"Unapproachable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Villars to be introduced to the more intimate acquaintance of the Queen, the Princess succeeded in obtaining for her the privilege of the petites entrees (unaware of the powerful passport to favour which she possessed), she found it difficult to account for the eagerness with which the ordinarily unapproachable Marie greeted the appearance and courted the society of the astute Duchess; nor did she for an instant dream that by facilitating the intercourse between them, she was undermining the fortunes of ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... stood just inside the door, looked solemn and awe-inspiring. Even Eric felt a little subdued; the chamber seemed so vast, and the great four-poster, away by itself in an alcove, had a remote and unapproachable aspect. It was one thing to have a rollicking, merry, good-humored father to romp about with all day, and another to approach the solemn personage who reposed in the center ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... to help the good; Nay, deeper, to ordain that good itself Can scarcely be discerned without the harm Of some companion-ill; even as gold Is useless unalloyed; and Very Light Unshadowed kills, as unapproachable; And absolute unmitigated good Alone is Godhead. Every creature here (In this our human trial-world at least) Is full of faults and spots and blemishes, If only to set off his better self, His talents, graces, excellent good gifts, Burnt in the fire to ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... by nature, surrounded by low, marshy grounds, rendering it almost unapproachable from the land side, save by the causeways over which the roads ran, with a large and convenient harbor and with easy access to the sea, was already rich and populous. The citizens of La Rochelle were noted ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... dazzling, unapproachable scene, the American was considering the practical question of what was next to be done, when Ariel at his side abruptly seized his arm with an intensity which startled and caused him ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... summoned the messengers and inquired the result of their efforts. "She is more unapproachable than ever," they replied; "she has even ordered us to ask the Queen to obtain your Majesty's permission to retire to the Nunnery of the White Bird ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... and asking me to help him with the girl I love! Good Lord, what next?" He surveyed the eager Ulstervelt in the most irritating manner, finally laughing outright in his face. The very thought of him as Connie's accepted lover! She, the adorable, the splendid, the unapproachable! It ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... betray him more than his aversions. Modern History touches us so nearly, it is so deep a question of life and death, that we are bound to find our own way through it, and to owe our insight to ourselves. The historians of former ages, unapproachable for us in knowledge and in talent, cannot be our limit. We have the power to be more rigidly impersonal, disinterested and just than they; and to learn from undisguised and genuine records to look with remorse upon the past, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... against a stone wall, for thus I regarded it, became at last almost unendurable. Clavering shy, and the secretary unapproachable—how was I to gain anything? The short interviews I had with Mary did not help matters. Haughty, constrained, feverish, pettish, grateful, appealing, everything at once, and never twice the same, I learned to dread, even while I coveted, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth (1 Cor. 2:13)," he used the language to which you will find no parallel in the literature of mere human genius. And no man of candor or intelligence can pass from the writings even of the unapproachable Shakespeare into the perusal of the Bible without feeling that the difference between the two is not one simply of degree, but of kind; he has not merely ascended to a loftier outlook in the same human dwelling, ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... Neapolitan soldiery destroy all the exquisite master-pieces on the walls of the church of the 'Trinitado Monte', after the retreat of their antagonist barbarians, might as easily have made vanish the rooms and open gallery of Raffael, and the yet more unapproachable wonders of the sublime Florentine in the Sixtine Chapel, forced upon my mind the reflection; How grateful the human race ought to be that the works of Euclid, Newton, Plato, Milton, Shakspeare, are not subjected to similar contingencies,—that ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... great triumph. It flattered his vanity. After all, he was entering this higher dark world whose existence had piqued and puzzled him so long. He glanced at Miss Wynn beside him there in the dimly lighted parlor: she looked so aloof and unapproachable, so handsome and so elegant. He thought how she would complete a house—such a home as his prospective four or six thousand dollars a year could easily purchase. She saw him surveying her, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and her imperial attraction. Among the men her name was never spoken but with reserve and respect, and her afternoon teas were like a little court. She had no compromising tenderness of manner for man or woman; she ruled, yet was unapproachable through any avenues of sentiment. She had a quiet aplomb, which would be called 'sang-froid' in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... transformation during that short journey across the waters of the lake; his eyes blazed with eagerness, his nostrils dilated as though after a prolonged absence he was once more breathing his native air; he carried himself with a new and kingly dignity that somehow seemed to render him unapproachable; he gave his orders with the calm finality of tone of an absolute monarch; his knowledge of the place which he was approaching was so intimate as to be positively uncanny, as was evidenced when the raft drew near the island: those in charge would have run her ashore at the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... crests defy the melting rays and bear their plumage through the very dog-days, to greet and welcome the first, faint, timid snow-flakes of the early fall. There they gleam and glisten, no longer as we saw them from the Kansas plains, dim in the western distance, unapproachable, but close at hand, neighborly, sheltering, for we nestle under their very shoulders. Here, to the west, just behind us, no great day's walk away and seemingly far nearer, in jagged outline against the blue of heaven, are the guardians of the old transcontinental ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... different person, in relation to his officers, from the colonel of a regiment; he is a demi-god, a Dalai lama, living in solitary state; sublime, unapproachable; and the radiation of his dignity stretches through all the other members of the nautical hierarchy; hence all sorts of petty intrigues, disputes, grumblings, and jealousies, which, to the irreverent eye of an "idler," give to the whole little society the aspect of nothing so much as the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... model of all that was good, brave, and true that Gordon will be enshrined in the memory of the great English nation which he really died for, and whose honour was dearer to him than his life. England may well feel proud of having produced so noble and so unapproachable a hero. She has had, and she will have again, soldiers as brave, as thoughtful, as prudent, and as successful as Gordon. She has had, and she will have again, servants of the same public spirit, with the same intense desire that not a spot should sully the national honour. But ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... more, and he has remained—cherishing his love with hope. Can such a man, with all his goodness, understand such a passion as mine? And besides, there is such a difference between us in years, in opinions. He kills me with his unapproachable dignity; and all this cools my friendship, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... mother.[24] For this reason he had not been able earlier to withstand Julie although Maria attracted him far more. For the former was the indulgent mother of his power of imagination, the latter on the contrary the proud, unapproachable mother of his real childhood. Moreover, though he did not conceal from himself that his heart belonged to the chaste Maria, yet he resolved, if Julie should convince him that she had been the ghostly ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... and he takes occasion to say, that God is not good, but goodness; is not holy, but holiness; is not infinite, but infinity. This, I apprehend, will have struck many readers as merely a rhetorical bravura; sublime, perhaps, and fitted to exalt the feeling of awe connected with so unapproachable a mystery, but otherwise not throwing any new light upon the darkness of the idea as a problem before the intellect. Yet indirectly perhaps it does, when brought out into its latent sense by placing ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... stars, Even so doth he resemble them in secret, Wonderful, still inexplicable courses! 335 Trust me, they do him wrong. All will be solved. These smokes, at once, will kindle into flame— The edges of this black and stormy cloud Will brighten suddenly, and we shall view The Unapproachable ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... which supports the vault, where they loll and howl like dogs. It is but rarely that it may be entered, and then only by the highly privileged—kings whose destiny marked them out for admittance, and heroes who have fallen valiantly on the field of battle. In his remote position on unapproachable summits Anu seems to participate in the calm and immobility of his dwelling. If he is quick in forming an opinion and coming to a conclusion, he himself never puts into execution the plans which he has matured or the judgments which he has pronounced: he relieves ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... conversation with the huge, unwieldy creatures, and they seemed to understand him. Indeed, he spoke to all the unphilological inhabitants with a directness and tact which went home to them at once. He chaffed with the monkeys, coaxed the tigers, and bamboozled the snakes, with a dexterity unapproachable. All the keepers knew him, he was such a loyal visitor, and I noticed they came up to him in a friendly way, with the feeling that they had a sympathetic ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... naval life will appreciate the annoying suspense on the Termagant when dawn revealed the calm sea, quiet sky, and tempting but unapproachable prize. The well-known pluck of our British tars was fired by the alluring vision, and nothing was heard about decks but prayers for a puff and whistling for a breeze. Meanwhile, Seagram, the surgeon, and purser were huddled ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... was a middle-aged man, quiet and unobtrusive in manner, and with very little to say upon any subject unconnected with his profession. There, however, he was unapproachable. He was simply perfect as a navigator, seemed to have been in and out of every harbour in the world, and was intimately acquainted with the position of every rock and shoal which guarded their approach, together with the distinctive ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... come! And if it come, and if Thy work be raised, the Temple will be radiant With a great host of statues, statues of no blemish, And works of thrice-great makers unapproachable. ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... beautiful country of beautiful France. It is the chateau once more. It is the same, but changed. The unapproachable elegance, the inviolable security, have witnessed invasion. The right wing of the chateau is in ruins, with traces of fire upon the blackened walls; while here and there, a broken statue or a roofless ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... flatter me, Elise. In short, however you are reported to be incorruptible and unapproachable. You cannot decide whether the world is calumniating you or not; but what is it you are musing about while I am speaking ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... caught through the parted doors of those celestial regions something of the glory of the New Jerusalem. She saw her pass on through the countless choirs of the angels, till she came close to the throne of God; and in the midst of the unapproachable light she saw the Child Jesus, more beautiful and glorious than she had ever seen Him before; and then, even as she gazed on Him, forgetting all beside, the golden gates closed on the scene, and shut it from her eyes. Now when Dominica looked round, and saw that ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... he felt sure there was a hereafter. The memory of the times when he had but to lay his hand on her hair to call a most passionate response from her filled his heart with a torture that choked all words before they reached his lips; at the thought of those days he forgot she was unapproachable, forgot how forbidding were her eyes, how stony her lips. Flinging himself forward, his knee on the chair at her side, his face pressed hardly in the folds of the cloak on her shoulder, he clasped his arms about her with a boyish petulance, saying, ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... had been a true one. On a subsequent visit to the Bush street saloon he found the Blind Boss unapproachable. After waiting almost an hour and seeing several men who had come after him, led to the rear room for a conference, word was brought him by the little, keen-eyed man that the position of Mayor's secretary was already filled. He was exceedingly polite, expressing "Mr. Buckley's deep regret," ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... when his wife had attempted to condole with her brother-in-law, Prince Peter had observed a look of pain on his brother's face. The look had at once been masked by an expression of unapproachable pride, and he had begun to question her about their flat, and the price she paid. At luncheon, before the family and guests, he had been witty and sarcastic as usual. Towards every one, excepting the children, whom he treated with almost ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... re-draw same map from memory. Measure the heights of a tree, telegraph pole and church steeple, describing method adopted. Measure width of a river, and distance apart of two objects a known distance away and unapproachable. Be able to measure a gradient, contours, conventional signs ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... that they are not to be referred to the Noachian deluge. I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks. I should fear the infinite power and inflexible ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... I do not think there could be any comparison. The exquisite perfection of delicate accuracy, combined with extraordinary lightness and velocity of execution, of Thalberg was his one unapproachable excellence, and as near the unerring precision of mere mechanism as possible: it was absolutely faultless; but it paid the penalty for being what things human may not be—it wanted the human element of passion and pathos. His performance was a miracle of art, and left his ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... hardly any idea now, how, in spite of the East India Company conquering and governing India, India itself remained a terra incognita, unapproachable by the students of England and of Europe. That there were literary treasures to be discovered in India, that the Brahmans were the depositaries of ancient wisdom, was known through the labours of some of the most eminent servants of the East India Company. It had been known ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... thought to be rugged piles of rock took the form of grim battlements and towers, rising so straight from the edge of the rock that I had thought them a part of it. Across the bridge frowned an angry portcullis. As the place stood, it looked as if one man could hold it against a thousand, so unapproachable did it seem. On our side the bridge, on the mainland, was a large courtyard or barrack, with an outer wall and moat round it, of itself no easy place to carry; and when, beyond that, hung this angry castle, perched ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... and a stride and a half back back again,—doing what all evildoers have to do sooner or later, cudgelling his brains for a way out of life's complications: and every now and then the terribleness of what had happened to his Princess, his guarded Princess, his unapproachable one, came over him with a fresh wave of horror and ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... bastions of Rose Island,—or to those caves at Coaster's Harbor where we played Victor Hugo, and were eaten up in fancy by a cuttle-fish. Then we voyaged, you remember, to that further cave in, the solid rock, just above low-water-mark, a cell unapproachable by land, and high enough for you to stand erect. There you wished to play Constance in Marmion, and to be walled up alive, if convenient; but as it proved impracticable on that day, you helped me to secure some bits of drift-wood instead. Longer voyages brought waifs from ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... various guises till it ends its days honorable as soup on the following Friday. Endeavor to hide from your husband that you are making that leg of mutton almost achieve eternal life. It is noticeable that men are attracted to a house where there is good cooking, and the most unapproachable beings are rendered accessible by the pleasantness of a souffle, or the aroma of a roast duck. You must have observed that a certain number of single men have their hearts very "wishful" towards their cook. Not infrequently they marry that cook; but it is less that she is a good and ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various
... her,' he went on, 'I loved her, her, calm, true, unapproachable, incorruptible; when she went away, I was almost mad with grief.... Since then I have never ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... was necessary to treat with the Bailie. He was not unapproachable, seeing that he had suffered this going and coming from the town to the camp and the camp to the town; and with him must be devised some honest means of getting rid of the garrison. With this object the commonalty, preceded by the Lord Bishop, went in great ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... are in the National Museum at Munich (861-2) which are surely unapproachable. One of the borders in 861 consists of the eyes of peacock feathers so absolutely perfect that we can only wonder at its rainbow hues and pearly sheen of colour. Something similar to it exists in a fragment (No. 4461) in the Victoria ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... the port of Bab-Salimeti with his guard, while the bulk of his forces continued their voyage eastward. The passage took place without mishap, but they could not disembark on the shore of the gulf itself, which was unapproachable by reason of the deposits of semi-liquid mud which girdled it; they therefore put into the mouth of the Ulai, and ascended the river till they reached a spot where the slimy reed-beds gave place to firm ground, which permitted them to draw their ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... order was being executed, Shirley moved away from her friends, and stood at the hall-window, silent, unapproachable. When Mrs. Gill came back, she turned. The purple flush which painful excitement kindles on a pale cheek glowed on hers; the spark which displeasure lights in a ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... not answer the telegram, nor did he acknowledge the photograph but, true to his word, he established it at once on his desk in a frame which he spent a long time in selecting. The picture represented Christine at her most queenly and unapproachable. She wore the black and gold dress, and the huge feather fan was folded across her bare arms. Every time he looked at it, he remembered how those same arms had been clasped round his own stiff and unbending neck. And sometimes ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... Margaret; and Joshua thought her cold and haughty, an aristocrat of the unapproachable type, never natural and never permitting others to ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... Aristotelian) doctrine that "All depends on the subject," and to connect the assertion with a further one, of which even less proof is offered, that "the Greeks understood this far better than we do," and that they were also the unapproachable masters of "the grand style." These positions, which, to do Mr Arnold justice, he maintained unflinchingly to his dying day, are supported, not exactly by argument, but by a great deal of ingenious and audacious illustration ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... a masterly study of the inner life by a heart thirsting after God, eager to grasp at least the outskirts of His ways, the abyss of His love for sinners, and the height of His unapproachable majesty—and it was written by a busy ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... the king had inscribed in his notebook, "My departure.—I do not mean to have anything more done." The temperature favored his designs; it did not freeze, the country remained inundated and the towns unapproachable; the troops of the Elector of Brandenburg, together with a corps sent by the emperor, had put themselves in motion towards the Rhine; Turenne kept them in check in Germany. Conde covered Alsace; the Duke ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... at New York the question was at its height. The theory of the floating island, and the unapproachable sandbank, supported by minds little competent to form a judgment, was abandoned. And, indeed, unless this shoal had a machine in its stomach, how could it change its position ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... in the landscape, bright and vivacious, but rather something secret and still, drawn almost reluctantly away, rather than hurrying off on business of its own. And yet the whole place gives me the constant sense of being an island, remote and unapproachable; the great black plain, where every step that one takes warns one of its quivering elasticity of soil, runs sharply up to the base of the long, low, green hills, whose rough, dimpled pastures and old elms contrast sharply and pleasantly with ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... forgive me?' he asked anxiously. 'I did not mean to offend you. Indeed, seeing you so far above me, so pure, so unapproachable, I thought that never in this world could I reveal my secret to you, never ask anything of you, never put myself in your way. Since ever I saw you, I have thought of you night and day, but without hope, without any definite end in view. I know that you do not love ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... since Milly's spirit had been after all so at one with her about them, what was the cruelty of the event but a cruelty, of a sort, to herself? That came out when he named, as the horrible thing to know, the fact of their young friend's unapproachable terror of the end, keep it down though she would; coming out therefore often, since in so naming it he found the strangest of reliefs. He allowed it all its vividness, as if on the principle of his not at least spiritually shirking. Milly had held with passion to her ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... Manse, Drumsheugh would have taken for granted that Donald was "feeling sober" (ill), and recommended the bottle which cured him of "a hoast" (cough) in the fifties. But the Free Kirk had been taught that the Highlanders were unapproachable in spiritual attainments, and even ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... regarded as necessarily inferior in all respects. Hellenic civilization at its best represented an early stage of sociological evolution; yet the arts which it developed still furnish our supreme and unapproachable ideals of beauty. So, too, this much more archaic civilization of Old Japan attained an average of aesthetic and moral culture well worthy of our wonder and praise. Only a shallow mind—a very shallow mind—will ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... had never been thought easy to intimidate, but I quailed before this unapproachable ice-berg. It made no attempt from that moment to vindicate what I was pleased to call my rights, but awaited passively the progress ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... day (if he wears thin boots and is neither a sportsman nor an agriculturalist) is the early morning. Between the hours of waking and breakfasting, the women of the family are sleeping or dressing, and therefore unapproachable; the master of the house is out and about on his own affairs; a Parisian is therefore compelled to be alone from eight to eleven o'clock, the hour chosen in all country-houses for breakfast. Now, having got what amusement he can out of carefully dressing ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... utterance. "THIS," said the dying man. "THIS IS THE END OF EARTH." He paused for a moment, and then added, "I AM CONTENT." Angels might well draw aside the curtains of the skies to look down on such a scene—a scene that approximated even to that scene of unapproachable sublimity, not to be recalled without reverence, when, in mortal agony, ONE who spake as never man spake, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... the rich porcelain maker, was ill at ease within himself. He had partaken of his customary midday meal, flavoured the repast by unsealing a jar of matured wine, consumed a little fruit, a few sweetmeats and half a dozen cups of unapproachable tea, and then retired to an inner chamber to contemplate philosophically from the reposeful attitude ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... sharp, and the light that still filtered through the dense storm-clouds was very dim. But in a few seconds another great flash lit up the whole wild scene. He saw again the Spear Point Rock standing out, scimitar-like, in the sea. The water was dashing all around it. It stood up, grim and unapproachable, the great waves flinging their mighty clouds of spray over its stark summit. But—possibly because he viewed it from above instead of from below—he saw naught beside that grand and futile struggle ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... by a visit from the ladies of that family, in the hope (generally futile) of inducing me to do some ornamental papering or painting in their residence, subjects on which they have by experience found my agent to be unapproachable. When those four women descend upon me, I am fairly dazzled by the splendor of their attire, and lost in wonder as to how the price of all that finery can have been squeezed out of the twelve remaining hundreds of their income. When I meet ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... down beside her and tried to make himself agreeable. He wanted some one to be nice to him. But Karna was unapproachable; those dirty feet had quite turned her head. And either Lasse had forgotten how to do it, or he was wanting in assurance, for every time he attempted a pleasant ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... tiptoe. "But your standards are so lofty—naturally, they would be." He paused. "I wonder what your standard really is. Is it—unapproachable? Or do you see some ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... development in the thick walls of mediaeval castles and convents. Its effect is tranquil, but cheerless and dungeon-like in its fullest development, owing to the limitation of the range of sight in the outlook, which, if the window be unapproachable, reduces it to a mere point of light. A modified condition of it, with some combination of the outlook form, is probably the best for domestic buildings in general (which, however, in modern architecture, are unhappily so thin walled, that the outline ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... proud withdrawal of the mountain boy and girl, and both were anxious to make amends. More than once Gray came near riding over to Steve Hawn's and trying once more to understand and if possible to explain and restore good feeling, but the memory of his rebuff from Mavis and the unapproachable quality in Jason made him hesitate. Naturally with Marjorie this state of mind was worse, because of the brink of Jason's confession for which she knew she was much to blame, and because of the closer past between them. ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... was toasting a slice of bread at the end of a very long toasting-fork, which she held at arm's length towards the unapproachable fire, travestying the Flanconnade ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... with fog, and looked desolate enough, but nevertheless seemed acceptable after a tedious journey against head winds and calms. The wind was still directly out of the straits, and we had to beat backward and forward from Resolution to Button Island, and it seemed as if the straits were unapproachable. Toward night the wind blew a perfect gale, and added to the usual dangers was the risk of running upon the innumerable pieces of loose ice which appeared on every side, many of them having sharp points projecting below the surface of the water, and heavy enough to pierce the sides ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... won his most enduring fame. By his liberal and enlightened policy the surplus of the Athenian revenues was devoted to the creation of those wonders of architecture and sculpture, whose fragments still serve as unapproachable models to the mind of modern Europe. And under his rule Athens became the school of Greece, the great centre for every form of intellectual activity, a position which she maintained until the later period of the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... Gloucester to Devonshire, and the consequent unapproachable state of my books, prevents my referring to authorities at the moment in support of what I have said about the arms of Judge Cradock alias Newton: still I wish to notice the subject at once that I may not appear to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... of the feudal chief, would have rejoiced at the arrival of a liberator; and indeed, while the Serbian troops were in Albania the peasant refused to give his lord the customary third or half of what the land produced, and after the departure of the Serbs he was unapproachable for tax-collectors. Who knows whether this social readjustment, so auspiciously begun, might not have made Albania wipe out her grievances against the Serbs and remember only that in the Imperial days of Du[vs]an, even if he was not of the most ancient Balkan ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... exceedingly lovely. She seemed unapproachable, elusive, mysterious, and yet her art touched the material. She contrived to bring out how successful Mister Shultz was in the bakery business, and in the next breath told nonchalantly of the vast sums ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... majestic &c (repute) 873. vast, immense, enormous, extreme; inordinate, excessive, extravagant, exorbitant, outrageous, preposterous, unconscionable, swinging, monstrous, overgrown; towering, stupendous, prodigious, astonishing, incredible; marvelous &c 870. unlimited &c (infinite) 105; unapproachable, unutterable, indescribable, ineffable, unspeakable, inexpressible, beyond expression, fabulous. undiminished, unabated, unreduced^, unrestricted. absolute, positive, stark, decided, unequivocal, essential, perfect, finished. remarkable, of mark, marked, pointed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... in the whole range of her deck and see every movement of her crew. It was a spot safe from eaves-droppers, though, of course, exposed to view. The sun had just set on the supreme content of Carter when Jorgenson and Jaffir sat down side by side between the knightheads of the Emma and, public but unapproachable, impressive and secret, began ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Rowlett joined the group, however, interest fell promptly away from Pete and centred around this more legitimate pole. But Bas turned on them all a sullenly uncommunicative face, and the idlers were quick to recognize and respect his unapproachable mood and to stand wide ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the fire; and the light, streaming up along her dress, transfigured her into something alien and unapproachable. The easy flex of her untrammelled waist was magnificent. She had the effect of a statue, draped ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... belief until now, with a dozen words, Ted saw his father shatter the illusion. No, of course Mr. Laurie would never come to the shack. It had been absurd to think it for a moment. And even if he did, it would only be as a lofty and unapproachable spectator. Mr. Fernald's words were a subtly designed flattery intended to put him in good humor because he wanted ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... everything he did: some one was watching over him and jealously concealing his or her identity. Christophe had tried to discover it: but it seemed as though his friend were piqued by his not having attempted sooner to find out who he was, and he remained unapproachable. Besides, Christophe was absorbed by other preoccupations: he was thinking of Olivier, he was thinking of Francoise: that very morning he had just read in the paper that she was lying seriously ill at San Francisco: he imagined her alone in a strange city, in a hotel bedroom, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... with every fine quality. According to them there had never been such a woman in the history of mankind; there could not have been! She became legendary among their friends: a young and elegant creature, surpassingly beautiful, proud, queenly, unapproachable, scarcely visible, a marvellous manager, a fine cook and artificer of strange English dishes, utterly reliable, utterly exact and with habits of order ...! They adored the slight English accent which gave a touch of the exotic to her very correct and freely idiomatic French. In short, Sophia ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... it is not merely on historical facts that hangs the "historical difficulty" at issue; but rather on its degree of interference with time-honoured, long-established conjectures, often raised to the eminence of an unapproachable historical axiom. That no statement coming from our quarters can ever hope to be given consideration so long as it has to be supported on the ruins of reigning hobbies, whether of an alleged historical or ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Anabela Zamora. The lady, as you know, is of an old Spanish family, and further than looking at her driving in the family carruaje of afternoons around the plaza, or catching a glimpse of her through a barred window of evenings, she is as unapproachable ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... meeting-place politically and commercially, as well as for the indulgence of pleasure without restraint. Round and round the golden mile-stone in front of the Forum—now in gloom of eclipse, now in unapproachable splendor—flowed all the active currents of humanity. If excellences of manner, refinements of society, attainments of intellect, and glory of achievement made no impression upon him, how could he, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... be even the worse for thee. And if it be so, then such must my good pleasure be. Abide thou in silence and hearken to my bidding, lest all the gods that are in Olympus keep not off from thee my visitation, when I put forth my hands unapproachable against thee." ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... hat firmly upon his head, and gazed across the monotony of the back-yard fences at Clarence. The cat eyed him disrespectfully, paws tucked under, tail curled up against his well-fed flank—disillusioned, disgusted, unapproachable. ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... a man with so intense a craving for the love of his fellow-men as I possess. And yet I am conscious that I cannot make myself understood by very many people. They will always say, "How cold and unapproachable he is." When in reality I love them with yearnings of heart. Now, then, I am going to Milton with all this complex thought of myself, and yet, dear chum, there is not the least doubt after all that I ought ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... the first there was a foreboding of evil in my heart, but I did not look to see it from this source. I feared always that the remoteness of my character, which seemed to terrify you with a sense of unapproachable strangeness, might keep you from responding to my passion. But that passed away. Then came your opposition to my crusade against the sentimentalism of the day. That I knew was merely a new phase of the earlier antipathy, a feeling that there was no room in my breast for ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... unrolled itself before me, looking on Ayesha that forgotten scene sprang into my mind. For on her face just such a change had come. Hitherto, with all her loveliness, the heart of Ayesha had seemed like that winter mountain wrapped in its unapproachable snow and before her pure brow and icy self-command, aspirations sank ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... possibilities for the ideal man: a handsome and highly respectable marriage with a girl twenty years his junior, fresh from the convent, provided with the right number of heraldic quarterings, acres, diamonds, and domestic virtues, and who would bear him, in deep awe for his unapproachable superiority, five or six robust children; and a romantic connexion with a married woman or a widow, a woman all passion and intellect and aspiration, with whom he should go through a course of mutual soul improvement, who should be the sharer of ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... as the central feature of a small church, with the utmost pathos and dignity, thus doing incomparably in his own way—the way of the colourist and the warm, the essentially human realist—what Michelangelo had, soaring high above earth, accomplished with unapproachable sublimity in the Prophets and Sibyls ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... interrupted phrases, in hints ending in deep sighs. The woods were unmoved, like a mask—heavy, like the closed door of a prison—they looked with their air of hidden knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence. The Russian was explaining to me that it was only lately that Mr. Kurtz had come down to the river, bringing along with him all the fighting men of that lake tribe. He had been absent for several months—getting himself adored, I suppose—and had come down unexpectedly, with the intention ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... life, than the literature of any nation that ever existed. That same race, side by side with the unparalleled growth of its industry produces Shakspeare, Milton, Bacon, and Newton, all four at the summit of human thought,—and then, just below these unapproachable fixed lights, a whole firmament of glories, lesser than they, as all created intelligence must be, yet in whose superior rays the age of Augustus, of Leo X., of Louis XIV., all but the age of Pericles, the culture of Greece, pale and fade. And ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... listened for a time too easily to their counsel. He and they little knew what they were doing in giving and taking such advice. The truth is, when he used his own Scottish dialect he was unapproached, unapproachable; no poet before or since has evoked out of that instrument so perfect and so varied melodies. When he wrote in English he was seldom more than third-rate; in (p. 073) fact, he was but a common clever versifier. There ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... by the world's conceptions of Godhead, and the reality as unveiled in Christ! On the one hand you have gods lustful, selfish, passionate, capricious, cruel, angry, vile; or gods remote, indifferent, not only passionless, but heartless, inexorable, unapproachable, whom no man can know, whom no man can love, whom no man can trust. On the other hand, if you look at Christ's tears as the revelation of God; if you look at Christ's ruth and pity as the manifestation of the inmost glory of the divine nature; if you take ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... table here, at Raxim's, you must come and join us," and she added with a sly smile, "Oh—quite platonically—I know you're unapproachable." ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... not tell you that I had not seen the interior of the cathedral. I do not know where the tomb (if there be a tomb) of the Eleven Thousand Virgins is; and then, it appears, it is unapproachable, alas! ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... by their lank longitude from the stockier foreign breed: it was the careless powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain. There was something bleak and unapproachable in his face, and he was so stiffened and grizzled that I took him for an old man and was surprised to hear that he was not more than fifty-two. I had this from Harmon Gow, who had driven the stage from Bettsbridge to Starkfield ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... exchange the trampled causeways of the London streets for the greenest meadows that bordered Rotha or Derwentwater. There were days of early summer when London rose from her morning bath of mist in a splendour truly unapproachable; when no music heard of man seemed comparable with the long diapason of the crowded streets; when from morn to eve the hours ran with an inconceivable gaiety and lightness, and the eye was in turn inebriated with the hard glare and deep ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts and unapproachable bogs.—PLUTARCH: Theseus. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... steed can follow him. Immense sums of money have been offered to any who could catch him, and many have attempted the task, but without success. The noble animal still runs free in his native prairies, always alone and unapproachable. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... what it is to stand on its shores. Well, I will pass over all intervenin' incidents, some as the lava duz when it gits started, and draw the curtain on us agin as we stood in front of that awful, majestic, dretful, sublime, unapproachable, devilish, glorious—a thousand times glorious—and not to be forgot till death, sight. Tongue can't utter words to describe it; the pen hain't made, the egg hain't laid to hatch out the soarin' eagle whose feathers could be wrought into a pen fittin' to describe that seen. Why, I have ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... love would have been enough. But to have been given the love of a being like Miss Gladys—peerless and unapproachable, ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... outside. "Quelle pudeur!" he more than once observed, as her knock drew him towards the door. His lunch he took wherever he happened to be, and he dined at his French restaurant, or at a new Italian one where the spaghetti was unapproachable, and where everything was cheap, plentiful, and informal. He returned home at his own discretion, and sometimes was heard working upon the obdurate old night-lock ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... cannot be regarded as the actual Fathers of Neoplatonism; for the philosophic method was still very imperfect in comparison with the Neoplatonic, their principles were uncertain, and the authority of Plato was not yet regarded as placed on an unapproachable height. The Jewish and Christian philosophers of the first and second centuries stand very much nearer the later Neoplatonism than Numenius. We would probably see this more clearly if we knew the development of Christianity in Alexandria in the second century. But, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... eyes, which, as those of her father, were not large, and had gray pupils with a cold glance, penetrating and reasoning. Her shapely form was somewhat too slender; her posture and movements too stiff and ceremonious. She passed in society for a haughty, cold, unapproachable, original, and even eccentric young lady. On the stage was presented a play which had been preceded by immense praise; in the theatre had collected all that bore the name of high and fashionable society in the city. The boxes were filled, except ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... no Harbour: a vessel of 250 tons cannot approach within a mile of the landing-place; the open roadstead is exposed to the terrible north wind, and when gales blow from the west and south, it is almost unapproachable. Every ebb leaves a sandy flat, extending half a mile seaward from the town; the reefy anchorage is difficult of entrance after sunset, and the coralline ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... tried To touch Lene Levi's heart. Lene remained unapproachable. Suddenly she jumped up on the railing, Turns up her nose at the world for the last time, Joyfully jumps into the river. Seven pale little men ran, As quickly as they could, out of ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... oxygen, nitrogen, and are endued with a special soul, which soul is the product of some of the forces which the chemical atom possesses, he affirms that this is one of those positions which is still unapproachable, adding, "I feel like a sailor who puts forth into an abyss, the extent of which he cannot see;" and, again, "I must enter my decided protest against the attempt to make a premature extension of our doctrine in this manner—never ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... with whip, bridle, or spur; but now I gave him the curb and the spurs at the same instant. He gave one mad bound, and then went off at a rate that completely eclipsed the speed of the fleetest horse I had ever ridden. He could not trot, but his gallop was unapproachable, and consisted in a succession of leaps, performed with a precision, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various |
