"Imperceptible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that I have in a sense called my own to me; that the great mass of children could not be ignited except by an orderly and imperceptible process, either from within or without. In fact, it has been said repeatedly that I deal with extraordinary soil. I wish to place the situation here even more intimately, in order to cover these and other objections, for I believe they are to ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... but ever and again it went away to be filled. What happened on these holiday jaunts Euphemia has never ascertained. But a chance blow or worse cause ran a crease athwart the forehead of the thing, and below an almost imperceptible bulging hinted at a future corpulency. And there was complaint of the quantity of polishing it needed, and an increasing difficulty in keeping it bright. And except when it was full to the brim, the lining was unsightly; and this became more so. One day Ithuriel must have visited Euphemia's ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... to cover the new applications. He may be led to a process of 'rationalising' or 'spiritualising' which is dangerous to intellectual honesty. The vagueness of the general conceptions with which he is concerned facilitates the adaptation; and his words slide into new meanings by imperceptible gradations. His error is in taking a legitimate tentative process for a conclusive test; and inferring that opinions are confirmed because a non-natural interpretation can be forced upon them. This, however, is only the vicious application ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... piece of bark revealed to us two scorpions with enormous bellies, and heads so small as to be almost imperceptible; all they did was to stiffen out their tails, which are composed of six divisions, the last terminating ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... world, the one a materialistic belief, and the other some degree or phase of a spiritual conception. Every degree of density is to be found in the material view, and every grade of refinement exists in the spiritual vision: by imperceptible gradations they may shade from one into the other, but the two extremes are material and spiritual. The latter view will tend to result in unselfishness, in altruism and a keen desire to leave one's own little corner of the world ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... ventilating houses is by some method that will empty rooms of the vitiated air and bring in a supply of pure air by small and imperceptible currents. ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the highest mountains of the globe. Still, however, the instance we have cited of the rivers of Russia shows, that the land whence great rivers take their rise, is not necessarily mountainous; in this case the ascent is almost imperceptible, and the summit offers the aspect of a level and marshy plain. Such also occurs in the famous boundary between the United States and Canada, where the highlands that figured in two successive treaties have disappeared, and in their supposed place has been ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... mind. Rousseau and Goethe were studied, French and German sentiments were exchanged, till criminal passion was exalted into the purest of all earthly emotions. It were tedious to dwell upon the minute, the almost imperceptible occurrences that tended to heighten the illusion of passion, and throw an air of false dignity around the degrading spells of vice; but so it was, that in something less than a year from the time of her marriage, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... these suns are luminary only? Do you believe that this old Phoebus, who incessantly forces into space, wherein we are swimming, his inordinate surge of heat and light, has no other function but to light the earth and some other paltry and imperceptible planets? What a candle! A million times greater than ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... of the instincts and the passions, a vague intimation of sympathy between man and the world around him,—in one word, the sense of mystery. The narrower and the broader meanings pass into one another by imperceptible shades. They are affected by the well-known historic conditions for romantic feeling in the different European countries. The common factor, of course, is the man with the romantic world set in his heart. It is Gautier with his love of color, Victor Hugo enraptured with the sound of words, Heine ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... a quick, almost imperceptible nod, as she recalled how she had lain in her clothes, and listened to the busy coming and going of footsteps, for the greater part of ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... to constitute the sum total of a well built character. Therefore, the whole truth about the morals of the present generation will be known only to the next. The processes used in the moral development of the race have been gradual and almost imperceptible in progress, but they have been in progress, nevertheless, and promise great results. The man who sowed his seeds yesterday does not expect to reap a harvest to-morrow. Cultivation is to follow planting. The warm spring rains, the hot rays of a summer sun are to come and moisten and warm the soil ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... heart, that natural seat of evil propensities, that little troublesome empire of the passions, is led to what is right by slow motions and imperceptible degrees. It must be admonished by reproof, and allured by kindness. Its liveliest advances are frequently impeded by the obstinacy of prejudice, and its brightest promises often obscured by the tempests of passion. It is slow in its acquisition of virtue, ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... imagination began to paint her hovering like a sea-bird upon white wings high above the mainmast's taper point, and gazing through the darkness into the soul of her she loved. Then, by those faint and imperceptible degrees with which thoughts fade one into another, from Jeannie her thought got round to Eustace Meeson. She wondered if he had ever called at the lodgings at Birmingham after she left? Somehow, she had an idea that he was not altogether indifferent to her; there had been a ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... that electricity exists immovable or in circulation everywhere, latent or imperceptible, around us, and within ourselves, and that it enters as a cause into the majority of the chemical, physical, and mechanical phenomena that are constantly taking place before our eyes. A body cannot change state, nature, temperature, form, or place, even, without electricity being brought ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various
... had been going cautiously all the while. I had had confidential agents trickling through the country some time, whose office was to undermine knighthood by imperceptible degrees, and to gnaw a little at this and that and the other superstition, and so prepare the way gradually for a better order of things. I was turning on my light one-candle-power at a time, and meant to continue ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... adventure. These mushrooms, like other vegetables, have the power of suddenly bursting without being touched, Nature having provided them with this means of spreading their seed over a wide extent of ground. The red dust which so disagreeably filled our eyes is composed of imperceptible spores, each atom containing a germ. The shock produced when we fell caused the explosion of some of the largest of these, and they set all the others agoing, though who would have believed that two brave hunters could be ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... to me, as clear as daylight. I only marvelled how his Honour could waste his time and mine by putting what he thought were searching questions to the accused relating to his past. Francis Smethurst, who had quite shaken off his somnolence, spoke with a curious nasal twang, and with an almost imperceptible soupcon of foreign accent, He calmly denied Kershaw's version of his past; declared that he had never been called Barker, and had certainly never been mixed up in any murder ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... said, stepping back a pace, and an almost imperceptible jar coming into her voice. Then she came close again. "The fault you will have to find with me is this, Jasper," she said, looking fully at him with her sweet eyes; "I shall love you, if anything, too well. No one can ever come between us, unless it ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... Before the novel could reach its modern stage, of a more or less sincere attempt to express human life and character, it had to pass through several centuries of almost imperceptible development. Among the early precursors of the novel we must place a collection of tales known as the Greek Romances, dating from the second to the sixth centuries. These are imaginative and delightful ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... The education of an individual is a slow process. The education of a family, of a community, or of a state is slower still. The education of a nation or of a race is so slow that its progress is difficult of measurement. Indeed, the movement of the race as a whole is so imperceptible that it leaves room for debate as to whether humanity is ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... Their eyes did not flash, but shone with a cold still light. They were of a pale-golden or straw color, horrible to look into, with their stony calmness, their pitiless indifference, hardly enlivened by the almost imperceptible vertical slit of the pupil, through which Death seemed to be looking out like the archer behind the long narrow loop-hole in a blank turret-wall. On the whole, the caged reptiles, horrid as they were, hardly matched his recollections of what he had seen or dreamed ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... is there, of which man is capable, that is not founded on the exterior; the relation that exists between visible and invisible, the perceptible and the imperceptible?—Lavater. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... At last an imperceptible opening is made. Streams rush down from the mountain to join the river; even raindrops lend their individually insignificant aid. All the forces of nature are subtly arrayed against the obstruction in the ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... of destruction are here named. There is a slow decay going on in the opponents and their opposition, as a garment waxing old, and there is a being fretted away by the imperceptible working of external causes, as by ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... it as an enormous rope under the constant pressure of soldiers on either side, who now and then, with an "all together" of a tug-of-war at a given point, straightened or made a bend, with the result imperceptible except as you measured it by a tree or a house. Battles as severe as the most important in South Africa, battles severe enough to have decided famous campaigns in Europe in former days, when one king rode forth against ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... up and begin again. The sky is superb; the weather is hot, calm and propitious for those in search of the Lizard crushed beside the footpath. Perhaps the effluvia of the gamy tit-bit have reached them, coming from afar, imperceptible to any other sense than that of the Sexton-beetles. So my Necrophori are fain to go ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... cried, "Ho boy! bring basin and ewer;" and, turning to my brother, said, "O my guest come forward and wash thy hands." My brother rose to do so but he saw neither ewer nor basin; yet his host kept washing his hands with invisible soap in imperceptible water and cried, "Bring the table!" But my brother again saw nothing. Then said the host, "Honour me by eating of this meat and be not ashamed." And he kept moving his hand to and fro as if he ate and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the musketeer, continuing his imperceptible tone of irony, "I had no idea such a ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the road for seven miles extends over somewhat undulated ground, generally good; but here and there stony, with a gradual but almost imperceptible ascent, until the top of the pass is reached; from this, the view of Tazeen valley, and the summit ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... riders and had become what their teacher called "pals" with their horses, they were daily given larger liberty. In company with him, and sometimes without him, they rode long distances over the roads, the narrow trails, and the almost imperceptible paths which led over the mountains ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... render less striking the contrast in manners and civilization which I observed at the beginning of the century, at Caracas, Bogota, Quito, Lima, Mexico and the Havannah. The influences of the Basque, Catalanian, Galician and Andalusian origin become every day more imperceptible. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... part of the edifice it might be perpetrated. From hall to hall, and from room to room, he tracked with noiseless step and glaring eye the movements of the Christian mob—now hiding himself behind a pillar, now passing into concealed cavities in the walls, now looking down from imperceptible fissures in the roof; but, whatever his situation, invariably watching from it, with the same industry of attention and the same silence of emotion, the minutest acts of spoliation committed by the most humble follower of the Christian ranks. It was ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... has hung for many years in her grandson's dining-room, and is well known to all his friends. It represents a stately woman with an unmistakably fair skin; and if the face or hair betrays any indication of possible dark blood, it is imperceptible to the general observer, and must be of too slight and fugitive a nature to enter into the discussion. A long curl touches one shoulder. One hand rests upon a copy of Thomson's 'Seasons', which was held to be the proper study and recreation of cultivated women in those ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Only at night and in the forests while the dew lasted was there any freshness. But on the road, the highroad along which the troops marched, there was no such freshness even at night or when the road passed through the forest; the dew was imperceptible on the sandy dust churned up more than six inches deep. As soon as day dawned the march began. The artillery and baggage wagons moved noiselessly through the deep dust that rose to the very hubs of the wheels, and the infantry sank ankle-deep ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... in the alliance. 'The stream of supplies and reinforcements, which in terms of modern war is called "communications,", was kept free from even the threat of molestation, not by visible measures, but by the undisputed efficacy of a real, though imperceptible sea-power. At the close of the Russian war we encountered, and unhappily for us in influential positions, men who, undismayed by the consequences of mimicking in free England the cast-iron methods of the Great Frederick, ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... comprehended in the first region descends towards the north with so imperceptible a slope that it may almost be said to form a level plain. Within the bounds of this immense tract of country there are neither high mountains nor deep valleys. Streams meander through it irregularly: great rivers ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... flood-tide had obliged the pickmen to strike work, a sea would come rolling over the rocks, dash out the fire, and endanger his indispensable implement, the bellows. If the sea was smooth, while the smith often stood at work knee-deep in water, the tide rose by imperceptible degrees, first cooling the exterior of the fireplace, or hearth, and then quietly blackening and extinguishing the fire from below. The writer has frequently been amused at the perplexing anxiety of the blacksmith when ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... friend. "Here," he says, "was no conversation of leaps and bounds, in which idleness traverses a whole gallery of ideas that have no connection with one another, and weariness draws you away from one object to skim a dozen others. They were talks in which all was bound together, often by imperceptible threads, but all the more naturally, as not a word of what was to be said had been led up to or prepared beforehand." Grimm cannot find words to describe her verve, her stream of brilliant sallies, her dashing traits, her eagle's coup d'oeil. No wonder ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... into the Gulf, through Timbalier Bay, and may properly be termed one of the mouths of the Mississippi. Its current movement does not in high water exceed three miles an hour, and when the Mississippi is at low water, it is almost imperceptible. Large steamers, brigs, and schooners come into it when the river is at flood, and carry out three or four hundred tons of freight ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... alone worthy to represent some of the aspects of the Highest. And may it not be that from His standpoint those great differences that we see between ourselves and those which we call the lower forms of life may be almost imperceptible, since He transcends them all? A little child sees an immense difference between himself of perhaps two and a half feet high and a baby only a foot and a half high, and thinks himself a man compared with that tiny form rolling on the ground and unable to walk. ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... was delicacy on the duchess's part—not policy. He was on the point of saying something himself, to make the chance which he had determined to give her still better, when the servant announced another visitor. The duchess, on hearing the name—it was that of an Italian prince—gave a little imperceptible pout, and said to Newman, rapidly: "I beg you to remain; I desire this visit to be short." Newman said to himself, at this, that Madame d'Outreville intended, after all, that they should ...
— The American • Henry James
... in a jargon which to a layman would have been unintelligible, illustrating them by certain almost imperceptible shiftings of the fingers or changes in the position of his hand, so slight as to thwart discovery. Through it all the girl stood by and followed his every word and motion with eager attention. She needed no explanation of the terms they ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... still plastic, still capable of being won to God, as it were, by a coup de main—might not—would not—all have been well? But no!—he must needs believe that God had given her to him for ever, that there was room for all the gradual softening, the imperceptible approaches by which he had hoped to win her. It had seemed to him the process could not be too gentle, too indulgent. And meanwhile the will and mind that might have been captured at a rush had time to harden—the forces of ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the great river, sailing when the wind permitted, paddling when it did not, passing, at tolerably frequent intervals, points where lesser streams discharged themselves into the main body of water, while by imperceptible degrees the waterway narrowed, and the forest—dense, green, flower-decked, alive and gay with bird and insect life—pressed its foliaged walls in upon them ever closer and closer, except where an occasional break caused by fire or windfall afforded them a momentary glimpse of giant mountain ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... elegant villas on the seacoast of Puteoli and the Caieta, they compare their own expeditions to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet should a fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas, should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded and imperceptible chink, they deplore their intolerable hardships, and lament in affected language that they were not born in the land of the Cimmerians, the regions of eternal darkness. In these journeys into the country the whole body of the household marches with their master. In the same order as the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... it was slowly opening. Gradually, gradually the lid was swinging back, and the black slit which marked the opening was becoming wider and wider. So gently and carefully was it done that the movement was almost imperceptible. Then, as we breathlessly watched it, a white thin hand appeared at the opening, pushing back the painted lid, then another hand, and finally a face—a face which was familiar to us both, that of Professor Andreas. Stealthily he ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... burning brightly, and the other, a yellow one, too, was already beginning to blink. And though there was no wind, that lantern quivered from its own blinking, and everything seemed to quiver slightly. Yura was about to get up to go into the arbour and there begin life anew, with an imperceptible transition from the old, when suddenly he heard voices in the arbour. His mother and the wrong Yura Mikhailovich, the officer, were talking. The right Yura grew petrified in his place; his heart stood still; ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... to the non-mathematical mind, when he said that "ten decimal places are sufficient to give the circumference of the earth to the fraction of an inch, and thirty decimal places would give the circumference of the whole visible universe to a quantity imperceptible with the most ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... shook his head. In the distance he saw the Honourable Maurice come quickly toward them. With a firm but imperceptible gesture ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fascination of the lifeless face and wide-staring eyes. They drew him towards them; he stooped down and felt for the pulse, which was imperceptible; laid his hand upon the heart, but could not feel it beat; he raised an arm, and it fell back ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... was up; there were no clouds now, but there was not a very strong light, because the moon was on the wane. It was one of those nights during which an imperceptible vapour arises, and renders the moon somewhat obscure, or, at least, it robs the earth of her rays; and then there were shadows cast by the moon, yet they grew fainter, and those cast upon the floor of the apartment were ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... connected with mankind long who has learned to estimate the nature of eternity? or glorious who is aware of the insignificance of the size of the earth, even in its whole extent, and especially in the portion which men inhabit? And when we consider that almost imperceptible point which we ourselves occupy unknown to the majority of nations, can we still hope that our name and reputation can be widely circulated? And then our estates and edifices, our cattle, and the enormous treasures of our gold and silver, can they be esteemed or denominated ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... honour;—could you believe in the decline of life he would have fallen off? No, he cannot have fallen: such a mind as his never was exalted.—It is the virtues of his wife that has hitherto made his vices imperceptible;—that has kept them in their dark cell, afraid to venture out;—afraid to appear amidst her shining perfections.—Vile, abandon'd Smith!—But for the sake of his injur'd, unhappy wife, I will not discover his baseness to any but yourself and Lady Powis.—Perhaps ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... face. After a moment Alan dropped the paper, rose to his feet, and went to the window. There was no longer a light in the cabin where Mary Standish had been accepted as a guest. Stampede, too, had risen from his seat. He saw the sudden and almost imperceptible ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... Hebrew language is aware that we have in the conjugation of our verbs a mode known as the 'intensive voice,' which, by means of an almost imperceptible modification of vowel-points, intensifies the meaning of the primitive root. A similar significance seems to attach to the Jews themselves in connection with the people among whom they dwell. They are the 'intensive form' of any nationality whose language and customs they ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... eyes fell upon Fernand Wagner, she started slightly; but this movement was imperceptible alike to him whose presence caused ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Athlone,—at least so my uncle's letter mentioned. Perhaps he might have returned; if not, to Athlone I should set off at once. So resolving, I stole noiselessly up-stairs, and reached the door of the count's chamber; I opened it gently and entered; and though my step was almost imperceptible to myself, it was quite sufficient to alarm the watchful occupant of the room, who, springing up in his ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the hand of Adherbal flew at him. An imperceptible bending of the body, a red streak on Glaucon's naked side, and it dug into the deck. Yet whilst it quivered, was out again and hurled through the Carthaginian's breast and shoulders. He fell in a ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... box for another chocolate cream, gave an imperceptible start. She, too, was staying at the Normandie. She presumed that her admirer was a recent arrival, for she had seen nothing ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... white siren yonder, whose delicate body seemed to palpitate with every slow ripple of the surrounding waters. He hesitated,—with that often saving hesitation a noble spirit may feel ere willfully yielding to what it instinctively knows to be wrong,—and for the briefest possible space an imperceptible line was drawn between his own self-consciousness and the fascinating personality of his lately found friend—a line that parted them asunder as though by a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... restively, and say, "Uh-uh," at intervals, and at the first chance they would sort of fade out of the room, with a meaning glance at their wives. Eva had two children now. Girls. They treated Uncle Jo with good-natured tolerance. Stell had no children. Uncle Jo degenerated, by almost imperceptible degrees, from the position of honoured guest, who is served with white meat, to that of one who is content with a leg and one of those obscure and bony sections which, after much turning with a bewildered and investigating knife and fork, leave ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... but she would not meet her cousin's true eyes, nor would she grant me one minute apart from the rest in which I could utter my fears or demand the breaking of that spell whose effects were so visible, even if its workings were secret and imperceptible. But at last the stomacher was finished, and as it dropped from her hands I threw myself at her feet, and from this position, looking ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... had the unspeakable joy of seeing her wag her tail with an almost imperceptible movement at his approach. He sat down then, without fear, by her side, and they began to play together; he took her paws and muzzle, pulled her ears, rolled her over on her back, stroked her warm, delicate flanks. She let him do what ever he liked, and when he began ...
— A Passion in the Desert • Honore de Balzac
... before I knew or was capable of guessing what the world, or glories, or business of it were, the natural affections of my soul gave me a secret bent of aversion from them, as some plants are said to turn away from others, by an antipathy imperceptible to themselves and inscrutable to man's understanding. Even when I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holidays and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or with ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... Nevill said these words. The fat man did not show any sign of embarrassment, however, unless his expectant gaze became somewhat fixed, in an effort to prevent a blink. If this were so, the change was practically imperceptible. "She had left here before six o'clock last evening, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... imperceptible twist at the corners of his lips manifested itself to the watchful eye and cheered the enterprising soul of Miss Forbes. "No," he said equably, "I'm interested to discover how ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... a positive, about ten pounds of positive, I should judge from the size of that volume, while Charlotte certainly argued from a negative viewpoint," said father, and his eyes twinkled as he gave me an almost imperceptible wink. By his answer he also avoided answering the question of faith put ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... agreeable rejoinders she had made to his offerings, the faint suggestion of an accent that should have struck him at the time but did not for the obvious reason that he was then not at all interested in her. Her English was so perfect that he had failed to detect the almost imperceptible foreign flavour that now took definite form in his reflections. He tried to place this accent. Was it French, or Italian, or Spanish? Certainly it was not German. The lightness of the Latin was evident, he decided, but it was ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... admitting of theory, first, that those mountains had been much higher; secondly, that they had been degraded in their present place; thirdly, that this continent has subsisted in its present place for a very long space of time, during the slow progress of those imperceptible operations; and, lastly, that much of the solid parts of this earth has been thus travelled by the waters to the sea, after serving the purpose of soil upon the surface of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... venturing to open the door wider, he worked through the narrow aperture, inch by inch, stopping every few seconds for fear that the rustle of his shirt against the jamb might be overheard. At length, by almost imperceptible movements, he succeeded in gaining the head of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... obtain information as to the progress of the Berlin industrial works, and the faithful patriot had, in obedience to the call of his king, come to Leipsic. He had seen the misery and suffering on this poor, down-trodden town, and, as he traversed the antechamber, he said to himself, with an imperceptible smile, "I brought the Russian general to clemency, and the king will not ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... have even before we are conscious of a single image; as if, circumscribing his scenes by a magic circle, he had imposed his own mood on all who entered it. The spell then opens ere it seems to have begun, acting upon us with a vague sense of limitless expanse, yet so continuous, so gentle, so imperceptible in its remotest gradations, as scarcely to be felt, till, combining with unity, we find the feeling embodied in the complete image of intellectual repose,—fulness and rest. The mind thus disposed, the charmed eye glides into the scene: a soft, undulating light leads it on, from bank ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... measurements sank into insignificance beside it. Its color was of softest gray just touched with the flush that deepens the inmost chamber of a shell, or blushes in the unfolded petals of a wind flower. With majestic yet almost imperceptible motion this cloud mounted the blue background of the sky. The spectre of a faded moon hung motionless above it an instant only, and then was swiftly drawn within its soft eclipse. Changing from moment to moment, the great mass took on all semblances of vivid ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... a thin mist spread over portions of the "Moor." It did not lie everywhere, it spared the sand, it lay above the water, but in so delicate a film as to be all but imperceptible. It served to diffuse the moonlight, to make a halo of silver about the face of the orb, when looked up to by one within the haze, ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... answer for a moment, and when he did, it was in a low, almost imperceptible tone, as he stood by the table at which Barbara sat, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... had not deceived itself. It was as I had thought. I had planned to rid myself of her by hating this phantom until my hate had darkened it. Then there would be nothing but an imperceptible shadow of her remaining, one with which my senses could ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... last 5,000 years. The latter prediction is lawful, because, while we know the causes on which its rising depends, we know, also, that there has existed hitherto no perceptible cause to counteract them; and that it is opposed to experience that a cause imperceptible for so long should start into immensity in a day. If the uniformity is empirical only, that is, if we do not know the causes, and if we infer that they remain uncounteracted from their effects ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... dwelling, I found that one of the windows of the cottage had formerly occupied a part of it, but the panes had been filled up with wood. In one of these was a small and almost imperceptible chink through which the eye could just penetrate. Through this crevice a small room was visible, whitewashed and clean but very bare of furniture. In one corner, near a small fire, sat an old man, leaning ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... and uncouth nature of the man was susceptible to the impulses of a refined revenge, or of an exalted ambition. But when, on closer inspection, the duchesse perceived the small, piercingly black eyes, the longitudinal wrinkles of his high and massive forehead, the imperceptible twitching of the lips, on which were apparent traces of rough good-humor, Madame de Chevreuse altered her opinion of him, and felt she could say to herself: "I have ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the door and opened it. Quarrier, passing the corridor, turned an expressionless visage toward him, and passed on with a nod almost imperceptible. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... returned to the towns and cities. Yet from this temporary association were produced two results; European fraud became sharpened by coming into contact with Asiatic craft, whilst European tongues, by imperceptible degrees, became recruited with various words (some of them wonderfully expressive), many of which have long been stumbling-stocks to the philologist, who, whilst stigmatising them as words of mere ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... (man included), begins the course of its existence as an egg; and each egg has no greater value of form than that of a single cell. This egg-cell is differentiated, after fecundation, in gradual and imperceptible transitions, farther and farther, higher and higher, until the individual has reached its perfect organization. No organ, no function of the body, no power or function of the soul or of the mind, appears suddenly, but all in gradual development. Since ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... had beheld a man weep in the prison. With difficulty I comforted him, and although from that day forth, he began to serve me more zealously than ever, if that were possible, and to watch over me, yet I perceived, from almost imperceptible signs, that his heart could never pardon me for my reproach; and yet the others laughed at us, persecuted him at every convenient opportunity, sometimes cursed him violently—but he lived in concord and friendship with them and never took offense. Yes, it is sometimes ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... of an almost imperceptible wink in the direction of Violet, the third of the party. Sir Thomas's diplomacies were thoroughly appreciated by his offspring. "It's time some of you were cleared out from under my feet!" he told them. Nevertheless ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... sad infection is syphilis, instead of gonorrhea, there are still other miseries in store for it. If it is not so fortunate to be stillborn, it may have infection that ranges from almost imperceptible degrees to the most loathsome extent that it is possible for animal tissue to harbor. Its brain may be so invaded by the syphilitic parasites that it can never attain any degree of mentality; its spinal column maybe so involved that paralytic conditions ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... a slight, almost imperceptible start, and opened his long, dark eyes with questioning surprise at Bardo's blind face, as if his words—a mere phrase of common parlance at a time when men were often being ransomed from slavery or imprisonment—had some ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... is so little that you cannot see it, but by the motion of it; for at every pulse, as it opens you may see it, and immediately again it shuts, in such sort as it is not to be discerned. From this red speck, after a while, there will stream out a number of little (almost imperceptible) red veins. At the end of some of which, in time, there will be gathered together a knot of matter, which by little and little will take the form of a head and you will, ere long, begin to discern eyes and a beak in it. All this while the first ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... vice and corruption. There are a sort of middle tints and shades between the two extremes; there is something uncertain on the confines of the two empires which they first pass through, and which renders the change easy and imperceptible. There are even a sort of splendid impositions so well contrived, that, at the very time the path of rectitude is quitted forever, men seem to be advancing into some higher and nobler road of public conduct. Not that such impositions are strong enough in themselves; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in advancement. Each new position brings them to a new situation and into a new relation to the business. Girls receive salary advancement for increasingly responsible work, but any change in work is likely to be so gradual as to be almost imperceptible if they remain in the same place of employment. If they change to another place, those who are stenographers have a slight readjustment to make in getting accustomed to new terms and to the peculiarities of the new persons who dictate ...
— Wage Earning and Education • R. R. Lutz
... air has been phenomenally still. One can go outside, as we do frequently, to feed the birds and squirrels without hats and not feel a hair stirred. Even when the snow was on the ground we never felt the cold, owing to the absence of wind, and the thaw has been imperceptible. Snow is still on the hills. I have several times thrown open my bedroom window about dawn for an hour to familiarise myself with the outside noises. There is nothing human within a quarter of a mile. (N.B.—The others, who are much more likely to be accurate as to distance than I, say ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... peaks, paling from rose to saffron, far above, beyond. There was no sound but a tinkling stream and the continual jingle of our sledge-bells. We drove at a foot's pace, our horse finding his own path. When we left the forest, the light had all gone except for some almost imperceptible touches of primrose on the eastern horns. It was a moonless night, but the sky was alive with stars, and now and then one fell. The last house in the valley was soon passed, and we entered those bleak gorges where the wind, fine, noiseless, penetrating like an edge of steel, poured ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... few minutes later, I rejoined those below, I found them all, with eyes directed toward the cornice, searching for the hole through which I had just been looking. It was next to imperceptible, so naturally had it been made to fit in with the shadows of the scroll work; and even after I had discovered it and pointed it out to them, I found difficulty in making them believe that they really looked upon an opening. But when once convinced ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... have been tempted to tell her too,' Cytherea went on, 'had I not found out that there exists a very odd, almost imperceptible, and yet real connection of some kind between her and Mr. Manston, which is more than that of a mutual interest in ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... don't know, Gracious, only it seems to me you are like a pure white lily bell, and I want to creep into your heart and live in its fragrance, but—" She stopped abruptly. It seemed as though the almost imperceptible veil of reserve was falling lower ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... obviously plausible reason for assigning it to the creator of so realistic a witch and so singular a succubus. But such a dramatic poem as this would be a conspicuous jewel in the crown of any but a supremely great dramatist and poet. And the musical or metrical harmony of the verse, imperceptible as it may be or rather must always be to the long-eared dunces who can only think to hear through their clumsy fingers, is so like Fletcher's as to suggest that if any part of Shakespeare's "King Henry VIII." is attributable to a lesser hand than his it may far more plausibly be assigned ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of Greenland moves. It flows with imperceptible slowness under its own weight, like, a mass of some viscous or plastic substance, such as pitch or molasses candy, in all directions outward toward the sea. Near the edge it has so thinned that mountain peaks are laid bare, these islands in the sea of ice being known as NUNATAKS. Down the valleys ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... before. This was the mere allegation of envy, chafed at the achievements of another, which, from their apparent facility, might have been its own. It is indeed strange that the simple mechanism thus explained should have been unobserved or misunderstood so long; and nothing can account for it but the imperceptible lightness as well as the strength of the chains which authority ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... is like a reflecting telescope, the least breath upon the mirror of which will cause all the starry sublimities that it should shadow forth to fade and become dim. The slightest moisture in the atmosphere, though it be quite imperceptible where we stand, will be dense enough to shut out the fair, shining, snowy summits that girdle the horizon and to leave nothing visible but the lowliness and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... mechanical basis of the world, the processes which science knows as 'laws of motion' and the like, but which really, as I then perceived, might more aptly be described as the more inveterate of Nature's habits. Upon this foundation, which varied, indeed, but by almost imperceptible gradations, was built up an infinitely complex structure of intermediate parts, increasing from below upwards in freedom, ease and beauty of form, till high above all floated on the ear snatches of melody, ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... his heart, and tho' never insensible of beauty, had never been enslaved by it, was now by charms he least suspected, and at an age when he believed himself proof against all the attacks of love, subdued without knowing that he was so.—The tender passion stole into his soul by imperceptible degrees, and under the shape of friendship and paternal affection, met with no opposition from his reason, till it became too violent to be restrained; then showed itself in the whole power of restless wishes, fears, hopes, ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... general's plantation, M. Michaux passed over Mulder Hill, a steep and lofty mountain, that forms a kind of amphitheatre. From its summit the neighbouring country presents the aspect of an immense valley, covered with forests of imperceptible extent. As far as the eye can reach, nothing but a gloomy verdant space is seen, formed by the tops of the close-connected trees, and, through which, not even the vestige of a plantation can be discerned. The profound silence that reigns in these woods, uninhabited by savage beasts, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... objects seemed much nearer from the distinctness with which their outlines were revealed. The road was a magnificent one,—broad, well paved, well graded,—and though for some miles it was steadily ascending, yet the ascent was made by such an easy slope, that it was really imperceptible; and they bowled along as easily and as merrily as if on level ground. Moreover, the scenery around was of the most attractive character. They were among the mountains; and though there were no snow-clad summits, and no lofty peaks lost amid the clouds, still the ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... hoofs of the posse; the quiet was so perfect, the air so clear, that he even caught the chorus of straining saddle leather and then voices of men. All this time the effects of the whisky had been wearing away by imperceptible degrees and at that sound all his old self rushed back on Vic Gregg. Why, they were his friends, his partners, these voices in the night, and that clear laughter floated up from Harry Fisher who had been his bunkie at the Circle V Bar ranch three years ago. He ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... a slow, almost imperceptible shake of the head. He was gazing reflectively at a couple of English sparrows perched on one of the telephone wires some ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... necklace." Then he looked up at her, and their eyes met, hers with desperate expectation and his holding her gaze in an unmoved questioning. "Did she give it to you?" he asked, and she shook her head with a negation almost imperceptible. "No," said Jeffrey to himself. "She didn't have it. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... on the box and waited, meditating upon the probable occupations of gentlemen who habitually slept till ten o'clock in the morning and sometimes till twelve. From time to time he brushed an almost imperceptible particle of dust from his very smart blue cloth knees, and settled the in-turned collar of the perfectly new blue guernsey about his neck. It was new, and it scratched him disagreeably, but it was ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... Mr. Ferris with evident reluctance and not until he had plainly received intimation from Miss Sanford that it was more than time. Knowing Mrs. Truscott well, she could see what was imperceptible to their visitors, that the strain was becoming almost unbearable. The moment they were gone ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King |
