"Impenetrable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... years the committees have made no report whatever, either favorable or unfavorable. How much longer do you expect women to treat with respect National and State constitutions and legislative bodies that stand thus an impenetrable barrier between them and their rights as citizens of the United States?" A long colloquy ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... success. When I heard that the Maharatha Sansaptakas of our army appointed for the overthrow of Arjuna were all slain by Arjuna himself, then, O Sanjaya, I had no hope of success. When I heard that our disposition of forces, impenetrable by others, and defended by Bharadwaja himself well-armed, had been singly forced and entered by the brave son of Subhadra, then, O Sanjaya, I had no hope of success. When I heard that our Maharathas, unable to overcome ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... also has the freeman of the North—and every person there is presumed to be a free man—an equal right to be secure at home in the enjoyment of freedom. The same principle of State rights by which Slavery is protected in the slave States throws an impenetrable shield over Freedom in the free States. And here, let me say, is the only security for Slavery in the slave States, as for Freedom in the free States. In the present fatal overthrow of State rights you teach a lesson which may return to plague the ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... eclipse. What Braxton sat down on was not I, but the seat of the pew; and what he sat back against was not my face and chest, but the back of the pew. I didn't realise this at the moment. All I knew was a sudden black blotting-out of all things; an infinite and impenetrable darkness. I dimly conjectured that I was dead. What was wrong with me, in point of fact, was that my eyes, with the rest of me, were inside Braxton. You remember what a great hulking fellow Braxton was. I calculate that as we sat there my eyes were just ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... namely, the great prevalence of the slave trade, which has confined the attention of European adventurers exclusively to the coast; the small temptation which the continent of Africa held out, during the continuance of that trade, to internal commerce; and the almost impenetrable barrier raised up against Europeans in modern times, by the savage ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... nightly toward the pole: so seemed Far off the flying Fiend. At last appear Hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof, And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass, Three iron, three of adamantine rock, Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire, Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat On either side a formidable Shape. The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold, Voluminous and vast—a serpent armed With ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... understand them), and an impression of Dupont's engraving of Delaroche's Beaux Artes hemicycle, representing the great men of all ages. On the wall behind him, above the mantelshelf, is a family portrait of impenetrable obscurity. ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... now saw, for they generally ran toward that point. I was partly influenced in leaving the river by a wish to avoid several chiefs in that direction, who levy a heavy tribute on those who pass up or down. Our path lay along the bed of the Nake for some distance, the banks being covered with impenetrable thickets. The villages are not numerous, but we went from one to the other, and were treated kindly. Here they call themselves Bambiri, though the general name of the whole nation is Banyai. One of our guides was an inveterate talker, always stopping and ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... it as a whole, however, this literature was sad; a cloud of melancholy enveloped it, like those penetrating mists, observed by Pytheas and the oldest travellers, which rose from the marshes of the island and concealed the outlines of its impenetrable forests. But the conquerors who came from Normandy, from Brittany, from Anjou, from all the provinces of France, were of a cheerful temperament; they were happy: everything went well with them. They brought with them the gaiety, the wit, the sunshine of ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... his feet, his place of abode, his daily course, were in the dominion of another, who inexorably ruled him. It was not the gentle influence which draws and persuades; it was not the power which can be propitiated by prayer; it was a tyranny which acted without reaction, energetic as mind, and impenetrable as matter. ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... ruined. To all that he said to me I could find no answer. Ignorant what drink I had taken, I could not explain my long sleep. Appearances were against me. If I complained, every one would condemn me; it must be so, for to me all was an impenetrable mystery." ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... who knows? The importation of that Bali pony might have been part of some deep scheme, of some diplomatic plan, of some hopeful intrigue. With Almayer one could never tell. He governed his conduct by considerations removed from the obvious, by incredible assumptions, which rendered his logic impenetrable to any reasonable person. I learned all this later. That morning, seeing the figure in pajamas moving in the mist, I said to ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... succeeded in glozing over his criminal correspondence with the enemy, and persuading the Emperor, still prepossessed in his favour, that the sole object of his secret conferences was to obtain peace for Germany. But impenetrable as he himself believed his proceedings to be, in the course of his conduct, enough transpired to justify the insinuations with which his rivals incessantly loaded the ear of the Emperor. In order to satisfy ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... appreciable extent. The boom, the one engrossing idea in the minds of all alike, seemed to hold no fascination for Hazon. To him it was a matter of absolutely no importance. What the deuce, then, was he there for? His impenetrable reserve, his out-of-the-common and striking personality, his rather sinister expression, had earned for him a nick-name. He was known all over the Rand as "Pirate" Hazon, or more commonly "The Pirate," because, declared ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... ghastly form which had so recently appeared standing by her bedside. The same haggard countenance, the same awful appearance of murderous death. A faintness came upon her; she turned to flee to her chamber—the candle dropped from her trembling hand, and she was shrouded in impenetrable darkness. She groped to find the stairs: as she came near their foot, a black object, apparently in human shape, stood before her, with eyes which seemed to burn like coals of fire, and red flames issuing from its mouth. As she stood fixed a moment in inexpressible trepidation, a large ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... which blazed several days was extinguished it was simple to recover the bodies on the surface. It is now a question, however, of delving into the almost impenetrable collection to get at those lodged within. The grinding tree trunks doubtless crushed those beneath into mere unrecognizable masses of flesh. Those on the surface were nearly all so much burned as to ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... blows on both sides he forced his horse forward (the eyes of which had been bound), intending to make a way down the hill. But the living wall of peasants was impenetrable. ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... Sometimes the rattle of the stones told of a paved causeway, and at others our smooth, silent course suggested asphalt; but, save by this variation in sound, there was nothing at all which could in the remotest way help me to form a guess as to where we were. The paper over each window was impenetrable to light, and a blue curtain was drawn across the glass work in front. It was a quarter-past seven when we left Pall Mall, and my watch showed me that it was ten minutes to nine when we at last came to a standstill. My companion let down ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... the door was not sure whether Miss Verinder was at home or not. I sent him upstairs with my card, as the speediest way of setting the question at rest. The man came down again with an impenetrable face, and informed me that Miss ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... commercial folk over a wide tract of the western Sudan. The long east-and-west stretch of the Sudan grasslands presents an unobstructed zone between the thousand-mile belt of desert to the north and the dense equatorial forests to the south, between hunger and thirst on one side, heat and fever and impenetrable forests on the other. Hence the Sudan in all history has been the crowded Broadway of Africa. Here pass commercial caravans, hybrid merchant tribes like the Hausa, throngs of pilgrims, streams of peoples, herds of cattle moving to busy ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... and now we draw near to the empire of the fishes. Our feet glide swiftly over unfathomed depths, where in summer our line tempted the pout and perch, and where the stately pickerel lurked in the long corridors formed by the bulrushes. The deep, impenetrable marsh, where the heron waded, and bittern squatted, is made pervious to our swift shoes, as if a thousand railroads had been made into it. With one impulse we are carried to the cabin of the musk-rat, that earliest settler, and see him ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... it with farming. Or put the question to a still higher legal functionary, who, on the same occasion, when he should have been a reed, inclining here and there, as adverse gales of evidence disposed him, was seen to be a manufactured image on the seat of Justice, cast by Power, in most impenetrable brass. ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... gleams, Deep buried as the glooms that lay Impenetrable as the grave of day, Near and as distant as our dreams. A bright train flashed with all its squares Of warm light where the bridge lay mistily. The night was all about us: we were free, Free of the day and all ...
— Silhouettes • Arthur Symons
... turned her attention to Senator North. He was standing alone for the moment, glancing about the room. His attitude was one of absolute repose; he did not look as if he ever had hurried or wasted his energies or lost his self-control in his life. His face was impenetrable; his eyes, black and piercing, were wholly without that limpidity which reveals depths and changes of expression; his mouth was somewhat contemptuous, and betrayed neither tenderness nor humour. If possible, he stood even more squarely ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... followed the arrival of the new comers were the coolest and most salubrious of the year. But, even in those months, the pestilential influence of a tropical sun, shining on swamps rank with impenetrable thickets of black mangroves, began to be felt. The mortality was great; and it was but too clear that, before the summer was far advanced, the second colony would, like the first, have to choose between ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is an enlarged copy of the Yenna or Prince's River. There are the same swampy borders and 'impenetrable forests,' as Captain Wyatt entitles them; while the mangrove never quite disappears from this true lagoon-stream. The monotonous fringe of rhizophores is broken, about two miles from the mouth, by bamboo-palms ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... startled his contemporaries by taking for granted scarce one of the articles that formed their comfortable faith and by revelling in almost everything that made them idiots if he himself was to figure as a child of truth, looks to us, by any such measure, comparatively plated over with the impenetrable rococo of his own day. I speak, I hasten to add, not of Byron's volume, his flood and his fortune, but of his really having quarrelled with the temper and the accent of his age still more where they might have helped him to ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... and a weird stillness fell after it. Then came a low moaning cry, a cry that was human in its agony, and yet which had in it something so near the savage that even Wabigoon found himself trembling as he strained in futile effort to pierce the impenetrable gloom ahead. Before the cry had lost itself in the distances of the cavern Mukoki was ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... hour later I conducted Mademoiselle Sophie to her father, and two days after I left the town of T——, and the image of the girl with the childlike face and the soul impenetrable as stone slipped quickly out ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... pyramid, vomiting incessant fire; and the commandant had had the sagacity to draw up three lines of his men, with their bayonets fixed, from one side of the vessel to the other, abreast of the gangways, forming a barrier, behind which the crew of the French had retreated, and which was impenetrable to the gallant crew of the Aspasia, who were only provided ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... fast was impossible, and any moment he might miss the road that led off to the left. So he was compelled to give all his attention to peering into the thick shadows ahead. As good luck would have it, he came to higher ground where there was less mesquite, and therefore not such impenetrable darkness; and at this point he came ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... see not how to obey, how to carry them out! I am shut up in a world of consciousness, an unknown I in an unknown world: surely this world of my unwilled, unchosen, compelled existence, cannot be shut out from him, cannot be unknown to him, cannot be impenetrable, impermeable, unpresent to him from whom I am! nay, is it not his thinking in which I think? is it not by his consciousness that I am conscious? Whatever passes in me must be as naturally known to him as to me, and more thoroughly, even ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... looks and action is common in summer in the South Atlantic and Gulf States, frequenting the almost impenetrable swamps, and is a ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... known of Emily Bronte,' she writes, 'that every little detail awakens an interest. Her extreme reserve seemed impenetrable, yet she was intensely lovable; she invited confidence in her moral power. Few people have the gift of looking and smiling as she could look and smile. One of her rare expressive looks was something to remember ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... peaceful traders who explored those northern waters were careful never to lose sight of the Saxon, Frisian and Frankish shores during their passage. Nor was communication with the west by land any easier. For generations the obstinately heathen Saxons had lain, a compact and impenetrable mass, between Scandinavia and the Frank empire, nor were the measures adopted by Charles the Great for the conversion of the Saxons to the true faith very much to the liking of their warlike Danish neighbours on the other side. But by the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... degree less than the capillary pressure of the largest channel, the gases disengaged in the two parts of the trough will remain entirely separate. In order that the mixing may not take place through the partition above the level of the liquid (dry partition), the latter will have to be impenetrable in every part that emerges. The study of the partitions should be directed to their separating effect on the gases, and to their electric resistance. In order to study the first of these properties, the porous partition, fixed by a hermetical joint to a glass tube, is immersed ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... whose intellect only was left unimpaired by the general decay, lived between a doctor and a confessor, his two antipathies. But he was jovial with them. Was there not a bright light burning for him behind the veil of the future? Over this veil, leaden and impenetrable to others, transparent to him, the delicate and bewitching delights of youth ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... right ahead of them, offering what seemed an effectual barrier to their further progress—at least by water—and as the sides of the gorge through which the river rushed were almost perpendicular, without margin and with impenetrable bush everywhere, advance by land seemed ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... was a little more genial than it had been in the old days. Nevertheless this was still the old Amy Warlock, stiff, masculine, impenetrable. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... which became still more vehement—then louder—bewailed his lost state—deplored his keeping aloof from the means of grace—feared that the example of his old, and sinful, and blasphemous father, and his most profligate mother, had rendered his heart impenetrable to all visitations of conscience or religion—if conscience he ever had, or religion he ever heard; both of which, he, the humble and sinful suppliant, doubted. What then was his state? Oh! how could ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... was moored to a tree on the eastern side of the stream, far-away from the haunts of civilised man, while Rob lay sleepless, listening to the strange and weird sounds which rose from the apparently impenetrable forest ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... wood and semi-tropical trees looking like a long green wall. Far in front arose a transverse wall like to the first, and making at its intersection a right angle. At this angle, the road entered the wood, near to the ground this forest was absolutely impenetrable to the sight, by reason of the suffocating growth of briars, vines, palmettos and underbrush. We ought to have occupied these woods the night before, and have hemmed the enemy in the open beyond. We now knew that the foe was in our immediate front. We marched down the ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... as though it were a pillar of fire. While they were wondering what it could be, a pilot came on board, and in answer to their questions told them that it was the light from the Wakulla volcano. He said that no living soul had ever been nearer than five miles to it, on account of the horrible and impenetrable swamps surrounding it. ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... portion was committed to certain ciphers, which their ingenious inventor deemed, no doubt, to be utterly impregnable. In stenography, however, the art of lock-picking always keeps ahead of the art of locking, as that of inventing destructive missiles seems to outstrip that of forging impenetrable plates. Wodrow's trick was the same as that of Samuel Pepys, and productive of the same consequences—the excitement of a rabid curiosity, which at last found its way into the recesses of his secret communings. They are now ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... de Peyronnet saw him, the Terrorist had been entirely replaced by the "civilised Statesman." What passed before her eyes was a very old, white-haired man, with a regard deep and impenetrable. She added, however, "I remember noting that everyone seemed to treat him with the greatest awe." By that time, strange to say, he was one of the richest and most respected men in France. Further, he had by his second marriage entered one of the greatest families of the ancien rgime, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... feed about 4 P.M., and they invariably, retire to the thickest and most thorny jungle in the neighbourhood of their feeding-place by 7 A.M. In these impenetrable haunts they ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... about two and a half feet long, and six inches wide in the blade: they rarely come to sufficiently close quarters to make use of the last. For defensive armor they wear a cassock or tunic of elk-skin double, descending to the ankles, with holes for the arms. It is impenetrable by their arrows, which can not pierce two thicknesses of leather; and as their heads are also covered with a sort of helmet, the neck is almost the only part in which they can be wounded. They have another kind of corslet, made ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... who, in the midst of this exordium, pulled down his eyebrows, which were surprisingly black and bushy, so as, in appearance, totally to extinguish his visage, though he was all the time observing our youth from behind those almost impenetrable thickets. ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... foreseen, at the beginning of his expedition, that a handful of rash men, abandoned by Russia, would in three or four years have been annihilated by battles or diseases; that in a rigorous climate they would succumb amid deserts and thick forests, impenetrable refuges of a savage and fierce population, whom fire-arms only could force to pay tribute to strangers? It is more probable that, not having been an eye-witness of the facts, the annalist established upon hypothesis the order in which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... tent was a double one; the maid slept in the smaller portion of it and a canvas doorway gave entrance into her mistress' room. Over this doorway hung the usual screen of green matting. Now these screens act as screens, are as impenetrable to the eye as a door—so long as there is no light behind them. But place a light behind them and they become transparent. This was what Violet Oliver had done. She had lit her candle and at once ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... he reached to where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheater; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high, impenetrable wall, over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad, deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a stand. He again called and whistled after his dog; ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... fort we joined in with these, and rode down a descent, which would have been impracticable for any save the sure-footed iron-plated horses of the East. After traversing the valley for some miles, the rugged line of Piwa closed in upon us on the left, and a black impenetrable mountain seemed to bar our farther progress. After three quarters of an hour's ascent we were glad to halt. Clambering to a grassy knoll, we made a frugal meal of the hardest of biscuit soaked in muddy water, the only food, by ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... improved by penances. With the assistance of this single crow I have crossed this kingdom of thine that is like a river abounding with alligators and sharks and crocodiles and whales. Indeed, with the assistance of that bird, I have passed through thy dominions like unto a Himalayan valley, impenetrable and inaccessible in consequence of trunks of (fallen) trees and scattered rocks and thorny shrubs and lions and tigers and other beasts of prey. The learned say that a region inaccessible in consequence of gloom can be passed through with the aid of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... hand, no larger than a child's and smoothly gloved in white, appeared in a corner of the window and privily beckoned him to approach. He did so, and looked in. The carriage was occupied by a single small and very dainty figure, swathed head and shoulders in impenetrable folds of white lace; and a voice, speaking low and silvery, addressed him ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we passed another thriving village, built on the mountain side; made two or three sharp ugly turns, still going at a smashing pace, and coming on the level ground, entered an extensive cedar swamp, impenetrable above with the dark boughs of the evergreen colossi, and below with half a dozen varieties of rhododendron, calmia, and azalia. Through this dark, dreary track, the road ran straight as the bird flies, supported on the trunks of trees, constituting ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... exertions of a single individual, chemical science has assumed a new aspect. Bodies have been brought to light which the human eye never before beheld, and which might have remained eternally concealed under their impenetrable disguise. ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... address, of rare mental gifts and cultivation, and of magnetic personality, could disappear from the face of the earth—could, almost before the very eyes of his fellows, step from the glare of the world in which he moved into the abyss of absolute obscurity or impenetrable mystery, and create no stir—that no one should deem it his or her business to seek or to find an answer to the question, a reading of ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... valleys that branch out from the sides of the volcanic chain of Auvergne were once, no doubt, filled with impenetrable forests: gloomy wildernesses, thick as those of American wilds, where scarcely the light of the sun could penetrate, and tenanted only by the wolf, the bear, the boar, and the stag. Now these forests have disappeared from the eastern and western skirts of the chain, and are to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... high guards both banks of the Mississippi all the way down that lower end of the river, and this embankment is set back from the edge of the shore from ten to perhaps a hundred feet, according to circumstances; say thirty or forty feet, as a general thing. Fill that whole region with an impenetrable gloom of smoke from a hundred miles of burning bagasse piles, when the river is over the banks, and turn a steamboat loose along there at midnight and see how she will feel. And see how you will feel, too! You find yourself away out in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... heaviest-calibered cannon: it is a commanding site, and capable of being rendered formidable. There are no roads about Pontiana; the town is situated in the midst of a swamp, so low that the tide at high water overflows the lower parts of the houses, and this, with the addition of a country overrun with impenetrable jungle, renders it extremely unhealthy, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... with frogs. By the side of this pool I saw her again: she looked at me. Like a madman I plunged into the water, but the reeds and the lilies entangled me in their meshes: the long grasses and water-weeds were netted into an impenetrable mass. I stood there up to my waist in water, incapable of movement, like the poor cattle of which Pliny tells, who used to mistake all this verdure for dry land, and so drifted out into the middle of the lake. She looked at me, laughed a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... great boughs which sprang from the trunk. Two of these rose almost perpendicularly, and supported the immense parasol of foliage, the branches of which were so crossed and intertwined and entangled, as if by the hand of a basket-maker, that they formed an impenetrable shade. The third arm, on the contrary, stretched right out in a horizontal position above the roaring waters, into which the lower leaves dipped. There was no want of room in the interior of this gigantic tree, for there were great gaps in the foliage, perfect glades, with air in abundance, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... will enrapture your inward vision. As you realize the divine Love, the divine Justice, the divine Purity, the Perfect Law of Good, or God, great will be your bliss and deep your peace. Old things will pass away, and all things will become new. The veil of the material universe, so dense and impenetrable to the eye of error, so thin and gauzy to the eye of Truth, will be lifted and the spiritual universe will be revealed. Time will cease, and you will live only in Eternity. Change and mortality will no more cause you anxiety ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... hard, made Alice tender. Mary was wrapped up in her husband and her house, and in her social relations and young Grierson's Platonic passion, so tightly wrapped that these things formed round her an impenetrable shell. They hid a secret ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... sighted human enemy. Others had followed because it is the instinct of cattle to join their running fellows in whatever crazed urgency they feel. There was a dense, pounding, horrible mass of running bulls and cows and calves; bellowing, wailing, grunting, puffing, raising thick and impenetrable clouds of dust which had everything but galloping beasts ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... no trace of this revival appeared in Austria. The noble hunted and slept; the serf toiled heavily on; where a school existed, the Jesuit taught his schoolboys ecclesiastical Latin, and sent them away unable to read their mother-tongue. To this dull and impenetrable society the beginnings of improvement could only be brought by military disaster. The loss of Silesia in the first years of Maria Theresa disturbed the slumbers of the Government, and reform began. Although the old provincial Assemblies, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... barrel received a new charge, by a side chamber, which produced an almost incredible effect. An ellipsoidal missile of ninety gauge and several diameters long, made of brass, was driven through thirty-six inches of oak and twenty-four inches of green spruce timber, or fifty inches of the most impenetrable of timbers. The same principle of acceleration has, it is said, been most successfully applied in Boston by the use of a hollow tige or tube fixed at the bottom of the bore with the inside of which the cap-fire ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... asked the same question, was annoyed by her husband's reserve. His silence in all his affairs, especially those relating to his brother, was impenetrable. ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... about it. Celebrated and learned historians, questioned by Willkomm on the subject, have acknowledged their ignorance in regard to the character and laws of its small people. A more cogent reason, however, lies nearer home, in the impenetrable reserve and self-insulation of the mountaineers themselves. Willkomm confesses that their coldness towards strangers is unparalleled; they have no confidence whatever in foreigners; "and let a Lusatian but suspect," he says, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... without resistance, interiorly and exteriorly, to all Thy divine disposals. These gifts which I was favored with from the beginning, have continued and increased until now Thou hast Thyself guided my continual crosses, and led me through paths impenetrable to all but thee. ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... Adelma. My father urges me. This is a sign The mystery is not impenetrable. He is in league with that strange man, and seeks To talk ...
— Turandot, Princess of China - A Chinoiserie in Three Acts • Karl Gustav Vollmoeller
... there, although De Guiche tried his utmost to draw out his secret from him; but, doubtless, De Wardes had determined to say nothing further, and he remained impenetrable. De Guiche therefore promised himself a more satisfactory result with Raoul. In the meantime they had reached the Palais Royal, which was surrounded by a crowd of lookers-on. The household belonging to Monsieur awaited his command ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... better success follow the exhibition at the morgue of the poor little victim's innocent body. The mystery covering the whole affair seemed to be impenetrable, and the rush made on the museum upon its first reopening to the public was such as to lead to its being closed again till some limit could be put upon ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... well as very rough. They made no greater progress when they tried the Bush. Fallen trees lay across one another, and there were thorny thickets in between, while, here and there, the undergrowth seemed as impenetrable as a wall. By-and-by it commenced to rain, and for an hour or two they plodded on dejectedly through the pitiless deluge. It rains exceedingly hard in that country. At last the girl sat down on a fallen tree. She had already lost her hat, and the water soaked out of Nasmyth's jacket, which he ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... tough that no knife or machine, however sharp or powerful, can cut, pierce, or indeed make any impression upon it, until it has passed through a process, in which fire has a great part, and is thus purposely deprived of its impenetrable nature. ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... was looking forward to the day when the timber on the watersheds should become available. He knew that when such timber should be cut it would have to be hauled out through the valleys where his untouched holdings formed an impenetrable barrier to the exit! Before long the owners of timber on the watersheds would come to realize this and sell to John Cardigan at ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... harmonious in all its parts—beautiful and sublime in all its truths—instructive in all its lessons—inspiring the brightest, broadest hopes the mind can conceive. But lay reason aside, in its perusal, and it will be involved in inextricable confusion, and impenetrable darkness. ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... be seen in this voyage of any interest, for the curtains of mangroves, with palms and other trees growing in almost impenetrable denseness, veiled in our view to the limits of the stream's breadth. As the tide was running out at sunset, we halted for its return at Pombui, a small village on the left bank, and resumed the journey after midnight. In two hours we reached the mooring-place opposite the station, Chogue, fastened ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Alan Hawke returned from Calcutta, the inky blackness of an approaching storm wrapped dreaming Delhi in an impenetrable mantle. Under the huge camphor tree where the cobra had risen in its horrid menace before the frightened girl, a dark figure waited till a man glided to his side. His head was bent as the spy reported "Simpson is gone to the quarter. Two of our men have followed him, and, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... said the lawyer. "A crook is never really clever. He always leaves some loophole which leads to detection. He thinks he is secure, that his disguise is impenetrable, but there is always someone watching him, closely observing his every move. And, the first thing he knows, he has walked into a trap, the handcuffs are snapped, and the electric chair looms ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... the sunlight is splintered on its ripples into carcanets of diamonds. When they chose to speak, not all the orators that have rounded periods since Isocrates could match their eloquence; when it was their will to guard a secret, they met you with the cold, impenetrable gaze that we attribute to the mighty mother, Cybele. Even a philosopher might have been interested—on purely psychological grounds, of course—in watching the thoughts as they rose one by one to the surface of those deep, clear wells (was truth ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... "through the wilderness of this world" find it difficult to realize what an impenetrable wall there is around the town of Boyville. Storm it as we may with the simulation of light-heartedness, bombard it with our heavy guns, loaded with fishing-hooks and golf-sticks, and skates and base-balls, and butterfly-nets, the walls remain. If once the clanging gates of the ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... wildness of the tiny park sloping gently down to the cool, narrow, shaded river, over which the bending trees met and arched, and he begged me not to interfere with the trailing blackberry branches which crept about the roots and stems of the superb wild-rose trees, making sweet but impenetrable thickets interwoven with honeysuckle, even in the midst ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... tossing up my arms like a madman in my pity and sorrow for my dear old friend, and my general regret and disenchantment. I made for the Bois de Boulogne, there to find, instead of the old rabbit-and-roebuck-haunted thickets and ferneries and impenetrable growth, a huge artificial lake, with row-boats and skiffs, and a rockery that would have held its own in Rosherville gardens. And on the way thither, near the iron gates in the fortifications, whom should I meet but one of my friends the couriers, on his way from St. Cloud to ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... over his small kingdom. All the houses were of brick, and the paths and roads were covered with gravel and lined with flowers. Nothing in the Congo is more curious than this pretty town of suburban villas and orderly machine shops; with the muddy river for a street and the impenetrable jungle for a back yard. The home of the director at Dima is the proud boast of the entire Congo. And all they say of it is true. It did have a billiard table and ice, and a piano, and M. Fumiere invited me to join his friends at an excellent dinner. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... of lightning revealed a fork in the road immediately ahead—to the left ran the broad, smooth highway, to the right a dirt road, overarched by trees, led away into the impenetrable dark. ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... an early rabbit into an impenetrable, frost-incrusted brier patch. He rushed another covey, that flew away like the wind. He sat down on his haunches and with ears erect watched the distant, whirling specks scatter into the woods. He was helpless in the daylight without man and gun. He remembered a white-tiled butcher shop on upper ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... Early in October the elements relented; the clouds broke, the sky was bright again, and the sun shone out in splendor on mountains radiant in the livery of autumn. A gleam of hope revisited the heart of Forbes. It was but a flattering illusion. The sullen clouds returned, and a chill, impenetrable veil of mist and rain hid the mountains and the trees. Dejected Nature wept and would not be comforted. Above, below, around, all was trickling, oozing, pattering, gushing. In the miserable encampments the starved ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... of this little scene, were differently affected by it. The glance, moist with joy, which his wife cast upon her eldest child was a fatal revelation to the husband of the secrets of a heart hitherto impenetrable. That eldest child was all Juana; Juana comprehended him; she was sure of his heart, his future; she adored him, but her ardent love was a secret between herself, her child, and God. Juan instinctively enjoyed the seeming ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... appealed to men, and a deferential chivalry that appealed to women; a combination that brought him many friends—and some enemies. With plenty of money to indulge a passion for traveling, young Calderwell had spent the most of his time since graduation in daring trips into the heart of almost impenetrable forests, or to the top of almost inaccessible mountains, with an occasional more ordinary trip to give variety. He had now come to the point, however, where he was determined to "settle down to something that meant something," ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... of friends or foes. The sun shall not find us by day, nor the moon by night. Were our life forfeited to what are called the laws, how could the laws discover the criminal? How could they drag us from the impenetrable gloom of this sylvan sanctuary? And if here we chose to perish by suicide or natural death—and famine is a natural death—what eye would ever look on our bones? Raving all; but so it often is with us ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... state of disuse into which it had fallen. It was no more than an anteroom to the vestry of the church, though quite detached from it, yet one could almost feel through the stout south wall the impenetrable weight of darkness which had settled down within the great building beyond. The gloomy shadows had penetrated here, too, for although the antechamber contained a half dozen windows, they were shuttered ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... knowledge of life and the world, which is the reward given to the friends and lovers of mankind. For the preacher deals not with the shallows but the depths of life. Like his Master he must be a great humanist. To make real sermons he has to look, without dismay or evasion, far into the heart's impenetrable recesses. He must have had some experience with the absolutism of both good and evil. I think preachers who regard sermons on salvation as superfluous have not had much experience with either. They belong to that large world of the intermediates, neither positively ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... see nothing but loss and disgrace. If you look forward the same scene continues, and the close is an impenetrable gloom. You may plan and execute little mischiefs, but are they worth the expense they cost you, or will such partial evils have any effect on the general cause? Your expedition to Egg Harbor, will be felt ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... and fidelity were of an unequal complexion. We may discriminate the janizaries, who have been gradually raised to an establishment of forty thousand men; a national cavalry (the spahis of modern times); twenty thousand cuirassiers of Europe, clad in black and impenetrable armor; the troops of Anatolia, whose princes had taken refuge in the camp of Timur: and a colony of Tartars, whom he had driven from Kiptchak, and to whom Bajazet had assigned a settlement in the plains of Adrianople. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "Dunciad;" but he had the fate of Cassandra. I gave no credit to his prediction, till in time I saw it accomplished. The shafts of satire were directed equally in vain against Cibber and Osborne; being repelled by the impenetrable impudence of one, and deadened by the impassive dulness of the other. Pope confessed his own pain by his anger; but he gave no pain to those who had provoked him. He was able to hurt none but himself; by transferring the same ridicule from one to another, he reduced himself to the ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... self in a kind of Arsenal or Magazine, where store of Arms were reposited against any sudden Invasion. Should you be attack'd by the Enemy Side-ways, here was an infallible Piece of defensive Armour to cure the Pleurisie: Should a Distemper beat up your Head Quarters, here you might purchase an impenetrable Helmet, or, in the Language of the Artist, a Cephalic Tincture: If your main Body be assaulted, here are various Kinds of Armour in Case of various Onsets. I began to congratulate the present Age upon the Happiness Men ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... enjoyed profound peace and tranquillity through the whole kingdom, till a neighbouring prince, envious of our happiness, invaded our dominions with a mighty army; and penetrating as far as our capital, made himself master of it; and we had but just time to save ourselves in an impenetrable and inaccessible place, with a few trusty officers, who did not forsake ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... Meyn, which were plentifully stored with corn and cattle, felt the ravages of an invading army. The principal houses, constructed with some imitation of Roman elegance, were consumed by the flames; and the Caesar boldly advanced about ten miles, till his progress was stopped by a dark and impenetrable forest, undermined by subterraneous passages, which threatened with secret snares and ambush every step of the assailants. The ground was already covered with snow; and Julian, after repairing an ancient castle which had been erected ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... made room for swamp-plants, to which the dampness of the place, assisted by the heat of summer, had given giant proportions. These were principally canes and rushes, which formed a tangled network, an impenetrable undergrowth, sprinkled everywhere with a thousand flowers remarkable for the brightness of ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... the most impenetrable gravity, while Mr. Rossitur looked blank and puzzled. Fleda ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... acquainted with two Persons who were formerly School-fellows,[1] and have been good Friends ever since. One of them was not only thought an impenetrable Block-head at School, but still maintain'd his Reputation at the University; the other was the Pride of his Master, and the most celebrated Person in the College of which he was a Member. The Man of Genius is at present buried in a Country Parsonage ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... had broken her down completely, and she was so ill as to be unable to move. Her aunt went at once to see her, and finding that her presence at the Grange relieved some of Dr. May's anxieties, chiefly devoted herself to her. Flora was grateful and gentle, but as silent and impenetrable as ever, while day after day she lay on her couch, uncomplaining and undemonstrative, visited by her father, and watched over by her aunt and sister-in-law, who began to know each other much better, though Flora less ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge |
