"Impregnable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a blood-clot? 'Beautiful.' Evil-smelling recesses walled up with painted wood. Birthplaces of mice. Impregnable hot-beds of vermin. And who wants ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... that, by the time he's got his bearin's, Sarah Ann's been swept down to my tree, an' I've lifted her to a seat by my side. The catamount don't try to lay siege to our p'sition, recognizing it as impregnable, but paddles back to the shore an' goes into watchful ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... calm, the tranquillity of a soul free from the agitations of emotion and the storms of passions and the tumults of desire, as well as the security of a life guarded from the assaults of foes and girded about with an impregnable barrier which nothing can destroy and no enemy overleap, are ours, if we take the good news about God to our heart. They are ours in the measure in which we take it. Clearly such truths as those which the gospel brings have a plain tendency to give peace. They give peace with God, with the world, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... backing it by God's appointment, to keep it where it is and what it is; and till (as Lord Bacon has it) I have discovered and obeyed the will of God revealed in that pebble, it is to me a riddle more insoluble than the Sphinx's, a fortress more impregnable than Sevastopol. I may crush it: but destroying is not conquering: but I cannot even mend the road with it prudently, until I have discovered whether Almighty God has made it fit to mend roads with. I may have the genius of a Plato or of a Shakespeare, but all ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... surrounding hills the Confederates complacently viewed the magnificent pageant, mistaking it for a grand review. So secure were they in their apparently impregnable positions that we carried Orchard Knob and captured nearly the whole picket line before they realized that we were not dress parading. And so, under the immediate eye of General Grant, who stood upon Fort Wood, a very commanding position, from which he could ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... the other Greeks beyond the Isthmus, endeavours to reduce the power of Athens, and to restore independence to the Greek maritime states who were the subject allies of Athens. At the commencement of the war the Peloponnesian armies repeatedly invade and ravage Attica, but Athens herself is impregnable, and her fleets secure her the dominion ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... sealed, but in the wide precincts of the Serapeum no one thought of surrender or of prompt defeat. The basement of the building, on which stood the grandest temple ever erected by the Hellenes, presented a smooth and slightly scarped rampart of impregnable strength to the foe. A sloping way extended up over a handsomely-decorated incline, and from the middle of the grand curve described by this road, two flights of steps led up to the three great doors in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... And long before that time the fugitives would have decided on a plan of defense. What that defense would be, and where it would be made, were matters over which the men considered gravely. Ladd averred the Yaqui would put them into an impregnable position, that at the same time would prove a death-trap for their pursuers. They exhausted every possibility, and then, tired as they were, still kept ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... reasoning of Tazewell pass, and press with all his force some plain views of the case. Some lawyers are successful in the elenchical mode of argument—to use a logical term—that is, in demolishing the structure of their opponents, while they fail in the deictic, that is, in raising on its ruins an impregnable fabric of their own; but it was difficult to decide which process was the most thorough in the reasoning of Tazewell. In putting his arguments before a jury he showed great adroitness. He either knew himself or learned from others the calling of every juryman; and ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... and there the antic sits Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh, which walls about our life, Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin[1] Bores through his castle wall, and—farewell, King!" [Footnote 1: In Hamlet's famous soliloquy the pin ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... sides to it; they must go deeper, to the radical question of Right and Wrong, or they surrender the chief advantage of their position. What Spinoza says of laws is equally true of party-platforms,—that those are strong which appeal to reason, but those are impregnable which compel the assent both of reason and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... times this sea-girt fortress was almost impregnable. Two ancient cannon lying at its gate show that the conqueror of Agincourt thundered against it in vain. Its weak point was want of water: it had none but the rain-water collected in a great cistern. In these days it could not hold out an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... But at the point where she had hoped to find him vulnerable she now began to fear he was proof against all persuasion. The iron and stone quality that she had early suspected in him had actually cropped out as an impregnable barrier. Nevertheless, if Lassiter remained in Cottonwoods she would never give up her hope and desire to change him. She would change him if she had to sacrifice everything dear to her except hope of heaven. Passionately devoted as she was to her religion, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... field. Among the election occurrences which they regarded as specially providential was the defeat of Tarte in Beauharnois. If he had been elected it might have been necessary for Laurier to do something for him, but now that he had fallen upon the glacis of the impregnable fortress he had elected to assail, who were they to repine over the doings of fate? "The Moor has done his work; the Moor can go!" Moreover, had he not been for long an inveterate Bleu? Had he not actually been the organizer ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... present themselves as the acme of despair. A sensation of relief and lulling repose would be more reasonably expected, especially after so stormy a career as that of Louis. The change from restless and capricious Paris to dewy shades and luxurious halls in the heart of changeless and impregnable England ought, on common principles, to have promoted the content and prolonged the life of the old king. Possibly it did, but if so, the French had not many months' escape from a second Orleans regency, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... name," answered Wilkin Flammock, "and Damian, though a brave youth, hath not his uncle's ascendency of character, and authority. His men also complain that they are harassed with the duty of watching for protection of a castle, in itself impregnable, and sufficiently garrisoned, and that they lose all opportunity of honourable enterprise, as they call it— that is, of fight and spoil—in this inactive and inglorious manner of life. They say that Damian the beardless was a man, but that Damian with the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the staring, manlike visitor there was a glimpse of enormous, crocodile jaws and huge, amethyst eyes. Instantly the head and arms receded, leaving an empty-seeming, lifeless shell. An impregnable fortress of spines, the thing drifted slowly away through ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... dishwashers in less than two weeks' time, with the natural feeling that any change in that department must be for the better, but the present incumbent was even more incompetent than his predecessors. Even Nancy's impregnable nerves began to feel the strain of the continual clamorous assault ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... chance if a ricochet shot struck it. If it did, the very low angle of impact made it fly off without doing any harm. The turret was dented with some centre shots, as I saw when I visited the vessel later, but it was practically impregnable to the ordnance the Confederates used. On the other hand, the direct fire from the ship was limited in its effect to the displacement of earth on the parapet or the knocking away of the cheeks of the embrasures. The body of the garrison was ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... by their terrible reverse, would be more than likely to seek an early revenge, Jack and Carlos were kept very busy during the ensuing fortnight in so far improving the defences of the estate as to render it practically impregnable. The remains of the wrecked stone bridge were removed, and a timber drawbridge was built in its place; entrenchments were dug commanding the approach to it and to the one or two other spots where it was thought that the passage of the river might possibly be forced; a further ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... up her work, and rose to go with a slightly abashed air, though her small brown eyes were still blanks of impregnable defence. "Well, I dunno what I've said to stir you both so," she remarked again. "If I've said anythin' that riled you, I'm sorry, I'm sure. As I said before, folks must do as they are a mind to with their own children. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... individualistic influence of the English Common Law. When the Socialistic autocracy is once completely in power, with its professed policy of taking away human ambition and initiative, its position will be almost impregnable and become more and more secure as the average citizen becomes more and more servile, lazy and unambitious. Socialism is politically decadent and contains within itself the germ of self-destruction. ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... him in baptism." Mr. M., you will confess that this is an impregnable proof-text. You have never been "buried ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... that is slow and hard to make understand. "It isn't my nature. But, if I'm resurrected, I'll seem to be mercenary until I get a full suit of the only armor that's invulnerable in this world. Why, I built my fort like a fool. It was impregnable except for one thing—one obvious thing. It hadn't a supply of water. If I build again it'll be round a spring—an income big enough for my needs and beyond anybody's power to ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... honourable beyond the chance of temptation. But misery has the virtue of Ithuriel's spear, with a difference. As the one touched the beast and transformed him to the seeming of a high intelligence, so will the other touch a seemingly impregnable armour of bright honour, and turn it into tinder, leaving the poor beast revealed and unprotected from his own base natural longings. The poor Bommaney was maddened to think he had not done what the other's thoughts charged him with, even though he ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... parts, which are properly so many Rocks jutting out into the Sea, with large Harbours between them. That called Valetta, in honour of the Grand Master who so gallantly defended the place against the Turks, is extremely well Fortified, and also defended by a Castle, held to be impregnable. The City contains about Two Thousand Houses, well built with white Stone, and Flat-roofed, surrounded by Rails and Balusters. On t'other side of the Harbour is another City, formerly called Il Borgo, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... in the papers that Pickering was to be theirs. It was said on all sides that Nidderdale was doing very well for himself. The absolute money was not perhaps so great as had been at first asked; but then, at that time, Melmotte was not the strong rock, the impregnable tower of commerce, the very navel of the commercial enterprise of the world,—as all men now regarded him. Nidderdale's father, and Nidderdale himself, were, in the present condition of things, content with a very much less stringent bargain than that which ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... negotiated, better terms perhaps were obtained than would otherwise have been the case. The terms granted included the independence of Korea, for centuries a tribute-paying vassal of China, and the cession of the island of Formosa. Japan had occupied the peninsula on which stands the impregnable fortress of Port Arthur, and had captured the latter in a few hours; but she was not to be allowed to keep them. A coalition of European powers, Russia, Germany, and France—England refused to join—decided that it would never do to let Japan possess Port Arthur, and forced her to accept a money ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... field against Cyrus, the future conqueror of Babylon, but was defeated, and obliged to return to his capital, where he shut himself up. Hither he was soon followed and besieged by Cyrus, with a far inferior force; but, at the expiration of fourteen days, the citadel, which had been deemed impregnable, was taken by a stratagem, and Croesus was condemned to the flames. When the sentence was about to be executed, he was heard to invoke the name of Solon, and the curiosity of Cyrus being excited, he asked the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... were they promised in the Treaty of Berlin? Turkey restored to strength, reformed, and, if reformed, made secure for a distant future; Greece contented; Russian influence excluded; and the Balkans fortified as "an impregnable frontier" for Turkey. Very different were the realities. Turkey had been partitioned; Greece had not been satisfied; surrender of Turkish territory to Greece, though it was the one form of surrender ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... of the capacity and efficiency of the chief of the staff of the great army. Such an operation as that of Yorktown, anywhere else, would be considered as the highest disgrace; here, glorifications of strategy. McClellan's bulletins from Yorktown describe the rebel fortifications as being almost impregnable. Of course impregnable! ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... the Belgians laughed at any one taking Antwerp, the impregnable fortress of Western Europe. The Germans laughed, too. But it was the bass, hollow laugh of their great guns placed ten to twenty miles away, and pouring into the city such a hurricane of shell and shrapnel that they forced its evacuation ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... and kept telling her that things were not all right with her; that she ought not to be afraid, yet had good reason for being afraid; that she knew of no essential safety. There must be some refuge, some impregnable hiding-place, for the thing was a necessity, and she ought to know of it! There must be a human condition of never being afraid, of knowing nothing to be afraid of! She wondered whether, if she were quite good, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... simplicity and of insidious craft; he must play the part of watchman, of robber; now prodigal as a spendthrift, and again close-fisted as a miser, the bounty of his munificence must be equalled by the narrowness of his greed; impregnable in defence, a very dare-devil in attack—these and many other qualities must he possess who is to make a good general and minister of war; they must come to him by gift of nature or through science. No doubt it is a grand thing also to be a tactician, since ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... lover, was also her instructor in this philosophy, and the principles he instilled into her mind were such as tended to seduce her. Finding her cold and impregnable on the side of her passions, and firmly attached to her husband and her duty, he attacked her by sophisms, endeavoring to prove that the list of duties she thought so sacred, was but a sort of catechism, fit only for children. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... it is expedient that age should know of youth. "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell." Of all earthly consolations this is the greatest, that the mind is its own place. The mind is an impregnable fortress which can be held against all comers, the mind is a sanctuary open day or night to the pursued, the mind is a flowery pleasance where shade refreshes even in summer droughts. To some trusted friend we try to give the clue of the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... curious round forts, rising out of the sea, are built of granite; that in time of war they are to be united by a line of torpedoes and the wires of electric batteries. They are perfectly impregnable to shot, and they are armed with very heavy guns, so that an enemy attempting to come in on that side would have a very poor ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... legitimate powers, Dr. Manning is in ecstasies. The "very exalted person" becomes "a righteous judge, a learned judge, a Daniel come to judgment—yea, a Daniel." These shouts of joy ought to be enough to show men where the real danger lies. Our present position is impregnable. But if we abandon it for the new one proposed to us by the Rationalist party, how shall we be able to stand? How could a national religious Establishment which should seek to rest its foundations—not on God's Word; on the ancient Creeds; ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... made. The wealth he had acquired by them was devoted to the restoration of the temples and cities of his country, and, above all, to making Babylon one of the wonders of the world. The temples of Merodach and Nebo were rebuilt with lavish magnificence, the city was surrounded with impregnable fortifications, a sumptuous palace was erected for the king, and the bed of the Euphrates was lined with brick and furnished with quays. Gardens were planted on the top of arched terraces, and the ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... is not very easy, indeed, to say what Mr. Foxton positively believes; having, like his German prototypes, a greater facility of telling what he does believe, and of wrapping up what he does believe in a most impregnable mysticism. He certainly rejects, however, all that which, when rejected a century ago, left, in the estimate of every one, an infidel in puris naturalibus. Like his German acquaintances, he accepts the infidel paradoxes—only, like them, he will still ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... not discover, has been proved by our enemies not to be impassable to men, and it would be disgraceful for us after having begun so well to leave our enterprise incomplete, and to give up the place as impregnable after the enemy themselves have shown us how it may be taken. Where it is easy for one man to climb, it cannot be hard for many to climb one by one, as their numbers will give them confidence and mutual ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Afraid of these warriors, yet wishing to bind them to him by indissoluble ties, Iwo gave Renaud his daughter Clarissa in marriage, and helped him build an impregnable fortress at Montauban. This stronghold was scarcely finished when Charlemagne came up with a great army to besiege it; but at the end of a year of fruitless attempts, the emperor reluctantly withdrew, leaving Montauban still in ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... Secure in the impregnable position of his own learning and in the scholarship of his church; amid a hush of profound awe and admiration, the ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... neither be told nor counted nor conceived. So they laboured at the work three hundred years; and, when they had brought it to end, they went to King Shaddad and acquainted him therewith. Then said he, "Depart and make thereon an impregnable castle, rising and towering high in air, and build around it a thousand pavilions, each upon a thousand columns of chrysolite and ruby and vaulted with gold, that in each pavilion a Wazir may dwell." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... is the place of confidence; the bosom is only for those who have a right to closest intimacy. It is the place of love, near the heart. It is the place of safety, for he is in the clasp of the everlasting arms, and none can snatch him out of the impregnable shelter. It was the darkest night the world ever saw that John lay on the bosom of Jesus. That is the place of comfort for all sorrowing believers, and there is abundance of room for them all on that breast. John leaned on Jesus' breast,—weakness reposed on strength, helplessness ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... very pleasing; there was a certain indefinable charm about the scene as we passed in and out among the thickly-wooded islands, or dived between those strong but almost hidden fortifications of which the Russians are so proud. Once having passed these impregnable mysteries, we found ourselves in more open water, and before us lay the town with its fine Russian church of red brick with rounded dome, the Finnish church of white stone, and several other handsome buildings denoting a place of importance and considerable ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... a man might search the walls of an apparently impregnable fortress for some vulnerable spot. "Ah, I see," he said, after a moment. "You must have believed Madelina to be still alive when Dacre married. What was the ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... believe that you can change what, believe me, is unchangeable. To Wingrave, women are less than playthings. He owes the unhappiness of his life to one, and he would see the whole of her sex suffer without emotion. He is impregnable to sentiment. Ask him and I believe that he ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sweep of all the festering superstitions that fascinate the silly and the sentimental to-day as much as they did three thousand years ago. Mr. Stead is a Puritan, and the Old Testament should be his impregnable rock. Yet Deuteronomy is most definite about "Julia." "There shall not be found with thee ... a consulter with a familiar spirit. For whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto the Lord." His organisation ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... fearlessness of her character, which was made perfect at last by her perfect love. Alone, she had always had courage. Even in her most listless hours she had never been a craven. But now she felt the completeness of a nature clothed in armour that rendered it impregnable. It was a strange thing that man should have the power to put the finishing touch to God's work, that religion should stoop to be a handmaid to faith in a human being, but she did not think it strange. Everything in life seemed to her to be in perfect accord because her heart was ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... grow." And what is it that makes the covenant of God with man thus sure? sure not only in itself, but (as the apostle speaks) to all the seed. Is it not this, because it hath a strong foundation, a double, impregnable foundation? First, His own free grace. Second, The blood of Christ; which is therefore also called, the blood of the covenant. Because of all this, this all, which hath an infinity in it, the Lord God hath made ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... Bay take one farther afield and into more varied scenes. In its upper stretches, three thousand feet above the sea, the Murray River flows through a level country before it plunges into mountain fastnesses, almost impregnable in summer, for a long and troubled detour, to emerge at length into this last valley. To reach this flat upland one must drive through a beautiful mountain pass with great heights towering on either side of the winding roadway. In the upper river the fishing is still unsurpassed. ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... solid might of the giant engines in his ship—but he had seen explosive charges that he knew would split any ship open from end to end bounce harmlessly from the smooth walls of this ship. He had seen it destroy the fleet of magnetic ships that had formed a supposedly impregnable guard around the mightiest city ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... ravaged the Roman Empire of the East almost without opposition. Only the impregnable walls of Constantinople resisted the destruction. A few years later the savage horde appeared upon the Rhine, and in enormous numbers penetrated Gaul. No people had yet understood them, none had even checked their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... fiends Rinaldo strove, Where every silent tree possessed A spirit prisoned in its breast, Which the first stroke of coming strife Would startle into hideous life: So dense, so still, the Austrians stood, A living wall, a human wood! Impregnable their front appears, All horrent with projected spears, Whose polished points before them shine, From flank to flank, one brilliant line, Bright as the breakers' splendors run Along the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... numerous as were their spies, and the English army generally knew as little of it as the French. When the moment arrived for the execution of his project, the English general retired behind these lines, in the face of an overwhelmingly numerous enemy, who gazed with wonder upon the impregnable defences which were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... read and re-read your article on Mill's Essays. I suppose it is this article which has sent the 'Edinburgh' into a second edition. I am rejoiced to think that it is so. The ground which you take is, I feel sure, impregnable; but the force of your whole argument, which is much what I have tried to work out for years past, only makes me lament the more the folly of the line taken by most of the writers who shrink from the materialistic and atheistic philosophy of Mill and Tyndall—for the ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... me to hope the speedy arrival of the express; but he does not come: and I know not why, I experience in my heart oppression and anguish. O, who will tell me what has become of Hildegarde and my children? But what have I to fear? Rothenwald is impregnable, and should all our enemies surround it, is it not under the protection of Our ...
— Theobald, The Iron-Hearted - Love to Enemies • Anonymous
... "That is what makes my position impregnable. I have no personal spite against him. He is bad, that is all. His life ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... observes a pair of Red-Heels, a Patch, or any other Particularity in his Dress, she cannot take too much care of her Person. These are Baits not to be trifled with, Charms that have done a world of Execution, and made their way into Hearts which have been thought impregnable. The Force of a Man with these Qualifications is so well known, that I am credibly informed there are several Female Undertakers about the Change, who upon the Arrival of a likely Man out of a neighbouring Kingdom, will furnish him with proper Dress from Head to Foot, to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... be for Alwa, should he see fit. He has men and horses, and a fort that is impregnable. The Miss-sahib would be safe there ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... therefore, was a training of mind and body to despise pleasure and attain independence. In this way virtue was teachable, and could be so acquired as to become an inseparable possession. The man who had thus attained to wisdom, not of words, but of deeds, was, as it were, in an impregnable fortress that could neither crumble into ruin nor be lost by treachery. And so Antisthenes, being asked what was the most essential point of learning, answered, "To unlearn what is evil." That is to say, to the Cynic conception, men were born with a root of evil in them in the love of pleasure; ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... last night with an account of their being in Edinburgh to the number of five thousand. This sounds great, to have walked through a kingdom, and taken possession of the capital! But this capital is an open town and the castle impregnable, and in our possession. There never was so extraordinary a sort of rebellion! One can't tell what assurances of support they may have from the Jacobites in England, or from the French; but nothing of either sort has yet appeared-and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... of this plan, Duke Mercury, with an army of thirty thousand, whereof nearly ten thousand were French, besieged Stowell-Weisenberg, otherwise called Alba Regalis, a place so strong by art and nature that it was thought impregnable. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of Irish labor, with nothing in them,—they ring like slabs of marble together, in response to the wild appeals of O'Connell, and the British stand conquered before them, with shouldered arms. Ireland is on her feet, with nothing in her hands, impregnable, unassailable, in utter defencelessness,—the first time that ever a nation sprung to its feet unarmed. The veterans of England behold them, and forbear to fire. They see no mark. It will not do to fire upon men; it will do only to fire upon soldiers. They are ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... belonging to Bala Khan, a Pathan who sometimes styles himself as a rajah. He has a body of fierce fighting men; and he lives unmolested for two reasons: looting would not be worth while and his position is isolated and almost impregnable. Now, if I am right, we shall find shelter there, for he was an old friend of my father's and I might call him a friend of mine, since I ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... In contrast with this we shall presently see that the assertion of a future life which is not materially conditioned, though unsupported by any item of experience whatever, may nevertheless be an impregnable assertion. But first I would conclude the foregoing criticism by ruling out altogether the sense in which our authors use the expression "Unseen Universe." Scientific inference, however remote, is connected by such insensible gradations with ordinary perception, that one may well question the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... he was clay or sand after all. But this was permitted that we might learn that our noblest natural qualities as much need to be dealt with by the grace of God as our vices and defects. Many a fortress has been taken from a side which was deemed impregnable. No one expected that Wolfe would assail Quebec from ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... the British two impregnable and secure bases of operations, within reasonable distance of one another, and each in close proximity to points most essential to control. During Nelson's entire command, the three chief centres of interest and of danger were the Straits of Gibraltar, the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... troops. Their ardour was in nowise damped by the incessant rain that fell, and converted the surrounding country into a wide morass, nor by the snow that followed, which gave the Drakenberg Mountains an additionally impregnable aspect and rendered them at once ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... ancient and impregnable theory that all brides are beautiful, was there ever a woman who looked her best in the uniform of approaching servitude? In any case, Ellaphine's best was not good, and she was at her worst in her ill-fitting white gown, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... theories of man as a machine pure and simple which would make him the most complicated of mechanisms, a marvel of intricate parts, but would deprive him of his essence as self-conscious unique in the universe. Man, thinking man, at any rate, dreads to lose the cherished impregnable conviction that he is something apart, inherently, and therefore infinitely different from every other phenomenon in the ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... the question comes up again whole and entire? When by dint of confusions and sophisms such theorists imagine that they have extinguished the intelligence which radiates from nature, that intelligence again confronts them in man, and there, as in an impregnable fortress, sets all attacks at defiance. Mark then where lies the real problem. Whether the eternal God formed the body of the first man directly from the dust of the earth; or whether, in the slow series of ages, He formed the body of the first man of the dust of the earth, by making ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... could never reach it. There are too many to pursue and capture you. If you wish to know, however, it lies up the river that empties into Jad-ben-lul whose waters kiss the walls of A-lur—up the western fork it lies with water upon three sides. Impregnable city of Pal-ul-don—alone of all the cities it has never been entered by a foeman since it was built there while Jad-ben-Otho was ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... night met with no better success. The fact became obvious then that to artillery fire the Mercutians were impregnable. For several days no further military operations were attempted, with the exception of an occasional shell futilely ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... unjust. Palamas may have a clear vision of the tragedy of life. But in the light of this revelation, with his unfettered contemplation, he builds, like Bertram Russell, a "shining citadel in the very centre of the enemy's country, on the very summit of his highest mountain; from its impregnable watch-towers, his camps and arsenals, his columns and forts, are all revealed; within its walls, the free life continues while the legions of Death and Pain and Despair and all the servile captains of tyrant Fate afford the burghers of that dauntless ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... striking mental characteristic of his sermons is the originality of his perceptions of religious truth. He takes up the themes and doctrines of the Church, the discussion of which has filled libraries with books of divinity which stand as an almost impregnable wall around the simple facts and teachings of the Scriptures, protecting them from attack by shutting them from sight, and in a few brief and direct statements cuts into the substance and heart of the subjects. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... mountains is enclosed by a formidable rampart, and surrounded by an immense fosse. And as for our fortified citadel, it is so secured by a precipitous barrier and enclosure of rocks, that, even in that horrible attack and invasion of the Gauls, it remained impregnable and inviolable. Moreover, the site which he selected had also an abundance of fountains, and was healthy, though it was in the midst of a pestilential region; for there are hills which at once create a current of fresh air, and fling an agreeable ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... College after the Revolution was not more cordial and not more adequate than the meagre succors of Colonial legislation. The first Governor of independent Massachusetts, from the height of his impregnable popularity, for more than twelve years defied the repeated attempts of the Corporation, backed by the Overseers, to obtain the balance of his account as former Treasurer of the College, and died its debtor in a sum exceeding a thousand pounds. The debt was finally paid by his heirs, but not without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... gestures of applause and confirmation. Then the voice of the speaker fell, and lost the loud, animated tones of triumph with which he had enumerated their deeds of success and victory. He described the cataract of Glenn's; the impregnable position of its rocky island, with its caverns and its numerous rapids and whirlpools; he named the name of "La Longue Carabine," and paused until the forest beneath them had sent up the last echo of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... aggressive show of friendship toward the lone Peruvian for the express benefit of the chief. They knew well that by their rescue of the Mayoruna women they had made their own position among these people virtually impregnable, and that their recognition of Jose as a friend probably would be his only bulwark. Wherefore they left no doubt in the minds of the watchers as to where he stood in ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... Ann's dignity was impregnable. She walked on with her head in the air, the desire for ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of the ancient inhabitants, populous, wonderful and impregnable, from the character of its position, situated in this valley (of Chimaltenango), on an elevated and cool site. It lies eight leagues in a straight line from New Guatemala. Around this ancient and dismantled town, ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... fortifications contributed a great deal to their becoming practically impregnable. The Russian engineering troops saw to it that all these works were built as narrow as possible and were dug as deep as the ground permitted. It was this fact which made the German artillery fire so surprisingly ineffective at this point. In spite of its ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... battalions, armed with spears eighteen feet long, the squadrons of Burgundy rode in vain. Their lines were impregnable. Their enemies fell in numbers. In the end the whole Burgundian army, seized with panic, broke and fled, "like smoke before ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... remained on the hilltops, sombered and silent. The awful reality, impregnable and drear, before them had changed their spirit, and they looked into each ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... Impregnable in the old days, before cannon were brought to India, Kuttarpur lives to-day remote, unfriendly, inhospitable. Within its walls there is no room for many visitors; they who come in numbers, therefore, must perforce ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... looking over the records and documents on file in the various archives of state and nation, that they are absolutely beyond question, and it is our object to give these truthfully. These rough and untidy, but impregnable truths, dressed in the sweet persuasive language of the author, and fluted, embossed, embroidered, and embellished by the skilful hand of the artist, ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... same moment, too, came something else that damped my spirits more than any rains, however fierce and heavy, could damp my skin—the sense of my own utter helplessness. There I was—having acted on impulse—at the foot of a mass of grey stone which had once been impregnable, and was still formidable! I neither knew how to get in, nor how to look in, if that had been possible; and I now saw that in coming at all I ought to have come accompanied by a squad of police with authority to search the whole place, from ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to lodge in, but not to live in. Foolish people hate and dread and envy such an association of men of varied powers and influence, because it is lofty, serene, impregnable, and, by the necessity of the case, exclusive. Wise ones are prouder of the title M. S. M. A. than of all their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... braved hardships, faced dangers, resisted temptations which would have been too powerful for him had it not been for his strong love of Home. A strong love of Home in any man's heart is a triple wall of brass around his moral nature—an impregnable bulwark against the assaults of moral evil. No labor is too great for the strong lovers of Home to accomplish. See them on ocean's billowy bosom; on mountains of ice and snow; on fields of bloody strife; on burning deserts; in trackless ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... he confessed, "to having visited the offices of The Monthly Review with the same object. I left a note for him there, in charge of the editor, inviting him to a conference at my house. I received no reply. His anonymity seems to be impregnable." ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... say up to ten years ago or less, permanent fortification mounting heavy guns was impregnable to direct assault if it were properly held and properly munitioned. It could hold out for months. Its heavy guns had a range superior to any movable guns that could be brought against it—indeed, so very heavily superior that movable guns, even ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... was situated near Pensacola. Lieutenant Slemmer, seeing that an attack was about to be made upon him, transferred his men from Fort McRae, an untenable position, to Fort Pickens, an almost impregnable fortification, which ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... v. Shaw, 309 U.S. 495 (1940). Here it was said that the reasons for sovereign immunity "partake somewhat of dignity and decorum, somewhat of practical administration, somewhat of the political desirability of an impregnable legal citadel where government, as distinct from its functionaries may operate undisturbed by the demands of litigants," ibid. 500-501. The Court went on to hold that when the United States took possession of the assets of Fleet Corporation and assumed its obligations, it did not waive its ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... features.' This policy, founded on our experience of the German defence during the Third Battle of Ypres, was very sound. All the redoubts constructed in the area occupied by the 184th Brigade were so well sited and so strongly wired that the faith seemed justified that they were part of one impregnable system. But against loss of one important factor no amount of industry could serve to insure. 'Strong points' must act in concert and for such mutual action 'on the day' good visibility was essential. As we shall see, ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... destruction of the Temple, one of the prominent figures was Baruch, the faithful attendant (65) of Jeremiah. God commanded him to leave the city one day before the enemy was to enter it, in order that his presence might not render it impregnable. On the following day, he and all other pious men having abandoned Jerusalem, he saw from a distance how the angels descended, set fire to the city walls, and concealed the sacred vessels of the Temple. At first his mourning over ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... conversing upon that important topic. He innocently eavesdrops. The individual who advocates the wearing of gloves is (of course) frivolous, fashionable, and feeble. His companion, who despises such vanities, is poor, though honest,—brawny and impregnable. It is wonderful how stupidly the kid-glove advocate reasons. The honest son of toil overwhelms him in a few moments. When a man talks so splendidly about the hard palm of labor being more useful to the world than the silken fingers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... glimpse of Boabdil's banners; the populace rose, beat back their Christian guards, and opened the gates to the last of their race of kings. The garrison alone, to which the Spaniards retreated, resisted Boabdil's arms; and, defended by, impregnable walls, promised an obstinate and ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little Quebec. I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity, that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage. No, thought I, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... taken up and the next day (12th) found us up against infantry again at Fisher's Hill, between Cedar Creek and Strasburg, a position impregnable against direct assault. For three days we remained face to face with Early's infantry, constantly so close as to draw their fire and keep ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... been something very consolatory, very sweet, to the poor girl in her lover's last words. And yet they had almost made her tremble. He had been so bold, and stern, and confident. He had seemed so utterly to defy the impregnable discretion of Mr. Beckard, so to despise the demure propriety of Hetta. But of this she felt sure, when she came to question her heart, that she could never, never, never cease to love him better than all the world beside. She would wait—patiently ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... laboured honestly in the design. Then Berkeley, who carried on the work, despairing of securing all, bethought himself of an expedient: By giving up the material world, which he thought might be spared without loss, and even with advantage, he hoped by an impregnable partition to secure the world of spirits. But, alas! the Treatise of Human Nature wantonly sapped the foundation of this partition and drowned all in one universal ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... rankles in me still, making me fear The man was mad, some word of lonely seas, A desert island and a mutineer And dead Magellan's gallows. Sirs, my life Was hardly safe with him. Why, he resolved To storm the Castle of St. Vincent, sirs, A castle on a cliff, grinning with guns, Well known impregnable! The Spaniards fear Drake; but to see him land below it and bid Surrender, sirs, the strongest fort of Spain Without a blow, they laughed! And straightway he, With all the fury of Satan, turned that cliff To hell ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... singular forms. Some of them might be mistaken for pyramids, they are so regular and well defined; some resembled lofty cones, and others resembled lofty square or pentagonal redoubts. One of the latter description lies upon the eastern bank of the river, and could easily be made an impregnable fortress, which could command all water communication between Egypt and Dongola. The scenes of verdure and cultivation through which we had passed today, removed all suspicions from my mind as to what had been reported to me of the great difference ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... Devon battalion, which, as one of the best here, and trusted for its steadiness in all circumstances, was given the most vulnerable point to hold, has busied itself in the formation of works that promise to make Helpmakaar Hill impregnable, though its long, low spur is exposed to artillery fire from Bulwaan and Lombard's Kop and the scrub-screened nek between them. The works there show what can be done under difficulties by a good ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... French flags on several balconies and shops. England's declaration of war against Germany arouses tremendous enthusiasm. The heroic defense made by the Belgians against three German army corps advancing on the almost impregnable fortress of Lige—a second Port Arthur—is a magnificent encouragement for the French. At some of the houses in Paris one now sees occasionally assembled the flags of France, Russia, Great ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... perhaps, another reference to "our age," left her, and next attacked Celeste Fishblate, having long ago discovered Nattie to be impregnable to the process known as "pumping," a fact that had augmented her ever-increasing dislike ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... this is too much," gasped the Chancellor. "The man is impregnable. It is too much, your Majesty. I fought through the war of '70 and '71, but I surrender to this; ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... French people, however, are loth to purchase estates in the country they may be said to inhabit on sufferance, while rich Germans prefer to build palatial villas within the triple fortifications and thirteen newly constructed forts which are supposed to render Strasburg impregnable. ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... only too well known in diplomatic circles that Russia coveted the railroads of Graustark, as a means of throwing troops into a remote and almost impregnable portion of Austria. If the debt were paid promptly, it would be impossible, according to international law, for the great White Bear to take over these roads and at least a portion of the western border of the principality. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to be what it is, and not what it is, at one and the same time. Thus, although sin exists, we vindicate the character of God, on the ground that it is an inherent impossibility to exclude all evil from a moral universe. This is the high, impregnable ground ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... it was found to be defended by a strong stockade, with a trench inside, from which the crouching natives could fire through loopholes, while outside of the stockade was a deep ditch of water. Feeling their position impregnable, the savages flourished their weapons and uttered tantalizing whoops at the white men. The whoops quickly changed when the cabins within the stockade were set on fire by a rocket. The natives fled, leaving the village to be burned to ashes. The Americans pushed ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... east, makes on all sides (that only excepted which joins it to the city) a frightful and inaccessible precipice. The castle is situated on a high rock, and strongly fortified with a great number of towers, so that it is looked upon as impregnable. In the great church they have a set of bells, which are not rung out as in England, (for that way of ringing is not now known in this country,) but are played on by the hand with keys, like a harpsichord, the person playing having great leather covers for his fists, which enables him ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... potentate unless the townsmen gave their consent thereto.' Now, what would the military engineers of Chatham and Paris and Berlin, who are now at their wits' end, not give for a secret like that! A wall impregnable and insurmountable and not to be sapped or mined from the outside: a wall that could only suffer hurt from the inside! And then that wonderful wall was pierced from within with five magnificently answerable ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... sumptuous Hall, flaunting and gay with banners which chronicled the victories and the power of the Republic—in the impregnable stronghold of the realm, under the astonished gaze of the entire Venetian court and the brilliant throng of the households of nobles and ambassadors who looked down from the circling galleries, expectant and awestruck under the spell ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... cities, and distant from the splendid court, frequented the lonely mountains, and the unambitious fields; nor went but rarely among the throngs of Ilium. Yet, not having a breast either churlish, or impregnable to love, he espies Hesperie, the daughter of Cebrenus,[61] on the banks of her sire, who has been often sought by him throughout all the woods, drying her locks, thrown over her shoulders, in the sun. The Nymph, {thus} seen, takes to flight, just as the frightened hind from ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... entrance through the pane. So violent did its contortions become that I momentarily anticipated the yielding of the glass, and the excited assailant coming crashing through. Considerably to my relief the window proved more impregnable than seemed at one time likely. The stolid resistance proved, in the end, to be too much either for its endurance or its patience. Just as I was looking for some fresh manifestation of fury, it seemed rather to tumble than to spring off the sill; then came, once more, the same sound of ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... badly fortified; the emperor considering Flushing to be quite impregnable. "You say that the bombardment of Flushing makes you apprehensive of its surrender," he wrote on the 22nd August. "You are wrong to have any such fear. Flushing is impregnable so long as there is bread ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... insurrection, and requested to send in the State militia. By evening all the forces of organized society were under arms. The leaders of the Law and Order party were jubilant. Their position appeared to be impregnable. They felt that back of them was all the weight of constituted authority, reaching, if need be, to the Federal Government at Washington. Opposed to them was lawlessness. Lawlessness had occasionally become dignified revolution, to be sure, but only ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... so that the bottoms were generally overflowed, leaving only narrow causeways of dry land between points of debarkation and the high bluffs. These were fortified and defended at all points. The rebel position was impregnable against any force that could be brought against its front. Sherman could not use one-fourth of his force. His efforts to capture the city, or the high ground north ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and Greek fire; the rapid evolutions of his cavalry completed the dismay and disorder; the Syrian crowds fell back on each other; many thousands were stifled or slaughtered in the entrance of the great street; the Mongols entered with the fugitives; and after a short defence the impregnable citadel of Aleppo was surrendered by cowardice or treachery. Among the suppliants and captives, Timur distinguished the doctors of the law, whom he invited to the dangerous honor of a personal conference. The Mongol ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... box-shaped houses that bulged out as if trying to see what was going on beneath. The massive timbers used in the construction of this fort, the square, compact form, and the small, dark holes cut into the walls, gave the structure a threatening, impregnable aspect. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... Ringdove, and was boarded before we came to anchor in the bay. When the boat from the brig was approaching, it was strange to see the trepidation which seized every one of our crew. Although all, with the exception of myself, were in possession of genuine legal documents that should have served as impregnable barriers against impressment, yet they had witnessed so many facts showing the utter disregard of human or divine laws on the part of the commanders of British ships-of-war when in want of men, that they awaited the result of the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the usual. One had been blackmailed by an actress after an affair and railroaded her off the Earth. Another had a habit of taking bribes to advance favorite sons in civil and military service. And so on. The Republic could not suffer at their hands; the Republic and the dynasty were impregnable. You simply spied on everybody—including the spies—and ordered summary executions often enough to show that you meant it, and kept the public ignorant: deaf-dumb-blind ignorant. The spy system was simplicity itself; you ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... bunch of ostrich feathers, bending its majestic form here and there over the verdant and luxuriant undergrowth, the mahogany tree, the stout lignumvit, the banana, the fragrant and beautiful orange and lemon, and the long, impregnable hedge of the dagger aloe, all go to show us that we are in the sunny clime of ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... the reader of the impregnable strength of the argument already presented in previous chapters, fixing the application of this symbol to these United States. This is an established proposition, and needs no farther support. An exposition of the remainder of the prophecy will therefore consist chiefly of an effort ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith |
