"Irresistibly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... McClellan reminds me of a story that I (A. Lincoln) heard in Washington, when I was here before. There was an editor in Rhode Island noted for his love of fun—it came to him irresistibly—and he could not help saying just what came to his mind. He was appointed postmaster by Tyler. Some time after Tyler vetoed the Bank Bill, and came into disrepute with the Whigs, a conundrum went the round of the papers. It was as follows: 'Why is John Tyler like an ass?' ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... Yet irresistibly the conviction was being forced upon him that Doggott had surmised aright. Circumstance backed up circumstance within his knowledge of or his experience with the man, all seeming to prove incontestably the truth of ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... commonplace. The very perfection of his work hinders the reader from perceiving at once how good of its kind it is.... With the added charm of a most delicate humor,—a real humor, mellow, tender, and informed by a singularly quaint and racy fancy,—his stories become irresistibly ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... innumerable; only rather prosaically completed by the exhibition of the every-day suit of the last Emperor of Austria, which, however affecting a spectacle for a simple-hearted Viennese—and they are mere babies in matters of royalty—irresistibly reminded one of Holywell Street, London, and cast-off regimentals. Laxenberg is distant less than a shilling ride, and about two hours' walk from Vienna; and, like our Hampton Court Palace, is ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... been something irresistibly attractive in the character of Pius IX. That illustrious champion of Ireland and of liberty, Daniel O'Connell, resolved, towards the close of his days, to visit Rome and pay the homage of a kindred spirit to the Holy ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... [who built it] was, there is something magnificent in the sweep of his ambition, and irresistibly interesting in the greatness of his fall. He was the last of those haughty prelates in the good old Catholic times who rose up from the dust of insignificance into the most lordly and overgrown ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... woman of my age, who has studied human nature for a long time, comes to know the weaknesses of boys, even while believing in them to the utmost. At times the temptation may be more than their powers of resistance can stand, and they are irresistibly impelled to take something that excites their cupidity. I am prone to believe most of them find it possible to resist such an inclination. Still, alas! I have known of occasions where the temptation carried the day. This seems ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... ago, other matters have more and more forced themselves upon our attention—matters lying outside our own life as a nation and over which we had no control, but which, despite our wish to keep free of them, have drawn us more and more irresistibly into their own ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... what did I care for Count Claudieuse? What did I care for your threats or for his hatred?" He said these words with perfect calmness, but with that cold, cutting tone which is as sharp as a sword, and with that positiveness which enters irresistibly into the mind. The countess was tottering, and stammered ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... is constructed with all the skill, science, and experience which engineers and artillerists can command, and therefore it would seem that instances of defective strength should not arise. Such cases, however, do occur everywhere, and irresistibly give rise to the suspicion that not only is the system of construction of guns of large caliber faulty, but also that the conditions of their manufacture must be considered as defective. Bearing in mind the enormous sums of money expended by every nation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... of curious form. The Baron, drawing out a private key, unlocked the casket, raised the lid, and produced a golden goblet of a singular and antique appearance, moulded into the shape of a rampant bear, which the owner regarded with a look of mingled reverence, pride, and delight, that irresistibly reminded Waverley of Ben Jonson's Tom Otter, with his Bull, Horse, and Dog, as that wag wittily denominated his chief carousing cups. But Mr. Bradwardine, turning towards him with complacency, requested him to observe this curious ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... moderation because (though I am ashamed to avow it) I have heard you was too impetuous. Pardon my mistake; and suffer me to entreat you to encourage a steady pursuit of republican measures in that way which will convince the bystanders that the actors are uniformly and irresistibly urged to pursue them by cool conviction, resulting from a candid, extensive, and philanthropic survey of the great object. Passion and caprice very illy become so awfully sublime an object as that for which well-informed ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... Forge with the founderman's daughter. Charcoal burners were lawless men, fugitive in character, often escaped from terms of indenture; Dan Hesa was, he knew, well liked by them; and the hazard created by his attraction to Fanny Gilkan drew Howat Penny irresistibly away from the superior ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... it will take two weeks to reach New York," cried Hans Fuellenberg, somewhat too forwardly, from where he was sitting a little distance away. He was still flirting with the English lady from Southampton; but now, irresistibly drawn to Mara's sphere, he jumped up and left her, bringing the tone that was agreeable to Mara and all her admirers, except Frederick von Kammacher. The jolliness of the little group communicated itself to the rest of the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... honest, substantial, and healthful; and never since have I desired to promote revolutionary changes in religion. Such changes, to be good, must be evolutionary, gradual, and in obedience to slowly increasing knowledge: such a change is now evidently going on, irresistibly, and quite as rapidly as ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Providence in a manner singularly displeasing to Justice, which claims the monopoly of that part. He had made up his mind to rid himself at all costs of the one obstacle in his way to happiness, and happiness for him meant capital trebled and marriage with the irresistibly charming portress. He had watched the little tailor drinking his herb-tea, and a thought struck him. He would convert the ailment into mortal sickness; his stock of old metals supplied him ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Keith had through his association with Murray become something of a prude in this respect. He could still descend to obscenities when his "manliness" had to be proved, but vulgarity repelled him irresistibly. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notion—science, that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... thought was that all was lost, and that my only chance for executing a retreat was to sacrifice my baggage. However, on reflection I determined to abide the issue. The groom was in the utmost alarm, both on his own account and on mine, but, in spite of this, so irresistibly had the sense of the ludicrous in this unhappy contretemps taken possession of his fancy, that he sang out a long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter, that might have wakened the Seven Sleepers. At the sound of this resonant merriment, within the very ears of insulted authority, I ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... respectable pair of whiskers remained. His hair behind being tied back tightly into a queue, the poor devil's eyes were almost starting from his head; while the corners of his mouth being likewise tugged towards the ears by the hair-dresser's operations, the expression of his countenance became irresistibly ludicrous. The astonished recruit's elbows were then brought in contact and fastened behind by a lashing, passed round and secured to the middle step of the ladder, so that he could not budge an inch from his position. One of the ship's pistols, fashioned ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... powerful attraction drew people to the capital; artisans and cottages, village shopkeepers, and merchants from small towns, all rushed there like the inflowing tide. It made one think of a number of moths blindly fluttering round a candle, or of the magnetic rock of Eastern fairy tales, irresistibly attracting ships to wreck themselves. It recalled to one the stories of California at the time of the gold fever. People's excited imaginations saw a veritable gold-mine in Berlin. The French indemnity flew to people's heads like champagne, and in a kind of drunken frenzy every one imagined himself ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... yielding occasional good things in wit or poetry: she was famed among her friends as a punster and parodist, and once answered at a dinner to a question what wine they used, "Oh, we drink Heidsick, but we keep mum." An irresistibly taking and womanly remark of hers, disposing in its own way of whole schemes of Calvinistic theology, was her reply to the argument for endless punishment: "Well, if God ever sends me into such misery, I know He will give me a constitution to bear it." Again, as the least laborious of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... a long, delicious, sobbing breath. "Why are you so irresistibly, so powerfully strong, Jack? Do you know,—you must know how wicked I have been! If you cast me out, it would only be a proper punishment. I don't mean that my lips or my hands are blurred with other men's kisses. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... meeting he had anticipated so long. The presence of others brought out in him, irresistibly, the repression of public display which was so strong an element ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an actual belief;—but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the bug being of solid gold, had a remarkable effect upon my fancy? ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... every commission to the governor of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick from 1763 to 1784, and after the treaty of peace of 1783, that the Province of Nova Scotia extended to the southern boundary of the Province of Quebec. It then irresistibly and inevitably follows that a west line from the Bay de Chaleurs, intersecting a due north line from the monument, is the identical northwest angle. Now a line from Mars Hill direct to Cape Rosiers, instead of being easterly, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... they have validity solely with reference to the experience which they set in order. Indeed, I cannot even complete that order. The orderly arrangement of parts of experience suggests, and suggests irresistibly, a perfect system. I can even define the ideas and ideals through which such a perfect system might be realized. But I cannot in the Kantian sense attach reality to it because it is not indispensable to experience. ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... to run. He laughed and caught hold of her. Slowly but irresistibly he drew her toward his heart. The dead-white of her face should have warned him. With a supreme effort she freed herself and struck him across the face; and there was a man's strength in the flat of her hand. Quick as a flash she whirled round and ran up the street, ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... very peculiar tone; setting it apart from the large mass of economic movements, placing it rather in a line with those vast religious developments which at the interval of ages have swept across humanity, irresistibly ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... with the amiable reader in front of a tobacconist's shop in the Regent Circus, Piccadilly; and as the principal attractions glare upon the astonishment of the spectators from the south window, it is there in imagination that we are irresistibly fixed. Before we dilate upon the delicious peculiarities of the exhibition, we deem it absolutely a matter of justice to the noble-hearted patriot who, imitative of the Greeks and Athenians of old, who gave the porticoes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... was unmistakably English in features, though strongly suggestive of the Boadicea. She was a large, heavily-boned woman, enormously covered with flesh, and she dandled across her knees that very unfeminine sceptre, an English cavalryman's sword. But the eye neglected these details, and was irresistibly drawn by the strongness of her face. Even Kettle ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... I don't know; but we have had a dreadful experience, whatever." And presently Valmai began to hum "By Berwen Banks," Cardo irresistibly joining in with his musical bass, and once again the old ballad floated down the valley and ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... vast extent, we are led to see in them a single homogeneous race, working without rivals, without obstacles, without contests, for they seem everywhere to have been free to choose what sites they would for their gigantic structures. And we are irresistibly led to believe that these conditions must have endured throughout a vast extent of time, for no nation which does not look back to a distant past will plan for a distant future. The spiritual sweep and view of the cromlech-builders are, ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... can not be overstated. God alone possesses Qualitative Infinity, which is strictly synonymous with absolute perfection; and the neglect of the distinction between this and Quantitative Infinity, leads irresistibly to pantheistic and materialistic notions. Spinozism is possible only by the elevation of 'infinite extension' to the dignity of a divine attribute. Dr. Samuel Clarke's identification of God's immensity with space has been shown by Martin to ultimate in Pantheism. From ratiocinations concerning ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... with both hands against his chest; but he swept her irresistibly up to him and kissed her clumsily. A cold rage possessed her. She stopped struggling; yet there was no need to continue—he released her immediately ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... are no friends to prudence: the springs of industry will relax, if cheerfulness be destroyed by anxiety; without hope men become reckless, and have a sullen pride in adding to the heap of their own wretchedness. He who feels that he is abandoned by his fellow-men will be almost irresistibly driven to care little for himself; will lose his self-respect accordingly, and with that loss what remains ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... her, she can wait, her injustice is of her girth. But for us it is too overwhelming, and our days are too few. Let us be satisfied that force should reign in the universe, but equity in our heart. Though the race be irresistibly, and perhaps justly, unjust, though even the crowd appear possessed of rights denied to the isolated man, and commit on occasions great, inevitable, and salutary crimes, it is still the duty of each individual of the race, of every member of the crowd, to ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... detained him; but, ha! ha! he charged the pike, and cleared it at a bound. Once the Cologne Diligence stopped the way: he charged the Diligence, he knocked off the cap of the conductor on the roof, and yet galloped wildly, madly, furiously, irresistibly on! Brave horse! gallant steed! snorting child of Araby! On went the horse, over mountains, rivers, turnpikes, apple-women; and never stopped until he reached a livery-stable in Cologne where his master was accustomed to put ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... expression, their kindliness. They were the eyes of the true visionary, but in such a personality they proclaimed the mystic who had retained his health of soul and body. Mr. Skale was surely a visionary, but just as surely a wholesome man of action—probably of terrific action. Spinrobin felt irresistibly drawn ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... Maximilian had done the same for Germany, while even the Italian republics, were being gathered into the hands of larger sovereignties. From this distance in time it is easy to see the prevailing direction in which all the nations were being irresistibly drawn. ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... are simple, docile, and affectionate almost to the point of absurdity. The same men who stood fire in open field with perfect coolness, on the late expedition, have come to me blubbering in the most irresistibly ludicrous manner on being transferred from one company in the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... post himself a good way from the window, in order to get rid of the ferocious yardstick; but the goblin was not to be baffled thus. The moment he stopped ironing and began to count the flies on the ceiling, the goose seemed to carry his hand up with it—irresistibly—to the end of his nose, and gave it a good scorching! This was no joke, I can tell you, and in a very short time Bartlemy began so to dread the visits of his two enemies that he never left working a minute, and his needle dashed along like magic. By sunset the coat was done, and sewed in a manner ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... to the museum. The distance was but short, and a very few minutes found them in the museum. Jimmy's eyes opened wide as they took in the crowded exhibition room, and he hardly knew what to look at first, until the approach of a giant eight feet high irresistibly attracted him. It is a remarkable circumstance that Barnum's giants were always eight feet high on the bill, though not always by measure. Sometimes the great showman lavishly provided two or three of these Titans. Where they came from nobody knew. It has been conjectured by ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... style, its good taste, its sound judgment, so richly entitle it. If Mr. Trevelyan's course in politics were not so useful as it is, one might be tempted to regret that he had not chosen literature for the main field of his career. The portrait which he draws of Lord Macaulay is so irresistibly attractive in many ways, that a critic may be glad to have delivered his soul before his judgment was subject to a dangerous bias, by the picture of Macaulay's personal character—its domestic amiability, its benevolence ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... sat looking about her with eyes quick to see the beauty and the comfort that made the place so homelike and delightful. A small waiting-room opened from the hall, and in it stood many blooming plants, whose fragrance attracted Lizzie as irresistibly as if she had been a ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... forgot that we were bound to regret that the shortened day left us no time to drive five miles further, above a pass in the little mountains—it had beckoned to us in the morning, when we came in sight of it, almost irresistibly—to see the Roman arch and mausoleum of Saint Remy. To compass this larger excursion (including the visit to Les Baux) you must start from Arles very early in the morning; but I can ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... the brakes on the wheels. The cars tried to stop, like a mob, but the rear cars bunted the front cars forward irresistibly. The cattle aboard lowed and bellowed. The brakemen, quaint silhouettes against the red sky, ran along the tops of the box-cars, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... is current in the Clubs that Mr. Henry James innocently went to Ramsgate, in order to possess his soul in peace. 'T was the height of the rougher Ramsgate season, and there is something irresistibly incongruous in the juxtaposition of the rarefied American novelist and the roaring sands of Albion. In the which juxtaposition the story leaves him; and we are ignorant of whether he turned tail and fled back to quieter London, or whether he stayed on to collect unexpected material. Our ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... had gone she sat up long, thinking—and her thoughts reverted irresistibly to Larry. His visit had been most distracting. But she was not going to let it affect her purpose. If anything, she was more determined than ever to be what she had told him she was going to be, to prove to him that he could not ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... Colambre. Lord Colambre, with that ardent thirst for knowledge which it is always agreeable to gratify, had an air of openness and generosity, a frankness, a warmth of manner, which, with good breeding, but with something beyond it and superior to its established forms, irresistibly won the confidence and attracted the affection of those with whom he conversed. His manners were peculiarly agreeable to a person like Mr. Salisbury, tired of the sameness and egotism ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... funny," rejoined Mrs. Delano. "I used to be entertained with a variety of them; especially when we were in Italy. If any of the pifferari went by, she would imitate the drone of their bagpipes in a manner irresistibly comic. And if she saw a peasant-girl dancing, she forthwith went through the performance to ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... colonial capital at Quebec. And over in Europe beaver hats and fur-trimmed garments were all the style! So the plodding farmer from Normandy and the fisherman from Poitou, transferred to Canadian soil, were irresistibly drawn into the adventurous life of the trapper and fur-trader. The fur trade became the accepted basis of colonial life; the voyageur and courier de bois, clad in skins, paddling up ice-rimmed streams in their birch-bark canoes, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the gaping crowd. Enough to know that, like other statesmen, he made the most of his subject, and fully impressed his audience with the belief that this first of Kablunets who had ever visited these ice-bound regions had been mysteriously, yet irresistibly, drawn there through his, Ujarak's, influence, with the assistance of his torngak ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... then, suddenly, the pressure was removed. I know that I felt as though I was about to expand, to fly apart in all directions. It seemed as if every atom composing my body was repelling every other atom and was on the verge of rushing off irresistibly into space. But that lasted only for a moment. Destruction ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... purity, and her temper all softness. I have not, you find, been blind to her merit; on the contrary, I have both admired and pitied her. But far indeed is she removed from all chance of rivalry in my heart! A character such as hers for a while is irresistibly alluring; but when its novelty is over, simplicity uninformed becomes wearisome, and softness without dignity is too indiscriminate to give delight. We sigh for entertainment, when cloyed by mere sweetness; and heavily drags on the load of life when ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... planet, in the persons of Mr. Edmund and Mr. Gregory Aglonby, brothers, bachelors, and joint-heirs of the property he had come to look at. These gentlemen received him with a dignity and antique courtesy irresistibly suggestive of bag-wigs, short swords, and aristocratic institutions generally, a courtesy largely mingled with restrained severity and unspoken suspicion until his identity had been fully established by the letters of introduction ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... One is here irresistibly reminded of the car of Juggernaut, and of the Hindoo fanatics throwing themselves beneath its wheels in the belief that they would thus obtain an entrance ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... in their seats, incredulous, yet irresistibly swayed by emotions that stirred to this ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... practicable, it could not be otherwise than desirable to do so. The service to astronomy itself would be not inconsiderable of enlisting wider sympathies on its behalf, while to help one single mind towards a fuller understanding of the manifold works which have in all ages irresistibly spoken to man of the glory of God might well be an object ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... admits, there is something irresistibly ludicrous in the spectacle of such generals lecturing such a man. The sequel was honorable to the American chief. At first determined to retaliate upon some prisoners in his hands, he changed his mind, apparently because they, ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... and economic aspects, became less and less sectional, more and more national. The South was drawn into the main stream of national life. The separatist forces which produced the cataclysm of 1861 sank irresistibly into the background. ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... their antipathy to beautiful ritual, their obscene buttonholing of God, their great talent for reducing the ineffable mystery of religion to a mere bawling of idiots. The normal woman, in so far as she has any religion at all, moves irresistibly toward Catholicism, with its poetical obscurantism. The evangelical Protestant sects have a hard time holding her. She can no more be an actual Methodist than a gentleman can be ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... she had repented her confidence. "I remembered that you were kind of old, Will"—and her manner was irresistibly winning when she said such a thing—"but you are so very kind now that you make me ashamed. I only meant to ask you what I must do. Yes, I must take this position if I can, for I ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... government. On the other hand, there was the Soviet itself, claiming the right to control the course of the Provisional Government and indulging in systematic criticism of the latter's actions. It was inevitable that the Soviet should have been driven irresistibly to the point where it must either renounce its own existence or oppose the ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... prayers every Wednesday and Friday. On the first of those days after he had summoned his congregation, he ascended the desk, and after sitting some time with no other auditor than his clerk Roger, he rose up and with a composure and gravity that, upon this occasion, were irresistibly ridiculous, began—"Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry places," and so proceeded to the end of the service. The story is not quite complete. But the fact is, that when he went into the church he found Roger alone, and exclaimed with evident ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... ladies called to pay their mother a morning visit. This gave Fanny's tongue such a long rest that the moment they were gone it seemed irresistibly to resume ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... never persuade him to repeat the description in presence of others; but he did it for me several times during our walks into the country, where he was, of course, unobserved. His recital of the incident was irresistibly droll, and no words of mine can give the situation even, as he gave it. He said he was once sitting in the pit of a London theatre, when two men came in and took places directly in front of him. Both were evidently strangers from the country, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... with the stern, earnest emergencies and perils? Emancipation is not Lincoln's, is not Sumner's, is not anybody's personal special work. The necessities, the emergencies of the times and of the hour did it. Their current drifted Mr. Lincoln irresistibly along, and to a shore where he must ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... alone the peculiar certainty supposed to distinguish it; and that in any science whatever, by reasoning from a set of hypotheses, we may obtain a body of conclusions as certain as those of geometry, that is, as strictly in accordance with the hypotheses, and as irresistibly compelling assent, on condition that those hypotheses ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... a moment, her tall figure in its sweeping folds swaying in slow rhythmic cadence—her attitude and gesture full of grace and dignity—irresistibly compelling—as in low, penetrating monotone she began ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... fancy, gave him the eclat of having ACTUALLY survived it; while the supposed real incident of his fall through the hatchway lent him the additional lustre of a wounded and crippled man. That prostrate condition of active humanity, which so irresistibly appeals to the feminine imagination as segregating their victim from the distractions of his own sex, and, as it were, delivering him helpless into their hands, was at once their opportunity, and his. ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... was again disturbed, and a new recourse to the source of it was needed. We stand reverently afar off, and ask, not too curiously, what it is that falls so heavily to the ground, and shines red and wet in the moonlight. But the question irresistibly rises, Why all this agony of apprehension? If Jesus Christ was but facing death as it presents itself to all men, His shrinking is far beneath the temper in which many a man has fronted the scaffold and the fire. We can scarcely save His character for admiration, unless ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... darkness and portentous storms. The events to which we have alluded in the preceding chapters, and various others of a similar nature, conspired to foment troubles between the French monarch and his subjects, which were steadily and irresistibly increasing. The great mass of the people, ignorant, degraded, and maddened by centuries of oppression, were rising, with delirious energy, to batter down a corrupt church and a despotic throne, and to overwhelm ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... elephants in their wars. They also had chariots, with scythes placed at the axles, which they were accustomed to drive among their enemies and mow them down. Alexander resorted to none of these contrivances. There was the phalanx—the terrible phalanx—advancing irresistibly either in one body or in detachments, with columns of infantry and flying troops of horsemen on the wings. Alexander relied simply on the strength, the courage, the energy, and the calm and steady, but resistless ardor of his men, arranging them in ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the trick put upon that barbarian Sir Jacob. His obstinacy, repentance, and amendment, followed so irresistibly in one half hour, from the happy thought of the excellent lady countess, that I think no plot was ever more fortunate. It was like springing a lucky mine in a siege, that blew up twenty times more than was ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... pointed to the pen tray, with a smile. To show consideration for her dog was to seize irresistibly on the high-road to her favor. Felix set to work on his letter, in a large scrambling handwriting, with plenty of ink and a noisy pen. "I declare we are like clerks in an office," he remarked, in his cheery way. "All with our noses to the paper, writing ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... great blessings with which our country has been favored, those which we now enjoy, and the means which we possess of handing them down unimpaired to our latest posterity, our attention is irresistibly drawn to the source from whence they flow. Let us, then, unite in offering our most grateful acknowledgments for these blessings to the Divine Author of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... eleven when the curtain parts and Marcel Legay rushes hurriedly up the aisle and greets the audience, slamming his straw hat upon the lid of the piano. He passes his hand over his bald pate—gives an extra polish to his eyeglasses—beams with an irresistibly funny expression upon his audience—coughs—whistles—passes a few remarks, and then, adjusting his glasses on his stubby red nose, looks serio-comically over his roll of music. He is dressed in a long, black frock-coat ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... schemes. Marplot's funniest blunder, in the "monkey" scene, is entirely original as far as I know (IV, iv). But her greatest change is in the character of Marplot, who in her hands becomes not so much stupid as human and irresistibly ludicrous. Mrs. Centlivre's style is of course inferior to that of Moliere. In the preface to Love's Contrivance (1703), in speaking of borrowings from Moliere, she said that borrowers "must take care to touch the Colors with an English Pencil, and form the Piece according to our ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... impression, or with an independent process of preperception as explained above. Thus, for example, we fall into the illusion of hearing two voices when our shout is echoed back, just because the second auditory impression irresistibly calls up the image of a second shouter. On the other hand, a man experiences the illusion of seeing spectres of familiar objects just after exciting his imagination over a ghost-story, because ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... this meeting to protest against the denial of liberty to American women. All over the world to-day we see surging and sweeping irresistibly on, the great tide of democracy, and women would be derelict in their duty if they did not see to it that it brings freedom to the women of this land . ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... beautiful silvery light on the aged tree-tops above the crag, and flickering on the splendid foliage at the corners of the several paths, all of which ended here, some with one tree, some with a group of trees. On all sides the eye was irresistibly led along their vanishing perspectives, following the curve of a wood-path or the solemn stretch of a forest glade flanked by a wall of verdure that was nearly black. The moonlight, filtering through the branches of the crossways, made the lonely, tranquil waters, where ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... state, exceeded its constitutional authority. Those who believed in a federal as opposed to a national government and who therefore wished to enforce the constitutional checks on the general government, were irresistibly impelled toward the doctrine of nullification as the sole means of protecting ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... the moral effect of previous disasters. The blockade of American ports was already so close that the United States ships found it continually more difficult to get to sea, or to keep the sea without meeting forces of irresistibly superior ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... asked Miss Trevanion; then, dropping her voice, she added, "why do you desert us so wilfully?" and, leaning her hand on my arm, I was drawn irresistibly into the lobby. The young loungers at the door made way for us, and eyed ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it, my friend," retorted Dick. "I grant you that the water looks almost irresistibly tempting, and I have no doubt that a swim would be amazingly refreshing—if we could only be sure of going in and coming out again unharmed. But who knows what dangers may be lurking beneath that sparkling surface? The place may be swarming with alligators, ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... presence always brought with it happiness and peace. He was not a great talker, but he generally had something pleasant to say, or an interesting anecdote to relate; for, with a keen perception of the ludicrous, he possessed a talent for telling anecdotes admirably well, and a humor that was irresistibly pervasive. No one could help feeling its influence, and being ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... the corner, something caught her eye presently, that she had never seen before. Only a small dark trunk with an air of secrecy about it; and something irresistibly took her right over to it, with her ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... weeks that followed, the man was forced to see her—to talk with her—to feel her strength. And every day he felt himself carried irresistibly onward toward the testing that he knew must come. He was conscious, too, that the woman, also, knew and understood and that it pleased her so to use her power. She willed that he should feel her presence. In a thousand subtle forms she repeated her challenge. ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... nebula in Coma Berenices is a spiral edge-on to us, and we see that it has precisely the lens-shaped middle and the general flattened shape that we have found in our own system. The nebula in Canes Venatici is a spiral facing towards us, and its shape irresistibly suggests motions along the spiral arms. This motion, whether it is towards or away from the central, lens-shaped portion, would cause a double streaming motion in that central portion of the kind we have found in our own system. Again, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... as Circe; and Miss Niphet., as leader of the chorus, looked like Melpomene herself, slightly unbending her tragic severity into that solemn smile which characterised the chorus of the old comedy. The charm of the first acted irresistibly on Mr. Falconer. The second would have completed, if anything had been wanted to complete it, the ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... intensely serious all through it that you might fancy he was reciting a tragedy, and that, of course, made it all the funnier. They said he never once suggested by his tone or manner that he was singing anything funny—that would spoil it. It was his air of seriousness, almost of pathos, that made it so irresistibly amusing. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... bank, which took them as much by surprise as it had us. Morton's lamentable figure, as he stood motionless in the midst of the pool, drenched with water, and with a great patch of black mud plastered over one eye, together with Max's look of consternation at his own narrow escape, were irresistibly ludicrous, and provoked a laugh, in which, after a moment, they ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... of a gentleman, the dress of a European in Syria, the outlines of a personable man; one glance at his face showed me a bronzed complexion, warm-coloured auburn hair, and a frank and very bright eye. I looked away, and then irresistibly was driven to look back again. He smiled. I ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... pressed upon me, and I felt sore, suddenly, at having eaten and drunk with those two. The idea of Seraphina, asleep perhaps, crying perhaps, something pure and distant and very blissful, came in upon me irresistibly. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... mighty whirlwind. In a moment the distant woods bent before it, and fell like grass before the scythe. It was a whirling hurricane, accompanied by a deluge of rain such as none of the party had ever before witnessed. Steadily, fiercely, irresistibly it bore down upon them, while the crash of falling, snapping, and uprooting trees mingled with the dire artillery of that sweeping storm like ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of these strange thoughts, but she could not; and she was compelled to give herself wholly up to them. Something, she knew not what, drew her irresistibly towards the dying girl, and she started up Broadway to find the flowers she had promised to carry to her. In a shop window she saw what she wanted. The flowers were of the rarest and most costly kinds; but nothing was too ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... "transcendental" mood do beyond question sometimes irresistibly suggest the close neighborhood of the sublime to the ridiculous. But very near that precipitous border line there is a charmed region where, if the statelier growths of philosophy die out and disappear, the flowers of poetry next the very edge of the chasm ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to address them he had felt irresistibly attracted. They looked such capital, independent fellows. Waiting for his turn to speak, he had marked them down as men after his own heart. For though Courtier knew that against an unpopular idea there must always be a majority, he never thought ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... giving us not even so much as a breathless, momentary pause in which to consider the result of our headlong career. We blunder on against every jagged obstacle, lacerated and bleeding, jolting cruelly from point to point, whither our passions irresistibly drive us. It is a blind, reckless journey, from which there is no escape when the tide sets in. We see our goal ahead, and we fondly believe that because it is ahead we must come to it. We do not consider the awful ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... only a gleam of it, a central glow. About this his thoughts circled like May flies round a lamp, irresistibly ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the Home Rule Bill, that "child of revolution and parent of separation," appears to lead irresistibly to two conclusions. First, that Imperial rights and Imperial powers, representation for Imperial purposes, Imperial taxation—in short, every link that binds a subordinate member of an Empire to its supreme head—have ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... years the use of the live bait with fine snap tackle, and on Nottingham principles, has prevailed to an increasing extent, but the familiar style of spinning from the weir beams still holds its own. It presents a minimum of toil, and the rushing water helps you so much that it appeals irresistibly to the happy-go-lucky instincts of the fair-weather sportsmen, who are probably, after all, a majority of Thames trout fishers. Our friends are persevering, but they persevere in the wrong way, contenting themselves ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... Saturday night dance at the club, a brilliant spectacle, faces that radiated pleasure, gowns that for startling combinations of color would have shamed a Futurist, music that set the feet tapping irresistibly—a scene which I shall pass over because it really has no ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... christened her the Australian Nightingale, and caused her to be so advertised in the papers. Moreover, her dainty appearance, and a certain dash and abandon she had with her, carried the audience irresistibly away, and had Fanny Wopples not been a really good girl, she would have been jealous of the success achieved by the new-comer. She, however, taught Kitty to dance breakdowns, and at Warrnambool they had a benefit, when 'Faust, M.D.' was produced, and Fanny sang her ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... been educated with a care which her sisters had not enjoyed; painted pretty well, spoke Italian and English, and played the piano brilliantly; her voice, trained by the best masters, had a ring in it which made her singing irresistibly charming. Clever, and intimate with every branch of literature, she might have made folks believe that, as Mascarille says, people of quality come into the world knowing everything. She could argue fluently on Italian or Flemish ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... Maurice she spoke, with a childlike upturning of her face to his—an irresistibly confiding gesture. She disappeared behind the screen, and came out bareheaded, nestling with both hands at the coil of hair on her neck. Then she lit two candles that stood on the piano in brass candlesticks, and Maurice ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... not believe the evidence of his sight, but the facts seemed stunning. As if the girl were a dangerous and incomprehensible thing, he approached her step by step. Wilson followed, and the others appeared drawn irresistibly. ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey |
