"Impassable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sit before a dying fire, as I sat last night, and am oppressed with the sense of tragedy. It was not altogether Carlotta's innocence that formed the barrier between us. That which rendered it impassable was Judith's white face. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... intellectual limit; the mystery will never be cleared up to you, for that limit you will never overpass. Not all your learning, not all your reading, not all your sagacity, not all your perseverance can help you over one viewless line—one boundary as impassable as it is invisible. To enter that sphere a man must be born within it; and untaught peasants have there drawn their first breath, while learned philosophers have striven hard till old age to reach it, and have never succeeded." I should not dare, nor would it be right, to say this to ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... turnpike, which has never been bridged, and which was once so suddenly swollen by rain that all the artillery and wagons of a corps were obliged to wait about twelve hours for its subsidence. The mules of some wagons driven into it were swept away. Fords, unless of the best bottom, are rendered impassable after a small portion of the wagons and artillery of an army have crossed them—the gravel being cut through into the underlying clay, and the banks converted into sloughs by the dripping of water from ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... pursuit, and several skirmishes occurred; but Soult effected a most masterly retreat, saving his army, when it seemed upon the brink of destruction, by leaving his guns and baggage behind him, and leading his men by paths over mountains supposed to be impassable for any large body of men. He lost altogether 6000 men in this short campaign. This included 3600 prisoners either captured in action or left behind in the hospitals, and 1400 killed. The number of guns left behind was fifty-eight. The English had ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... admiral, being at sea without a boat, might never reach a place from whence he could send them assistance, that they determined to abandon the colony, and would certainly have done so without orders, had not the mouth of the river been rendered impassable by bad weather and a heavy surf in which no boat could live, so that they could not even convey advice to the admiral of what had occurred. The admiral was in no little danger and perplexity, riding in an open road with no boat, and his ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... this gorge—impassable for wheeled vehicles—the waggon-trace, below its entrance, turns off to the right; and we perceived that the caravan had taken that direction. To get round the heads of the transverse ravines, that run into the canon, a detour ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... surprising that so many of the Sun River and ranch people came, for the night was terrible, even for Montana, and the roads must have been impassable in places. Even here in the post there were great drifts of snow, and the path to the theater was cut through banks higher than our heads. It had been mild and pleasant for weeks, and only two nights before the entertainment we had gone to the hall for rehearsal with fewer ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... and lowest, between the richest and poorest, between the most wise and the most ignorant, between the most gracious and the most ungodly, as there is between the infinite God and a finite angel. Should then the mutual infirmities and failings of Christians, be an insuperable and impassable gulf, as between heaven and hell, that none can pass over by a bridge of love to either? "If God so loved us," should not we love one another? 1 John iv. 11. And besides, when I consider that God hath not only loved me, but my brethren who were worthy of hatred, with an everlasting love, and ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... we have to make it possible that it shall be fulfilled by keeping inside the wall, and trusting to it. As faith dwindles, the fiery wall burns dim, and evil can get across its embers, and can get at us. Keep within the battlements, and they will flame up bright and impassable, with a fire that on the outer side consumes, but to those within is a fire ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... force their passage; again it became clogged with masses of debris, dead branches, and dislodged fragments of stone, across which they were obliged to struggle desperately, while once they completely halted before a sheer smoothness of rock wall that appeared impassable. It was bridged finally by a cedar trunk, which Hampton wrenched from out its rocky foothold, and the two crept cautiously forward, to emerge where the sunlight rested golden at the summit. They sank face downward in ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... comparative calm reigned over the Austro-Russian theatre of war, so far as actual hostilities were concerned. But it was not altogether the variable climatic conditions of alternate frost and thaw—the latter converting road and valley into impassable quagmires—that caused the lull. It was a short winter pause during which the opposing forces—on one side at least—were preparing and gathering the requisite momentum for the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... that they might have the first chance of taking places in the boxes. I saw some take their hats off and put on night-caps. At ten o'clock the next morning the door was opened to them, and at that time the street in front of the theatre was impassable. When the rush took place, I saw a man spring up and catch hold of the iron which supported a lamp on one side of the door, by which he raised himself so as to run over the heads of the crowd into the theatre. Some of these ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... joyful hearts to greet the sunshine. There is, however, no slow transition. Rushing winds from the North-west sweep the sky, the snow vanishes, and after a week or two, during which the prairie trails are impassable, the bleached grass dries and green blades and flowers spring ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... plains as Lithuania, Courland, and Poland, travel in winter is easier than at any other time of year. The rivers, which run sluggishly in their ditch-like beds, are frozen so completely that the bridges are no longer required. The roads, in summer almost impassable—mere ruts across the plain—are for the time ignored, and the traveller strikes a bee-line from place to place across a level of ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... women by seeing around me so many who were self-devoted to celibacy. The thought sometimes occurred to me whether I should not find the best and the only natural solution of the problem of existence, as submitted to myself, in taking upon me the vows which settle the whole question and raise an impassable barrier between the devotee and the object of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Dona Maria said she had seen the child some time before going in the direction of the "shales." These were broad beds of rock to the south of town, much broken and deeply fissured, and so glaringly hot during most of the day as to be impassable. Thither Jose bent his steps, and at length came upon the girl sitting in the shade of a stunted algarroba tree some ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... and swear, partly in fear, and partly through sheer vexation of spirit, at having no means of vengeance against a foe whose audacity was open and outrageous, whose trumpets were for ever sounding a charge, yet who were withal, as impassable as Etna. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... thinking aloud: "The fact of the matter is, that in this world, the dead weight of the mass bears heavily upon the exceptional natures. It comes home to one vividly, in cases like this. The stupidity and blindness of each individual goes to build up the dead wall, the impassable obstacle, for some other spirit. The burden that we have cast upon the world has to be borne by our fellow man or woman, and perhaps is doomed to crush ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... by creating and perpetuating arbitrary and yet almost impassable lines of social cleavage, must be fatal to the development of a robust body politic which can only be produced by the reasonable intermingling and healthy fusion of the different classes of the community. It was perhaps chief ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... Scott's Mountain.—Good camp at the foot of the mountain. Road passes over the mountains, but is impassable for wagons. ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... great loss and suffering to the two hundred thousand burnt-out people, who were obliged to lie in the fields under the open night sky, or in hastily-made huts of mud and straw, while the lanes and roads were rendered impassable by carts which had broken down as they tried to save their goods. But the Fire was a great blessing to the City afterwards, for it arose from its ruins very much improved—built more regularly, more widely, more ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... impossible to distinguish friend from foe, and who in countless instances used a false appearance of friendship for ambush and assassination. They were obliged to deal with problems of communication and transportation in a country without roads and frequently made impassable by torrential rains. They were weakened by tropical heat and tropical disease. Widely scattered over a great archipelago, extending a thousand miles from north to south, the gravest responsibilities, involving the ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... globe. The air is then hot and oppressive, reminding the geologist of the steaming atmosphere in the carboniferous period; the surrounding plains are flooded with water, and the roads, even some of the streets of the city, become impassable; intolerable musquitoes, huge cockroaches, disgusting centipedes, venomous scorpions, and still more deadly serpents, keep the human species circumspect, and fevers and dysenteries do the work ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... hand and led the way. He knew it well, though it was a rugged and steep one with no track to mark it. Sometimes they seemed to be walking around the mountain, sometimes they were climbing, sometimes they dragged themselves over rocks or fallen trees, or struggled through almost impassable thickets; more than once they descended into ravines and, almost at the risk of their lives, clambered and drew themselves with the aid of the undergrowth up the other side. The Rat was called upon to use all his prowess, ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... rapid descent of its bed, soon changed it into a noisy and dashing stream. About twenty miles above Animas City we were compelled to ascend to the top of the bordering mountains to avoid the narrow canyon below, which was impassable; and in descending from Animas City to visit these pueblos we crossed over to the La Plata Valley, and after passing through this valley we recrossed to the Animas Valley to avoid similar canyons also impassable. The supply of water for irrigation ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... reached the pass they found at its base a rapidly rising river. The melting snow which still lingered on the hilltops had swollen the stream and in places had made the road almost impassable. The two horsemen, by searching for fords, managed to make their way through the pass, and came out into the wide, smiling valley of Virginia, bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleghanies. Here flowed that picturesque river ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... did not get home on leave until the Easter vacation, for they were taking their military training along with their university work. John drove down to Silver Creek Crossing to meet them, for the roads to town were almost impassable. The home-coming of the boys had always been the great event in their family life, but it was a far more wonderful thing this time; it had something of the flavour of heroes returning ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... said, "in a sort of way what you mean; but still the same difficulty recurs which Audubon has already put forward. On your hypothesis there seems to be an impassable gulf between God's conception of Good and ours. To God, as it seems, the world is eternally good; and in its goodness is included that illusion by which it appears to us so bad, that we are continually employed in trying to make it better. The maintenance of this illusion is essential ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... release of the tomahawk. He then held the terrible instrument suspended some moments over his head, during all which time he was seen neither to change his posture, move a muscle, or his countenance to blench. The tomahawk fell, and the impassable warrior ceased ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... instantly disappeared, leaving the young couple, especially Gillian, in much consternation. So earnest was the maiden for instant departure, that Dick was obliged to comply; and as the whole of the thoroughfares about Whitehall were impassable, they proceeded to the river side, and took boat for London Bridge, at a hostel near which old Greenford ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... all sizes, from a moderate grindstone to that of a football. When people had wished to build a new house, they had taken up a few stones to make a foundation; the street was a series of pitfalls filled with mud and filth, including miniature ponds of manure-coloured water. The surface appeared impassable; the projecting water-spouts from the low roofs stuck out like the gnarled boughs of trees. Here was a pretty mess!—all because Georgi's wife was in town. It was impossible for anything larger than a perambulator to turn, and as the springs yielded to the uneven ground, the van bumped against ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... man to whom it may justly be applied is either a master, or at least a lover, of games, that his outlook is what is known as "breezy," that he observes the rules of cricket in every relation to his fellow creatures, and that he is capable of enduring defeat or success with the same impassable calm and good-nature. Now it would be absurd to deny that here we have a very imposing catalogue of highly desirable characteristics; it would, however, be equally absurd to claim that the person in whom they are all happily combined, necessarily displays, side ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... us proceed westward. About a mile from Oystermouth is Newton; where there are several lodging-houses. There have been many instances of great longevity at this village, which is perhaps the healthiest spot on the coast. The road to Caswell Bay, which passes through Newton, is almost impassable for horses; a new one however is talked of. The rocky valley leading to Caswell Bay, which abruptly comes in sight between two projecting rocks, is singularly wild and romantic. The bay is absolutely a mine of the picturesque—the Lullworth Cove of Wales. A ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... practical in the sense in which the New Testament is. It is not always sound sense inpractice. The Brahman never proposes courageously to assault evil, but patiently to starve it out. His active faculties are paralyzed by the idea of cast, of impassable limits, of destiny and the tyranny of time. Kreeshna's argument, it must be allowed, is defective. No sufficient reason is given why Arjoon should fight. Arjoon may be convinced, but the reader is not, for his judgment is not "formed upon the speculative doctrines of the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... having rendered the road impassable, I am detained here, but trust by the latter end of the week to proceed to Cheltenham, where I shall expect a letter from you to tell me if I am wanted ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... doing so," responded Cleek a little glumly. "We don't know the way out and we might as well try one plan as another. Seems pretty well closed up for the night, doesn't it? It certainly is a passage and if the door at the other end is impassable after all this wandering, I'll, ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... hand of Francis fell upon the Louvre it was but an isolated stronghold—a combined castle, prison and palace, gloomy, foreboding and surrounded by moats and ramparts almost impassable. Philippe Auguste built well and made of it an admirable and imposing castle and a place of defence, and a defence it was, ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... passing by the mission of Atures, in the middle of the Raudal. After long waiting, the Indians at length arrived at the close of day. The natural coffer-dam by which they had endeavoured to descend in order to make the circuit of the island, had become impassable owing to the shallowness of the water. The pilot sought long for a more accessible passage in this labyrinth of rocks and islands. Happily our canoe was not damaged and in less than half an hour our instruments, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... was he, and what was he, that he should yield to this overmastering spell which had been thrown over him by the witchery of this young girl? Had he not his wife? Was she not at Chetwynde Castle? That odious wife, forced on him in his boyhood, long since grown abhorrent, and now standing up, an impassable barrier between him and the dearest longings of his heart. So he crushed down desire; and, while assenting to Obed's plans, made no proposal to assist him in any way ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the famous Kosciuszko on the Pedee and Catawba had a great influence on the further course of the campaign." The campaign was carried on in a wild country of deep, roaring rivers, broken by falls, and often visited by sudden floods. The frequently impassable swamps breathed out poisonous exhalations. Rattle-snakes and other deadly reptiles lurked by the wayside. Great were the hardships that Kosciuszko, together with the rest of the army, endured. There were no regular supplies of food, tents ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... consider the idea of complete disappearance with all its effects upon him and others. What would be the effect upon himself? He would vanish into thin air as far as others were concerned. Whatever of his past the present held would turn into ashes. There would be no further connection with it. An impassable void would be created across which neither he nor those he loved could go. He went over in his mind what he had to give up, and trembled before his chum and his father's sister, two souls that loved him. ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... the only one of its order. But even if the line of gradation were single and perfect, the fact would be of no service to the hypothesis we are now considering; for the interval between two species most nearly allied to each other seems to be quite as impassable as the ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... were sighted, the first we had seen for 260 miles. We saw also petrels, numerous adelies, emperors, crab- eaters, and sea-leopards. The clearer weather of the morning showed us that the pack was solid and impassable from the south-east to the south- west, and at 10 a.m. on the 4th we again passed within five yards of the small berg that we had passed twice on the previous day. We had been steaming and dodging about over an area of twenty square miles for fifty hours, trying to find an ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... this curbing of his affections added to my already high esteem. The effort was doubly wise in Brandon's case. Should love with his intense nature reach its height, his recklessness would in turn assert itself, and these two would inevitably try to span the impassable gulf between them, when Brandon, at least, would go down in the attempt. His trouble, however, did not make a mope of him, and he retained a great deal of his brightness and sparkle undimmed by what must have ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... vessels, or of animals. On the front of the mantelpiece were perversely but brilliantly depicted, with a high degree of finish, two nude, crouching women who gazed longingly at each other across the impassable semicircular abyss of the fireplace; and just above their heads, on a scroll, ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... to pass abreast. It was supported by three arches, the centre one of very considerable size, the others small, and rising out of the shallow water on each side. In many parts the parapet wall was broken, in some even the pathway was almost impassable from the masses of fallen stone, and the dangerous fissures. In the centre of the middle arch was an immense key-stone, on which was sculptured, in high relief, an enormous helmet, which indeed gave, among the people of the country, ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... but continue by a series of offences against the authority of his gaolers to experience and display all the successive severities of Macquarie Harbour, Port Arthur, and Norfolk Island. A fundamental fact to be exhibited was the impassable gulf of misunderstanding that might exist between capricious or incompetent prison officials and a criminal who, for any reason, had once come to be regarded as hopelessly vicious. 'We must treat brutes like brutes,' ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... bright yellow colour with brown specks. Arriving at the termination of the sand hills, we looked down upon an immense shallow basin, extending to the north and south-east further than the range of vision, which must, I should imagine, be wholly impassable during the rainy season. There was scarcely any vegetation, a proof, it struck me, that it retains water on its surface till the summer is so advanced that the sun's rays are too powerful for any plants that may spring up, or that the heat bakes the soil so that nothing ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... at the expiration of two years the steamer was dragged to an utterly impassable series of cataracts south of Lobore. This line of obstruction extended for the short distance of about twelve miles, beyond which the river was navigable into ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... and docks were full of interest to the young tourists. The city, which contains a population of eighty thousand, is built on the summit and slopes of a hill, some of the streets upon whose sides are so steep as to be impassable ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... drive, save from necessity, because it is conceded that the dampness there is enough, even in summer, to "give you your death o' cold;" and as for the young, to them the place wears an eerie look, with its miniature suggestion of impassable gulfs and roaring torrents. Yet no youth reaches his majority without exploring the Gully. He who goes alone is the more a hero; but even he had best leave two or three trusty comrades reasonably near, not only to listen, should he call, but to stand ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... heterogeneous elements—Spaniards, Gauls, Numidians, Moors, Greeks—men of almost every race except his own. We see him cutting loose from his base of supplies, leaving enemies behind him, to force his way through hostile races, through unknown lands bristling with almost impassable mountains and frigid with snow and ice. We see him conquering here, making friends and allies there, and, more wonderful than all, holding his mongrel horde together through hardships and losses by the ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... he stood looking from trap to trap; then turned and surveyed again the impassable walls, the rows of works, few of which were European, some of them bound in vellum, some in pigskin, and one row of huge volumes, ten in number, on the bottom shelf, in ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... Americans hurriedly sent out. At Volshenitsa Captain Donoghue received a message by aeroplane from Col. Guard at Obozerskaya that "D" Force was held up at Tiogra by the Reds. After patrolling the forest five days and finding the trail to Emtsa impassable during the wet season, "K" Company received both the welcome reinforcements of Lieut. Gardner and the twenty men who had been left at Lewis gun School at Bakaritza, and orders to proceed ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... intellectuals, the soldiers unite in showing a contempt which is free from violence but knows no bounds. To them has come "the revelation of the great reality": a difference between human beings, a difference far profounder and with far more impassable barriers than those of race: the sharp, glaring, and inalterable distinction, in the population of every country, between those who profit and those who suffer, those who have been compelled to sacrifice everything, those who give to ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... view, the northern frontier was the most difficult of all. It passed north of Kilimanjaro, to the west of which is a desert belt. East of this desert belt and Kilimanjaro the enemy colony was protected by an almost impassable mountain system, with a very narrow, swampy, dangerous gap between the Usambara and Pare Mountains, and another gap of about four or five miles between the Pare Mountains and Kilimanjaro. It was impossible to move an army through the first gap; the second gap at the foot of ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... himself more than all for having discovered his blindness and his blunder. Thinking thus, he resolved to go away. Yes, he would go away! He would marry Priscilla at once, and have it over. He would put an impassable barrier between ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... well-placed bombs are sufficient to induce the pursuers to cease their activities. Even if the missiles fail to strike the motor-car itself they can wreak disaster in directly by rendering the road impassable or dangerous to negotiate at high speed. On the whole therefore, the "Archibald" is a greatly exaggerated weapon of offence against aircraft, and, so far as is known, has failed to fulfil expectations. In fact, ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... failure of the Peninsular campaign. And what a lesson is here to be learned! The fate of the contending armies was suspended in a balance. The hour when a particular bridge was to be completed, or rendered impassable by the rising floods, was to turn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... number of ponds, and at certain seasons abound with swans, geese, brandts, cranes, gulls, plover, and other wild-fowl. The shores, too, are low and closely wooded, with such an undergrowth of vines and rushes as to be almost impassable. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... soil, and growing up a man knoweth not how—at once troubled and united them. The fear of separation had grown, step by step, with the sense of attraction and of yearning. It was because their hearts reached out to each other that they dreaded so to find some impassable gulf ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the class of the artisans (hoi demiourgoi) some can make swords best, others pitchers, so, on the larger survey, there will be found those who can use those swords, or, again, think, teach, pray, or lead an army, a whole body of swordsmen, best, thus defining within impassable barriers three essential species of citizenship—the productive class, the military order, the governing class thirdly, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... became common, whose name, Kuss or Koos, gives the chief his name, Moenekuss ("Lord of the Parrot"); but the Manyuema pronunciation is Monanjoose. Much reedy grass, fully half an inch in diameter in the stalk on our route, and over the top of the range Moloni, which we ascended: the valleys are impassable. ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... is, an arming of those States to prevent the Union forces passing one way, or the disunion the other, over their soil. This would be disunion completed. Figuratively speaking, it would be the building of an impassable wall along the line of separation—and yet not quite an impassable one, for under the guise of neutrality it would tie the hands of Union men and freely pass supplies from among them to the insurrectionists, which it could not do as an open enemy. At a stroke it would take all the trouble off ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... After a snowfall they would have to scrape the ground when they had selected a place for pitching the tents. After a rain, or one of the occasional thaws, the country (there were no regular roads) would be practically impassable for teams, and they would have to remain in camp until the water disappeared, and the soil would bear the weight of the wagons after it was corduroyed with branches of trees. At one time bad roads caused a halt of two or three weeks. Fuel ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... Resaca. As it was, Thomas should have followed close upon his rear through Snake Creek Gap, with two corps. The distance between the two wings of the army would have been so short and the ground between them so impassable to the enemy as to give us practically a continuous line of battle, and Thomas's two corps in the valley of the Connasauga near Tilton would have been in far better position to strike the retreating enemy when he was compelled to let go of Dalton, than they ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... whole surface of it was beautiful in a high degree. The universal face was clothed with living green. And every part was fertile as well as beautiful. It was no where deformed by rough or ragged rocks: it did not shock the view with horrid precipices, huge chasms, or dreary caverns: with deep, impassable morasses, or deserts of barren sands. We have not any authority to say, with some learned and ingenious authors, that there were no mountains on the original earth, no unevennesses on its surface, yet it is highly ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... headed by Col. Kennett, dashed into the woods, and then occurred a chase the parallel to which has seldom been seen. "Forward!" was the word, and forward it was. The woods became a thicket, sometimes apparently impassable; but the horses, spurred by their riders, dashed at headlong speed through the trees, through the underbrush, under branches—thorns scratching the face and hands, projecting limbs tearing clothes and bruising bodies. ...
— Bugle Blasts - Read before the Ohio Commandery of the Military Order of - the Loyal Legion of the United States • William E. Crane
... always sombre, lowered in great tumbled masses from under the heavy clouds that seldom rose from their summits. Terrible gales kept the sea in torment, and the voice of its rage and pain filled Castletownrock without ceasing. Torrents of rain tore up the roads, and rendered them almost impassable. There was stolid endurance and suffering written on every face out of doors, while within the people cowered over their peat fires, a prey to hunger, cold, and depression. Draughts made merry through the large rooms and passages in Captain Caldwell's house; the wind howled ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the mountain of Santa Cruz was so dangerous and impassable, that I undertook to repair it; accordingly, I agreed with a Shilluh to make it safe and convenient for transporting goods for shipment; and such was the eager desire of the people for the establishment of the port, that hundreds ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... world at this dead season of the year, especially in those wilder solitudes of the island that extend their long slopes of moor to the west. The vast Atlantic spreads out before us, blackened by tempest, a solitary waste, unenlivened by a single sail, and fenced off from the land by an impassable line of breakers. Even from the elevation where I now write—for my little cottage stands high on the hill-side—I can hear the measured boom of the waves, swelling like the roar of distant artillery, above the melancholy moanings of the wind among ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... in a little bunch at the side of the road. On our left we saw a line of infantry running. The road itself was impassable. So we determined to strike off to the right. I led the way, and though we had not the remotest conception whether we should meet British or German, we eventually found our way to ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... would be very ill before the journey was half- finished. The roads, as George will tell you, are nearly impassable; and the weather after this fog may be intensely cold. For you a journey to Philadelphia would be an arduous undertaking, and one without any ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... leaving it unshielded alike from Polar winds in winter or scorching heat in summer, divesting it of beauty and of charm, and then casting this arid, frigid, torpid land to a branch of the human family as unique as its own habitation; separating it by natural and almost impassable barriers from civilizing influences, and in strange isolation leaving it to work out its own ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... he, with the deep sweet look I had noticed. "Do they never come now, in the way of their duty, to an impassable barrier of danger or difficulty, through which the same hand opens their path? Did you never find that they do, in ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... trying to get the Jaybird up the steep face of the bluff which rose back of the camp, on top of which the trail, such as it was, made off through the shoulders of the mountains in a general course toward the east, the river sweeping in a wide elbow, thirty miles around, through its wild and impassable gorge, far to the south ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... remarked, that even a Russian steppe has tumult and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man? It is written, "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Surely the plain rule is, Let each considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not this man and that man, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... of the rainy season, we accepted of the invitation of our friends the ——-s, to visit the different haciendas, as in a short time the roads will become nearly impassable. The country in May is perhaps at its highest beauty, or even a little earlier, as already the great blow of roses is nearly over; au reste there are roses all the year round, though more in December than in July. And this, by the way, is rather a source of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... seemed to be neither skill, enterprise, nor money left in the country. What resources it contained were altogether undeveloped. There was little communication between one place and another, and such roads as existed were for the greater part of the year simply impassable. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... people, unless it be their distrust when once they find themselves betrayed. They may follow for a time the exploiters of their artlessness, but then their friendly humor turns to hate. Doors which stood wide open offer an impassable front of wood, and ears once attentive are deaf. And the pity is that they have closed not to the evil alone, but to the good. This is the crime of those who distort and degrade speech: they shake confidence generally. We consider as a calamity the debasement ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... school that day, for all the thoroughfares were impassable. By twelve o'clock, however, the great snowploughs, each drawn by four yokes of oxen, broke a wagon-path through the principal streets; but the foot-passengers had a hard time of it floundering ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... actions can be completely expressed and accounted for in terms of nervous matter and motion. The laws of the mind, he maintained, are not to be deduced from physiological processes, but with them must be joined the psychical processes of the individual and the social man. He separates man by an impassable barrier from the lower animals, this gulf between them being due to human society and to the social acquisition of language. In the social factor he finds an important element of psychology, and one that must always come in to overturn any mechanical ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... only in Europe that we can trace the relations established between men separated by vast distances, by oceans, and by apparently impassable deserts. The shells of the Atlantic and those of the Pacific, the copper of Lake Superior, the mica of the Alleghanies, and the obsidian of Mexico lie together beneath the tumuli of Ohio, and quite recently Mr. Putnam exhibited to the Society of ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... had been his mistress of body and mind for one short term of life, and who once, and once only, had yielded to him. They were both advanced in years, and Life and Time had taken toll. She was haggard, yet beautiful in a wan way. He did not believe the vanished years had placed between them an impassable barrier. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... would precipitate them into the river. With great difficulty, Wood forced a path through the ruins. It was a work of no slight danger, for every instant a wall, or fragment of a building, came crashing to the ground. Thames Street was wholly impassable. Men were going hither and thither with barrows, and ladders and ropes, removing the rubbish, and trying to support the tottering habitations. Grace-church Street was entirely deserted, except by a few stragglers, whose curiosity got the better of their fears; or who, ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... active and busy in the world as Neckart, would have wasted so much thought on a chance young girl sitting on a log. But women being forbidden fruit to him, he was morbidly curious about them all. Old Chrysostom, barred into his cave by an impassable line, was much more inquisitive about the princess asleep outside than if he had been a hearty young fellow free to go out and kiss and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Sardis was built in a position naturally strong, and one part of the wall passed over rocky precipices which were considered entirely impassable. There was a sort of glen or rocky gorge in this quarter, outside of the walls, down which dead bodies were thrown on one occasion subsequently, at a time when the city was besieged, and beasts and birds of prey ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... standing still, Drouet rode up and forbade the postilions to proceed. He himself hastened on through the town, collected a few of the towns-people, and with their aid upset a cart or two on the bridge to block up the way; and, having thus made the road impassable, he roused the municipal authorities, for it was nearly midnight, and then, returning to the royal carriage, he compelled the royal family to dismount and follow him to the house of the mayor, a petty grocer, whose name was ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... religion it strove to rescue the ideal religion from the actual, and to discover the one revelation of the Divine ideal amid the great variety of religious traditions and modes of worship. But its invincible dualism, separating by an impassable chasm God from the world, and mind from matter, identifying goodness with the one, evil with the other, prevented belief in a religion like Christianity, which was penetrated by the Hebrew conceptions of the universe, so alien both to dualism ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... its mouth, is the commercial port of Cagayan. The country around is rich in live stock, and is partly under cultivation. During the rainy season, however, the pontoon bridges over the Rio Grande are swept away; the roads become impassable. The raging torrent of the river threatens the inland navigation, while the monsoons on the China Sea make transportation ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... actress; no matter by what course, to this she had attained. This man, Scawthorne, spoke of the theatrical life as one to whom all its details were familiar; acquaintance with him of a sudden bridged over the chasm which had seemed impassable. Would he come again to see her? Had her involuntary reserve put an end to any interest he might have felt in her? Of him personally she thought not at all; she could not have recalled his features; he was a mere abstraction, the representative of ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... with his new-made wife, had {now} come to the rapid waters of {the river} Evenus.[12] The stream was swollen to a greater extent than usual with the winter rains, and was full of whirlpools, and impassable. Nessus came up to him, regardless of himself, {but} feeling anxiety for his wife, both strong of limb,[13] and well acquainted with the fords, and said, "Alcides, she shall be landed on yonder bank through my services, do thou employ thy ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... unbroken sheet of snow; the blue lakes which are interspersed over the level valley at their feet, were frozen over, and undistinguishable from the rest of the dreary expanse, and a boundless mass of snowy peaks arose on all sides, presenting apparently an impassable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... neighbor and started early in the morning to haul the wood. Just as I reached the place, it began to snow hard. The wind blew such a gale that it was impossible to go on with the work. What was I to do? If it kept on snowing, I knew the roads would be impassable by the next day. Besides, that was the only day on which I could get the help of the man or the team. Unless I secured the wood that day it would not be in my power to get the fuel we needed for the rest of the winter. I thought of that sweet promise, 'Call ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... uncomfortable, and we concluded to halt until it should abate a little, at the first convenient and pleasant spot. Leaving the shore, which, besides being unsheltered from the sun, was so rugged with crevices and gullies, and great irregular blocks of coral, as to be almost impassable, we entered the borders of the wood, and took a short cut across the point. Johnny, in imitation of the desert islanders of the story-books, desired to give appropriate names to all the interesting or remarkable localities, with which we became acquainted. ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... carried them in wild bounds across impassable chasms, their laboring lungs checked them in the ascent. The joyous inebriation was wearing off. Winslow met his companion's eyes sheepishly as they stopped where a sheer cliff of basalt above caught and held the warmth of the sun's rays. Behind them it rose a straight hundred feet, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... endeavour to seize the horses, and ransack the waggons. This decided my adopting the least of the two evils, although I fully expected we should have a battle. After penetrating for I should think upwards of two miles, sometimes up to our knees in miry clay, and often stopped by impassable barriers of wild vines and other prehensile plants, which annoyed us greatly, and made me regret a thousand times that I had courted such dangers and inconveniences, the sound of two rifle-shots threw the whole party ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... fashion of the city assembled last night to witness the debut upon metropolitan boards of the young tragedian who has of late been winning such golden opinions in the amphitheatres of the provinces. Some sixty thousand persons were present, and but for the fact that the streets were almost impassable, it is fair to presume that the house would have been full. His august Majesty, the Emperor Aurelius, occupied the imperial box, and was the cynosure of all eyes. Many illustrious nobles and generals of the Empire graced the occasion with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... obstructions that, mountain-like, lay between them; but on its rough sides—flowers on an arid rock—grew the yearning affections, seemingly rootless, yet continuing to bloom in secret, scarce discovered beauty. Of what use was it, he asked himself in bitterness, to brood over these impassable barriers, to cultivate a faith in the power of his own affection strong enough to remove them, to cherish the vain imagination that this incomparably sweet girl and his own plain self were made for each other, and that no earthly obstacle could ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... hardly knew what, had opened his eyes to that glittering life of the world of which he had always been profoundly ignorant, and it seemed to him suddenly that the distance between himself and his wife had broadened to an impassable space in a single night. Connie was no longer the girl whom he remembered under cherry-coloured ribbons. She came in reality no closer to him than did the tired, restless women, with artificially brightened faces, who ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... over ground supposed impassable, was in line of battle behind Bolivar Heights. Lawton and Jones were yet further advanced. All the grey guns were ready—at early dawn they opened. Iron death, iron death!—they rained it down on Harper's Ferry and the fourteen thousand in garrison there. They silenced ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... let the works of nature alone, because they know there is no hope for them, and content themselves with enacting rules in literature and art, which make all the perfection and grace of the past so many impassable barriers to progress in future. Because the ancients kept to unity of idea in their groups, and attained to most beautiful results by doing so, shall no modern make an antithesis in marble? And why has not a man a right ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... first half of the eighteenth century was in many respects uncivilized. London was at that time separated from the country by roads that were often impassable and always dangerous. Travellers had to protect themselves as they best could from the attacks of highwaymen, who infested every thoroughfare leading from the metropolis, while the narrow area of the city was guarded by watchmen scarcely better fitted for its protection than Dogberry and Verges. ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... insolence on Miraudin's part to have addressed him at all without previous introduction. It was true that the famous actor was permitted a license not granted to the ordinary individual,—as indeed most actors are. Even princes, who hedge themselves round with impassable barriers to certain of their subjects who are in all ways great and worthy of notice, unbend to the Mime who today takes the place of the Court-jester, and allow him to enter the royal presence, often bringing his newest wanton with him. And there was not the slightest reason for ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... presently and see. But I'm almost sure it's a deep wide wash, with steep walls. Impassable! And by golly, if ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... no undulations more than a few feet in height. They are intersected every ten to twenty miles by wide shallow river beds, which during the summer months, when the warm nor'-westers melt the snow and ice on the Alps, are often terrific torrents, impassable for days together, while at other times they are shingle interspersed with clear rapid streams, more or less shallow, and generally fordable with ordinary care. Some of the principal rivers such as the Rakaia, Rangatata and Waitaki, are at all ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... day's march was infinitely worse than the first, for it lay along a series of abruptly shaped hills with deep ravines between them; each ravine had its swamp and each swamp its river. This bit of country must be absolutely impassable for any human being, black or white, except during the dry season. There were representatives of the three chief forms of the West African bog. The large deep swamps were best to deal with, because they make a break in the forest, and the sun can come down ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... elevated to be the head of our ancient and honourable family; but I know my own personal unworthiness to occupy that distinguished place, and feel how much better it would be filled by yourself. Although the law has placed a wide and impassable barrier between all of your branch of the family and ourselves, I shall ever be ready to acknowledge the affinity, and to confess that it does us quite as much honour ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... This horrid character in Opuntias, whilst rendering them disagreeable to the gardener, has been turned to good account in many of our colonies, where they are commonly used as fences. A good hedge of such kinds as O. Tuna or O. horrida is absolutely impassable to both man and beast, and as the stems are too watery to be easily destroyed by fire, their usefulness in this way could not be surpassed. As all the Opuntias will grow in the very poorest of soils, and even on bare rocks, and as they grow very rapidly, they have been largely ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson
... surgeon was there; he had applied a succession of hot cloths to the pit of the stomach, and was trying. to get laudanum down the throat, but the clenched teeth were impassable. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... spice of wild mustard springing in the lower valleys. But, as if by some irony of Nature, this gentle invasion of spring in the wild wood brought only disturbance and discomfort to the haunts and works of man. The ditches were overflowed, the fords of the Fork impassable, the sluicing adrift, and the trails and wagon roads to Rough and Ready knee-deep in mud. The stage-coach from Sacramento, entering the settlement by the mountain highway, its wheels and panels clogged and crusted with an unctuous pigment like mud and blood, ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... he climbed to clearer and clearer vision till the end.[152] Philosophy had made him forget Beatrice; it was Philosophy who was to bring him back to her again, washed clean in that very stream of forgetfulness that had made an impassable barrier between them.[153] Dante had known how to find in her the gift of ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... was really in a state of siege. If the snow had held for a sufficient number of days it might have been in a state of famine. The railway failed between Jerusalem and the nearest station. The roads were impassable between Jerusalem and the nearest village, or even the nearest suburb. In some places the snow drifted deep enough to bury a man, and in some places, alas, it did actually bury little children; poor ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... century before Christ, the corruption of society had become so flagrant under the teachings and government of the Brahmans, that a reform was imperatively needed. "The pride of race had put an impassable barrier between the Aryan-Hindus and the conquered aborigines, while the pride of both had built up an equally impassable barrier between the different classes among the Aryan people themselves." The old childlike joy in life, so manifest in the Vedas, had died away. A funereal gloom hung ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... fine stream of water, with just wood enough on the banks to serve for firewood. From the summit they had a fine view of all the settlements and country eastwards, and of a great extent of country to the westward and south-west. But their progress in both the latter directions was stopped by an impassable barrier of rock, which appeared to divide the interior from the coast as with a stone wall, rising perpendicularly out of the side of the mountain. In the afternoon they left their little camp in the charge of three of the men, and made an attempt to ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... shudder in their parting embrace, half averting her cheek, though Cecil's arms clung round her as though they would never let her go. The saddest feeling of the many that were busy then in the guilty, troubled heart, was a consciousness that in a few hours the gulf between them would be deep and impassable as the chasm ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... passable at all seasons of the year, the country much more favorable for offensive operations than that in front of Washington, much more level, the woods less dense, the soil more sandy" (p. 47). After arriving, we find "the roads impassable," "very dense and extensive forests, the clearings being small and few;" and "the comparative flatness of the country and the alertness of the enemy, everywhere in force, rendered thorough reconnoissances ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... similar fate through being on the summit, so to speak, of the rocky path; but though for the moment safe, we could not tell for how long; while on taking a hasty glance at our position it was this: overhead the shelving rock quite impassable; to left, to right, and in front, the swollen, ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... wrong tack when he had hoped to convince his judges by a fiery speech. In the midst of this cold calm procedure, his words would sound distorted and fantastic, and his eloquent tongue would fail him. The views of these men were separated from his by an impassable gulf. However good a will they might have, they were absolutely incapable of ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Koulaktche, the Grand Vizier merely assumed the offensive instead of taking up a position in the mountains; and, allowing the unusual rigour of the season to thin the ranks of the enemy, he precipitately advanced. The cold was so excessive, the weather so dreadful, and the roads rendered so impassable by the snow, that only a small portion of the artillery and ammunition could follow the movement, so that they found themselves, as at Horns, without provisions in the presence ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the world, which have their portion in this life," to a place of unmitigated suffering. Whatever be the comprehension of the word Hades (rendered in our version by the word hell), there is an impassable gulf between Lazarus in Abraham's bosom and the rich man in torment. The "great gulf fixed" may be a figure; but it represents an awful reality; and that reality is, that there is no transition from the one state ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... that at that point was a deep and sinuous gully, crossing half the field from the enemy's line, its general course at right angles to it. From where we now were it was invisible, and Brayle had evidently not known about it. Clearly, it was impassable. Its salient angles would have afforded him absolute security if he had chosen to be satisfied with the miracle already wrought in his favor and leapt into it. He could not go forward, he would not turn back; he stood awaiting death. It did ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... green, and sometimes a but, or farm-house, shaded by a willow or two, and surrounded by large elder bushes. These insulated dwellings communicated with each other by winding passages through the moss, impassable by any but the natives themselves. The public road, however, was tolerably well made and safe, so that the prospect of being benighted brought with it no real danger. Still it is uncomfortable to travel, alone and in the dark, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... they much shorten their passage by mending the swamps and building of bridges in several places; and there are established ferries at convenient places, over the great rivers." But slight attention was given to keeping the roads in good condition and after each long rain they become almost impassable. The lack of bridges was a great hindrance to traffic and even the poor substitute of ferries was often lacking, forcing travellers to long detours or to the dangerous task ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... a man-god, or of a human being endowed with divine or supernatural powers, belongs essentially to that earlier period of religious history in which gods and men are still viewed as beings of much the same order, and before they are divided by the impassable gulf which, to later thought, opens out between them. Strange, therefore, as may seem to us the idea of a god incarnate in human form, it has nothing very startling for early man, who sees in a man-god or a god-man only a higher degree of the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... most manifest virtues displayed by men, and to despair of the future destiny of the great majority of their fellow-creatures; that instead of binding them to their kind, it divides them from it by a gulf which they themselves proclaim to be impassable and eternal, and unites them only in a gloomy conspiracy of misanthropy with each other; that it is indeed a law-making power, but that the laws it makes are little-minded and vexatious prohibitions of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... was much happier when distinctions and divisions were impassable. There are no sumptuary laws now. What is the consequence? That your bourgeoise ruins her husband in wearing gowns fit only for a duchess, and your prince imagines it makes him popular to look precisely like a cabman ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... find there is a pathetic, one might almost say a tragic, side to the picture. A shy man means a lonely man—a man cut off from all companionship, all sociability. He moves about the world, but does not mix with it. Between him and his fellow-men there runs ever an impassable barrier—a strong, invisible wall that, trying in vain to scale, he but bruises himself against. He sees the pleasant faces and hears the pleasant voices on the other side, but he cannot stretch his hand across to grasp another hand. He stands watching ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... to the happiness of the children, this winter; and it was felt for a time to be no slight one. They could not go to the kirk at Dunmoor, their father's kirk. The winter rains had made the way over the hills impassable; and the distance by the high-road was too great for them. They learnt in a little while to love the kindly voice of the minister of Kirklands parish, and they soon got many a kindly greeting from the neighbours at the kirk ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... we entered upon a level plain three miles wide, which, with the exception of a patch here and there, was entirely covered with snow. The uncovered parts of this plain were so wet as to be almost impassable for the cart; and we were now as desirous of keeping on the snow as, at the beginning of our journey from Winter Harbour, we had been anxious ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... Odin to slay Ymir, and carry his body into the middle of Ginnungagap, and formed from it the earth and heavens. Of his blood the brothers made all the seas and waters, taking the gore that flowed from his body to form the impassable ocean which is supposed to encircle the earth. Of his bones they made the mountains, using the broken splinters and his teeth for the stones and pebbles. From his skull they made the heavens, at each of the four corners ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... mother of Evelyn. In her thought Evelyn was still a child, in leading-strings, and would be till she was formally launched, and the social gulf between the great heiress and the law clerk and poor writer was simply impassable. All of which goes to show that the most astute women are not ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the mountains, which is impassable for carriages, I passed through vast tracks of forest, where the lofty trees were covered with stout vines reaching to the tree tops, rendering it difficult for man to penetrate those sylvan recesses. Near the highest part of this mountain road, at a height of several ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the example of its officers, and led by Colonel Changarnier, flung itself on the intrenchments; the redoubts were carried, etc. At the same time, in the other column, Lamoricire led the way with his Zouaves, followed by the other troops. The Zouaves surmounted the almost impassable cliffs, attacked and carried two lines of intrenchment, and, in the teeth of a murderous fire, forced a third; a few moments later the two columns joined, and, rushing up the acclivity, planted the flag of France on the highest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... but there were bad Indians, half-breeds, and outlaws that made the trading-post a venture Withers had long considered precarious, and he wanted to move and intended to some day. His nearest neighbors in New Mexico and Colorado were a hundred miles distant and at some seasons the roads were impassable. To the north, however, twenty miles or so, was situated a Mormon village named Stonebridge. It lay across the Utah line. Withers did some business with this village, but scarcely enough to warrant the risks he had to run. During the last year he had lost ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... into the galleries, which were almost impassable. In the distance Lady Holme caught sight of Miss Schley with Mrs. Wolfstein. They were surrounded by young men. She looked hard at the American's pale face, saying to herself, "Is that like me? Is that like me?" Her conversation with Robin Pierce had ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... punishment, the endless Gehenna, the pitiless angels, the yawning hell, the roaring stream of fire, the unquenchable flame, the dark prison, the rayless darkness, the bed of live coals, the unwearied worm, the indissoluble chains, the bottomless chaos, the impassable wall, the inconsolable cry. And none to stand by me; none to plead for me; none to snatch me out." Now, no Temporary ever possessed anything like that in his own handwriting among his private papers. A meditation like that, written out with his own hand, and hidden away under lock and key, will ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... spiritually closer, had ended by thrusting them to an incalculable distance from each other. Of the nervous reactions which he had suffered she knew nothing. All she saw clearly was that the widening breach between them would soon become impassable unless it could be filled by their new love for the child. The power to hold him must slip from her hands to the child's, and she was more than ready, she was even eager, to relinquish it. In the last few months her feeling for George had altered, and, though she was hardly conscious of the change ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... by the boughs torn from overhanging trees, and here, there, and everywhere turned into a quagmire by the torrents that could find no adequate egress to the northward swamps. For over a mile above the barracks it looked like one vast canal, and by nine o'clock it was utterly impassable. No cars were running on the dilapidated road to the "half-way house," whatever they might be doing beyond. There was only one means of communication between the garrison and the town, and that, on horseback along the crest of the levee, and people in the second-story ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... refreshment as may be, I and my men, taking the guide he hath left for us, join him on foot. There may now be danger: for though Gryffyth himself may be pinned to his heights, he may have met some friends in these parts to start up from crag and combe. The way on horse is impassable: wherefore, master Norman, as our quarrel is not thine nor thine our lord, I commend thee to halt here in peace and in safety, with ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gave it up. He sat down beside the fire, for May in the mountains is cold; he held his empty pipe in his mouth, his rough forehead knitted, and he and the Cat looked at each other across that impassable barrier of silence which has been set between man and beast from the ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... morning Mac had inquired whether he could not be taken on to the dressing-station, but learned that it was impossible as the enemy swept the country between with an impassable hail of bullets. The lower end of the ravine was in Turkish hands, elsewhere there were unscalable cliffs, and the only means of getting back was by crossing a ridge close under the enemy rifles. There was nothing for it but ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... we traversed, were of uniform equality of surface. Water evidently lodges and continues on them long after a fall of rain, and in wet seasons they must, I should imagine, be full of quagmires, and almost impassable. ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... which are not left entirely to the care of Nature. Those which man takes care of—commencing with his own—are more abundant than they would be without his care, yet, as his power of taking this care is limited, the increase which has taken place is also fixed, and has long been restrained within impassable boundaries. Again, though in civilized countries man, and all the animals useful to him, are more numerous than in other places, yet their numbers never become excessive, for the same power which brings them into being destroys them as soon as ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler |
