"Palpable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kept the window open. Some one must have waded into the water in the dark and stolen it. Perhaps one of the bandsmen may have noticed the flashing of the diamonds on her wrist and returned to secure the bracelet—there's no saying. The only too palpable fact is that it is gone—it was valued ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... the change absurdly. Nevertheless, that a change had taken place was palpable. The arresting radiance, the vivid physical perfection of her, had gone. She was thin, and with the thinness had come lines—lines of fatigue, and other, more lasting lines born of endurance and self-control. The pliant symmetry ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... gentle, innocuous little thing about "Twain and one flesh," and all that sort of thing, I don't try to crush that man into the earth—no. I feel like saying: "Let me take you by the hand, sir; let me embrace you; I have not heard that pun for weeks." We will deal in palpable puns. We will call parties named King "Your Majesty," and we will say to the Smiths that we think we have heard that name before somewhere. Such is human nature. We cannot alter this. It is God that made us so for some good and wise purpose. Let us ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... an access of ardour I returned to my business in town; But, as life seemed each day to grow harder, I despaired of its joy and its crown; Till, fed up with a "tale" for poor Tommies, My temper I finally lost, And pronounced that oracular "promise" A palpable frost. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... neighbourhood of a solitary tree is a positive nuisance. It creates a violent eddy of wind, that leaves palpable evidence of its existence. Thus, in corn-fields, it is a common result of a storm to batter the corn quite flat in circles round each tree that stands in the field, while elsewhere no injury takes place. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... late of Andover, some years ago published a very able essay in the "Christian Review," the title of which was, "Sin a Nature, and that Nature Guilt." This title is a sufficient refutation of the essay. A man could not utter a more palpable contradiction, if he said, "The sun solid, and that solid fluid," or, "The earth black, and ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... spectre rises to my sight, Close by my side, and plain, and palpable In all good seeming and close circumstance As man meets ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... life is hid with him in Christ, Never therefrom to be enticed; And in his strength have I such rest As when the baby on my breast Finds what it knows not how to seek, And, very happy, very weak, Lies, only knowing all is well, Pillow'd on kindness palpable. ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... streets none but light weights could have lived long. This was the state of the town when I left it in the middle of January. On my arrival in the middle of December, everything was in a cloud of dust. One walked through an atmosphere of floating mud; for the dirt was ponderous and thick, and very palpable in its atoms. Then came a severe frost and a little snow; and if one did not fall while walking, it was very well. After that we had the thaw; and Washington assumed its normal winter condition. I must say that, during the whole of this time, the ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... as navigation grew better, would flow into the treasury, until all the canals would be completed and all the debts wiped out. The Radical was more than a pessimist—he was a strict constructionist of the act of 1842. He held that the Seymour bill was a palpable departure from the policy of that act, and that other measures, soon to follow, would eventually overthrow such a policy. To all this Seymour replied in his report, that "just views of political economy are not to be disseminated ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... to her too munch changed for her to reckon on what remnant of good feeling there might be to appeal to in him. And James, though he was certain not to permit palpable coercion in his presence, or even if he were aware that it was contemplated, seemed to have left the whole management of the affair to Esclairmonde's own guardians; and they would probably avoid driving matters to extremities that would revolt him, while he was near enough for an appeal. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spoke Pocket remembered the cigarette he had produced from his bag, but lacked the moral courage to light, in the train. He had slipped it into one of his pockets, not back into the box. He felt for it feverishly. He gave a husky cheer as his fingers closed upon the palpable thing, and he drew forth a flattened cylinder the size of a cigarette and the colour of a cigar. The boy had to bite off both ends; the man was ready with the match. Pocket drank the crude smoke down like water, coughed ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... establishments at Blois, Chenonceau, Chambord, or Chaumont. The style appears, however, out of place; an admixture meaningless in itself and in its application when, with a Gothic foundation bequeathed them, builders sought to incorporate into a cathedral such palpable inconsistencies ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... speaking plain Latin. He has fought in Asia as a mirmillo. After having equipped his own companion and intimate friend in the armour of a Thracian, he slew the miserable man as he was flying; but he himself received a palpable wound, ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... the ancient trial by combat, the duel, was still blocking the way of English civilisation when Her Majesty assumed the sceptre. A palpable anachronism, it yet seemed impossible to make men act on their knowledge of its antiquated and barbarous character; legislation was fruitless of good against a practice consecrated by false sentiment and false ideas of honour; but when dislodged from its chief stronghold, the ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... habitable it looked in the morning sunshine! Any one living in a city, who immediately on rising enters the room which he has used overnight, has noticed the peculiar staleness of the atmosphere. It is not exactly a noxious atmosphere; there is no palpable unpleasant odour in it, but it is used up, it is stale. He will also notice the dust which rests on everything. In a city the daily grinding of millions of wheels over thousands of miles of roads fills the air with an acrid, almost impalpable powder, which finds its way even through closed ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... was, in Thackeray, so palpable to Thackeray himself that in his original preface to Pendennis, when he began to be aware that his reputation was made, he tells his public what they may expect and what they may not, and makes his joking complaint of the readers ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... where it was not quite so dark, there to await the approach of Wicker Bonner, who leisurely but laughingly inspected the exterior of the house and the grounds adjoining. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, except as to dilapidation, he rejoined the party with palpable displeasure in his face. ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... March stood at the bedside gazing down into the girl's face. It was as if his presence there were palpable to her. She opened her eyes sleepily, smiled a fleeting contented smile and held up her arms to her lover. He smiled, too, and bent down and kissed her. Then as the arms that had clasped his neck slipped down he straightened, nodded to John and went back to the door. John followed and for a moment, ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... The last visit was to Fuseli, who had a great reputation for the terrible, both as artist and as man. The gallery into which the visitor was ushered was so full of devils, witches, ghosts, blood and thunder, that it was a palpable relief when nothing more alarming appeared than a little old and lion-faced man, attired in a flannel dressing-gown, with the bottom of Mrs. Fuseli's work-basket on his head! Fuseli, who had just been appointed Keeper of Academy, received the young man kindly, praised ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... things come to an end he will still endure. That a being beyond my comprehension should give life to other beings, this is merely difficult and beyond my understanding; but that Being and Nothing should be convertible terms, this is indeed a palpable ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... lyrics in our literature which have no palpable or deducible philosophy; but they are the utterance of deep, serious, imaginative natures, and they reach our minds and hearts. Wordsworth's "Daffodils," his "Cuckoo," his "Skylark," and scores of others, live because they have the freshness and spontaneity ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... that of medical men leads them to observe only, or chiefly, palpable and permanent organic changes are often just as wrong in their opinion of the result as those who do not observe at all. For instance, there is a broken leg; the surgeon has only to look at it once to know; it will not be different if he sees it in the morning ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... of Chief Magistrate as the executive agent of the whole country, bound to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and specially enjoined by the Constitution to give information to Congress on the state of the Union, it would be palpable neglect of duty on my part to pass over a subject like this, which beyond all things at the present time vitally concerns individual ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce
... place attempt to weave the moral which nevertheless lies hid in his unrequited life. At that time the number of Lamb's old intimates was gradually diminished. The eternally recurring madness of his sister was more frequent. The hopelessness of it—if hope indeed ever existed—was more palpable, more depressing. His own spring of mind was fast losing its power of rebound. He felt the decay of the active principle, and now confined his efforts to morsels of criticism, to verses for albums, and small contributions to periodicals, which (excepting only the "Popular Fallacies") it has not ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... that a noble oak of the forest is to be hewn down, and then planed and polished by carpenters and joiners, merely that you may come up and down these steps a little more easily? No, no, such a magnificent banister is a most palpable superfluity." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... R and O, which appear to have been written by careful scribes, and are of an older date than E and the printed editions, have been adopted. In our text, through the ignorance of the scribe, who had no gazetteer or map to turn to, some palpable errors have crept in. For instance, in naming Amalfi, already mentioned on p. 9, the error in spelling it [Hebrew:] has been repeated. Patzinakia (referred to on p. 12, as trading with Constantinople) ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... don't want to say nothing but what 'he' says!" Mitchy laughed. "He can't at all events have mentioned to you any such link as the one that in my case is now almost the most palpable. I'VE got a wife, ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... at all sure whether the look she gave him was one of astonishment or resentment. At any rate, it was a quick glance, followed by the palpable suppression of words that first came to her lips, and the substitution of ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... enmity of the born aristocrat, who is now called upon to give up the titles, dignities, and so-called honours, which, though stolen from the people, he has been taught to look upon as his right. He contends for a palpable possession which his hand has grasped, which he has tasted and long enjoyed. I know that he is a robber and a spoiler of the poor; I know, in short, that he is an aristocrat, and as such I would have him annihilated, abolished from ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... shall appear to many as a promoter not only of strange but of dangerous doctrines; it will therefore be necessary to proceed with caution."[20] Had either Gadsden or Laurens entertained thoughts of launching an anti-slavery campaign, however, the palpable hopelessness of such a project in their community must have dissuaded them. The negroes of the rice coast were so outnumbering and so crude that an agitation applying the doctrine of inherent liberty and equality to them could only have had the effect ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... clothes he wore in the dock bore their own witness to his guilt, and the court saw the police-sergeant produce a scrap of cloth torn from the guilty man's back, which exactly fitted a rent in the prisoner's ulster. The whole case would be a case of criminality too gross and palpable to merit a syllable of comment but for the astounding assurance with which the accused adhered to his plea in the face of evidence that was so complete as to make denial little more than a farce. He denied that he was Paul Drayton, and said his name was Paul Ritson. He was identified ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... view of the universe is mostly a view of the civilised society in which he lives. Other men and women are so much more grossly and so much more intimately palpable to his perceptions, that they stand between him and all the rest; they are larger to his eye than the sun, he hears them more plainly than thunder, with them, by them, and for them, he must live and die. And hence the laws that affect his ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... On the following day, 30th of June, Mayenne was dining with the Archbishop of Lyons, Peter d'Espinac; President Lemaitre was sent for, and the wrath of the lieutenant-general burst forth. "The insult put upon me is too palpable for me to be quiet under it; since I am played fast and loose with in that way, I have resolved to quash the decree of the Parliament. The Archbishop of Lyons is about to explain to you ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... was about to deliver an allocution of reproof to them in equal shares, being entirely unsuspicious of any other reason for the alarum than this palpable outbreak of a rivalry that he would have inclined to attribute to the charms of Chloe, when the house-door swung wide for them to enter, and the landlady of the house, holding clasped hands at full stretch, implored them to run up to the poor lady: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Belem, the Duke de Palmela, who presented its members (as Minister for Foreign Affairs), asked me to excuse his hurrying through the ceremony, as his Duchess was in the act of bringing her fifteenth child into the world. A palpable proof this, given by the head of its Foreign Office, of the vitality of the Portuguese nation! Some days later the Duke, a diplomatist of the old school, who added to his own considerable wit and cleverness ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... which it requires;—nor, indeed, would less than an intimate acquaintance with all the tongues and traditions of all nations that are, or ever have been, upon the face of the earth—so intermingled are divine revelations, corrupt mythologies, wild and palpable fictions, fantastic imaginings, exaggerated allegories, poetical machinery, and the very insanity of human hopes, fears, and wishes, &c. &c., in the great and never to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... it gave out some chance, though they cannot think what, might turn up in their favour. It was a mere reflection founded on probabilities still unscrutinised—the last tenacious struggle before hope gives way to utter and palpable despair. Hamersley's words had for an instant cheered them; for the thought of the Indians setting fire to the waggons had not occurred to any of the party. It was a thing unknown to their experience; and, at such a distance, might be ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... forefathers were the conquerors of thine! The first of the Maccabees drove thy people out of Hebron; Hyrcanus forced them to be circumcised!" Then, with all the contempt of the patrician for the plebeian, the hatred of Jacob for Esau, she reproached him for his indifference towards palpable outrages to his dignity, his weakness regarding the Phoenicians, who had been false to him, and his cowardly attitude towards the people who detested and ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert
... huge V toward the Water Gap, drawing the foam of many a mountain creek down through that matchless passway. Over the hills which tumble steeply on either side soared the vast Andes of the clouds, hanging palpable in the sapphire of a summer sky. What height on height of craggy softness on those silver steeps! What rounded bosomy curves of golden vapour; what sharpened pinnacles of nothingness, spiring in ever-changing contour into the intangible blue! Man the finite, reveller in the explainable ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... parents in a greater degree. In the famous Leicestershire breed of sheep, the object is to procure them with small heads and small legs. Proceeding upon these breeding maxims, it is evident that we might go on till the heads and legs were evanescent quantities, but this is so palpable an absurdity that we may be quite sure that the premises are not just and that there really is a limit, though we cannot see it or say exactly where it is. In this case, the point of the greatest degree of improvement, or the smallest size of the head and legs, may be ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... and simpler distinction between the two cases. The mistake, the gross, palpable mistake, which these gentlemen fall into in making this comparison, lies at the threshold. The House of Commons, in its discretion, used to grant, and sometimes now grants, supplies to the King. The American Congress, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... And I who long to reach The stars will not, howe'er, select the needs Of this our age for burden of my song; For these, increasing constantly, are still By merchants and by work-shops amply met; But I will sing of hope, of hope whereof The gods now grant a pledge so palpable. The first-fruits of our new felicity Behold, in the enormous growth of hair, Upon the lip, upon ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... you the Frowns of a Lady prevent, She too has this palpable Failing, The Perquisite softens her into Consent; That Reason ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... because thereby We live with sense, though intellect be not In any part: as oft the body is said To have good health (when health, however, 's not One part of him who has it), so they place The sense of mind in no fixed part of man. Mightily, diversly, meseems they err. Often the body palpable and seen Sickens, while yet in some invisible part We feel a pleasure; oft the other way, A miserable in mind feels pleasure still Throughout his body—quite the same as when A foot may pain without ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... does apprehend is colour and the coloured thing, and those other qualities (viz. extension, &c.), which inhere in the thing together with colour. Nor does feeling do so; for it has for its objects things palpable. Nor have the ear and the other senses mere Being for their object; but they relate to what is distinguished by a special sound or taste or smell. Hence there is not any source of knowledge causing us to ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... and other masters, have frequently availed themselves of them. The comic effect arises from our having herein a pretty obvious demonstration of the mind's dependence on external things: we have, as it were, motives assuming a palpable form. In Comedy these chastisements hold the same place that violent deaths, met with heroic magnanimity, do in Tragedy. Here the resolution remains unshaken amid all the terrors of annihilation; the man perishes but his principles ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... WILL NOT IDENTICAL.—I have had occasion to remark that the modern psychologist draws no such sharp line between desire and volition as the psychologist of an earlier time. That some distinction should be drawn seems palpable. It is not without significance that immemorial usage sanctions this distinction. The ancient Stoic's quarrel was with the desires, not with the will. The will was treated as a master endowed with rightful authority; the desires were subjects, often in rebellion, but justly to be held ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... before the rest of the school, and Miss Teddington, who was in a hurry to pack her boxes of snowdrops, concluded that they must have been in front with Ulyth and Lizzie, and did not stop to remember that she had left them tying Winnie's shoelace by the roadside. It was seldom that such a palpable lapse escaped her keen eye and even keener comprehension; so they might thank their fortunate stars for their escape. Hattie and Winnie made great capital out of the adventure, and recounted all the details, much exaggerated, to a thrilled ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... species and domestic races; the most experienced naturalists have often disputed whether the latter are descended from one or from several aboriginal stocks, and this clearly shows that there is no palpable difference between ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... join a body of men pledged to commit murder—that he was to become a murderer, and that he was to become so that very night. His feeling had been confined to the desire of revenging himself for the gross and palpable injuries with which he had been afflicted, whilst endeavouring to do the best he could for his father, his sister, and his house. But now—confronted with Ussher—asked by him as to the plots of the men whom he was on the point of joining, and directly questioned ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... come. If they failed, their estates would be confiscated, and their lives taken unless they could escape. I found a messenger who consented to tell the king of my desire to see him. He returned to say that the king was sleeping—a palpable falsehood. In a huff, I walked home to breakfast, leaving my attendants, Maula and Uledi, behind to make explanations. They saw the king, who simply asked, "Where is Bana?" And on being told that I came, but went off again, he said, as I was informed, "That is a lie, for ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... teaches us much in this matter. When we think of the cardinal, urgent and constant need we have to preserve our bodies and to raise our souls, of the special facilities given to each of us, in this field, to experiment continually on ourselves and on others, of the palpable injury by which the wrongness of a medical or pedagogical practise is both made manifest and punished at once, we are amazed at the stupidity and especially at the persistence of errors. We may easily find their origin ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... reign of William Rufus. This he hurriedly adapted to include the satirical characters suggested by "Poetaster," and fashioned to convey the satire of his reply. The absurdity of placing Horace in the court of a Norman king is the result. But Dekker's play is not without its palpable hits at the arrogance, the literary pride, and self-righteousness of Jonson-Horace, whose "ningle" or pal, the absurd Asinius Bubo, has recently been shown to figure forth, in all likelihood, Jonson's friend, the poet Drayton. Slight and hastily adapted as is "Satiromastix," especially in a comparison ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... with the caution of a black-leg; made a bet, and the moment the odds turned in my favour secured myself by taking them; hedged again, as the advantage changed; and thus made myself a certain winner. I exulted in my own clearness of perception! and wondered that so palpable a method of winning ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... palpable evasion of justice through obstinate non responsion, will it please the Court to overrule the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... a child a rainbow is a real thing—substantial and palpable; its limb rests on the side of yonder hill; he believes that he can appropriate it to himself; and when, instead of gems and gold hid in its radiant bow, he finds nothing but damp mist—cold, dreary drops of disappointment—that disappointment ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... we have treated the weather as an astronomical phenomenon, calculated by simple formulae, and that the evidence of its truth has been almost daily presented to us, so as to render it by this time one of the most familiar and palpable of all the great fundamental laws of nature. True, we have neither had means nor leisure to render the theory as perfect as we might have done, the reason of which we have ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... my life began to grow burthensome. The lies became too manifold, too palpable, and, to me, too onerous. They had been extremely inconsistent—ridicule began to raise her hissing head. Shame became my constant companion—yet I lied on. I think I may safely say, that I would, at the time that I was giving myself out as a future king, have scorned the least violation of the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... then contradicting him. Half an hour or less would, I hoped, show that the stranger astern was a real palpable vessel, with human beings on board who would relieve our distress, and no phantom craft. Poor McAllister sank down in the stern-sheets again through weakness, but continued to gaze at the stranger, as we all did, with our eyeballs almost ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... "Now," said he "I will show you the old hen that laid them." But it happened that the negro boy to whom had been intrusted the duty of supplying "properties," had made a slight mistake. The result was that Hawley triumphantly produced not "the old hen that laid the eggs," but a most palpable and evident rooster. The audience roared with laughter, and Hawley, completely taken aback, fled in confusion to his dressing room, uttering furious maledictions upon the boy who was the author ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... cork and proceeded to draw out incredible quantities of absorbent cotton. When there was no more to come, a faint tinkle sounded within the blue depths, and Mr. O'Shea, reversing the bottle, found himself possessed of a trampled and disfigured sleeve link of most palpable brass. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... in my bones; The moonlight on the stones Is pale, and palpable, and cold; I am as ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... own check for $240, and had it in his hatband with the $240,000 dummy check. The plan is palpable enough. When the messenger brought the bonds Brea, or Newman, was going to say: "All right, I have the check here; bring the bonds and we will go to the Chemical Bank and get them to certify my check." Then when at the bank he would take out both checks, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... intruded upon his hospitality. To say no more, the conformation of his visiter's feet was sufficiently remarkable—he maintained lightly upon his head an inordinately tall hat—there was a tremulous swelling about the hinder part of his breeches—and the vibration of his coat tail was a palpable fact. Judge, then, with what feelings of satisfaction our hero found himself thrown thus at once into the society of a person for whom he had at all times entertained the most unqualified respect. He was, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... policy, is a vote to reduce the pay and pensions for our troops, and to annihilate the allotments made by them for the support of their families. What effect such a policy must have on our troops and the maintenance of the Union is but too palpable. It is disbandment and dissolution. Every such vote is given also to reduce the value of the wages of labor, and for increased taxation, to the extent, as we have seen, of $408,800,000 per annum. It is a vote also to reduce our exports and revenue from customs, to paralyze ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... day! But, even with these heaping the hotel blankets and com-forters, we shivered, and a superannuated odor that had lurked in the recesses of those rooms, to which the sun or wind had never pierced, grew with the growing cold, and haunted the night like something palpable as well as sensible—the materialization of smells dead and buried there long ago. It was wonderful how little way the electric bulb shed its beams in that naughty air; it would not even light the page which at one time was opened in the vain hope that the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... preparing him the best dinner she could to cheer him when he came home at noon. To add a touch of grace she decided to set a bowl of petunias in front of him. He loved the homely little flowers in their calico finery, like farmers' daughters at a picnic. Their cheap and almost palpable fragrancy delighted him when it powdered the air. She hoped that they would bring a smile to him at noon, for he could still ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... supreme importance of the Louisiana purchase and its value as a national accomplishment, when seen in the incidents of its short history and in the light of its present and prospective effects, and judged solely by its palpable and independent merits, can not be better characterized than by the adoption of the following language from the pen of a brilliant American historian: "The annexation of Louisiana was an event so portentious as to defy measurement. It gave a new face to politics ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... penetrate and pervade The White Ship; and The King's Tragedy is saturated in the spirit of them. We do not speak of the incidents associated with the wraith that haunts the isles, but of the less palpable touches which convey the scarce explicable sense of a change of voice when the king sings of the pit that is ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... steps. She stumbled as she left the bungalow and stopped to catch her breath as if the oppression of the room in which she had immured her darling had infected the sunny air of this glorious day and made free breathing an impossibility. The weights on her feet were so palpable to her that she unconsciously looked down at them. This was how she came to notice the dust on her shoes. Alive to the story it told, she burst the spell which held her and made a bound toward ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... predilection of these belles from their exterior, a stranger would, nine times out of ten, be led into a palpable error. He might naturally conclude them to be attached to a republican system, since they have, in general, adopted the Athenian form of attire as their model; though they have not, in the smallest degree, adopted the simple manners of that people. Their arms are ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... universal experience. Great is the art of interpretation; and by a natural process, which when once discovered was always going on, what could not be altered was explained away. And so without any palpable inconsistency there existed side by side two forms of religion, the tradition inherited or invented by the poets and the customary worship of the temple; on the other hand, there was the religion of the philosopher, who was dwelling ...
— The Republic • Plato
... died on his feet," she explained in a palpable excuse of her husband's ignorance; "he don't read the papers nor nothing. But of course I've heard of you, Mr. Bowman. We're glad ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... she looked at him so, and then resuming her imperious air with a palpable effort and forcing a smile to her lips, she gathered up her trailing gown and passed slowly beneath the colonnade, Calvert following at her side. As she turned away, he stooped quickly and picked up the white rose she had worn where it had ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... palpable insincerity in these words; for if the road which they had taken did not lead to the bridge, neither did it lead to the chateau, and the mistake, if there was ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... stumbling-block be continually thrown in the way of those who labour to perfect it, the labourers may be discouraged, and the work be indefinitely postponed. Let all such then guard against a blind opposition, or an attempt to explain away palpable facts, merely because they lead to principles which are new, or to conclusions which are at variance with their pre-conceived opinions. If they persevere in a blind opposition, they may find at last that they have been resisting truth, and defrauding their ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... the theatre in a roar. This was notably true of Burton and of William Warren. The glance, motion, carriage, manner, and the pause and stillness of such a man, instil merriment. Cibber says that Robert Nokes had a palpable simplicity of nature which was often as unaccountably diverting in his common speech as on the stage, John E. Owens, describing the conduct of a big bee in an empty molasses barrel, once threw a circle of his hearers, of whom I was one, almost into convulsions of laughter. ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... (attack) 716; whip &c (punish) 972. come into a collision, enter into collision; collide; sideswipe; foul; fall foul of, run foul of; telescope. throw &c (propel) 284. Adj. impelling &c v.; impulsive, impellent^; booming; dynamic, dynamical; impelled &c v.. Phr. a hit, a very palpable hit [Hamlet]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... from the publication something more substantial than fame, yet in some degree the expression of it,—something which shall give him assurance that his volumes are on thousands of parlor tables, because the proofs of it are palpable in the increased comforts afforded to his old age. And certainly the poet deserves a wide circle of readers. Though he does not succeed in the delineation of the great and grand passions of our nature, he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... avert; but if the truth is that He might have averted it by the simple exercise of His will, but refused to do so, coldly looking on at our grief—not from afar, but close by—then we can only say that no God at all were better than that. It seems, then, as though, in order to escape from palpable inconsistency between theory and fact, we should have to make a surrender either of His immanence, or His omnipotence, or His benevolence, or the reality ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... fresh danger, Bruno strained his ears to catch at least an inkling of its precise nature ere the trouble could fairly close in; but only silence surrounded them,—silence, and an almost palpable gloom. ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... incompetence. It was mainly composed of girls of sixteen and seventeen who could not reach the standard of the Sixth, and who went by the nickname of "owls" or "stupids." The prospect of being relegated to such an intellectual backwater spread palpable dismay over Winona's face. Miss Bishop smiled ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... against which I had been fretting inwardly, night and day, had broken. To my surprise I discovered that my mind was freed from all mistiness. I could see everything relating to Bimala as if vividly pictured on a camera screen. It was palpable that she had specially dressed herself up to coax that order out of me. Till that moment, I had never viewed Bimala's adornment as a thing apart from herself. But today the elaborate manner in which she had done up her hair, in the English fashion, made it appear a mere decoration. That ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... and foliage rise, does not pass with him for the essential and innermost principle of all. It is rather that which, being itself poorest, the poorest of faculties can apprehend. As physical mechanism, it is that which is most palpable, and undeniable by any, because it is that which lies nearest the nothingness whence it has been hardly rescued, and is therefore, most akin to minds in whose meanness of structure or culture, even human existence might seem ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Johnson, in a tone of displeasure, asked him, 'Why do you praise Anson [1130]?' I did not trouble him by asking his reason for this question. He proceeded, 'Here is an errour, Sir; you have made Genius feminine.' [1131] 'Palpable, Sir; (cried the enthusiast) I know it. But (in a lower tone) it was to pay a compliment to the Duchess of Devonshire, with which her Grace was pleased. She is walking across Coxheath, in the military uniform, and I suppose her to be the Genius of Britain[1132].' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... assassination was related with palpable indifference. She stated the facts. "The woman seemed to gasp while she had her hand up; she struck with no force; and she has since been inanimate, I hear. The doctor says that a spasm of the heart seized her when ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ax I jumped over his body, got to the horse and rode away," his deep voice concluded. He spoke with a palpable effort and almost ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... truth. Lincoln's defects in 1860 limited his vision. Nevertheless, to the solitary distant thinker, shut in by the near horizon of political Springfield, there was every excuse for the error. The palpable evidence all confirmed it. What might have contradicted it was a cloud of witnesses, floating, incidental, casual, tacit. Just what a nature like Lincoln's, if only he could have met them, would have perceived and comprehended; what ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the Commissioners of this Kingdom unto England, which are owned in the late Declaration to the Kingdom of England, as the sense of this Kingdom) considered in relation to Religion makes the danger yet the greater and more palpable, yea, may reach further to shake and unsettle Religion established in this Land; If to the premises this be added which is not only often declared, but also demanded, That his Majestie be brought ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... loomed, a cratered, jagged globe of desolation indescribable; of sheer, bitter cold incarnate and palpable; of stark, sharp contrasts. Gigantic craters, in whose yawning depths no spark of warmth had been generated for countless cycles of time, were surrounded by vast plains eroded to the dead level of a windless sea. Every ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... The meed of praise is thine; But still let his be his and mine be mine. I say no more; but how can you for- swear Outspoken Jonson, he who knew me well; [106] So, too, the epitaph which still you read? Think you they faced my sepulchre with lies — Gross lies, so evident and palpable That every townsman must have wot of it, And not a worshipper within the church But must have smiled to see the marbled fraud? Surely this touches you? But if by chance My reasoning still leaves you obdurate, I'll lay one final plea. I pray you look ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... palpable and even discreditable mistakes. Hauling to windward—away—when the Marlborough forced him ahead, abandoned that ship to overwhelming numbers, and countenanced the irresolution of the Dorsetshire and others. Continuing to stand north, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... pleasure, at another the willing or passive instruments of pain, their influences and changes are as varied and boundless as the empire of thought itself." Through their silent expressions the mind reveals its workings to the external world in signs more rapid and as palpable as those uttered by the tongue. It is "the eyes alone that stamp the face with the outward symbol of animation and vitality," and which endue it with the visible "sanctity of reason." The eye is, indeed, the chief and most speaking ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... was filled with her. I closed my eyes and listened; I could almost hear the rustle of her dress on the gravel. Why do we make such an ado about death? What is it, after all, but a sort of refinement of life? She died ten years ago, and yet, as I sat there in the sunny stillness, she was a palpable, audible presence. I went afterwards into the gallery of the palace, and wandered for an hour from room to room. The same great pictures hung in the same places, and the same dark frescoes arched above ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... ain't much need o' lockin' YOUR door," he retorted darkly; "not from what I saw when I was in your studio!" He should have stopped there, for the hit was palpable and justified; but in his resentment he overdid it. "You needn't be scared of anybody's cartin' off THEM pitchers, young feller! WHOOSH! An' f'm the luks of the CLO'ES I saw hangin' on the wall," he continued, growing more nettled as I smiled cheerfully upon him, "I don' b'lieve ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... us climbed up to the masthead, having in his teeth a piece of the True Cross set in a silver heart; and called aloud to the wild weather, "Save, Lord, we perish!" as was said of old by very sacred persons. To which palpable truth so urgently declared an answer was vouchsafed, not indeed according to our full desires, yet (doubtless) level with our deserts. The wind veered to the north; and though it abated nothing of its force, preserved us from ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... Mediums, as intermediaries, have enabled spirit people to comfort the sad and encourage the weak; to relieve the doubter and console the bereaved; to confirm the old-world traditions regarding bygone spirit intervention and revelation, and supplement our hopes and intuitions with proof palpable. Present day experiences of inspiration and spirit manifestation make credible and acceptable many things in ancient records which must otherwise have been discarded as superstitious and false. Spiritualism redeems the so-called 'supernatural' ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... decanter of light wine which had been ordered by her physicians, and hastened across the chamber to procure it. But, as I stepped beneath the light of the censer, two circumstances of a startling nature attracted my attention. I had felt that some palpable although invisible object had passed lightly by my person; and I saw that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich lustre thrown from the censer, a shadow—a faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect—such ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and chuckled. In fact, he chuckled all the way home. In the vestibule they met Mr. Austen Vane and Mr. Thomas Gaylord, the latter coming forward with a certain palpable embarrassment. All through the evening Tom had been trying to account for her presence at the meeting, until Austen had begged him to keep his speculations to himself. "She can't be engaged to him!" Mr. Gaylord had exclaimed more than once, under his breath. "Why not?" Austen ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... editions I have seen of this translation, the following very palpable errors exist, which I do not remember to have seen noticed. The first of these errors is contained in book ix. lines 325, 326, ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... gone to? The very emptiness of that once potent phrase is beyond description! A regiment of Bryans could not compete with Mr. Roosevelt in harrying the trusts, in bringing wealth to its knees, and in converting into the palpable actualities of action the wildest dreams of Bryan's campaign orators. He has outdone ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... most gracious nod, and then went outside of the screen, giving me no time for thanks. I was, indeed, overjoyed; not so much at the promotion as at the change in the captain's manner towards me: a change so palpable that it filled me with the fondest anticipations. I remained for a long while reflecting upon my future prospects. As a lieutenant of the same ship I should be more in contact with him: he could now converse and take notice of me without its being considered ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... hard for me." And a voice came: "Eternity is here, and thou art judged." And then Christ stood before him and said: "Thou hast preferred the finite when the infinite was in thy power. Earthly joys were palpable and tainted. The heavenly joys flitted before thee, faint, and rare, and taintless. Thou hast chosen those of ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... had over seventy thousand men in line, and ready to mass on any given point. He ought to have known that Lee was too astute a tactician seriously to attack him in front, while Jackson was manoeuvring to gain his right. And all Lee's conduct during the day was palpable evidence that he was seeking ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... looked harried by his work. The big, cluttered place heaped high with piles of curiously shaped pieces of wood, filled with oddly contrived saws and lathes and knives and buffers for sawing and turning and polishing and fitting those bits of wood, was brooded over as by something palpable by an emanation of order. Mr. Welles did not understand a detail of what he was looking at, but from the whole, his mind, experienced in business, took in a singularly fresh impression that everybody there knew what he was up to, in every sense of ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... compromise with his pride by a submission to his will. This short plan of policy is the only counsel which will obtain a hearing. We plunge into a dark gulf with all the rash precipitation of fear. The nature of courage is, without a question, to be conversant with danger: but in the palpable night of their terrors, men under consternation suppose, not that it is the danger which by a sure instinct calls out the courage to resist it, but that it is the courage which produces the danger. They therefore seek for a refuge from their fears in the fears themselves, and consider a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... does the increased variety of parties comprised within the Union, increase this security. Does it, in fine, consist in the greater obstacles opposed to the concert and accomplishment of the secret wishes of an unjust and interested majority? Here, again, the extent of the Union gives it the most palpable advantage. The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; ...
— The Federalist Papers
... The palpable sense of mystery in the desert air breeds fables, chiefly of lost treasure. Somewhere within its stark borders, if one believes report, is a hill strewn with nuggets; one seamed with virgin silver; an old clayey water-bed where Indians scooped up ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... known that the signs of her past tears were so palpable as to call forth remark from everybody she met, as it appeared they were doing, she might have remained at home. Putting on a gay face, she laughed off the matter. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... events, was a state of things that was not going to endure, became palpable about that time to the philosophic mind. The transition from the rule of a sovereign who was mistress of 'the situation,' who understood that it was a popular power which she was wielding—the transition from the rule of a Queen instructed in the policy of a tyranny, inducted by nature into its ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... origins long antedating Marshall's chief justiceship. On the other hand, there is no public career in American history which ever built so largely upon this pervasive trait of the national outlook as did Marshall's, or which has contributed so much to render it effective in palpable institutions. ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... learned lawyers, presidents, counsellors, advocates, procurers, attorneys, and other glossers and commentators on the venerable rubric, De frigidis et maleficiatis. You are, in truth, sir, as it seems to me (excuse my boldness if I have transgressed), in a most palpable and absurd error to attribute my horns to cuckoldry. Diana wears them on her head after the manner of a crescent. Is she a cucquean for that? How the devil can she be cuckolded who never yet was married? Speak somewhat more correctly, I beseech you, lest she, being offended, furnish you with a pair ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... who allowed no point to slumber. The great features in favour of the Brighton Company were—first, that their line was acknowledged by all to be well connected; secondly, that Parliament had never granted a competing line of as palpable a character as the Beckenham; thirdly, that it had been shown by a committee of inquiry that competing lines invariably combine to the detriment of the public; and lastly, that the opposition line was not a bona fide scheme, and not required for the traffic of the ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... true! But why are they true? Because real epileptics are so common in the underworld, and their sufferings so palpable and striking, that parasites, even though afflicted themselves, nay, because of their own disabilities, can and do simulate the weird sufferings of epileptics. Will mendicity societies, when they tell us about, enumerate for us, and convict for us the ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... suspicious of this action. To me it was palpable that, animated by the lure of money and foiled in their efforts, they were prepared to go the length of concocting evidence against me. At least I thought so, and summarily frustrated their action. I went to them and by the aid of signs demonstrated that I wanted the ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Dust everywhere—choking, palpable dust; and then as from afar off came a faint roar, increasing each moment, till, with a furious rush, a fierce wind came tearing through the ruins of the smitten town, sweeping all before it, so that we had to cower down and seek protection from the storm of ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... that he found himself calling the whole exhibited art into question. What was it after all at the best and why had people given it so high a place? Its weakness, its limits broke upon him; tacitly blaspheming he looked with a lustreless eye at the palpable, polished, "toned" objects designed for suspension on hooks. That is, he blasphemed if it were blasphemy to feel that as bearing on the energies of man they were a poor and secondary show. The human force producing them was so far from one ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... when I entered the Senate. Some time ago it was stated in your paper that I was worth millions. A very small fraction, indeed, of one million dollars will cover all I am worth. My property consists mainly of real estate, palpable to the eye, and the rest of it is chiefly in a railroad with which I was connected ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... till he makes a false coinage and deceives himself. Many a man can travel to the very bourne of Heaven, and yet want confidence to put down his half-seeing. Sancho will invent a journey heavenward as well as any body. We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if we do not agree, seems to put its hand into its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive; a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. How beautiful are the retired ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... nature far more than the great and uniform action of health. It is not the chorea that used to be described, in which there was an irresistible impulse to excessive action, and which was best combated by complete muscular exhaustion; but the foundation of this disease is palpable debility. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... representations to represent the Virgin with a sword in her bosom, and even with seven swords in allusion to the seven sorrows. This very material and palpable version of the allegorical prophecy (Luke ii, 35) has been found extremely effective as an appeal to the popular feelings, so that there are few Roman Catholic churches without such a painful and literal interpretation of the text. It occurs ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... is a man who strives to make his visions palpable, Wixon thought of his own home town and the colony of boys that prospered there in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... palpable that Dick could not well ignore it. Dropping the key back into his pocket, he turned to stare ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... the disaster in a way that was, so to speak, visible and palpable, during these hours in which each of his victims remained locked up, as though in a torture-chamber. Nothing could have distracted his mind from its obsession, and even the fear of that accursed war which he had ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... matter-of-fact business-like activity of simple blue country has been already alluded to. This attribute renders in it a plain palpable brick dwelling-house allowable; though a thing which, in every country but the simple blue, compels every spectator of any feeling to send up aspirations, that builders who, like those of Babel, have brick for stone, may be put, like those ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... result of progress surely every one is assured. In the matter of thoughtless and instinctive cruelty—and that is a very fundamental matter—mankind mends steadily. I wonder and doubt if in the whole world at any time before this an aged, ill-clad woman, or a palpable cripple could have moved among a crowd of low-class children as free from combined or even isolated insult as such a one would be to-day, if caught in the rush from a London Council school. Then, for all our sins, I am sure ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... great or small,] gets access to this Lord of theirs. Is it, then, worth while to pass through this fire to the possible Moloch who sits beyond? Will this process of parting with coin—this Valley of the Shadow of Death—lead them to any palpable advantage? Perhaps the War-Lord with his red right hand can add guns to their salute; perhaps he will speak a recommendatory word to his caste-fellow, the ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... the mightiest monarch's arm, Vain his loud threat and impotent his frown! How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar! The weight of his exterminating curse How light! and his affected charity, To suit the pressure of the changing times, What palpable deceit! but for thy aid, Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend, Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men, And heaven with slaves! Thou taintest all thou ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... merging into the soft grey sky; and every now and then as the wind served, a thick wreath of white vapour came by from the engine and hid all, eddying past the windows and then skimming off away over the snowy ground from which it would not lift; a more palpable veil for a moment of the distant things,—and then broken, scattered, fragmentary, lovely in its frailty and evanishing. It was a pretty afternoon, but a sober; and the bare black solitary trees near hand which the cars flew by, looked to Fleda constantly like finger-posts ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Rieux, heiress of vast estates in this region, were both surprised and gratified at enjoying the opportunity of listening to preachers whose voice had penetrated to almost every nook of France save this. So palpable were the effects, that D'Andelot's brief tour in Brittany furnished additional grounds for Henry's suspicions respecting the young nobleman's ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... paid them for its protection against precisely the kind of thing which they openly tolerated and encouraged; yes, and even the militia, the guarantee of law and order, Broadcastle's own command, were decked out in tinsel and pipeclay, strutting to music in a palpable bid for applause and admiration. And yonder—the tide of anarchy was slowly but surely rising about the Rathbawne Mills, presaging riot, bloodshed, God alone knew what!—but one thing, inevitably,—the absolute downfall of dignity and rout ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... experience tell awful stories about the miseries of boarding, and boarding-houses, and it is very clearly palpable to us that keepers of boarding-houses could a tale unfold of their own miseries, equal, if not double that of the luckless creatures who board. That housekeeping has its joys it would be vain to deny, but we need no ghost come from the grave to inform us that the secrets of the kitchen are ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... there—there at the very spot where that beautiful ship first appeared, which the cruel ocean dashed to fragments on these rocks of Shetland, floats her counterpart. Can it be her—the 'Saint Cecilia' herself? Is all that has passed for these long years a dream? No, no; it has been too real, too palpable, too full of pain, and sorrow, and hope deferred, to be a dream. Yet, what is that?—a ship, come to mock me, as others have done; first to raise my hopes that my long-lost son is on board, and again as ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... made this speech, which conveyed nothing but amazement to the mind of the Curate; and then he shook hands hastily, and hurried back again towards Grange Lane. If there had been either room or leisure in Frank Wentworth's mind for other thoughts, he might have laughed or puzzled over the palpable mystery; but as it was, he had dismissed the late Rector entirely from his mind before he reached the door of Mr Brown's room, where the lawyer was seated alone. John Brown, who was altogether a different type of man from Mr Waters, held out his hand to his visitor, and did not look at ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Horace Vernon was a modern villa of prosperous appearance; but, on this sunny September morning, a palpable atmosphere of gloom seemed to overlie it. This made itself perceptible even to the toughened and unimpressionable nerves of Inspector Dunbar. As he mounted the five steps leading up to the door, glancing meanwhile at the lowered ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... Mr. Burton, save this: that no one clever enough to be a forger would have put together documents so incoherent, and so incomplete. For the evidence of guilt which they contain is, after all, slight and indirect, and, moreover, superfluous altogether; seeing that Mary's guilt was open and palpable, before the supposed discovery of the letters, to every person at home and abroad who had any knowledge of the facts. As for the alleged inconsistency of the letters with proven facts: the answer is, that whosoever wrote the letters would be more likely ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... special brother—most sisters know what I mean by that term. Allan was undemonstrative; he seldom petted or made much of me, but a word from him was worth a hundred from Fred; and there was a quiet unspoken sympathy between us that was sufficiently palpable. If Allan wanted his gloves mended he always came to me, and not to Carrie. I was his chief correspondent, and he made me the confidante of his professional hopes and fears. In return, he good-humoredly interested himself in my studies, directed my ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... attracted to the candle, but the union produces misery and death to the unfortunate insect. Mere admiration is not love. The novelty wears off; the soul is sated with the idol it worshipped, and its former homage sinks into contempt. You seek the outward and palpable. I seek that which is unseen and true. But let us go to my father, he is fishing, and the evening is growing cold. If he stays out much longer in the damp meadow, he will ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... ground-floor windows, looking over the whole market-place, we had the endless tumult lying, as it were, palpable. All sorts of walkers, soldiers in uniform, marauders, stout but sorrowing citizens and peasants, women and children, crushed and jostled each other, amid vehicles of all forms: ammunition-wagons, baggage-wagons; carriages, single, double, and multiplex; such hundredfold miscellany of ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... experience in the construction of works for irrigation; and so far had the renown of their excellence in this branch reached, that in the eighth century, the king of Kashmir, Djaya-pida, "sent to Ceylon for engineers to form a lake."[1] But after the reign of Prakrama I., the decline was palpable and progressive. No great works, either of ornament or utility, no temples nor inland lakes, were constructed by his successors; and it is remarkable, that even during his own reign, artificers were brought from the coast ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... election of public agents who will carry out their wishes and instructions. Any attempt to coerce the President to yield his sanction to measures which he can not approve would be a violation of the spirit of the Constitution, palpable and flagrant, and if successful would break down the independence of the executive department and make the President, elected by the people and clothed by the Constitution with power to defend their rights, the mere instrument of a majority of Congress. A surrender on his part of the powers ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... race itself that holds him with a mesmeric spell, as century after century it unrolls its acts and scenes, under the indifferent stars. The continuity of life! The long, piteous "ascent of man," from those queer fossils in the Portland Quarries—to what we see today, so palpable, so real! And yet for all his tragic pity, Mr. Hardy is a sly and whimsical chronicler. He does not allow one point of the little jest the gods play on us—the little long-drawn-out jest—to lose ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... you sit at the hearth; And I know, by the tender expression I see, I know that my darling is musing of me. Does her thought dim the blaze?—Does it shed through the room A chilly, unseen, and yet palpable gloom? Ah! then we are equal! You share all my pain, And I halve your blessedness with ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... of the families concerned, the Alighieri, the Portinari, the Bardi. "If the statement was false," argues Dr. Edward Moore, England's foremost Dantian scholar, "it must have been so glaring and palpable that its assertion could only have covered Boccaccio with ridicule." The second authority for the statement that Beatrice Portinari had a real existence and was the object of Dante's love is furnished by Dante's own son Pietro, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... intimation passed also; yet, in passing, turned her head, slightly indeed, but perceptibly, towards the place where he remained fixed as an image. He marked the last wave of her veil—it was gone—and a darkness sunk upon his soul, scarce less palpable than that which almost immediately enveloped his external sense; for the last chorister had no sooner crossed the threshold of the door than it shut with a loud sound, and at the same instant the voices of the choir were silent, the lights of the chapel were at once extinguished, and Sir Kenneth ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... so palpable. Hermia looked from one to the other amusedly. Markham was following Olga's artistic dissertation with the eye of dubiety, but their ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... of New Hampshire and Vermont was held at Hartford, on the call of Massachusetts. The counsels of the extremists were rejected but the convention solemnly went on record to the effect that acts of Congress in violation of the Constitution are void; that in cases of deliberate, dangerous, and palpable infractions the state is duty bound to interpose its authority for the protection of its citizens; and that when emergencies occur the states must be their own judges and execute their own decisions. Thus New England answered the challenge ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... improve from the first day that berries were brought to the table, and thousands would exchange their sallow complexions, sick headaches, and general ennui for a breezy interest in life and its abounding pleasures, if they would only take nature's palpable hint, and enjoy the seasonable food she provides. Belles can find better cosmetics in the fruit garden than on their toilet tables, and she who paints her cheeks with the pure, healthful blood that is made from nature's choicest gifts, and the ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... black poplars shake them- selves over a pond, And rooks and the rising smoke-waves scatter and wheel from the works beyond; The air is dark with north and with sulphur, the grass is a darker green, And people darkly invested with purple move palpable through the scene. ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... was a seat of learning in the days of Friar Bacon. But the Friar is gone, and his learning with him. Nothing of him is left but the immortal nose, which, when his brazen head had tumbled to pieces, crying "Time's Past," was the only palpable fragment among its minutely pulverised atoms, and which is still resplendent over the portals of its cognominal college. That nose, sir, is the only thing to which I shall take off my hat, in all this Babylon ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... tradesman does not go out of his way to offend a good customer, even though that customer is also a keen trade competitor. He bestirs himself instead to keep ahead, if possible, of his rival without doing anything to destroy the mutually profitable trade relationship between them. Such palpable considerations of expediency are ignored by our latter-day Protectionists, among whom Mr. Williams deservedly ranks as a leading prophet. Their ambition is to induce the Colonies to discriminate in their tariffs between goods from the Mother Country ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox
... wandering feet The dark, unbottomed, infinite Abyss, And through the palpable obscure ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... always opens a Court ball, commences. The Grand-Dukes Nicholas and Michael, (brothers of the Emperor,) and the younger members of the Imperial family, take part in it, the latter evidently impatient for the succeeding quadrilles and waltzes. When this is finished, all palpable, obtrusive ceremony is at an end. Dancing, conversation, cards, strolls through the sumptuous halls, fill the hours. The Emperor wanders freely through the crowd, saluting here and there a friend, exchanging badinage with the wittiest ladies, (which they all seem at liberty to give back, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... this fact has been recognized by a publisher, for "The Vengeance of James Vansittart," whose title is included in the list given above, has appeared in a later edition as "James Vansittart's Vengeance"—a palpable improvement. ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... speaking or singing it—a kind of diluted worship. They had many Prophets, these Arabs; Teachers each to his tribe, each according to the light he had. But indeed, have we not from of old the noblest of proofs, still palpable to every one of us, of what devoutness and noblemindedness had dwelt in these rustic thoughtful peoples? Biblical critics seem agreed that our own Book of Job was written in that region of the world. I call that, apart from all theories ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... laughed outright at the palpable truth of the statement, and with that spontaneous laughter was borne away much of the hurt pride and resentment which had been galling her. It was, after all, absurd to take an irresponsible being like ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... hushed: silence fell like a palpable thing. Snarley Bob shifted his position: he raised his arms from the table, grasped his chin with his right hand; with his left he took the pipe from his mouth, and pointed its stem at the speaker; ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks |
