"Irresistible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... room, free board, free piano in her own room, and all travelling expenses paid. The plan was an immediate success: the solicitation of a subscription by a girl desirous of educating herself made an irresistible appeal. ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... argument; and I have heard very many deliver sermons far more uniform in elegance, both of conception and of style; but most unquestionably, I have never heard, either in England or Scotland, or in any other country, a preacher whose eloquence is capable of producing an effect so strong and irresistible as his. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... sightless, soundless country life, and long days spent among old books? But if a man is weak, he doesn't want to assent beforehand to his weakness; he wants to taste whatever sweetness there may be in paying for the knowledge. So it is that it comes back—this irresistible impulse to take my plunge—to let myself swing, to go where liberty leads me." He paused a moment, fixing me with his excited eyes, and perhaps perceived in my own an irrepressible smile at his perplexity. "'Swing ahead, in Heaven's ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... or shrillness usually observed in them, but his utterance is clear, ringing, and most sweetly musical. But it was not in any one of these features that his charm lay so much as in his tout ensemble, and the irresistible magnetism of his sweet, aromatic presence, which seemed to exhale sanity, purity, and naturalness, and exercised over me an attraction which positively astonished me, producing an exaltation of mind and soul which no man's presence ever did before. I felt that I was here face to face with ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... for a poor peasant-girl—to a pious organist of Coesfeld, whose daughter she had known when she first lived in the town. Her hope was that, by learning to play on the organ, she might succeed in obtaining admittance into a convent. But her irresistible desire to serve the poor and give them everything she possessed left her no time to learn music, and before long she had so completely stripped herself of everything, that her good mother was obliged to bring her bread, milk, and eggs, for her own wants and those of ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich
... Republic! Nothing but the Republic!" repeated the men of the Right, Oudinot louder than the others. All arms were stretched towards Tamisier, every hand pressed his. Oh Danger! irresistible converter! In his last hour the Atheist invokes God, and the Royalist the Republic. They cling to that which ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... winner of what He is after, too. Run thoughtfully through these Gospels, and stand by Jesus' side in each one of these simple, tremendous incidents of His contact with the common people. Then listen anew to His teaching talks, so homely and so gripping. And the impression becomes irresistible that the one thought that gripped at every turn, never forgotten, was to woo man back to the ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... electrolysis), not more than the eighteenth part in hydrogen of the water decomposed was ever obtained, or, in other words, only just one-half the weight deducible from the formula HO 9. The conclusion was irresistible that in a water molecule two atoms of hydrogen must be assumed, and, as a natural sequence, followed the doubling of the molecular weight of water to 18, represented by ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... known what beauty meant till I looked on her. She was tall, and dressed more simply than many a citizen's wife, and yet her air was that of a goddess. Every movement of her head bore the signs of queenliness; and yet in every feature of her face lurked a sweetness irresistible. At first sight, as you saw her, tall, erect, with her short clustering hair and fearless eyes of blue, you would have been tempted to suppose her a boy in disguise. Yet if you looked a moment longer, the woman in her shone out in every step and gesture. Her cheeks glowed with health and maidenly ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... dawn when I wakened. My cousin was sleeping calmly just a few feet away. An irresistible longing to speak to him overcame me and I slipped across and gently kicked the slumbering form. Two cavalry blankets rolled apart. A note pinned to the edge of one caught my eye. ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... resists its influence. The effect produced by poisons on animals is still more plain to see: its malignity extends to every part that it reaches, and all that it touches is vitiated; it burns and scorches all the inner parts with a strange, irresistible fire. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... sheltered from the wind, the Indians were obliged to paddle hard to maintain their position. Harold wondered at first that they had not kept closer to the island, but he soon understood their reason for keeping at a distance. The massive blocks of ice, pressed forward by, the irresistible force behind, began to shoot from the top of the island into the water, gliding far on beneath the surface with the impetus of the fall, and then shooting up again with a force which would have destroyed the canoe at once had they ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... popularly believed to represent the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer; but, in determining their true signification, we must be governed by the ancient teachings that "All things were made by one god-head with three names, and this God is all things." Hence the conclusion is irresistible that the first person represents neither the creator nor organizer of chaos, but chaos itself; the second person, its organizer and governor; and the third person, the agent in nature which impresses all her parts with life and motion; ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill
... He was never weary of admiring the huge machine which did with one smooth and regular movement the work of hundreds of strong men, obeying the slightest turn of a tiny wheel, yet capable of tearing the whole ship to pieces should its irresistible strength ever ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... diligently, and tried to outshine the heroes or the swaggerers to be found in her circle. When I believed that I had left poverty for ever behind me, I regained my freedom of mind, humiliated my rivals, and was looked upon as a very attractive, dazzling, and irresistible sort of man. But acute folk used to say with regard to me, 'A fellow as clever as that will keep all his enthusiasms in his brain,' and charitably extolled my faculties at the expense of my feelings. 'Isn't he lucky, not to be in love!' they exclaimed. 'If he were, could he be so light-hearted ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her—it may seem marvellous that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... devoted nature. Even amongst women in whom those gifts are met with in the highest degree, clearness of perception has been almost always obscured by the ardour of pursuit or that of patronage—by the irresistible desire of pushing to the extremity of success her own ideas, and especially those of ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... faith and love, could not readily be lost. The father's prayer still echoed in his soul, and even to him it seemed that the heavens could not be deaf to such entreaty. These things affected him as no direct appeals possibly could. They were like the gentle but irresistible ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... revolt a nature like Christophe's, young, proud, and pure. But what he could not forgive, what he never would forgive, was that the betrayal was not the outcome of passion in Ada, hardly even of one of those absurd and degrading though often irresistible caprices to which the reason of a woman is sometimes hard put to it not to surrender. No—he understood now,—it was in her a secret desire to degrade him, to humiliate him, to punish him for his moral resistance, for ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... the number of souls saved by the new bishops exceed that of the fat benefices they have swallowed? And are they not for the most part foreigners? As yet, the office of stadtholder has been held by Netherlanders; but do not the Spaniards betray their great and irresistible desire to possess themselves of these places? Will not people prefer being governed by their own countrymen, and according to their ancient customs, rather than by foreigners, who, from their first entrance into the land, endeavour to enrich themselves ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... casualties. Meanwhile, no staff of any army, making its elaborate plans in the use of proved weapons, could be certain that the enemy had not under way, in this age of invention which has given us the wireless, some new weapon which would be irresistible. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the season. The surrounding country was covered with scattering timber. Soledad was another place where there were some improvements, located on a small river, but nearly deserted like the other places. Prospects at the gold mines were so favorable that every man felt an irresistible desire to enrich himself, and so they left their families at the Missions and in the towns and rushed off to the mines. Nearly all of them expected to ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... the development of his intellectual energies. And it is what the black man needs for the development of his. Educate him, and his mind proves itself at once as profound and masterly in its conceptions, and as brisk and irresistible in its decisions, as the mind of ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... in violence till four p.m., when it veered to the south, then reaching its height, and continued thus till eight, when it began to abate. Terrible was the havoc committed in these few hours. The waves, raised to a height never before witnessed, foaming and roaring, rushed with irresistible impetuosity towards the land, sweeping into the bay and carrying before it every building it encountered; numbers of the inhabitants it overtook being drowned, while the rest fled shrieking before it ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... sadly. To her it had seemed, from the first, small matter of surprise, however great of regret, that Teddy should have found 'Toinette's attractions irresistible; or that, having once appropriated her as his little sister, he should have found it ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... world was different from the rest. This was the mouth of the cave and the source of light. He had discovered that it was different from the other walls long before he had any thoughts of his own, any conscious volitions. It had been an irresistible attraction before ever his eyes opened and looked upon it. The light from it had beat upon his sealed lids, and the eyes and the optic nerves had pulsated to little, sparklike flashes, warm-coloured and strangely pleasing. The life of his body, and of every fibre ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... Directoire withdrew Bernadotte with a strong division from Germany to strengthen Bonaparte, and raised his army to 70,000 men. He advanced through Friuli and the Julian Alps, outflanking the Archduke Charles, who attempted to bar his way, with detached corps under Joubert and Massena. Bonaparte was irresistible. He forced his way to within a short distance of Vienna, and finally at Leoben, on the 18th of April, Austria accepted peace preliminaries. She agreed to {248} cede the Netherlands and Lombardy, in return for which she ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... became. The girl, if girl she were, confessed to never having met the man; she would therefore be the more easily deceived. But she was expecting him daily, and should not be disappointed. Love of adventure invested the project with an irresistible charm, and Mr. Henley determined to undertake the journey and play the part for all he was worth. It is true that visions of embarrassing complications occasionally presented themselves, but were dismissed as trifles ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... ear-splitting outburst just in front of them. But on the instant piercing shrieks among the huddled cheerers—cries of death and agony—changed the paeans of triumph into wails of anguish and mortal pain. A panic—instant, unreasoning, irresistible—fell upon the mass, a breath before so confident. A third of the regiment seemed to wither away. The colors fell in the struggling group in the center. Hoarse shouts, indistinguishable and ominous, could be vaguely heard from the staff ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... the witch. 'I did my best not to play eavesdropper, but by an irresistible power I was drawn to the half-open door, and heard the words of Judah, and, on my soul, I would I were as pure ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... besides. The double persuasion being irresistible, and my sponge being left behind at the last Hotel, I made the tour of the little town to buy another. In the small sunny shops—mercers, opticians, and druggist-grocers, with here and there an emporium of religious images—the gravest of old spectacled Flemish husbands and wives sat ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... injuring them without control, and particularly when it is attended with any circumstances mysterious and inexplicable to their understandings. The sea possesses all these qualities. Its destructive and irresistible power is often felt, and especially on the coasts of India where tremendous surfs are constantly breaking on the shore, rising often to their greatest degree of violence without any apparent external cause. Add to this the flux and reflux and perpetual ordinary motion of that ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... prosecution of the Popish plot, had found it necessary for his own safety to pretend, in all public speeches and transactions, an entire belief and acquiescence in that famous absurdity; and by this artifice he had eluded the violent and irresistible torrent of the people. When a little time and recollection, as well as the execution of the pretended conspirators, had somewhat moderated the general fury, he was now enabled to form a considerable party, devoted to the interests of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... whether Cic. ever wrote -is in the gen. of the Greek names in -es. When we consider how difficult it was for copyists not to change the rarer form into the commoner, also that even Priscian (see M.D.F. V. 12) made gross blunders about them, the supposition of Madv. becomes almost irresistible. Temeritatem: [Greek: propeteian, eikaioteta]. ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... her more than ever. Church had an irresistible attraction for him. And he paid no more attention to that part of the service which was Church to her, than if he had been an angel or a fabulous beast sitting there. He simply paid no heed to the sermon or to the meaning of the service. There was something ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... of these flatteries, Desnoyers was no longer presenting himself with his former assiduity at the hour of poker. The Counsellor's wife was retiring to her stateroom earlier than usual—their approach to the Equator inducing such an irresistible desire for sleep, that she had to abandon her husband to his card playing. Julio also had mysterious occupations which prevented his appearance on deck until after midnight. With the precipitation of a man who desires to be seen in order to avoid suspicion, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... church with us; I will merely have him note a curious fact regarding those effigies of the crusaders lying cross-legged in the pavement of the circle to which one enters. According to the strong, the irresistible conviction of one of our party, these crusaders had distinctly changed their posture since she saw them first. It was not merely that they had uncrossed their legs and crossed them another way, or some such small matter; but that now they lay side by side, whereas formerly they had better ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... joy. I could imagine nothing more beautiful than a lovely woman yielding without coarse words, and without tears of shame. My first impulse was to take her in my arms; but, as if overcome by that irresistible longing to worship which characterizes a first love, even with the grossest of beings, I fell down before her and pressed her knees to my breast; and yet, on my own supposition, it was to a shameless wanton that this homage ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... destined to be firmly and thoroughly crushed in the near future. But when he had emerged triumphantly from morning school he suddenly found his head being punched by Simpkins Minor, on the ground that he, Harry, had been showing off. The punching was scientific and irresistible. Harry, indeed, did not try to resist; in floods of tears and with uncontrolled emotion he implored Simpkins Minor to let him alone, and not be a brute. Then Simpkins Minor kicked him, and several other nice little ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... unreasonable action. In boys, the beginning of the use of tobacco and liquor usually comes at this time. This is the time, too, of sexual temptation, if not actual indulgence. The temptation to do something startling is almost irresistible; robberies will be planned, hold-ups thought of, abductions contemplated; the life of a desperado entertained. The moral character seems to be ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... stood looking at her without speaking. Her courage appealed to him, and her beauty made her almost irresistible. His brain was in a tumultuous riot of conflicting emotions. How he longed to comfort her, to take her in his arms, and tell her all that was in his heart. He was almost jubilant, for he knew now that she had cast off Ben forever, and there was hope ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... to proceed from and to be an attribute of GOD. By another, Infinite Justice, deduced from Infinite Power and Infinite Truth, was arrived at, as His essential and necessary quality. Again, the revealed Word of GOD as declared in the Bible was established in my mind as the irresistible result of another process; and, although several had intermediately passed over the Board, this was I think the last. The Board faded, the figure at our side disappeared, we were out of church, and presently I awoke, and lo! it was a DREAM! But the recollection ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... but to his mind not the less formidable, were multiplying, and he did not intend that they should culminate in disaster. The figure of that woman, so helpless and apparently the sole target at this moment of a powerful Government, made an irresistible appeal to him. ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Nigel's first impulse was an irresistible feeling to laugh at the sage adviser, who would have thus connected him with age, ugliness, and ill-temper; but his next thought was pity for the unfortunate father and daughter, who, being the only persons possessed of wealth ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... powers of life-giving in women and exercised a direct influence upon their life-blood, the Great Mother was identified with the moon. But how was such a conception to be brought into harmony with the view that she was also a cow? The human mind displays an irresistible tendency to unify its experience and to bridge the gaps that necessarily exist in its broken series of scraps of knowledge and ideas. No break is too great to be bridged by this instinctive impulse to rationalize ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... surprise when I beheld Bianca before me. It was herself; pale with grief; but still more matured in loveliness than when I had last beheld her. The time that had elapsed had developed the graces of her person; and the sorrow she had undergone had diffused over her countenance an irresistible tenderness. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Joseph of Arimathaea buys a linen cloth, the holy women prepare spices, all of which works would have been forbidden on Nisan 15. Finally, the day is itself called the "preparation," a name which would not be given to Nisan 15. The conclusion is irresistible. It is that our Lord died on Nisan 14, that St. John is correct, and that the Synoptists in most of the passages concerned corroborate St. John. The only real difficulty is raised by Mark xiv. 12 (cf. Matt. xxvi. 17; Luke xxii. 7), which ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... way; and protesting while he did it that he was the most faithful servant of the Holy See. Individually a pious Catholic, officially a military machine, Alva obeyed orders with mechanical inflexibility, and, irresistible as destiny, advanced towards Rome. The college of cardinals, who remembered the occupation of the city by Bourbon's army, implored the pope to have pity on them. The pope had been too precipitate in commencing ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... by election to the higher office. The custom of succession from the one office to the other, which prevailed in the earlier years of the Republic, was broken when Madison was preferred to George Clinton in 1808; and was revived only in the single instance of Van Buren, whom the irresistible will of Jackson imposed upon the Democrats as his successor. Washington, before becoming President, had held the office of President of the Constitutional Convention. Polk had only served in the lower House of Congress, over which he had presided ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... appearance on this occasion: "there is not, perhaps in nature, a more expressive eye than that of Red Jacket; when fired by indignation or revenge, it is terrible; and when he chooses to display his unrivalled talent for irony, his keen sarcastic glance, is irresistible." [Footnote: Drake.] ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... like aquatic plants of evil growth: their hour comes, and they wither and die, and leave the channels free. Life returns—in slow, soft ripples at first, but not the less in irresistible tide, and at last in pulses of mighty throb through every pipe. Death is the final failure of all sickness, the clearing away of the very soil in which the seed of the ill plant ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... one from home, the one human being in the whole of Skeaton who knew the old places and the old people, the Chapel, and the aunts—and Martin. She knew at once that it would have been far safer had Caroline not been there, that the temptation to discuss Martin would be irresistible, that she would yield to it, and that Caroline was in no way whatever to be trusted-she realised all these things, and yet ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... a song, soared with so jubilant a strain to the topmost summits of rapture, and flowed wide into the Infinite, that it seemed like the voice of some celestial being pouring out the joy of a deathless victory. The spirits of the audience were borne along on that irresistible torrent of sound. When the music ceased, the tremor of the instruments continued for a moment in the hearers. A murmur ran from one end of the hall to the other. A moment later and ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... Kahira or The Victorious, to a more deplorable condition of subjection and slavery than any old-world conqueror could ever have done. For the heavy yoke of modern fashion has been flung on the neck of Al Kahira, and the irresistible, tyrannic dominion of "swagger" vulgarity has laid The Victorious low. The swarthy children of the desert might, and possibly would, be ready and willing to go forth and fight men with men's weapons for the freedom to live and die unmolested in their own native land; ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... under the careful tutelage of the castle chaplain she became as good as she was beautiful. Lovers she had in plenty, for the charms of Etelina and the wealth of her noble father, whose sole heiress she was, formed a combination quite irresistible in the eyes of the young gallants who frequented the castle. But none loved her more sincerely than one of the baron's retainers, a young knight of ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... florid complexion, and as he grew old some tendency to be stout, but with snowy hair and much personal dignity, he seems to have had an irresistible charm of manner toward those whom ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... portrait of Gopher Prairie done to the life with the fingers of ridicule. He has photographic gifts of accuracy; he has all the arts of mimicry; he has a tireless gusto in his pursuit of the tedious commonplace. Each item of his evidence is convincing, and the accumulation is irresistible. No other American small town has been drawn with such exactness of detail in any other American novel. Various elements of scandal crop out here and there, but the principal accusation which Mr. Lewis brings against his village—and indeed against ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... alone. Employed in water, a thick glaze of gum-arabic or gamboge adds to its stability. As a landscape pigment, the colour is out of the general scale of nature; but in flower-painting its charms are almost irresistible. Nothing certainly can approach it as a colour for scarlet geraniums, but its beauty is almost as fleeting as ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... can tolerate, and spread it over the region of the bladder and genitals: if there is running water in the room, turn it on full and let it run while the towel is in position as above. If the bladder is full, there is a peculiar, irresistible desire to urinate when one hears running water. If this effort fails, report the fact to the physician when he makes his daily call; he will draw the urine and it will be part of his daily duty to give specific instructions regarding this ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... word knoll had not been uttered, but our feet were at once drawn in its direction by an irresistible force, and presently we found ourselves standing at the lower end of the ridge ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... just now, Porphyrius Petrovitch, I was hasty," began Raskolnikoff, who had regained all his self-possession, and who even experienced an irresistible ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... the midst of the irresistible whirl of words there came a pause. Some one looked at his watch and said: 'The steamboat.' They all rose; the gentlemen, who had to go to town, rushed off; the whole company was scattered to the four winds, and the problem—whether one can ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... "reglah gole money" in Bundy's bank by his performances of house-cleaning, catering, and his work as janitor; not a little, too, by sales of the fish he caught. He was believed to possess a secret charm that made his fish-bait irresistible. Certainly his fortune in this matter was superior to that of any other frequenter of the bass nooks below ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... 1168 by Robert FitzStephen, a son of the Constable of Cardigan, with a little band of a hundred and forty knights, sixty men-at-arms, and three or four hundred Welsh archers. Small as was the number of the adventurers, their horses and arms proved irresistible by the Irish kernes; a sally of the men of Wexford was avenged by the storm of their town; the Ossory clans were defeated with a terrible slaughter, and Dermod, seizing a head from the heap of trophies ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... few official impostors, had placed upon them. But all, whether thoughtful or careless, whether clairvoyant or blind, whether calmly yielding to fate or attempting to breast the storm, were driven along by the irresistible current of events, each drifting toward the darkness of an inevitable doom which, we now know, was inexorably awaiting him as he passed from the ray of light into the gloom in ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... destined to have great influence on the minds of these pioneers in geological research; both became satisfied from their studies that, with respect to the excavation of the valleys of the country, Scrope's conclusions were irresistible; and in a joint memoir this position was stoutly ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent. The freedom, as I understand it, promised by the proclamation, is taking us from under the yoke of bondage and placing us where we can reap the fruit of our own labor, and take care of ourselves ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and the young people dress up, and away they drive across the crackling snow to a country house six miles off, all the actors creating a great sensation, but especially the fair maiden Sonya, who proves irresistible when clad in her cousin's hussar uniform and adorned with an elegant moustache. Such mummers as these would lay aside their disguises with a light conscience, but the peasant was apt to feel a depressing qualm when the sports were ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... genius bursting in upon our staid literature is irresistible. Irving's temperament, his travels, his humor, gave him a cosmopolitan point of view; and his little native city, with its local sense of importance, and its droll aristocratic traditions springing from Dutch burgomasters and traders, impressed his merry ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... members of a political happy family. "Cedant arma togae," the life-long sentiment of Sumner, in conflict with "Stand fast and stand sure," the well-known device of the clan of Grant, reminds one of the problem of an irresistible force in collision with an insuperable resistance. But the President says,—or is reported as saying,—"I may be blamed for my opposition to Mr. Sumner's tactics, but I was not guided so much by reason of his personal hatred of myself, as I was ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... pure as new milk, edged a little bit—the merest infinitesimal atom—nearer to Gifted Hopkins, who was on one side of her, while Clement walked on the other. Women love the conquering party,—it is the way of their sex. And poets, as we have seen, are well-nigh irresistible when they exert their dangerous power of fascination upon the female heart. But Clement was above jealousy; and, if he perceived anything of this movement, ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... same time he suggested that, after all, would be as well to humour BRADLAUGH and his friends, and strike out Resolution. Then OLD MORALITY rose from side of SOLICITOR-GENERAL, and, unmindful of that eminent Lawyer's irresistible argument and uncompromising declaration, said, "on the whole," perhaps NORTHCOTE was right, and so mote ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... any exclusiveness of privilege or spirit of party. Among the Egyptian adventurers there were probably none fitted by previous education for the sacred office; and the chief who had obtained the dominion might entertain no irresistible affection for a caste which in his own land he had seen dictating to the monarch and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... annoyance served, in some degree, to assuage his grief. Life's daily occupations, the excitements of society, the continual care shown towards him by his relatives, youth, above all, and Time, the irresistible healer, at last served to soothe a sorrow which, had it lasted longer, would have been more disastrous ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... idleness and irregularity of children in school often depends more on accidental circumstances than on character. Two boys may be individually harmless and well disposed, and yet they may be of so mercurial a temperament, that, together, the temptation to continual play will be irresistible. Another case that more often happens, is, where one is actively and even intentionally bad, and is seated next to an innocent but perhaps thoughtless boy, and contrives to keep him always in difficulty. ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... to success in uniting several Colleges into a common University is sameness of type in the education given, and sameness of discipline in the various Colleges. This condition is attained in France by the centralizing and irresistible power of the State; in Oxford and in Cambridge it has grown up spontaneously, and has partially succeeded; in Oxford, however, as in Cambridge, the multiplicity of Colleges and of rival, though similar interests, has produced feebleness in the government of the central authority, ...
— University Education in Ireland • Samuel Haughton
... and Estevon beheld bent upon himself the dark eyes and quivering lip of Muza Ben Abil Gazan. That noble knight had never, perhaps, till then known fear; but he felt his heart stand still, as he now stood opposed to that irresistible foe. ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures, it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... interest of their constituents, would struggle for improvements within their own districts, and the body itself must necessarily be converted into an arena where each would endeavor to obtain from the Treasury as much money as possible for his own locality. The temptation would prove irresistible. A system of "logrolling" (I know no word so expressive) would be inaugurated, under which the Treasury would be exhausted and the Federal Government be deprived of the means necessary to execute those great powers clearly confided to it by the Constitution for the purpose of promoting ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... regarding himself as the victim of ill-luck. Go visit the incarcerated criminal, who has imbued his hands in the blood of his fellow-man, or who is guilty of less heinous crimes, and you will find that, joining the temptations which were easy to avoid with those which were comparatively irresistible, he has hurriedly patched up a treaty with conscience, and stifles its compunctious visitings by persuading himself that, from first to last, he was the victim of circumstances. Go talk with the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... would become a morphomaniac in a given time, and the apathy into which he fell prevented him from resisting the desire to absorb new doses of poison, a desire as imperious, as irresistible in morphinism as that of alcohol for the alcoholic, and more terrible in its effects—the perversion of the intellectual faculties, loss of will, of memory, of judgment, paralysis, or the mania that leads ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... realised that Plato's theory was of a great, central, motionless entity, which acted not by expulsive energy but by a sort of magnetic attraction; and that all the dreams, the hopes, the activities of human minds were not the ripples of some central outward-speeding force, but the irresistible inner motion, as to the loadstone or the vortex, which made itself felt through the whole universe, material and immaterial alike. The intense desire to know, to solve, to improve, to gain a tranquil balance of thought, was nothing more, Hugh perceived, than this ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... must expect that unavoidable and irresistible Circumstances will gradually take away the powers of the States and concentrate them in the central government, and that the republic will then repeat the history of all time and become a monarchy; but I believe that if we obstruct these encroachments and steadily resist them the monarchy can ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... pony was struggling furiously for the same purpose, but the power pulling them down was irresistible. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... on the table and leaned against him a long time. Then she said she must go upstairs to her room—she had so much to do. He could not forbid, because she was irresistible. She extinguished the kitchen-lamp, and, side by side, they groped up the stairs to the first floor. The cat nonchalantly passed them ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Whereas before it they were always hankering after the gods of the nations, they came back from Babylon the resolute champions of monotheism, and never thereafter showed the smallest inclination for what had before been so irresistible. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... 'His wit and humour are perfectly irresistible. Mr. Jacobs writes of skippers, and mates, and seamen, and his crew are the jolliest lot that ever sailed.'—Daily News. 'Laughter in every ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... as a most venerable pile; in reality it is only a plain, respectable country-house: as the home of the Wyllyses, however, it must always be an honoured spot to him. Colonnade Manor too—he laughs! There are some buildings that seem, at first sight, to excite to irresistible merriment; they belong to what may he called the "ridiculous order" of architecture, and consist generally of caricatures on noble Greek models; Mr. Taylor's elegant mansion had, undeniably, a claim to a conspicuous place among the number. Charlie ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... even then they are kindled and extinguished easily; but generally they emit a peaceful light, like the morning star, Venus. Modesty is painted in their eyes, and modesty is the greatest and most irresistible fascination of their souls. In short, the Mexican ladies, by their manifold virtues, are destined to serve as our support whilst we travel through the sad desert ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... his father's love of money, joined to an irresistible passion for everything that he called pleasure; and as he was already continually quarrelling with his younger brother, who was as continually impertinent to him, George's prospect in life was not particularly bright. As to turning his mind to any useful ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... one prefers to laugh at the experience of a "culled" brother, what can be found more irresistible ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... in the world, being merely external, mean little or nothing apart from the impulse that started them, and the poet alone is powerful to stir the impulse of reform in humanity. "To be persuaded rests usually with ourselves," said Longinus, "but genius brings force sovereign and irresistible to bear upon every hearer." [Footnote: On the Sublime.] The poet, in ideal mood, is as innocent of specific designs upon current morality as was Pippa, when she wandered about the streets of Asolo, but the power of his songs is ever as insuperable as was that of hers. It is for this reason ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... entertainment, and she did her best; Vivian, having reached a halt in her daily Latin review, asked assistance; little David, Alec's adorable son, had come over with his mother for the afternoon, and Priscilla found him irresistible; and at last Donald, riding homeward, hot and tired from working on the range, had stopped for rest and refreshment. With Hannah's help Priscilla had provided the refreshment, and the ground beneath the cottonwood ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... himself, by pinning him to the ground at one end with a long thorn—it is presumed worms do not feel; his miserable contortions attract the attention of the hungry woodcock, who immediately seizes this irresistible tit-bit. ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... sand and other debris assailed the flying-machine, and while sight was thus rendered almost useless for the time being, the aerostat began to sway and reel from side to side, shivering as though caught by an irresistible power, yet against which it battled as though ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... repentance was almost irresistible, well as the Major knew it for the mood of the moment, assumed as what ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was irresistible: she filled the whole place otherwise than by the mere material voluminousness of her; bubbling over with froth of nonsense which flew through the house, driven by her energy, like sea-foam on a spring gale; and the day, so ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... irresistible. No power outside of us can stop it while life lasts. We cannot stop it ourselves. When we try to stop thinking, the stream but changes its direction and flows on. While we wake and while we sleep, while we are unconscious ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... the tribal deity of the Jews. The old version says, "Hicar was a native of the country of Haram (Harran), and had brought from thence the knowledge of the true God; impelled, however, by an irresistible decree," etc. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... HAD chosen to take it. I felt this at the time, and I feel it just as strongly now, while I write these lines, in my own room. The one hope left is that his motives really spring, as he says they do, from the irresistible strength of his attachment ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... her hand, suddenly unable to say a word, looking at her hungrily. A flood of emotion, of which he had had no prevision, swelled up within him to fill his throat. An almost irresistible impulse all but controlled him to crush her to him, to kiss her lips and her throat, to lose his fingers in the soft, shadowy fineness of her hair. The crest of the wave passed almost immediately, but it left him shaken. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... Breaking Point is a much stronger novel than K. To me it seems to combine the excellence of character delineation noticeable in K with the dramatic thrill and plot effectiveness which made The Amazing Interlude so irresistible as you ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... originating plans, his schemes, his booklets, and advertising copy brought results with regularity. He became known as a man who could "put the thing over'' in a pinch, with a vigor and enthusiasm that seemed irresistible. He fairly earned his standing as the live wire among executives ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... butterflies chiefly come to sip (see wild pink), and an occasional hummingbird, fascinated by the color that seems ever irresistible to him, hovers above them on whirring wings. Hapless ants, starting to crawl up the stem, become more and more discouraged by its stickiness, and if they persevere in their attempts to steal from the ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... seal to Herrick's fame, it is now only needful that some wiseacre should attribute the authorship of the poems to some man who could not possibly have written a line of them. The opportunity presents attractions that ought to be irresistible. Excepting a handful of Herrick's college letters there is no scrap of his manuscript extant; the men who drank and jested with the poet at the Dog or the Triple Tun make no reference to him; (1) and in the wide parenthesis formed by his ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... began to scribble aimlessly on the blotter. All at once he flung down the pen, rose and walked out through the casement-doors, down toward the sea. Kitty's curiosity was irresistible. She ran over ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... he allowed his friend Mann to alter passages in "The Mysterious Mother," and confessed the alterations to be improvements. It may be added that Lord Macaulay's disparagement of his judgement and his taste is not altogether consistent with his admission that Walpole's writings possessed an "irresistible charm" that "no man who has written so much is so seldom tiresome;" that, even in "The Castle of Otranto," which he ridicules, "the story never flags for a moment," and, what is more to our present purpose, he adds that "his letters are with reason considered his best performance;" ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Scarcely had the shadows of Evander and his companion vanished from the grasses of the pleasaunce than the pursuers emerged from the shelter of a yew screen and ran into the open, staring after the departing pair. Yet these pursuers were no stealthy enemies, but merely creatures spurred by an irresistible curiosity. One was stout and red faced and inclined to breathe hard after the fatigues of the chase. The other was slim and smooth, with ripe cheeks and bright eyes, lodgings for the insolence of youth. In a word, the hunters were Mistress Satchell and pretty Tiffany, ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... were originally mere predicates; they meant bright, brilliant, warm. But as soon as the name svar or surya was formed, it became, through the irresistible influence of language, the name, not only of a living, but of a male being. Every noun in Sanskrit must be either a masculine or a feminine (for the neuter gender was originally confined to the nominative case), and as surya had been formed as a masculine, language stamped it once ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... heresies with which the subtle and debased ingenuity of the Greeks had stained and distorted the great but simple mysteries of the faith. Then came the hordes of invaders from the North, sweeping with irresistible force over regions that the weakness or cowardice of the wearers of the purple left defenceless before them. Before the northern tribes had settled in their possessions, and had full time to assimilate the faith ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... would be driven back into their own Land immediately. I wish to see Spain, Italy, France, Germany, formed into independent nations; nor have I any desire to reduce the power of France further than may be necessary for that end. Woe be to that country whose military power is irresistible! I deprecate such an event for Great Britain scarcely less than for any other Land. Scipio foresaw the evils with which Rome would be visited when no Carthage should be in existence for her to contend with. If a nation have nothing ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... what is really another department of fiction. Nevertheless, when a ghost story is told with the consummate art of a Miss Wilkins, and of one or two others on our list, consistency in this regard ceases to be a jewel; art proves irresistible. As for adventure stories, there is a fringe of them that comes under the riddle-story head; but for the most part the riddle story begins after the adventures have finished. We are to contemplate a condition, not to watch the events that ultimate ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... middle ages, a bold, bad, blood-thirsty brigand chief kidnapped the only daughter of the Empress, because of that young lady's irresistible beauty and charm and because of his own unquenchable love for her. He, in turn, was trapped and captured by the Royal Body Guard, who brought him—manacled in chains with cannon balls at the ends of ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... recognized by any government, and as for his gentility, if it were the genuine article and not a veneer like his title, it would certainly stand the strain of a little honest labour. The arguments were cogent, and the hand of the law more irresistible still, so the high ranking officer took his turn in the trench with ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... in great timidity with clasped hands and eyes down to the ground. And she was so irresistible that Madam Wetherill caught her ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Other ropes are attached; numbers of men take hold of these, and working together swing the beam backwards and forwards, so that each time it strikes the wall or door a heavy blow. As the beam is of great weight, and many men work it, the blows are well nigh irresistible, and the strongest walls crumble and the most massive gates splinter under the shock of ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... who quickly saw that attempts to restrain the rise of American democracy were efforts to reverse the processes of nature. He saw how fixed and rooted in the nature of things was the American spirit—how inevitable, how irresistible. He warned his countrymen that there were three ways of handling the delicate situation—and only three. One was to remove the cause of friction by changing the spirit of the colonists—an utter impossibility because that spirit was grounded in the essential ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... King of glory; the Lord strong and mighty; the Lord mighty in battle." His servants, filled with the Holy Spirit and devoted to His cause, grow like Him in moral courage and irresistible action. Every age supplies ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... is richer in stories of everything appertaining to the supernatural than Germany. The Rhine is the favourite river of nymphs and sirens, to whose irresistible and fatal fascinations so many men have fallen victims. Along its shores are countless haunted castles, in its woods ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... God is supposed to see, her, and as the embalmer will see her—until they have been married for years. All the tricks may be infantile and obvious, but in the face of so naive a spectator the temptation to continue practising them is irresistible. A trained nurse tells me that even when undergoing the extreme discomforts of parturition the great majority of women continue to modify their complexions with pulverized talcs, and to give thought to the arrangement of their hair. ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... rushed, like darkly lowering clouds Which Cronos' Son, when storm is rolling up, Herdeth together through the welkin wide. Swiftly the whole plain filled. Onward they streamed Like harvest-ravaging locusts drifting on In fashion of heavy-brooding rain-clouds o'er Wide plains of earth, an irresistible host Bringing wan famine on the sons of men; So in their might and multitude they went. The city streets were all too strait for them Marching: upsoared the ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... of you both, after our lively supper of last evening, and starting for the thicket, and giving way just here to an irresistible feeling of drowsiness, and sinking down with the dreamy idea that I would not go to sleep, but would soon arise and pursue my journey. And I have lain here all night!" he exclaimed ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... bushy, low-branched cedar. It was not his intention to spy on them. He merely wanted to avoid a meeting. But the missionary's hand on the girl's arm, and her up-lifted head, her pretty face, strange, intent, troubled, struck Shefford with an unusual and irresistible curiosity. Willetts was talking earnestly; Glen Naspa was listening intently. Shefford watched long enough to see that the girl loved the missionary, and that he reciprocated or was pretending. His manner scarcely savored of pretense, Shefford concluded, as he slipped ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... the two nations were equally German, it had many of the melancholy aspects of a civil war. But Austria was Catholic and Prussia was Protestant; and had Austria succeeded, Germany possibly to-day would have been united under an irresistible Catholic imperialism, and there would have been no German empire whose capital is Berlin. The Austrians, in this contest, fought bravely and ably, under Prince Carl and Marshal Daun, who were no mean competitors with the King of Prussia ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... also governs another man, that is more than self-government— that is despotism." [Footnote: "Lincoln, Complete Works," ed. by Nicolay and Hay, 2:227.] Two years later he made near there an address so irresistible in its eloquence that the reporters forgot why they were there and failed to take notes. So there are but fragments preserved of what is known as ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... passage cited by Paul is taken from the Sixteenth Psalm, which is in reality one of the Messianic psalms. This is the psalm Peter in his first sermon on the day of Pentecost more fully explains, drawing from it the irresistible conclusion, so apparent in his own words, that Christ indeed has died; not, however, to become victim to decay in the tomb, but, proof against mortal destruction and hurt, to arise on ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... the footlights the beset man darted, and like a desperate swimmer plunging from a foundering bark into a stormy sea he leaped far out and projected himself, a living catapult, along the middle aisle. He struck the tall yellow woman as the irresistible force strikes the supposedly immovable object of the scientists' age-old riddle, but on his side was impetus and on hers surprise. She was bowled over flat and her hands, clutching as she went down, closed, but ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... violently open, and a tall, magnificent woman dashed into the room. Her features, marvellously chiselled as those of the antique Venus, would have been irresistible in beauty, if their expression had corresponded to their symmetry—But in her large black eyes glared the fire of ungoverned passion, and her rosy mouth was curled ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... adversary who was a match for him. Nothing could stop his progress, or check his pretensions, if the intoxication of success should tempt him to abuse his victory. If formerly they had dreaded the Emperor's irresistible power, there was no less cause now to fear everything for the Empire from the violence of a foreign conqueror, and for the Catholic Church from the religious zeal of a Protestant king. The distrust and jealousy of some of the combined powers, which a stronger fear of the Emperor had for a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... astrologers agree, precisely that instant of the entire year when the stars combine their magic powers with their most puissant force to produce their greatest possible effect on the nature of a child born at that instant, in order that he may have irresistible sway over the wills of all ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... The poets retort that the moral instincts of the poet, more truly than of the philosopher, are unerring, because the poet's attention is fixed upon the good in its most ravishing aspect, that of beauty, and in this guise it has an irresistible charm which it cannot ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... have thought otherwise," remarked Gerty, adding immediately, "and so you met Laura. Oh, you two! It was the irresistible force meeting the immovable ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... of telling him that he ought to be ashamed to send her down such rubbish, she recovered herself sufficiently to stammer out that his song was exactly what she had been looking for and that after reading it she had been seized with an extraordinary, irresistible impulse—that of thanking him for it in person and ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... of the British guns and the tramp of our soldiers crept nearer and nearer, terrifying, relentless, and irresistible, the Germans left, fleeing with their ill-gotten spoil like demons of darkness before the angels of light, leaving in their trail the picture I have unfolded ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... the Plumed Knight which Mr. Ingersoll created to characterize Mr. Blaine is part of the latter's memory. At Chicago, four years later, when Garfield, dazed by the irresistible doubt of the convention, was on the point of refusing that in the acceptance of which he had no voluntary part, Ingersoll was the adviser who showed him that duty to Sherman ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... were reflected from a crust of glittering snow. Their intention had been to pass through the city without stopping, but when Jean learned that his old colonel was still at the Delaherches' he felt an irresistible desire to go and pay his respects to him, and at the same time thank the manufacturer for his many kindnesses. His visit was destined to bring him an additional, a final sorrow, in that city of mournful ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... wrote. "I would not give one single human life for any portion of the continent which remains to be annexed; but I cannot get rid of the conviction that popular passion for territorial aggrandizement is irresistible. Prudence, justice and even timidity may restrain it for a time, but its force will be augmented ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... vehement terrors: I had filled your mind with faith in shadows and confidence in dreams: I had depraved the imagination of Pleyel: I had exhibited you to his understanding as devoted to brutal gratifications and consummate in hypocrisy. The evidence which accompanied this delusion would be irresistible to one whose passion had perverted his judgment, whose jealousy with regard to me had already been excited, and who, therefore, would not fail to overrate the force of this evidence. What fatal act of despair or of vengeance ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... to survey such minute objects; and from that hour till twelve, he continued without interruption, all the while exposed in the open air to the scorching heat of the sun, bareheaded for fear of intercepting his sight, and his head in a manner dissolving into sweat under the irresistible ardors of that powerful luminary. And if he desisted at noon, it was only because the strength of his eyes was too much weakened, by the extraordinary afflux of light and the use of microscopes, to continue any longer upon such small objects, though as discernible in the afternoon, as they ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... to supplicate her with bowed head, but he gave one surreptitious flick of his stumpy tail, that to me had the irresistible suggestion ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... Richard, her expression serious, intimate, appealing. Then she shook back her fair head, and as though in obedience to an irresistible movement of tenderness, stooped down swiftly over him—seeming to drown him in the shimmering waves of some azure, and thin, clear green, and royal, blue-purple sea—while she kissed him full and daringly upon ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... economist than Boswell, that a country would be made more populous by emigration. "There are bulls enough in Ireland," he remarked incidentally in the course of the argument. "So, sir, I should think from your argument," said Johnson, for once condescending to an irresistible pun. It is recorded, too, that he once made a bull himself, observing that a horse was so slow that when it went up hill, it stood still. If he now failed to appreciate Burke's argument, he made one good remark. Another speaker said that unhealthy countries were ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Father. But their own position was weak. Whatever they might say, their secondary God was a second God, and their theory of the eternal generation only led them into further difficulties, for their concession of the Son's origin from the will of the Father made the Arian conclusion irresistible. Marcellus looked scornfully on a lame result like this. The conservatives had broken down because they had gone astray after vain philosophy. Turn we then to Scripture. 'In the beginning was,' not the Son, ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... Strong drink and tobacco had never had the chance to play havoc with my steady hand or to sap the vitality of my reserve forces. Even as Jean lifted me by the throat to crush my head backward over that sharp stone ledge, I put forth this burst of power in a fierceness so irresistible that it hurled him from me, and the struggle was still unended. We were on our feet again in a rage to reach the finish. I had almost ceased to care to live. I wanted only to choke the breath from the ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... pleasure in coitus. For a long time past, however, she had felt a strong desire to play with the genital organs of children of either sex, a proceeding which gave her sexual pleasure. She sought to resist this impulse as much as possible, but during menstruation it was often irresistible. Examination showed an enlarged and retroflexed uterus and anesthesia of vagina. (Kisch, Die Sterilitaet des Weibes, 1886, p. 103.) The psychological mechanism by which an anesthetic vagina leads to a feeling ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... her hand smilingly on his shoulder, as if to push him down, and as he yielded to the light but irresistible pressure, she put a pen in his nerveless ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... eyes, from the carriage of her head. She was certainly pretty, with that proud virginal beauty which often bears itself on the defensive, in our modern world where a certain superfluity of women has not tended to chivalry. But how little prettiness matters, beside the other thing!—the indefinable, irresistible something—which gives the sceptre and the crown! All the time she was listening to Mrs. Penfold's chatter, and the daughter's occasional words, Victoria Tatham was on the watch for this something; and not without jealousy and a critical mind. She had been taken ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... over our minds, that public affairs assume the interest of private feelings, affect domestic peace, and occupy not merely the most retired part of mankind, but even mothers, wives, and children with solicitude irresistible. ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... of heaven in which the planets move. It carries them round with it; it governs the tides; it stood with men for the type of irresistible regularity. Each of the planets naturally has a motion of its own, contrary in direction to that of the firmament, which was from east to west. All the fixed stars move in circles whose centre is the centre of the universe, but the courses of the planets (among which ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... what plight Louis de Bourbon enters the battle for Christ and fatherland!' Then, lowering his head, he charges with his three hundred horse upon the eight hundred lances of the Duke of Anjou. The first shock of this charge was irresistible; such for a moment was the disorder amongst the Catholics that many of them believed the day was lost; but fresh bodies of royalists arrive one after another. The prince has his horse killed under him; and, in the midst of the confusion, hampered by his wounds, he cannot mount another. In spite ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Fort Prescott that a great and glorious event had occurred. They would not be taken by the Indians, they would not be slaughtered or carried into captivity. Relief, many boats and canoes filled with their own warlike country-men, an irresistible force, were at hand, because Major Braithwaite and Gregory Wilmot had heard the welcome sound ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... including freight and all charges, is from 3d. to 4d. per lb., and the duty is 3s. per lb., being 900 per cent, on the value. A duty so enormously disproportioned to the cost offers an irresistible premium to the illicit trader; for the expense of smuggling tobacco by the cargo, including the first cost, does not exceed 91/2d. per lb., and it has been ascertained that the smuggler receives 6d. per lb. less than the duty, or 2s. 6d. per lb., which yields ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... in the fire and roar, that generates an irresistible desire to get nearer to it. We can not rest long, without starting off, two of us on our hands and knees, accompanied by the head guide, to climb to the brim of the flaming crater, and try to look in. Meanwhile, the thirty yell, as with ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... elected Professor of Chemistry in the University of London, our conversation turned (if you can pass me the intoxicating favour of remembering it) on the glorious science of chemistry. For me this knowledge has ever possessed irresistible attractions, from the enormous power which it confers of heaping benefits on the suffering race of mankind. Others may rejoice in the advantages which a knowledge of it bestows—the power which can ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang |
