"Impenetrability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... never be entirely displaced by even such superior systems as wireless telegraphy. The advantage of the wig-wag lies in the fact that no apparatus is necessary and communication may thus be established for short distances almost instantly. Its disadvantages are lack of speed, impenetrability to dust, smoke, and fog, and the short ranges over which ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... vaults susceptible of indefinite extension. But how was he, standing on a platform at the eastern edge of the reservoir, mighty in so many senses, to determine its shape, width, length? Stooping he looked down the vista straining his vision, but there was no opposite wall—only darkness and impenetrability. He filled his lungs trying the air, and it was damp but sweet. He stamped with force—there was a rumble in the vault overhead—that was all. He called: "Lael, Lael"—there was no answer, though he listened, his soul in his ears. Therewith he gave over ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... recondite, but they must be dragged out of their obscurity and brought struggling to the light; they must be rendered plain and palpable, (as far as it is in the wit of man to do so) or they are no longer eloquence. That which by its natural impenetrability, and in spite of every effort, remains dark and difficult, which is impervious to every ray, on which the imagination can shed no lustre, which can be clothed with no beauty, is not a subject for the orator or poet. At the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... men told Columbus, "they had an herb which took away fatigue"; but he found the illusion of "arriving from the east at the Indies" more composing to his lofty spirit than any tobacco. Is not our faith in the impenetrability of matter more sedative than narcotics? You play with jackstraws, balls, bowls, horse and gun, estates and politics; but there are finer games before you. Is not time a pretty toy? Life will show you masks that are worth all your carnivals. Yonder mountain must migrate into your mind. The fine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... a slight but decided change in her manner, which did not pass away: a sort of hardness and impenetrability: and so incorporated into her nature did these traits seem, that one would have supposed they had always been there. Some unpleasant visitors take a surprisingly short time to ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... not even see the ground below It was a series of negatives. I stopped the horses. I listened—then looked at my watch. The stillness of the grave enveloped me. It was a little past five o'clock. The silence was oppressive—the misty impenetrability of the atmosphere was appalling. I do not say "darkness," for as yet it was not really dark. I could still see the dial of my watch clearly enough to read the time. But darkness was falling fast—"falling," for it seemed to come ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... IMPENETRABILITY, the name given to that quality of matter whereby two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... ideas, and the one salvation of an epoch of expansion is a harmony of ideas. The very principle of the authority which we are seeking as a defence against anarchy is right reason, ideas, light. The more, therefore, an aristocracy calls to its aid its innate forces,—its impenetrability, its high spirit, its power of haughty resistance,—to deal with an epoch of expansion, the graver is the danger, the greater the certainty of explosion, the surer the aristocracy's defeat; for it is trying to do violence to nature ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... we reflect that when Varro wrote his treatise on husbandry, Virgil was at work on the Georgics, and then compare the diction of the two, it seems almost incredible that they should have been contemporaries. In all literature there is probably no such instance of rock-like impenetrability to fashion; for him Alexandria might never have existed. He recalls the age of Cato rather than that of Cicero. His versatility was as great as his industry. There was scarcely any department of prose or poetry, provided it was national, ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... acute and still worthy of attention. If bodies transmitted to the sense-organs forms like themselves, these copies, which would evidently be corporeal, must, by their departure, diminish the mass of the body from which they came away, and also, because of their impenetrability, obstruct and interfere with one another, thus destroying the possibility of clear impressions. A further point against the image theory is furnished by the increase in the size of an object, when approached. And, above all, it can never be made conceivable how motion can be transformed into sensations ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... a frost, I don't know," Maria said. She was actually confused before this impenetrability. Remembering the awful things she had said to Her, she was suddenly conscience-stricken as she saw Ida's calm radiance of demeanor. She began to wonder if she had not been mistaken, if Ida was not ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman |
