"Adamantine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... does. Symptoms of too great interest bore one. I enjoy more the men who are impervious to me. Now there's my father. He comes nearer understanding me than anybody else, but he's quite adamantine to my wiles." ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... me you have made up your mind," cried the lady hysterically, who knew from a twelve years' experience that John Temple's made-up mind was like an adamantine wall ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... lady to leave the shelter of our castle,' he said. And the Duchess replied by an angry outburst, a hailstorm of reproaches, before which Eberhard Ludwig remained silent, cold, rigidly self-contained. The Duchess paused; it was like beating one's hand against some adamantine barrier. She had the sensation that all she said, felt, suffered, passed unnoticed; the man before her was waiting for information, that was all. It was intolerable, and the hopelessness of any pleading ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... wrinkled, but her face was stamped with a species of beauty which never fades—the beauty of a loving look. Ah! the brow of snow and the peach-bloom cheek may snare the heart of man for a time, but the loving look alone can forge that adamantine chain that time, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Brougham) was achieving the immortal victory, and the illustrious triumph, protecting innocence and truth by the adamantine shield of his prodigious eloquence, it has been my lot to discharge only a few random arrows at the defeated champions of this disgraceful cause." Dr. Lushington followed on the 26th of October, with a luminous view of the case, and the king's attorney ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... walk of life, says my mother, there were a few survivors in the shape of stolid, adamantine misogynists. ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... Than for the fire filched by Prometheus, And thrusts him down from heaven. He, wandering here, In mournful terms, with sad and heavy cheer, Complained to Cupid. Cupid for his sake, To be revenged on Jove did undertake. And those on whom heaven, earth, and hell relies, I mean the adamantine Destinies, He wounds with love, and forced them equally To dote upon deceitful Mercury. They offered him the deadly fatal knife That shears the slender threads of human life. At his fair feathered feet the engines ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... cinder-cones, brick-red, old rose, and purplish black of colour. Above us, higher and higher, towered the crater-walls, while we journeyed on across innumerable lava-flows, turning and twisting a devious way among the adamantine billows of a petrified sea. Saw-toothed waves of lava vexed the surface of this weird ocean, while on either hand arose jagged crests and spiracles of fantastic shape. Our way led on past a bottomless pit and along and ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... pleasure in it; when he is seized with an irresistible desire to go forth in the world and by his prowess dazzle all mankind for the purpose of attracting one pair of eyes. The same occurs to the lady, and she determines to make all men fall at her feet by way of illustrating to one adamantine heart that he was a dullard to have passed over her charms. And this young lady of the rose and lily complexion, and knight of the bright-hued locks and herculean muscles, being young—sufficiently young to be downcast by imaginary stumbling-blocks—had ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... of houses. It was odd to observe how, once a man became infected, his former interests and anxieties fell away from him like an old garment. In Harley Street an attitude of stubborn disbelief continued amongst those still mortal. There is something magnificent in that adamantine spirit which refuses to recognize the new, even though it moves with ever-increasing distinctness before the very eyes of the deniers. I was not surprised. I was ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... undaunted salesman, who had come prepared for adamantine obstacles in his path. "If more book buyers would see that such rascals get what's coming to them, the rest of us salesmen, who represent square publishers squarely, would not have to prove so often that we are not crooks like some fellows who have happened to precede us ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... brutal imprisonment reduce them to skeletons. Let us devote ourselves to the service of the Mother. A man maddened by devotion will do everything and anything to achieve his ideal. His strength will be adamantine. Just as a widow immolates herself on the funeral pyre of her husband, let ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... High. Wuczicz, dressed in the coarse frieze jacket and boots of a Servian peasant, heard, with a reverential inclination of the head, the discourse of the prelate, but nought relaxed one muscle of that adamantine visage: the finer but more luminous features of Petronevich were under the control of a less powerful will. At certain passages his intelligent eye was moistened with tears. Two deacons then prayed successively for the Sultan, the Emperor of Russia, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... suggested that beautiful image to the Mantuan muse, of the Grecian soldier remembering in the last struggles of death his pleasant Argos. It is this which makes us revert, with ever verdant freshness, to our homes and native places, and binds us to the land of our birth with adamantine links. From the burning desarts of sunny Africa—from the wild tornados of the gusty West—from the mountains of ice piled by a thousand ages, like impassable barriers round each frozen pole—from the fertile plains and trackless forests of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various
... tresses twine: Knew ye the cause of this my pilgrimage, Ye would lie down and join your moans with mine. Let this poor wretch but pass, who war doth wage With heaven, the elements, the powers divine! I beg for pity or for death. No more! But open, ope Hell's adamantine door! ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... broken—McClellan strove to crush his adversary by sheer strength. No sooner would one attacking column waver, break, retreat—leaving a writhing and ghastly wake behind it—than a fresh host would hurl against the adamantine line that sunk and shriveled under the resistless fire, but never wavered. In all the fearful carnage of the war—whether resulting in gloom, like that of Corinth, or purchasing brilliant victory with precious ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the last new pattern, worthy of a child's delicious sleep; and they would only have discovered that the room was three hundred years old when they had drawn aside the window curtains, and had revealed the adamantine solidity of the outer walls. Or, if they had been allowed to pursue their investigations a little further, and had found their way next into Mrs. Linley's sitting room, here again a transformation scene would ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... faces, and asked several prisoners if they were well and contented. The men looked with the shrewdness of their class into their visitors' faces and measured them; saw there, first a feeble understanding, secondly an adamantine prejudice; saw that in those eyes they were wild beasts and Hawes an angel, and answered to please Hawes, whose eye was fixed on them all this time and in whose ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... with blood to vomit crime;[nz] And fatal have her Saturnalia been[oa] To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime; Because the deadly days which we have seen, And vile Ambition, that built up between Man and his hopes an adamantine wall, And the base pageant[477] last upon the scene, Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall Which nips Life's tree, and dooms Man's worst—his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... hanging and a whirl day and night through the Karoo, would almost favour the suspension of the constitution! But apart from physical inconvenience, the idea of forsaking their homes and husbands was too ridiculous. The notion of living in tents on potted beef and adamantine biscuits was shuddered at. The whole project was voted a wild-cat scheme (and Mr. Rhodes agreed). After the spartan bravery they had displayed for two months, the ladies regarded this new and wanton strain on their loyalty ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... The adamantine steel! O shining light, O beacon, polestar, path and guide of all Who, scorning slumber and the lazy down, Adopt the toilsome life of bloodstained arms! To thee, great hero who all praise transcends, La Mancha's lustre and Iberia's star, Don Quixote, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... he had discussed with Thorpe the meaning and values of this inscrutable expression which the latter's countenance could assume. It had seemed interesting and even admirable to him then—but then he had not foreseen the possibility that he himself might some day confront its adamantine barrier with a sinking heart. All at once he could bear this implacable ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... request of the District Attorney, Drake was to be taken "dead or alive," but according to an adamantine principle of the Force, he must be taken not only alive, but unscathed if that were humanly possible. This meant that he must not be given an opportunity to run and so render shooting necessary. If, however, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... indescribable glory and colour. Aldebaran was a spot of blood-red fire, and Sirius condensed to one point the light of innumerable sapphires. And they shone steadily: they did not scintillate, they were calmly glorious. My impressions had an adamantine hardness and brightness: there was no blurring softness, no atmosphere, nothing but infinite darkness set with the myriads of these acute and brilliant points and specks of light. Presently, when I looked again, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... of Honolulu, supposes them to be from the beginning less fluid than pahoehoe, and that they advance very slowly, being full of solid points, or centres of cooling: that a- a, in fact, grains like sugar. Its hardness is indescribable. It is an aggregate of upright, rugged, adamantine points, and at a distance, a river of it looks like a dark brown ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... know nothing but their holy duties,—while men are torturing and denouncing their fellows, and while we can hear day and night the clinking of the hammers that are trying, like the brute forces in the "Prometheus," to rivet their adamantine wedges right through the breast of human nature,—I have been ready to believe that we have even now a new revelation, and the name of its ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... way that, when described, it was too late to alter the helm. Its giant shape filled the foreground, towering high above the masts, grim and gaunt and ghastly, immovable as the adamantine buttresses of a frowning seaboard, while the liner lurched and staggered like a wounded thing in agony as her engines slowly drew her back from the rampart against which she ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... character. But a promise to political opponents that you will not give effect to your principles stands on the level of a card debt: it is a matter of honour to make good; and on this point Mr. Asquith in particular has always shown an adamantine resolution. ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... ever occur to you, Adelbert, that your wife made a mistake also? Did it ever bore itself through your adamantine skull that it is not an unbroken round of gayety for a young girl to shut herself up in a lonesome house for three years, gradually acquiring children, and meantime being "sassed" by her husband because she is ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... is not entailed. In the time to come, he hopes to see us less anxious to be governed, in the technical sense; each man shall govern himself in the interests of all; government without any governor will be, for the first time, adamantine. Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious; conservatism stands on man's limitations, reform on his infinitude. The age of the quadruped ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... write it in the rock," Saint Bernard said, "Grave it on brass with adamantine pen! 'Tis God himself becomes apparent, when God's wisdom ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... England flush'd To anticipate the scene; And her van the fleeter rush'd O'er the deadly space between. "Hearts of Oak!" our Captains cried; when each gun From its adamantine lips Spread a death-shade round the ships, Like the hurricane eclipse Of ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... your sight (We, wretched mortals! lost in doubts below, But guess by rumour, and but boast we know), Oh! say what heroes, fired by thirst of fame, Or urged by wrongs, to Troy's destruction came! To count them all demands a thousand tongues, A throat of brass and adamantine lungs. ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... ravish'd breast, To me, no seer, the inspiring gods suggest; Nor skill'd nor studious, with prophetic eye To judge the winged omens of the sky. Yet hear this certain speech, nor deem it vain; Though adamantine bonds the chief restrain, The dire restraint his wisdom will defeat, And soon restore him to his regal seat. But generous youth! sincere and free declare, Are you, of manly growth, his royal heir? For sure Ulysses in your look appears, The same his features, if the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... devoted to study, instruction, and works of benevolence. He has been a teacher of the young, a helper of the poor, and he has gained respect, affection, and honourable repute. He is safe in the security of silence and in the calm self-poise of his adamantine will. His awful secret sleeps in his bosom and is at rest forever. He has suffered much and he still suffers; yet, lulled into a false security by the uneventful lapse of years and by that drifting, desolate, apathetic recklessness ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... since his majority. Russia is one grand conspiracy against you, and your enemies have pitched their tents at the foot of your throne. They may well hate the only man who stands between you and destruction. Their arrows have glanced harmlessly from the adamantine shield of his loyalty, and there remained but the alternative of calumniating him to his empress. Oh, Catharine, my angel; beware of Paul, who has never forgotten how his father lost his life! Beware of Orloff, who has never forgiven you for loving me! Both these ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... with an avaricious light at sight of the roll of yellow banknotes which Smith flung carelessly upon the bar, but he had earned his living by his wits too long to betray eagerness. He masked the adamantine hardness of his grasping nature beneath an air ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... creation, it is not his handiwork. It is no mere provincialism of this dwindling sphere of ours, but a fact and a law supreme, holding sway beyond the uttermost star, valid in infinity and eternity, at this hour, the sovereign law of life for whatsoever or whomsoever lives and knows, the adamantine foundation upon which all law, civilisation, religion and progress ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... evidence which sustains the faith of thousands, who never read and cannot understand the learned books of Christian apologists, who want, perhaps, words to explain the ground of their belief, but whose faith is of adamantine firmness, who hold the gospel with a conviction more intimate and unwavering than ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Ancient Mariner"] is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... day the name "Stonewall" attached to Thomas Jonathan Jackson and was peculiarly appropriate as indicating the adamantine, unyielding ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish. Forgive me, then, and let us part, at least, as friends part. I have assailed thy resolution in vain, and mine own is fixed as the adamantine decrees of fate." ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... his head as adamantine, as millstone or hard as one o' your cannon balls that shall not save him, if mind and body agreeably seek and desire death, and mind (pray understand, sir) is the more potent factor, thus (saving and excepting the abnormal vigour of his ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... Her face had taken upon itself that appalling and exasperating calmness of very good people who never get angry, but drive others to frenzy by the simple occlusion of an adamantine veil between their own feelings and their opponents'. "I'll tell you all about it after I've put up the horse," he said hurriedly, glad to escape until the veil was lifted again. "I suppose the ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... it is true," replied the crying maid, "That Sita followed Rama to the woods, And that she of the Pandus also shared With them their toils—if ever woman's charms Had power to move the adamantine heart Of man, then let thy Rati go with thee To share with thee thy joys and woes as well. If thou shouldst go alone, remember then, Dear lord, the sin rests solely on thy head That a young maiden has been left alone To mourn ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... and his helpless hands outstretched in pleading and prayer, but that stern sentinel will never yield. Wounded love is easily forgiven, wounded belief sometimes forgotten, but wounded pride—never. It is the adamantine fortress. There is only one path which leads to the house of forgiveness—that of understanding, and it is impassable if ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... not been mistaken when he spoke of her as a potential tamer of wild beasts. Her anger was no mere gush of emotions, to spend itself and leave her exhausted. It was a sort that hardened in an adamantine resolution. The next chance she got, she'd show them! Unluckily, she wasn't billed to sing again until toward the end of the week. It happened, however, that the Sunday papers, taking away with one hand, gave in a roundabout but effective ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... he ordered in those stormy hours His adamantine chains for one and all, Brute "Force" and soulless "Strength" the only Power On ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... policy of taxing imports of German fabric gloves, or the rest of the ridiculous "litter of mice" that has thus far been yielded by the Safeguarding of Industries Act, is the crowning proof at once of the insincerity and ineptitude of tariffism where it has a free hand, and of the adamantine strength of the Free Trade case. If any further illustration were needed, it is supplied by the other tariffist procedure in regard to the promise made five years ago to Canada that she, with the other Dominions, should have a ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... hands, and at the sacred shrines Kneel to adore? Good, easy dupes! What win we From faith and pious awe? to touch with prayers The tenants of yon azure realms on high, Were hard as with an arrow's point to pierce The silvery moon. Hid is the womb of time, Impregnable to mortal glance, and deaf The adamantine walls of heaven rebound The voice of anguish:—Oh, 'tis one, whate'er The flight of birds—the aspect of the stars! The book of nature is a maze—a dream The sage's art—and every sign ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... merely a good-looking young fellow of twenty-five, he was scenery, magnificent and compelling. Furthermore, he had been in the public eye for years, first as a precocious child and, later, as a brilliant young scientist. Yet, for all his experience with hero worshippers to put an adamantine crust on his sensibilities, he grew warm-eared under the gaze of these two strangers—this hunchback with a face like a grotesque mask in a Greek play, this other who, even handsomer than himself, chilled ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... We know no reason of internal or external probability which should induce us to believe that such matters could ever have been the subjects of direct revelation.' Is that all? There is no reason, certainly, for expectations so foolish; but is there no adamantine reason against them? It is no business of the Bible, we are told, to teach science. Certainly not; but that is far too little. It is an obligation resting upon the Bible, if it is to be consistent with itself, that it should refuse to teach science; and, if the ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... the aspiring adamantine trunk Of a huge tree, whose root, with slaughter drunk Sends forth a scent of war, La Mancha's knight, Frantic with valor, and returned from fight, His bloody standard trembling in the air, Hangs up his glittering armor beaming far, With that fine-tempered steel whose edge o'erthrows, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Power Hurl'd headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... progeny of heroes, and the stormy glories of the sixteenth century rose on awakened Europe. But Spain was the citadel of darkness,—a monastic cell, an inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce. She was the bulwark of the Church, against whose adamantine front the wrath of innovation beat in vain. In every country of Europe the party of freedom and reform was the national party, the party of reaction and absolutism was the Spanish party, leaning on Spain, looking to her for help. Above all, it was so in France; and while ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... raised Schools, colleges, and libraries. He heard The cry of the old and weary, and he built Houses of refuge. Even so he kept His prentice vows of Duty, Industry, Obedience, words contemned of every fool Who shrinks from law; yet were those ancient vows The adamantine pillars of the State. Let all who play their Samson be well warned That Samsons perish, too! His monument ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... one time, and now let me apply it. When a murder is in the paulo-post-futurum tense, and a rumor of it comes to our ears, by all means let us treat it morally. But suppose it over and done, and that you can say of it,[Greek: Tetelesai], or (in that adamantine molossus of Medea) [Greek: eirzasai]; suppose the poor murdered man to be out of his pain, and the rascal that did it off like a shot, nobody knows whither; suppose, lastly, that we have done our ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... tonic; and resentment came over her as she scrutinized her friend's satirical face, which seemed to typify all the women who progressed successfully through life, as if their natures, victoriously adamantine, had bestowed upon them this brilliant hardness of complexion, this sophisticated, frosty, conquering glance. Lucky women, who were so emphatically of the same essence as the phenomena round them, who accepted life with the simplicity of natural creatures, who never saw, beneath the pageantry ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... are battered by this time; and whose pink cotton (or silk is it?) lower extremities are all dingy and dusty. Yet but a few days, Bob, and flakes of paint will have cracked off the fairy flower-bowers, and the revolving temples of adamantine lustre will be as shabby as the city of Pekin. When you read this, will Clown still be going on lolling his tongue out of his month, and saying, "How are you to-morrow?" Tomorrow, indeed! He must be almost ashamed of himself (if that cheek is still capable of ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... character, a smile while he was writing, a tear when he had published! "I know," he exclaims, "that this book will live and escape the havoc that has been made of my literary fame." Again—"Before I die, I think my literary fame may be fixed on an adamantine foundation." Our old acquaintance, Blas of Santillane, at setting out on his travels, conceived himself to be la huitieme merveille du monde; but here is one, who, after the experience of a long life, is writing a large work to prove ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... bell struck midnight. Then Theos, raising his eyes, saw that all further progress was impeded by a great wall of solid rock that glistened at every point with flashes of pale and dark violet light—a wall composed entirely of adamantine spar, crusted thick with the rough growth of oriental amethyst. It rose sheer up from the ground to an altitude of about a hundred feet, and apparently closed in ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... literature. He had formed his mind by Helvetius, whose system he deemed irrefutable, and in whom alone he had faith. Armed with the principles of his great master, he believed he could pass through existence in adamantine armour, and always gave you in the business of life the idea of a man who was conscious you were trying to take him in, and rather respected you for it, but the working of whose cold, unkind, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... as he apparently headed straight for the biggest outlying rock—a square, black boulder about the size of an ordinary railway car. He came up to it on the summit of a foaming wave; but just as I looked for him to be dashed to pieces against its adamantine sides, he threw his legs into the air and disappeared. A stealthy, satisfied smile glowed upon Samuela's rugged visage, and, as he caught my eye, he said jauntily, "Polly savee too much. Lookee him come on top one ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... steep, powerless to guide or to check the shell, we plunged in a meteor rush straight for the annihilating adamantine breasts ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... their comprehension and approval, though this was later and long after I had quitted the situation. It was ten or eleven years afterwards—that is, four or five years after my departure—that the mother of these lads expressed her entire approval of the adamantine perseverance I had exhibited in ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... voice he hears, Kind as when first it praised his youthful skill. And soon a seraph-child, In boyish rapture wild, With a light crook comes bounding from the hill, Kisses his hands, and strokes his face, And nestles close in his embrace. In his adamantine eye None might discern his agony; But they who had grown hoary next his side, And read his stern dark face with deepest skill, Could trace strange meanings in that lip of pride, Which for one moment quivered and was still. No time for them to mark or him ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with all other portions of my young life but himself, the adamantine inadaptability of the man to my favourite fancies and amusements, is the thing for which I hate him most. What right had he to bore his way into my Arabian Nights? Yet he did. He was always hinting doubts of the veracity of Sindbad the ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... moment, gazing on his adherents, tried veterans every man of them, case-hardened in the furnace of Sylla's fiery discipline, with proud confidence and triumph in his eye; and then addressed them in clear high tones, piercing as those of an adamantine trumpet. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... creeping up, as it were in the very atmosphere, a feeling that England should be again asked to annex us, so as to save our old people from the wise decision to which our own Assembly had come. Oh for an adamantine law to protect the human race from the imbecility, the weakness, the discontent, and the extravagance of old age! Lord Marylebone, who saw that I was in earnest, and who was the most courteous of gentlemen, changed the conversation. I had already observed that he never spoke about the ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... nor dew! O mad Arachne! so I thee beheld E'en then half spider, sad upon the shreds Of fabric wrought in evil hour for thee! O Rehoboam! no more seems to threaten Thine image there; but full of consternation A chariot bears it off, when none pursues! Displayed moreo'er the adamantine pavement How unto his own mother made Alcmaeon Costly appear the luckless ornament; Displayed how his own sons did throw themselves Upon Sennacherib within the temple, And how, he being dead, they left him there; Displayed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... gallons of ginger beer, which was procured for him (in stone bottles) at his request. The difficulty of keeping up a conversation with that being exhausted Mrs. Fyne herself, who had come to the table armed with adamantine resolution. The only memorable thing he said was when, in a pause of gorging himself "with these French dishes" he deliberately let his eyes roam over the little tables occupied by parties of diners, and remarked that his wife did for a moment think of ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... Creator remained in his own nature. And his children, receiving from him the immortal principle, borrowed from the world portions of earth, air, fire, water, hereafter to be returned, which they fastened together, not with the adamantine bonds which bound themselves, but by little invisible pegs, making each separate body out of all the elements, subject to influx and efflux, and containing the courses of the soul. These swelling and surging as in a river moved irregularly ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... spear-thrust: aye she pierced The backs of them that fled, the breasts of such As charged to meet her. All the long shaft dripped With steaming blood. Swift were her feet as wind As down she swooped. Her aweless spirit failed For weariness nor fainted, but her might Was adamantine. The impending Doom, Which roused unto the terrible strife not yet Achilles, clothed her still with glory; still Aloof the dread Power stood, and still would shed Splendour of triumph o'er the death-ordained But for a little space, ere it ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... to rain them all the faster into his cart. Ah, me, what is that sweet something in human hearts, which, in its response to human want, translates us like a flash from low to highest mood; aye, which breaketh through all barriers of selfish habit, and even the adamantine of foreign tongues and poureth out its rich largess in a common tide to meet a brother's need, where'er that brother is or whatever ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... with the sentence of death already in idea ringing in my ears, to be told that I was free to transport myself whithersoever I pleased! Was it for this that I had broken through so many locks and bolts, and the adamantine walls of my prison; that I had passed so many anxious days, and sleepless, spectre-haunted nights; that I had racked my invention for expedients of evasion and concealment; that my mind had been roused to an energy of which I could scarcely have ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... our times avow, The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of shade; And comes Despair, whom not her calm may cow, And coldly on that adamantine brow Scrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade. But Faith (who from the scrawl indignant turns) With blood warm oozing from her wounded trust, Inscribes even on her shards of broken urns The sign o' the ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... 1784, Mrs. Siddons, about whom all the world has been talking, exposed her beautiful, adamantine, soft and lovely person for the first time, at the Smock Alley Theatre, in the bewitching, tearful, and all melting character of Isabella. From the repeated panegyrics in the impartial London newspapers, we were taught to expect the sight of a heavenly angel; but how were ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... open water, studying the movement of the floes which pressed against us, I would hear him shouting to the ship below us as if coaxing her, encouraging her, commanding her to hammer a way for us through the adamantine floes: ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... any thirty or forty advocates for this gun or that gun could make a motion in Parliament, beat the department, and get their ships or their guns adopted. The "Black Breech Ordnance Company" and the "Adamantine Ship Company" would soon find representatives in Parliament, if forty or fifty members would get the national custom for their rubbish. But this result is now prevented by the Parliamentary head of the department. As soon as the Opposition begins the ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... earth. This alone was afforded To the man whom men know me, or deem me, to be. But, far down, in the depth of my life's mystery, (Like the siren that under the deep ocean dwells, Whom the wind as it wails, and the wave as it swells, Cannot stir in the calm of her coralline halls, 'Mid the world's adamantine and dim pedestals; At whose feet sit the sylphs and sea fairies; for whom The almondine glimmers, the soft samphires bloom)— Thou abidest and reignest forever, O Queen Of that better world which thou swayest unseen! My one perfect mistress! my all things ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Shall we help them to obliterate the associations that cluster around the glorious struggle for independence, or stultify the labors of the patriots who erected this magnificent political edifice upon the adamantine base of human liberty? Shall we surrender the fame of Washington and Laurens, of Gadsden and the Lees, of Jefferson and Madison, and of the myriads of heroes whose names are imperishably connected with the memory of a united ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... qualities to a swinging tureen of Spartan soup, and now requiring the accompaniment of a satellite tongue, or friendly slice of Lamego bacon, to impait a dull relish to it; potatoes of leaden continuity; dumplings of adamantine contexture, that Carthaginian vinegar itself might fail to dissolve; with offensive vegetables, and something in a round shape, said to be imported from Holland, and called cheese, but more like the unyielding rock of flint in the tenacity of its impenetrable substance; a small quantity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... in front. 860 The pole was argent all, to which she bound The golden yoke, and in their place disposed The breast-bands incorruptible of gold; But Juno to the yoke, herself, the steeds Led forth, on fire to reach the dreadful field. 865 Meantime, Minerva, progeny of Jove, On the adamantine floor of his abode Let fall profuse her variegated robe, Labor of her own hands. She first put on The corselet of the cloud-assembler God, 870 Then arm'd her for the field of wo complete. She charged her shoulder with the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... fabulous. Since, however, we possess intellect, opinion, and phantasy, demonstrations are given with a view to intellect; and hence Plato says that if you are willing to energize according to intellect, you will have demonstrations bound with adamantine chains; if according to opinion, you will have the testimony of renowned persons; and if according to the phantasy, you have fables by which it is excited; so that from all these you ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... on the Stock Exchange, and my speculations would be infallible; but a man who can find the hoards that misers have hidden in the earth need not trouble himself about stocks. Feel the strength of the hand that grasps you; poor wretch, doomed to shame! Try to bend the arm of iron! try to soften the adamantine heart! Fly from me if you dare! You would hear my voice in the depths of the caves that lie under the Seine; you might hide in the Catacombs, but would you not see me there? My voice could be heard through ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... not quite of this world, in the tender lightness that seemed to come into his heart. "His whole appearance, poise and bearing," says one of his observers, "had marvelously changed. He was, in fact, transfigured. That indescribable sadness which had previously seemed to be an adamantine element of his very being, had been suddenly changed for an equally indescribable expression of serene joy, as if conscious that the great purpose of his life had ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... mind had dissected out a shade of feeling of which I had often been conscious. There is a coldness about all the luscious exuberance of Milton, like the wind that blows from, the glaciers across these flowery valleys. How serene his angels in their adamantine virtue! yet what sinning, suffering soul could find sympathy in them? The utter want of sympathy for the fallen angels, in the whole celestial circle, is shocking. Satan is the only ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... be one with theirs through all eternity, like twin stars in one common atmosphere, for ever giving and receiving wisdom and might, beauty and bliss, and yet are barred from their bliss by some invisible adamantine wall, against which they must beat themselves to death, like butterflies against the window-pane, gazing, and longing, and unable to guess why they ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... against the corners of the trunk, he warded off as best he could the shocks of the skilled baggage-breakers along the route. Again and again, an unexpected twist would bang his throbbing head against the adamantine sides, and with a wince, a sharp, in-drawn breath, he would hold himself "together" ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... Hetherington listended to her story with all the sympathetic horror she could wish, and she felt buoyed up in her adamantine decision, although she still harped on the intention of praying ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... other days, and are likely at such times to put hard crackers and glory on one side, the good things of home and peace on the other and owing probably to the unsubstantial quality of glory, and the adamantine quality of the crackers, arrive at conclusions not at ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Sometimes we hung on the edge of a chasm in whose fathomless shadow were buried a forest and a stream, both of which sent upward to us a fragrant and melodious greeting; sometimes we rested under a mighty mountain, whose adamantine brow scowled upon us, and we were glad when we once more resumed the toilsome ascent of the Sierras and escaped ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... we may adopt concerning volition, or the governing determinations of the mind, all will agree in the fact, that the energies of the human soul, when aroused, may be strung like fibres of steel, giving and adamantine firmness and indomitable force to the will. We have seen this exemplified in the fortitude with which one sometimes endures surgical operation; in the heated courage of the soldier, rushing with ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... faith, and left its mark in gloom upon the characters of the people and the tenor of their laws. The Ironside quality of their creed showed itself in the cruelties with which they visited the Indians; the severity of their tenets was felt by all who could not readily adapt themselves to the adamantine ethics of men of the type of Endicott and Mather. There was not wanting, too, a spirit of lawlessness in the English America, curiously in contrast with the law-abiding character of the Non-conformist colonizations. Along the seaboard wild ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... surgery, and one that inevitably threatened the saddest consequences. A man has grand powers of recovery, so long as his spirit is free; but let him once be persuaded that his soul is chained down forever in adamantine fetters, and, though, like Prometheus, he may endure with silence, patience, even divinely, he is nevertheless utterly incapable of any positive effort towards recuperation. His faith becomes, by a subtile law of our being, his fact; the mountain is gifted with actual motion, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... to herself, happily putting things away and humming an air. Queed watched her in annoyed silence. His adamantine gravity inspired her with an irresistible impulse to levity; so the law of ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to the horrid roof And thrice three fold the gates: three folds were brass, Three iron, three of adamantine rock. Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire, Yet unconsumed. Before the gate there sat On either ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... sigh which should have spoken volumes to her adamantine heart, Courage gathered all the mugs together by their handles, and reluctantly marched out of the room ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... honour to him Who snatch'd the world, in his day, From an overmastering King, A colossal imperial sway! Calm adamantine endurant chief, Fit forerunner of him, whose crowning stroke, Rousing his Guards on the Flandrian plain, Unvassall'd Europe from despot yoke! He who from Ganges to Rhine Traced o'er the world his red line Irresistible; while in the breast Reign'd devotedness utter, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... not only employed women as executioners, but refused to permit her a priest or monk, thus forcing her to die unshriven, and refusing her the benefit of any penitence that may have lurked in her adamantine heart." ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... disgusts, the dull work, to the last item of it, has daily to be done. Which proved infinitely beneficial to the Crown-Prince, after all. Hereby, to his Athenian-French elegancies, and airy promptitudes and brilliancies, there shall lie as basis an adamantine Spartanism and Stoicism; very rare, but very indispensable, for such a superstructure. Well exemplified, through after life, in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... his car and drove off at speed. Beneath his off-hand words to Mrs. Buckingham Smith he was conscious of a quickly growing, tender sympathy for Marguerite Haim. The hardness in him was dissolved almost instantaneously. He saw Marguerite, who had been adamantine in the difference which separated them, as the image of pliancy, sweetness, altruism, and devotion; and he saw her lips and the rapt glance of her eyes as beautiful as in the past. What a soft, soothing, assuaging contrast with the difficult ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... of liberty and to protect minorities, that nullification professes to act; while in its first ordinance it sweeps away the dearest rights of a large minority of the people of Carolina, and binds the freedom of conscience in adamantine chains. It deprives American citizens of that last and hitherto sacred refuge from oppression, a trial by an impartial jury, and requires the very judges upon the bench and jurors within the box to be sworn to condemn the unhappy man whose only crime was this: that he claimed the Government of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... she said gently—her gentleness was adamantine—"under any circumstances whatever, consider, for a moment even, the possibility of parting with the ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... child Goeth with his prayer to bed; Dungeon-beams, from quenchless head; Poets, making earth aware Of its wealth in good and fair; And the benders to their intent, Of metal and of element; Of flame the enlightener, beauteous, And steam, that bursteth his iron house; And adamantine giants blind, That, ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... and limitary land, The Scythian steppe, the waste untrod of men! Look to it now, Hephaestus—thine it is, Thy Sire obeying, this arch-thief to clench Against the steep-down precipice of rock, With stubborn links of adamantine chain. Look thou: thy flower, the gleaming plastic fire, He stole and lent to mortal man—a sin That gods immortal make him rue to-day, Lessoned hereby to own th' omnipotence Of Zeus, and to repent his love ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... entities of good and bad each had, in its turn, a perfect and distinct existence? He chose to think that this was the case. Who, within his inner consciousness, does not feel that same ferine, savage man struggling against the stern, adamantine bonds of morality and decorum? Were those bonds burst asunder, as it was with this man, might not the wild beast rush forth, as it had rushed forth in him, to rend and to tear? Such were the questions that ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... laws were adamantine. Her rule was as Procrustean as her thin-lashed eyes were inquisitive. She daily inspected both her lavishly distributed lambrequins and her "gentleman roomers'" mail, with an occasional discreet excursion into their ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... Apollonius of his own discovering, we only laugh. There may be doubts about the third and fourth rank; but the first and the second are hardly open to discussion. The gates which lead to the Elysian fields may slowly wheel back on their adamantine hinges to admit now and then some new and chosen modern. But the company of the masters of those who know, and in especial degree of the great poets, is a roll long closed and complete, and they who are of it hold ever peaceful ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... conversing with the doorman. That adamantine individual, unaccustomed to being addressed as a human being, was startled at first, surly and distrustful. But he mellowed under Hosey's simple and friendly advances. They became quite pals, these two—perhaps two as lonely men as you could find in all ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... and I had ever met, I had fluttered around Fanny Meyrick for a season, attracted by her bright brown eyes and the gypsy flush on her cheek. But there were other moths fluttering around that adamantine candle too; and I was not long in discovering that the brown eyes were bright for each and all, and that the gypsy flush was never stirred by feeling or by thought. It was merely a fixed ensign of health and good spirits. Consequently ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... shoot into their sockets I might thoroughly know my ineffectual self and leave untouched the forbidden latch. So far I came in my dream times without number; and always on the verge of joy there came that doom, and the shooting of those adamantine bolts. ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... him I love. E'en as I melt, not uninspired, the wax, May Mindian Delphis melt this hour with love: And, swiftly as this brazen wheel whirls round, May Aphrodite whirl him to my door. Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love. Next burn the husks. Hell's adamantine floor And aught that else stands firm can Artemis move. Thestylis, the hounds bay up and down the town: The goddess stands i' the crossroads: sound the gongs. Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love. Hushed are the voices of ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... said Chevenix; "he does. He was sure of you all through, from the beginning, as you say. That's why he didn't write or expect letters from you. He nattered himself that he was secure. Poor old Nevile!" He felt sorry now for Ingram. She was really adamantine. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... inexorable hangers-on and supplicants. I do not perceive the alleged failure of his health or powers, and I do not believe it; but assuredly, it were no marvel if such really were the case. It must be an adamantine constitution and temper that could long bear with impunity the daily contact with a Lincoln, a Seward, a Halleck, and others less noted, indeed, but ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... of the slaves under my care. I imparted to them this promise, which excited them to great exertions. At last we were fortunate enough to find a diamond above the weight required. It was a well-spread stone, of a beautiful pale rose-colour, and of an adamantine hardness. I am sure that the sight of that famous stone, which is known by the name of the Pitt diamond, never gave its possessor such heartfelt joy as I experienced when I beheld this. I looked upon it as the pledge of future happiness, not ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Hudson poured its waters from the lakes, the Highlands formed one vast prison, within whose rocky bosom the omnipotent Manitou confined the rebellious spirits who repined at his control. Here, bound in adamantine chains, or jammed in rifted pines, or crushed by ponderous rocks, they groaned for many an age. At length the conquering Hudson, in its career toward the ocean, burst open their prison-house, rolling its tide triumphantly through ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on my forehead, my obstinacy was adamantine. I reflected for some time, and then answered as if I had discovered a new idea, "I mean ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... before the Mahomedan invasions, the two salient features that emerge from the twilight are the failure of the Aryan Hindus to achieve any permanent form of political unity or stability, and their success, on the other hand, in building up on adamantine foundations a complex but vital social system. The supple and subtle forces of Hinduism had already in prehistoric times welded together the discordant beliefs and customs of a vast variety of races into a comprehensive fabric sufficiently elastic to shelter most ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... Siddons, about whom all the world has been talking, exposed her beautiful, adamantine, soft, and lovely person, for the first time at Smock Alley Theatre in the bewitching, melting, and all tearful character of Isabella. From the repeated panegyrics of the impartial London newspapers, we were ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... triumphs of this disappointed woman. "No power on earth can save him now," continued she; "your doting heart must yield him, Helen, to another rest than your bridal chamber. His iron breast has met with others as adamantine as his own. A hypcrite! he feels not pity; he knows no beat of human sympathies; and like a rock, he falls, unpitied, undeplored—undeplored by all but you, lost, self-deluded girl! My noble lord, the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... see clearly, and the moonlight still held. My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the gasp of Arthur, as we recognized the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... felt, and continues after the feeling is over. The one implies no kind of extension, nor parts, nor cohesion; the other implies all these. Both, indeed, admit of degrees, and the feeling, beyond a certain degree, is a species of pain; but adamantine hardness does ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... encountered, and many the hardships that he endured through the lack of herbs that he needed for meat, because the desert, being dry, yielded even these in but scant supply. But, being kindled by love of her Master, this adamantine and indomitable soul bore these annoyances more easily than other men bear their pleasures. Wherefore he failed not of the succour that is from above, but, many as were the sorrows and toils Chat he ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... an important characteristic due to reflection, and of which there are six varieties:—([alpha]) adamantine (which some authorities, experts and merchants subdivide as detailed below); ([beta]) pearly; ([gamma]) silky; ([delta]) resinous; ([epsilon]) vitreous; ([zeta]) metallic. These may ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... marriage of young women. That the young women belonging to them should be settled,—and thus got rid of,—is no doubt the great desire; but, whether the old woman be herself married or a spinster, the desire is founded on an adamantine confidence that marriage is the most proper and the happiest thing for the young woman. The belief is so thorough that the woman would cease to be a woman, would already have become a brute, who would desire to ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... decks and below. 'But your ship,' says Carlyle, 'cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting: the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed with adamantine rigour, by the ancient Elemental Powers, who are entirely careless how you vote. If you can by voting, or without voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will get round the Cape: if you cannot, the ruffian Winds will blow you ever back again; the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... righteousness can urge against it. His throne can no more be shaken by the puny attacks of men or devils than the everlasting mountains can be disturbed by the storm-blasts which howl around them. What more, then, is needed, than to shut up the wicked in a prison-house, through whose adamantine walls the accusing cry can never pierce, and whose doors are for ever barred by the holy decree of the Almighty? Ah! were it so, even this thought might possibly gratify pride and enmity, could a condemned, though not judged spirit for ever carry with it a conviction ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... Peasley relieved the situation; she had a habit of relieving situations—when she did not make them tenser. She had gotten into the Shakespeare Reading Society purely by persistence and the possession of adamantine self-confidence. From that shot-proof exterior snubs, hints and reproofs glanced like blown peas from the hull of a battleship. "Heaven knows," confided Mrs. Captain Wingate to Miss Taylor and the Reverend Mrs. Dishup, "why ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Angelica Candy, Candy'd Eryngo Root & Carroway Comfits;" and a few sweetmeats came to port in foreign vessels, "Sugar'd Corrinder Seeds," "Glaz'd Almonds," and strings of rock-candy. Whole jars of the latter adamantine, crystalline, saccharine delight graced the shelves of many a colonial cupboard. And I suppose favored Salem children, the happy sons and daughters of opulent epicurean Salem shipowners, had even in colonial days Black Jacks and Salem Gibraltars. The first-named dainties, though dearly loved by ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... true, genuine feeling of love, was bound in adamantine chains to her sister. Time and fortune, that shatter all human institutions and prove human feelings, consolidated the union of their hearts and their destinies. A stranger on stronger proof of the influence of sisterly affection could not be adduced; ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... of terrors, Arm'd in adamantine chains, Lead me to the crystal mirrors, Watering soft ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... favored him with a frown, and the back view of a sharp shoulder blade. To her mid-Victorian mind Sinclair Spencer was not conducting himself as a gentleman should, and her half-considered resolve to drop him from her visiting list became adamantine as she observed his appearance. Slipping her hand inside Kathleen's arm she led ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... more is destruction. Strange is the heart of man, with its quick, mysterious instincts! Strange is the life of man, and fatal or fated are moments, Whereupon turn, as on hinges, the gates of the wall adamantine! "Here I remain!" he exclaimed, as he looked at the heavens above him, Thanking the Lord whose breath had scattered the mist and the madness, Wherein, blind and lost, to death he was staggering headlong. "Yonder snow-white cloud, that floats ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Magnetic. Hard the course for her to steer, The leap against the sharpened spikes restrain. For the belted Overshadower hard the course, On whom devolves the spirit's touchstone, Force: Which is the strenuous arm, to strike inclined, That too much adamantine makes the mind; Forgets it coin of Nature's rich Exchange; Contracts horizons within present sight: Amalekite to-day, across its range ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
