivion—if I had not dragged them out, as it were, by the very locks, just as the monster's adamantine fangs were closing upon them for ever! And here have I, as before observed, carefully collected, collated, and arranged them, scrip and scrap, "punt en punt, gat en gat," and commenced in this little work, a history to serve as a foundation on which other ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... wonderful in the way Parson Brush kept control of himself. Externally he was as calm as when standing in front of the adamantine blackboard, giving instruction to Nellie Dawson, while down deep in his heart, raged a tempest such as rouses into life the darkest passions that can nerve a man to wrong doing. Believing it necessary to stir the father to action, ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali," [Footnote: Appendix I, "The Gondolier's Cry."] struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... had come to that bar with the sentence of death already in idea ringing in my ears, to be told that I was free to transport myself whithersoever I pleased! Was it for this that I had broken through so many locks and bolts, and the adamantine walls of my prison; that I had passed so many anxious days, and sleepless, spectre-haunted nights; that I had racked my invention for expedients of evasion and concealment; that my mind had been roused to an energy of which I could scarcely ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... youthful freshness? Fetters thee that lovely mien? That glance so full of truth and goodness, With an adamantine chain? Vain the hardy wish to tear me From those meshes that ensnare me; For the moment I would flee, Straight my path leads ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... seen the salting pan, having already yielded its nutritious qualities to a swinging tureen of Spartan soup, and now requiring the accompaniment of a satellite tongue, or friendly slice of Lamego bacon, to impait a dull relish to it; potatoes of leaden continuity; dumplings of adamantine contexture, that Carthaginian vinegar itself might fail to dissolve; with offensive vegetables, and something in a round shape, said to be imported from Holland, and called cheese, but more like the unyielding rock of flint in the tenacity of its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... the name of liberty and to protect minorities, that nullification professes to act; while in its first ordinance it sweeps away the dearest rights of a large minority of the people of Carolina, and binds the freedom of conscience in adamantine chains. It deprives American citizens of that last and hitherto sacred refuge from oppression, a trial by an impartial jury, and requires the very judges upon the bench and jurors within the box to be sworn to condemn the unhappy man whose only crime was this: that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he had discussed with Thorpe the meaning and values of this inscrutable expression which the latter's countenance could assume. It had seemed interesting and even admirable to him then—but then he had not foreseen the possibility that he himself might some day confront its adamantine barrier with a sinking heart. All at once he could bear this implacable ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... It proceeds on the idea that all things in heaven and earth are bound together by "an implexed series and concatenation of causes:" it admits the existence of God, it is true, but yet it regards him as merely the greatest and brightest link in the adamantine universal chain of necessity. According to this scheme, as well as to the former, the very idea of moral liberty is inconceivable and impossible. This portentous scheme was perfectly understood and expressly repudiated by Calvin. In reference to this doctrine, which was ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... woman! but a man, a beast, That hath no bliss like others? Would to heaven, In wreak of my misfortunes, I were turn'd To some fair water-nymph, that set upon The deepest whirl-pit of the rav'nous seas, My adamantine eyes might headlong hale This iron world to ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... whose shelfy bounds With ceaseless roar the foaming deep surrounds. The thoughts which roll within my ravish'd breast, To me, no seer, the inspiring gods suggest; Nor skill'd nor studious, with prophetic eye To judge the winged omens of the sky. Yet hear this certain speech, nor deem it vain; Though adamantine bonds the chief restrain, The dire restraint his wisdom will defeat, And soon restore him to his regal seat. But generous youth! sincere and free declare, Are you, of manly growth, his royal heir? For sure ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... fortunes; still preserving all that is valuable of their taste and qualities; so ordering them, that they may delight the palate, without disordering the stomach, by leaving out those inflammatory ingredients which are only fit for an "iron throat and adamantine bowels," and those costly materials which no rational being would destroy, for the wanton purpose of merely giving a fine name to the compositions they enter into, to whose excellence they contribute nothing else. For instance, ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... force of deadly missiles. Incapacitated as Garrison was to resort to physical resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law by his non-resistant doctrine, it seemed that all the energy and belligerency of the man went into the most tremendous verbal expressions. They were like adamantine projectiles flung with the savage strength of a catapult against the walls of slavery. The big sinners, like Webster and Clay, he singled out for condign punishment, were objects of his utmost severities of ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... of clear and diamond sparkle, Where the Baltic waters darkle, Lonely German seer of Reason, Great and calm as Atlas old; Through our formless foggy season, Short thine adamantine cold. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Mr. Perkins called personally upon that lady, and laid before her the question of Johnnie's health, she was adamantine in her refusal. Even the sight of a two-dollar bill could not sway her, offered, as Mr. Perkins explained, not in the hope of bribing her to do anything that was forbidden, but as pay in case Johnnie proved to be any trouble; for she had explained, "Kids is fierce for t'rowin' trash 'round, and ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... four or five times more, and passed between rocks, and broken land, through a very uncultivated and romantic vale, we began to ascend the Pyrenees upon a noble road, indeed! hewn upon the sides of those adamantine hills, of a considerable width, and an easy ascent, quite up to the high Fortress of Bellegarde, which stands upon the pinnacle of the highest hill, and ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... His suit was a vehement brown with visible checks, beautifully matched in shade by the ends of four cigars that his vest pocket poorly concealed. Light tan were his shoes, gray his socks, sky-blue his apparent linen, snowy and high and adamantine his collar, against which a black butterfly had alighted and spread his wings. Sammy's face—least important—was round and pleasant and pinkish, and in his eyes you saw no haven for ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... Aristotle made to rule the world were eternal natures. An individual might fail to be a perfect man or a perfect monkey, but the specific human or simian ideal, by which he had been formed in so far as he was formed at all, was not affected by this accidental resistance in the matter at hand, as an adamantine seal, even if at times the wax by defect or impurity failed to receive a perfect impression, would remain unchanged and ready to be ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... unutterable sadness.' Such, we have often fancied, was the feeling of the great Florentine toward the world, and which—pained, pitying, yearning enthusiast that he was!—escaped irresistibly from those deep- set eyes, that adamantine jaw, and that brow, wearing the laurel, proudly yet painfully, as if it were a crown of everlasting fire! Dunbar was not altogether a Dante, either in melancholy or in power, but his 'Dance' reveals kindred moods, operating at times on ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... a true, genuine feeling of love, was bound in adamantine chains to her sister. Time and fortune, that shatter all human institutions and prove human feelings, consolidated the union of their hearts and their destinies. A stranger on stronger proof of the influence of sisterly affection ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... deep and dread I 2 With power of many a hand And many hastening feet shall spring The Fury of the adamantine tread, Visiting Argive land Swift recompense to bring For eager dalliance of a blood-stained pair Unhallowed, foul, forbidden. No omen fair,— Their impious course hath fixed this in my soul,— Nought but black portents full of blame shall roll Before their eyes that wrought or aided there. ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... From faith and pious awe? to touch with prayers The tenants of yon azure realms on high, Were hard as with an arrow's point to pierce The silvery moon. Hid is the womb of time, Impregnable to mortal glance, and deaf The adamantine walls of heaven rebound The voice of anguish:—Oh, 'tis one, whate'er The flight of birds—the aspect of the stars! The book of nature is a maze—a dream The sage's art—and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the procurator for his resolution and success in rebuffing would-be patrons eager to pamper me. Also, all winter, I dreaded that he would he less lucky or less adamantine when spring came. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... everlasting bosh! I am a poet; I swear it! If you do not believe it you are a dolt, a fool, an idiot! Milton, Shakespere, Dante, Tommy Moore, Pope, never, but Byron, too, perhaps, and last, not least, Me, and the Poet Close. We send our resonance echoing down the adamantine canyons of the future! We live forever! The worms who criticise us (asses!) laugh, scoff, jeer, and babble—die! Serve them right. What is the difference between Judy, the pride of Fleet Street, the glory of Shoe Lane, and Walt Whitman? Start not! 'Tis no ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... known, must be loved. And though you have all the knowledge of a von Humboldt, and do not love her, you will never understand her or her teachings. You will go through life with her, and yet parted from her as by an adamantine wall. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... discarding of needless reticence, and the open presentation of the truth. Many men who would not tell a lie, yet seem to have faith in concealment: they would rather not reveal the truth; darkness seems to offer them the cover of a friendly wing. But there is no veil like light —no adamantine armour against hurt like the truth. To Malcolm it was one of the promises of the kingdom that there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed. He was anxious, therefore, to tell his people, at the coming dinner, the main points of his story, and certain that such openness would also help to ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... was hard, high, and strict; but while she had as little mercy on herself as on others, and while there were some soft spots in her adamantine judgment, there was hope that these would spread, and, without lowering her tone, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... filled him with longing to help others. "A sensitive, firm, wide-ranging, unresting spirit, he looks out mournfully over the throngs of men that fill the world, all of them totally depraved, all of them caught, from farthest eternity, in the adamantine meshes of God's decrees; the most of them also being doomed in advance by those decrees to an endless existence of ineffable torment; and upon this situation of affairs the excellent Michael Wigglesworth proposes to make poetry." His "Day of Doom," a horribly realistic description ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... once to build the depot; the snow here was excellent for this purpose — as hard as glass. In a short time an immense erection of adamantine blocks of snow rose into the air, containing provisions for five men for six days and for eighteen dogs for five days. A number of small articles ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... drunk with blood to vomit crime, And fatal have her Saturnalia been To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime; Because the deadly days which we have seen, And vile Ambition, that built up between Man and his hopes an adamantine wall, And the base pageant last upon the scene, Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall Which nips Life's tree, and dooms man's ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... steady strain that never stops Is mightier than the fiercest shock; The constant fall of water drops Will groove the adamantine rock; We feel our noblest powers decay In feeble wars with ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... bless, 60 But els in deep of night when drowsines Hath lockt up mortal sense, then listen I To the celestial Sirens harmony, That sit upon the nine enfolded Sphears, And sing to those that hold the vital shears, And turn the Adamantine spindle round, On which the fate of gods and men is wound. Such sweet compulsion doth in musick ly, To lull the daughters of Necessity, And keep unsteddy Nature to her law, 70 And the low world in measur'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... hundred feet. The shores are a striking feature, and on the south side range from three hundred to four hundred feet in height, while on the north the hills, in places, attain an altitude of two thousand feet; and these adamantine walls, witnesses of many a stirring event in the history of California, are clothed in green in spring-time, while in autumn they are brown, and from the distance resemble huge lions, couchant, guardians of ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... listen I To the celestial Sirens harmony, That sit upon the nine infolded Sphears, And sing to those that hold the vital shears, And turn the Adamantine spindle round On which the fate of gods and men is wound. Such sweet compulsion doth in musick lie To lull the daughters of Necessity, And keep unsteady Nature to her law, And the low world in measur'd motion ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... irresistible fatality, that hurries us along, like goodly vessels driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish. Forgive me, then, and let us part, at least, as friends part. I have assailed thy resolution in vain, and mine own is fixed as the adamantine ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... humor in Hawthorne's thought. It gleams out upon us from behind many of the gravest of his conceptions, like the silver side of a dark leaf turning in the wind. Wherever the concretion of guilt is most adamantine, there he lets his fine slender jet of humor play like a lambent fire, until the dark mass crumbles, and the choragos of the tragedy begins his mournful yet hopeful chant among the ruins. This may be verified in the "Seven Gables," "Blithedale," and "The Marble Faun"; not in "The Scarlet ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop |
