"Invisible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... acceptably. If his aloof and solitary state ever distressed him, at least he gave no outward sign of it, but went his uncomplaining way, bearing himself with a homely, silent dignity, and enveloped in those invisible garments of superstition which local prejudice and local ignorance had ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... books finished,—the Signatura Rerum. In this remarkable book Behmen teaches us that all things have two worlds in which they live,—an inward world and an outward. All created things have an inner and an invisible essence, and an outer and a visible form. And the outward form is always more or less the key to the inward character. This whole world that we see around us, and of which we ourselves are the soul,—it is all a symbol, a 'signature,' of ...
— Jacob Behmen - an appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... Christian turned to climb up Bury Bluff. He found that he had in reality made very little progress in descending. Before leaving the case, he edged it by degrees nearer to the base of the ledge, which would render it invisible from the beach. The ascent was soon accomplished, and after a cautious search he concluded that no one was about, so set off home at ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... principles fixed upon her. If she had, she would have been more consciously distressed. Now the lunch went off with considerable warmth. Under the influence of the varied occurrences, the fine, invisible passion which was emanating from Drouet, the food, the still unusual luxury, she relaxed and heard with open ears. She was again the victim of ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... suggestive. The glass was pointed toward the spot and instantly confirmed the unaided eye. In the horizon, in the mist of a stretch of wooded country, he observed a faint, almost invisible line of vapor climbing upward into the cold blue sky, and gradually dissolving, until at the height of a hundred feet or less ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... of course, to appear spontaneous and the hand of the titular rulers remain invisible: the Convention, as usual with usurpers, is to simulate reserve and disinterestedness.—Consequently, the following morning, August 11, on the opening of the session, it simply declares that "its mission is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... sculptures or images[236] in Siamese temples also include Ganesa, Phra: Narai (Narayana or Vishnu) riding on the Garuda and Phra: Isuen (Siva) riding on a bull. There is a legend that the Buddha and Siva tried which could make himself invisible to the other. At last the Buddha sat on Siva's head and the god being unable to see him acknowledged his defeat. This story is told to explain a small figure which Siva bears on his head and recalls the legend found ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet; Draw close, but speak not. Phantoms, welcome, divine and tender! Invisible to the rest, henceforth become my companions; Follow me ever! desert me ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... stillness reigns around where death has been! The painful oppression, the muffled tread, the echoes that haunt as tidings from the spirit world, borne on invisible wings, confronting ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... after his first baptism of fire, after his first view of the shattered mutilated remnants of a shell-stricken body, that the infantryman turns towards where invisible German guns from comparative safety belch forth death, and shakes his impotent fist at this enemy. He picks himself up, white and shaken, from where the concussion has thrown him, and amid the cries of the dying, "Curse you," he sobs, ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... position in a deep ditch which crossed the British line of advance, and behind which was a thick jungle, and opened a heavy fire upon the Rifles. The troops advanced steadily in skirmishing order, opening fire upon their almost invisible foes, whose heads only could be seen when they raised them to discharge their muskets. The Egyptians fired high, and although a hail of bullets swept over the heads of the advancing troops there were but few casualties. ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... course run, her last silver loop wound through the meadows, she ended in a placid pool amid the sand ridges above high-water mark. The yellow cliffs climbed up again on either side, and near the chalice in the grey beach whence, invisible, the river sank away to win the sea by stealth, spread Estelle's sea garden—an expanse of stone and sand enriched by many flowers that seemed to crown the river pool with a garland, or weave a wreath for Bride's ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... dog, purposely brought up to this mode of warfare, warned us by his barkings that marauders were in sight, we repaired to the spot, and then the firing was opened. Fright seized hold on the mischievous tribe, every member of which hid itself in its tree, and became as invisible as it possibly could. But the little dog would not leave his post, while we would turn round the tree, and never failed discovering the hidden inmate. We then commence the attack, not ceasing until pug was laid prostrate. After having ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... literature during the past four centuries; but one great book in a generation or a century, like a grain of radium in a ton of pitchblende, is worth all it has cost; for like the radium it is infinitely powerful to the wise man, deadly to the fool, and its strange, invisible virtue so far as we know ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... the summer boarder, and was presented to him by a young lady who liked him very much. It was wrought in a Persian pattern slightly mingled with the Greek, and was embroidered with purple, yellow, crimson, Magenta, sage green, invisible blue, ecru, old gold, drab, and other shaded worsteds, dotted with stitches of shining silk and beads of silver, the tassel alone containing skeins of ecru sewing silk. The young lady lived not very far from Mr. Stimpcett's, and she ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... entangling and impeding progress. Panting and struggling the firemen penetrated only a short way into the mass before they were slowed almost to a standstill. From the sidelines it seemed as though they were wrestling with an invisible octopus. Feet were lifted high, but never free of the twining vegetation; the ladder was pulled angrily forward, but the clutch of the grass upon it became firmer with ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... some invisible dust from his coat sleeve. "If it would keep you at home, I would say I never would ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... desolate as it is, is thronged with these invisible legions. There to our right rises the long line of Bourlon Wood—here are the sand-pits at its foot—and there are the ruined fragments of Fontaine-notre-Dame. There rushes over one again the exultation and the bitter recoil ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... or otherwise of this midnight interview under such circumstances. She thought that the tragedy of her life was beginning, and, for the first time almost, felt that her existence might have a grave side, the shade of which enveloped and rendered invisible the delicate gradations of custom and punctilio. Elfride softly opened the drawing-room door and they both went in. When she had placed the candle on the table, he enclosed her with his arms, dried her eyes with his handkerchief, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... and high enough temperature, all the C is burned to CO2, whether in gas, candle, or wood. CO2 is an invisible gas. The porcelain, when held in the flame, cools the C below the point at which it burns, called the kindling-point, and hence it is deposited. The greater part ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... hath many doors. The observance of (the duties prescribed by) religion can never be futile. Duties have been laid down with respect to every mode of life. (The fruits of those duties are invisible, being attainable in the next world.) The fruits, however, of Penance directed towards the soul are obtainable in this world.[500] Whatever be the object to which one devotes oneself, that object, O Bharata, and nothing else, appears to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... neraiidhes, who might punish him when he least expected it. He laughed and ridiculed Phrossa, offering to do any thing to dare those redoubted spirits which the company could suggest. Nerio, a far greater sceptic than Michael, suddenly affected great respect for the invisible world, and by exciting Michael, gradually engaged him, amidst the laughing of his companions, to undertake to fry a dozen of eggs on the tomb of a Turkish santon, a short distance beyond the Patissia gate—to leave a pot of charcoal, to be seen next morning, as a proof ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... man with your own eyes what do you try to find in him? The invisible man. These words which your ears catch, those gestures, those airs of the head, his attire and sensible operations of all kinds, are, for you, merely so many expressions; these express something, a soul. An inward man is hidden beneath the outward man, and ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... reached, he threw the contents of the box down into the tarpaulin which he had spread out to receive it, and having broken up the box with the ax, cast the boards down that they might fall to one side of the provisions. This done, he returned to the wagon, from above invisible, but which, when he stood on the plain, loomed dim and shapeless against ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... as one man, to repel the foreigners, and that the Jacobite party, which had, a few days before, seemed to be half the nation, had crouched down in silent terror, and had made itself so small that it had, during some time, been invisible. What reason was there for believing that the multitude who had, in 1690, at the first lighting of the beacons, snatched up firelocks, pikes, scythes, to defend, their native soil against the French, would now welcome the French as allies? And of the army by which James was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ability were they planned and executed, that the people, who in every instance identified Meehan and his brother with them, began to believe and hint that, in consequence of their compact with the devil, they had power to render themselves invisible. Common Fame, who can best treat such subjects, took up this, and never laid it aside until, by narrating several exploits which Meehan the elder was said to have performed in other parts of the kingdom, she wound it up by roundly informing the Carnmorians, that, having ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... After supper, a pale-faced, tired-looking young man, who had been previously invisible, came into the parlour, and made a low reverence to Madam, which she returned with a queenly bend of her head. His black cassock and scarf showed him to be in holy orders. Madam rang the hand-bell, the servants filed in, and evening prayers were read by the young chaplain, in a thin, ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... the grey twilight summoned the faithful women, and before the earthquake and the angel's descent. No eye saw Him rise. The guards were not asleep, for the statement that they were is a lie put into their mouths by the rulers; but though they kept jealous watch, His rising was invisible to them. 'The prison was shut with all safety,' for the stone was rolled away after He was risen, 'and the keepers standing before the doors,' but there was 'no man within.' As in the evening of that day He appeared in the closed chamber, so He passed from the sealed grave. Divine ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... yet darker, and a somewhat angry shudder, the knight resumed: "Yes, yes; I know all your promises and threats of an invisible Power, and how they are meant persuade us to part more readily with whatever of this world's goods we may possess. Once, ah, truly, once I too had such! Strange!—Sometimes it seems to me as though ages had passed over since then, and as if I were ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... assured that she could now hold herself at the valve, it was the work of only a minute to encase her in one of the protective coverings. Then, as she sat upon a bench, recovering her strength, he flipped on the lifeboat's visiphone projector and shot its invisible beam up into the control room, where he saw space-armored figures ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... days the little company at Castlewood sat at table as of evenings: this care, though unnamed and invisible, being nevertheless present alway, in the minds of at least three persons there. My lord was exceeding gentle and kind. Whenever he quitted the room, his wife's eyes followed him. He behaved to her with a kind of mournful courtesy and kindness remarkable in one ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... contended that the true Church of Christ is invisible, consisting in his view only of the predestined, but, realising the necessity for authority and organisation, he was driven to hold that the invisible Church manifested itself through a visible religious ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... retreat. The alarm would spread through the sleeping camp, the long roll would be beaten or the bugles would sound to horse, there would be mounting in hot haste and a rapid pursuit. But the partisans generally got off with their prey. Their pursuers were striking at an invisible foe. I often sent small squads at night to attack and run in the pickets along a line of several miles. Of course, these alarms were very annoying, for no human being knows how sweet sleep is but a soldier. I wanted to use and consume the Northern cavalry in hard work. I have often ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... But she was cross, or stiff, or something, to me for a long time. Peggy only appeared after dinner, looking pale and lovely enough in her loose wrapper to make Peter act excessively like——a young married man, and to make me wish myself at an invisible distance, doing something beside picking up Kate's things, that she always dropped on the floor whenever she sewed. Peggy saw I was bored, so she requested me one day to walk down to the poultry-yard and ask about her chickens; she pretended a great deal of anxiety, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... little brother Next to an overturned barrel of water. In rags, a beast of a person lies gulping food Like a cigarette butt on the yellow sun. Two skinny goats stand in broad green spaces On pegs, and their ropes sometimes tighten. Invisible behind monstrous trees Unbelievably at peace the huge ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... of the porch, he felt himself smitten as by an invisible wing, and he gasped like a fish with too much air. A quick pain in the side at that moment reminded him of his bullet-wound, but his heels had heart in them, and he set off to run. The night had fallen, but a green rent was torn in the leaden sky, and through ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... and of that existence of which he himself was conscious, would, by a great act of power upon the death and corruption of human creatures, raise up the essence of thought in an incorporeal, or at least invisible form, to give it a happier existence in ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... first, that behind the visible world there is another, the world invisible, which is hidden from the senses and also from thought that is fettered by these senses; and secondly, that it is possible for man to penetrate into that unseen world by developing certain faculties dormant ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... many poets,' said she, quickly and confusedly avoiding the mention of Vetranio, which a direct answer to Hermanric's question must have produced, 'but I remember none perfectly, save those whose theme is of spirits and of other worlds, and of the invisible beauty that we think of but cannot see. Of the few that I know of these, there is one that I first learned and loved most. I will sing it, that you may be assured I will not fail to you in ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... wide and impassable gulch between the chiefs and common people. In fact, the distinction between them was primarily of a sacred and religious character. The chief was believed to be descended from the gods, and to be allied to the invisible powers. ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... Hath found no name. Whom here awaitest thou?" "Alcestis, Queen of Thessaly,—a queen Who wooed me as the bridegroom woos the bride, For her life sacrificed will save her lord Admetus, as the Fates decreed. I wait Impatient, eager; and I enter soon, With darkening wing, invisible, a god, And kiss her lips, and kiss her throbbing heart, And then the tenderest hands can do no more Than close her eyes and wipe her cold, white brow, Inurn her ashes and strew flowers above." "This woman is a god, a hero, Death. In this ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... little later on when we were among crevasses, with Terror above us, but invisible, somewhere on our left, and the Barrier pressure on our right. We were quite lost in the darkness, and only knew that we were running downhill, the sledge almost catching our heels. There had been no light all day, clouds obscured the moon, we had not seen her since yesterday. And quite ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... worked splendidly under the direction of the "Dying Rabbit." On the second day they put up a sambur which ran within a hundred feet of us but was absolutely invisible in the high grass. When we returned to camp we found that a civet (Viverra) had walked past our tent and begun to eat the scraps about the cook box, regardless of the shouts of the mafus and servants who were ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... their impatient side; and often, the very temper which makes men earnest, makes them also intolerant. [1510] "Of all mental gifts," says Miss Julia Wedgwood, "the rarest is intellectual patience; and the last lesson of culture is to believe in difficulties which are invisible ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... just taken a chair and sat down at her side. On hearing him, she gazed upwards into the summer night. The heaven was studded with golden lights. On the very verge of the horizon a constellation was sparkling like a carbuncle, while a dust of almost invisible stars sprinkled the vault above as though with glittering sand. Charles's-Wain was slowly turning ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... sense. Everyone will remember the effective appearance of Cyrano de Bergerac in the first act of the fine play of that name; when instead of leaping in by any hackneyed door or window, he suddenly springs upon a chair above the crowd that has so far kept him invisible; "les bras croises, le feutre en bataille, la moustache herissee, le nez terrible." I will not go so far as to say that when Bernard Shaw sprang upon a chair or tub in Trafalgar Square he had the hat in battle, or even that he had the nose terrible. But just as we see Cyrano best ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... herself the rooms below, formerly occupied by the Helmers, with the hope of seeing them before long reinstated in them; and there she had a piano, the best she could afford to hire: with its aid she hoped to do something toward the breaking of the invisible bonds that tied the wings of ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... thousand voices full and sweet, In this wide hall with earth's inventions stored, And praise th' invisible universal Lord, Who lets once more in peace the nations meet, Where Science, Art, and Labor have outpour'd Their myriad horns of ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... true religion with the Cardinal, who tried in vain to win him for the Church of Rome, he came to the conclusion that the true Church of Jesus Christ consisted of many sects and many forms of belief. He held that the Church was still an invisible body; he held that it transcended the bounds of all denominations; he had found good Christians among Protestants and Catholics alike; and he believed, with all his heart and soul, that God had called him to the holy task of enlisting the ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... overfeeding that he perched himself now and then upon the handle of the ax, Jim fell back with resentment and resigned the ax to Marty Fay who spat upon his hands, doubled up his fists, sparred, in an excess of good spirits, with an invisible antagonist, and thereafter made the chips fly so fast ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... be childish, it is clever; if it be mannish, it is unusually foolish. The flat earth, floating tremulously on the sea; the sun moving always over the flat, giving day when near enough, and night when too far off; the self-luminous moon, with a semi-transparent invisible moon, created to give her an eclipse now and then; the new law of perspective, by which the vanishing of the hull before the masts, usually thought to prove the earth globular, really proves it flat;—all these and other things are well fitted ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... the one ahead. The windows of a cheap cafe reminded him that he was hungry, and he entered, going to a table and ordering something absently. There was a television screen over the combination bar and lunch-counter. Some kind of a comedy programme, at which an invisible studio-audience was laughing immoderately and without apparent cause. The roughly dressed customers along the counter didn't seem to see any more humor in it than he did. Then his food arrived on the table and he began to eat ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... tan-bark oaks, scaled and wrapped and interwound with wild grape and flaming poison oak. Saxon drew Billy's eyes to a mossy bank of five-finger ferns. All slopes seemed to meet to form this basin and colossal forest bower. Underfoot the floor was spongy with water. An invisible streamlet whispered under broad-fronded brakes. On every hand opened tiny vistas of enchantment, where young redwoods grouped still and stately about fallen giants, shoulder-high to the horses, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... into the sitting-room. He had seldom been so angry with his mother; but his countenance betrayed no sign of it, and he took his seat opposite her in silence. Silence, absolute, unconquerable silence, was the armor which Stephen White wore. It was like those invisible networks of fine chains worn next the skin, in which many men in the olden time passed unscathed through years of battles, and won the reputation of having charmed lives. No one suspected the secret. To the ordinary beholder, the man seemed accoutred in the ordinary fashion ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... as she was told. On the back of the Image, as it had said, was the pattern of a flower. Hortense followed the curves of its petals with the point of the knife. Then to her surprise the flower swung inward on an invisible hinge and there before her was an opening just large enough for her hand. Her fingers closed on something round and hard like a marble, which in the moonlight shone with little bright flashes and crinkles ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... on horseback, accompanied by the Chevalier de Pean. She drew bridle sharply in front of the group, and leaning down from her saddle gave her hand to the ladies, bidding them good morning in a cheery voice which there was no mistaking, although her face was invisible behind her veil. It was Angelique des Meloises, more gay and more ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Wells's man who invented a drug that made him invisible; and like the Arabian tales of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... masked battery, I suspected that had something to do with the matter, and, on following it up, I learned that the Kentucky colonel before mentioned had appealed for aid against the masked battery and invisible force of rebels, and that a regiment had been ordered to him. This regiment, filing off into the timber, had been followed by Thayer's brigade, supposing it to be advancing to the front, and thus left a single brigade to attack a superior force of the enemy in an intrenched and naturally strong ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of the historian and the psychologist are not, as we see, identical, but of both we may demand the endeavour, by a wise interpretation of the facts, to discover, under the visible evidences, the invisible forces which determine them. ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... my ticket at the double door of a "Silver Palace" car, the slippered steward, whispering low, conducted me to my berth—a luxurious bed three and a half feet wide, with a hair mattress on springs, fine linen sheets, and costly California blankets. The twenty-four inmates of the car were all invisible, asleep behind rich curtains. It was a true Temple of Morpheus. Profound sleep was the object to which everything was dedicated. Four silver lamps hanging from the roof, and burning low, gave a dreamy light. On each side of the center passage, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... thought, with every earnest longing For aught thou deemest needful to thy soul, Invisible vast forces are set thronging Between thee ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... sun mottled the earth with long shadows and streaks of light. A wounded man lifted his head and crawled painfully out of the swale, Michael following him with his rifle but forbearing to shoot. A whistle ran along the invisible line from left to right, and a flight of arrows arched ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... describe the appearance of a loose atomic vortex to those who have never seen one; and, fortunately, most people never have. And practically all of its frightful radiation lies in those octaves of the spectrum which are invisible to the human eye. Suffice it to say, then, that it had an average effective surface temperature of about fifteen thousand degrees absolute—two and one-half times as hot as the sun of Tellus—and that it was radiating every frequency possible to that incomprehensible temperature, and let ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... Thursday came, and still there was no chance to speak a word in private. The kitchen drudge was hedged about by open ears and curious eyes, and save at meal-time she was invisible to the men unless they glimpsed her for a moment in ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... the Christian faith, the most sublime of its teachings, and to him who penetrates its deepest sense, the most human, is this: To save lost humanity, the invisible God came to dwell among us, in the form of a man, and willed to make Himself known by this ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... get clear of the vessel before she gave a terrific roll, her stern lifted, and down she went, as if dragged by some invisible power towards the depths of the ocean. We hurried back to the Charon, without attempting to pick up anything, for the weather was coming on bad, and the boats were already as full as they could hold. I could not help remarking how little the men seemed to care for the loss ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... coquettishly,—against his knuckles. He started in nervous fright. An instant later, the same thing brushed his knuckles again, this time more insistently. The man, in a spurt of fear-driven rage, grabbed at the invisible object. His fingers slipped along the smooth sides of the bewitched bag that Lad was shoving ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... that whirring through the air, and that thud into flesh that had announced the attempt on himself and the death of Mindjee, back at the stockade gate. But no tangible obstacle fell in his way this time. It was a voice, sounding ghostly in the whispering canes, from an invisible yet very close speaker. ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the Phædo of Plato: "It well appears that those who established the Mysteries, or secret assemblies of the initiated, were no contemptible personages, but men of great genius, who in the early ages strove to teach us, under enigmas, that he who shall go to the invisible regions without being purified, will be precipitated into the abyss; while he who arrives there, purged of the stains of this world, and accomplished in virtue, will be admitted to the dwelling-place of the Deity.... ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... began in the manner which had of late grown customary, and in a while the fog gave way to a brilliance unusually flushed and hectic. The uninvited, invisible personage kept his place, until, even with the constant fancy that he was there looking over my shoulder, and so close that there was always a risk of contact, I grew to disregard him. All day long he watched the pen travelling over ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... what we are. Be mine to follow with no timid step 250 Where knowledge leads me: it shall be my pride That I have dared to tread this holy ground, Speaking no dream, but things oracular; Matter not lightly to be heard by those Who to the letter of the outward promise 255 Do read the invisible soul; by men adroit In speech, and for communion with the world Accomplished; minds whose faculties are then Most active when they are most eloquent, And elevated most when most admired. 260 Men may be found of other mould than these, Who are ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... past; there is no longer the mighty "shock of arms," the pomp and panoply of glorious war. Men fall to the shrill whisper of a bullet, the sound of which has not time to reach their ears, fired by an invisible foe. Their death is merely the quod erat demonstrandum of a mathematical and mechanical proposition. But with bow and arrow, spear or battle-axe, Mauser or Lee-Metford, the heart behind the weapon is just the same now as ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... of Mr. Irving's fine serious features are plainly visible as he turns to look at the wings. "I don't see any necessity for having these 'wings' so forward," he declares, and the wings at once slide gently back, moved by some invisible agency. In response to Mr. Irving's request for another alteration in the scenery (he speaks with an utter absence of effort in a voice which can be heard at the other end of the theatre, although it does not appear to be raised above a conversational pitch), a middle-aged ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and in Figure captions has been silently regularized, and invisible periods (full stops) have been supplied. Inconsistent hyphenization is ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... and was so far from building up of fortune by the benefit of his place, that he demolished that fine estate left him by his ancestors to purchase dear intelligence from all parts of Christendom. He had a key to unlock the pope's cabinet; and, as if master of some invisible whispering-place, all the secrets of Christian princes met at his closet. Wonder not then if he bequeathed no great wealth to his daughter, being privately interred in the choir of Paul's, as much indebted to his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... there came a great literary foregleam of the new life upon which the world was about to enter. From Italy, where the European ferment, both in its political and its spiritual character, mainly centred, came the prophecy of the new day, in a poet's "vision of the invisible world"—Dante's Divina Commedia—wherein also the deeper history of the visible world of man was both embodied from the past and in a measure predetermined for the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... not wrong. There was an essence of a floating, formless resentment there. Over the invisible tendons of mental telepathy it came to him, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the apparent failure of the lower class. And these matters of height and weight are only coarse material deficiencies. They serve to suggest, but they do not serve to gauge, the far graver and sadder loss, the invisible and immeasurable loss through mental and moral qualities undeveloped, through activities warped and crippled ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... be there searching for Him, and He meant to spend the intervening time in prayer. With the longing for sympathy so marked during these latter months, He takes Peter and James and John and goes farther into the deeply-shadowed grove. But now some invisible power tears him away and plunges Him alone still farther into the moonlit recesses of the garden; and there a strange, awful struggle of soul ensues. It seems like a renewal of the same conflict He experienced in John twelve when the Greeks came, but immeasurably intenser. ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... alliance with France and other Continental powers would be. While in Europe as an agent of the colonies he gave his energy and experience to assisting a secret committee to negotiate foreign aid in the war. It was a time of invisible ink, and Franklin instructed this committee how to use it. He saw that Europe must be engaged in the struggle to make the triumph of liberty in ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... though all the poets praise 'occhi neri' as a gift of Venus, despite that even goddesses were known for their eyes of heavenly blue, and that soft, joyous, brown eyes were admired by everybody. The eye itself should be large and full and brought well forward; the lids white, and marked with almost invisible tiny red veins; the lashes neither too long, nor too thick, nor too dark. The hollow round the eye should have the same color as the cheek. The ear, neither too large nor too small, firmly and neatly fitted on, should show a stronger color in the winding than in the even parts, with an edge of the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... "Rival al-Ghayb," somewhat like the "Himalayan Brothers" of modern superstition. See Herklots (Qanoon-e-Islam) for a long and careful description of these "Mardan-i-Ghayb" (Pers.), a "class of people mounted on clouds," invisible, but moving in a circular orbit round the world, and suggesting the Hindu "Lokapalas." They should not be in front of the traveller nor on his right, but either behind or on his left hand. Hence tables, memorial couplets and hemistichs are required to ascertain ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... had been given the power of making himself invisible, by sitting on his haunches and rubbing his ears ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... more slowly, and a low, irregular house detached itself from the tangled growth pressing upon it from all sides. The doorway, dimly lighted by an invisible lamp from within, was now near by; and John Woolfolk saw a shape cross it, so swiftly furtive that it was gone before he realized that a man had vanished into the hall. There was a second stir on the small covered ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... reached the heap of cold ashes. Iktomi halted stiff as if he had struck an invisible cliff. His black eyes showed a ring of white about them as he stared at the empty ground. There was no pot of boiled fish! There was no water-man in sight! "Oh, if only I had shared my food like a real Dakota, I would not have lost it all! Why did I not know the ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... very sure I could not reproduce in description, and probably not by practice, the inevitable monkey-contortions, the unimaginable animal agility, by which I transfer my weight to the clumsy links of this almost invisible chain. The size of the staple from which it hangs dissipates all fears in respect to its strength. Hand over hand, my feet sliding on the slippery bank, remembering sailors in the shrouds, and taking time to pity them, at last I reach friendly ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... strength I know so well Send you in Janasthan to dwell." The giants heard with prompt assent The pleasant words he said, And each before his master bent For meet salute, his head. Then as he bade, without delay, From Lanka's gate they passed, And hurried forward on their way Invisible and fast. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... guard, kept night and day, though invisible from all but one small point, was the only sign that there was anything but the kindliest relations among all the members ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... is, as intercessors between man and god, but as themselves gods, able to bestow upon their subjects and worshippers those blessings which are commonly supposed to be beyond the reach of mortals, and are sought, if at all, only by prayer and sacrifice offered to superhuman and invisible beings. Thus kings are often expected to give rain and sunshine in due season, to make the crops grow, and so on. Strange as this expectation appears to us, it is quite of a piece with early modes of thought. A savage hardly conceives the distinction commonly ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... and the mother of the child in his arms. He hastily examined the wreckage. Not a boat was intact. Creeping down to the water's edge, he hailed, with all the power of his weak voice, to possible, but invisible boats beyond the fog—calling on them to come and save the child—to look out for a woman who had been on deck, under the bridge. He shouted this woman's name—the one that he knew—encouraging her ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... there was his studying. Had not Bob assumed an obligation that must be lived up to and that was quite as binding as if it existed on paper instead of in a mere invisible point of honor? He was very grateful to Bob and had given bond that he would live up to the pledge his chum had made for him. Now he must fulfil his promise, Van argued. So although the call of the springtime ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... background, talking to each other in flashing Morse. The great mountain, Fernando Po, standing up out of the water to starboard and the Peak of Cameroon (13,760 feet) wreathed in mist to port; Victoria invisible, as also Buea—both hidden behind the clouds as we passed disdainfully by and entered the estuary of the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... master moved slowly up and down the aisle with a word of encouragement or explanation here and there, stopping with his hands behind him to gaze abstractedly out of the windows to the wondering envy of the little ones. A faint hum, as of invisible insects, gradually pervaded the school; the more persistent droning of a large bee had become dangerously soporific. The hot breath of the pines without had invaded the doors and windows; the warped shingles and weather-boarding at times creaked and snapped under the rays ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... A.M.," Excellency Hyndford is introduced to the King's Tent, and has his First Audience. Goldstick having done his motions, none but Podewils is left present; who sits at a table, taking notes of what is said. Podewils's Notes are invisible to me; but here, in authentic though carefully compressed state, is Hyndford's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the invisible realities of another world, of inward religion, of the work of God upon a poor sinner's heart. I am now talking of a matter of great importance, my dear hearers; you are all concerned in it, your souls are concerned in it, your eternal salvation is ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... Publican declareth, that he himself was borne up now by an almighty though invisible hand. For sin, when seen in its colours, and when appearing in its monstrous shape, frighteth all away from God. This is manifest by Cain, Judas, Saul, and others, who could not stand up before God under the sense and appearance ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... They laid their water-colours, not on a plastered surface, but on a rough brick wall, merely whitewashed. They used no adhesive medium, and in a few months the colours peeled off and the whole series became invisible. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Triangles of the Soldier class are formidable, it may be readily inferred that far more formidable are our Women. For if a Soldier is a wedge, a Woman is a needle; being, so to speak, ALL point, at least at the two extremities. Add to this the power of making herself practically invisible at will, and you will perceive that a Female, in Flatland, is a creature by no means to ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... been sounded every quarter of an hour so as to keep in touch with the other two vessels who were invisible in the fog. Now the high clear note rang out once more, the call of a fierce sea-creature to its mates, but no answer came back from the thick wall which pent them in. Again and again they called, and again and again with bated breath ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... at the light. Bob was merely indulging in various speculations regarding its source. On the other hand Frank busied himself in locating the strange glow, so that he might be able to know when he reached the spot, in case it was invisible at the time ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... that it is more difficult for them to realise unaided; and, besides helping them to feel more intensely those restricted personal interests which are patent to all, it awakes in them some consciousness of those more general relations that are so strangely invisible to the average man in ordinary moods. It helps to keep man in his place in nature, and, above all, it helps him to understand more intelligently the responsibilities of his place in society. And in all this ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the respectable careers to women, to bachelor women above all..." (A pause, and the two women look out on a blue London dotted with lemon-coloured, straw-coloured, mauve-tinted lights, with one cold white radiance hanging over the invisible Piccadilly Circus)—"Well, go ahead! Follow your star! I can be confident of one thing, you won't do anything mean or disgraceful. Deceiving Man while his vile laws and restrictions remain in force is no crime. Be prudent, so far as compromising our poor little firm here is concerned, because ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... led to notice an invisible barrier, more insurmountable than mountain ranges, but which is not opposed to the southern progress of cattle, goats, and sheep. The tsetse would prove a barrier only until its well-defined habitat was known, but the disease passing under the term of horse-sickness ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... universe are bound by the universal law of cause and effect. The effect is visible or perceptible, while the cause is invisible or imperceptible. The falling of an apple from a tree is the effect of a certain invisible force called gravitation. Although the force cannot be perceived by the senses, its expression is visible. All perceptible ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... similar to those of cherubims in religious pictures fluttered through the heavens uttering through their fleshless jaws hoarse hymns to the great divinity who filled the whole space with the folds of his shroud, and whose bony head was lost in the clouds. He felt that invisible beings were ripping off his flesh in bleeding tatters, which, having adhered to him throughout a whole lifetime, drew from him shrieks of pain as they were torn away. Then he beheld himself a white skeleton, bleached and polished, and a far away voice seemed ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in, around, out, crossed by the coming and going through transverse passages of the "staff," the attendants, the clerks, messengers, etc. Each atom in the stream was welling over with egotistic woes, far too many for the brief moment in which he would be closeted with the great one, who held the invisible keys of relief, who penetrated this mystery of human maladjustment. It was a busy, toiling, active, subdued place, where the tinkle of the telephone bell, the hum of electric annunciators, as one member of the staff signalled to another, vibrated in the tense atmosphere. Into this hive poured the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the leaves that seemed to whisper eerie things to him; they were stirred by some invisible emotion—by fear, he thought. To his mind all nature was trembling before the great human sacrifice about to be demanded of this fair land; and he imagined other trees, forests upon forests of them, vines, flowers, grasses—aye, mountains and gorges, even—being obsessed by this same dumb shivering. ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... nearest shelf, and soon seemed absorbed in its contents. The room, made irregular by baywindows, and shelves that projected as in public libraries, abounded with nook and recess. To one of these Fairthorn sidled himself, and became invisible. Lionel looked round the shelves. No belles lettres of our immediate generation were found there; none of those authors most in request in circulating libraries and literary institutes. The shelves disclosed no poets, no essayists, no novelists, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mission," she quoted, as if talking in a chapel, "for woman than that she sit enthroned in the home, wielding her invisible but mighty scepter from that throne, while man, kissing the hand that so lovingly commands him, shall bear her gifts and do her bidding. That is the strongest vote in the world. That is the universal suffrage which chivalry grants to woman. The unpolled vote! ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... bread. Grand'ther ate fast, not troubling himself to ask us if we would have more, but making the necessary motions to that effect by touching the spoon in the pudding or knife on the pie. Ruth and Sally still kept their eyes fixed on some invisible object at a distance. What a disagreeable interest I felt in them! What had they in common with me? What could they enjoy? How unpleasant their dingy, crumbled, needle-pricked fingers were! Sally hiccoughed, ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard |
