"Invisibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... celestial bodies, may be small; it is, indeed, as we shall afterwards see, almost infinitesimal. But in the economy of our earth the moon has played, and still plays, a part second only in importance to that of the sun himself. The moon is so close to us that her brilliant rays pale to invisibility countless orbs of a size and an intrinsic splendour incomparably greater than her own. The moon also occupies an exceptional position in the history of astronomy; for the law of gravitation, the greatest discovery that science has yet witnessed, was chiefly accomplished by ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... is taken for granted only by the inexperienced. Without doubt editors love to surround themselves with an atmosphere of mystery, aloofness, and sovereignty, but in truth they are human beings, and may be so treated. The invisibility of editors is mainly a legend. If you call at a newspaper office and, presenting your card, ask in a firm voice to see the editor, the probability is that you will see him, or some one else clothed with authority. You may be requested to state the ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... brother), he assisted him to obtain in marriage Brunhild, queen of Issland, who announced publicly that he only should be her husband who could beat her in hurling a spear, throwing a huge stone, and in leaping. Siegfried, who possessed a cloak of invisibility, aided G[:u]nther in these three contests, and Brunhild became his wife. In return for these services, G[:u]nther gave Siegfried his sister Kriemhild, in marriage. After a time, the bride and bridegroom went to visit G[:u]nther, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... believing myself unperceived, I noticed under the large oak in the roadside the figure of a young man who, by the imperfect light, appeared to be of Spanish extraction. But I evidently miscalculated my own invisibility; for he moved rapidly forward as I came to the window, and in a series of the most extraordinary pantomimic gestures saluted me. Beyond my experience of a few Greek plays in earlier days, I confess I am not an adept in the understanding of gesticulation; but it struck me that the various phases ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... certainly cure the gout, and so on; and then when they found a plant which certainly grew and increased, but of which the organs of fructification were invisible, it was a clear conclusion that properly used the plant would confer the gift of invisibility. Whether the people really believed this or not we cannot say,[92:1] but they were quite ready to believe any wonder connected with the plant, and so it was a constant advertisement with the quacks. Even in Addison's time "it was impossible ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... his rage at the thought of putting the inhabitants to death; but the thought in his mind brought the storm again, and his ship went down, and he was drowned. But at last the remnant of them landed, and fought a battle with the Gods, and defeated them; whereafter the Gods put a druid invisibility on themselves, and retired into the hills; and there in their fairy palaces they remain to this day; indeed they do. They went back into the inwardness of things; whence, however, they were always appearing, and again vanishing into it; and all the old literature of Ireland ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... against any one under eighteen. Half-a-crown to seven and sixpence, according to size. These panoplies on cards are for juvenile knights-errant and very useful—shield of safety, sandals of swiftness, helmet of invisibility." ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... around him in the blackness. But none of these imagined figures could cause the horror which he felt. He drove away the whole pack of them with a silent cry, a motionless dismissing wave of his hands. But there might be other beings round us, condemned to eternal invisibility lest the sight of them should drive men mad. We cannot see them, he thought. As a rule, we have no sensation of these gaunt neighbours, no suspicion of their approach, of their companionship. We do not hear their footsteps. We are utterly unconscious of them. Yet may ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... RESIDENCE.—The residence of the late Laureate is in the neighbourhood between freshwater Gate and Alum Bay, secluded by trees almost to invisibility. The front is covered with greenery, a fine magnolia growing round and over the front door. From under the lateral branches of a fine spreading cedar tree the Poet could look into Freshwater Bay and yet himself not ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... skirmishing line of the waiting city flung out to this distant station—including some go-ahead flappers with autograph books to sign. It was, however, one of those occasions when the Prince was considered to be wrapped in a robe of invisibility until he had been to Government House and started from there to drive inland to ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... his incautious moccasin. One of the savages heard it, gave a warning cry, and in an instant the whole party threw themselves flat upon the earth, with the wall of the Council House between themselves and that point in the forest from which the sound had come. Silence and invisibility followed, yet ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... combine for her those qualities of novelty, inexperience, and inexhaustible feeling that had seized so firmly upon her imagination, she was reckless of discovery. After all, her Prince was proving exceptionally stupid and complaisant. Her words were gospel to him; and her frequent invisibility seemed only to ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... combined the intense vitality of a dominating woman of the world with the mysterious and romantic quality of a myth. She was a legend in her lifetime, and she knew it. She tasted the joys of power, like those Eastern Emperors whose autocratic rule was based upon invisibility, with the mingled satisfactions ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... northward from Lausanne, had seen it, describing the same spindle-form, but disagreeing a little as to breadth. Then comes the important point: that he and M. de Rostan did not see it upon the same part of the sun. This, then, is parallax, and, compounded with invisibility at Paris, is great parallax—or that, in the course of a month, in the summer of 1762, a large, opaque, spindle-shaped body traversed the disk of the sun, but at a great distance from the sun. The ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... occasionally betray itself by a stealthy movement. The pretty cowrie, lemon-coloured and grey and brown, throws over its shining shoulders a shawl of the hue of the rock on which it crawls about, grey or brown or tawny, with white specks and dots which make for invisibility—a thin filmy shawl of exquisite sensitiveness. Touch it ever so lightly, and the helpless creature, discerning that its disguise has been penetrated, withdraws it, folding it into its shell, and closes its door against expected attack. It may feebly fall off the rock, and ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... cleft in the earth to Nibelheim, the abode of the Nibelungs. There they find Alberich, by virtue of his magic gold, lording it over his fellow-dwarfs. He has compelled his brother Mime, the cleverest smith of them all, to fashion him a Tarnhelm, or helmet of invisibility, and the latter complains peevishly to the gods of the overbearing mastery which Alberich has established in Nibelheim. When Alberich appears, Wotan and Loge cunningly beguile him to exhibit the powers of his new treasures. The confiding dwarf, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... regards the Boer artillery, its concealment was usually perfect, its location original and independent, its service accurate and intelligent. Dotted thinly over a wide front, the few guns were nevertheless often turned upon a common target, and were as difficult to detect from their invisibility, as to silence from the strength of the defences, in the case of the heavy ordnance, and in the case of the lighter pieces, from their instant ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... this jeopardy. No one had cause to suspect him. No one had seen him enter the Jeffrey grounds that fatal evening. There had been noised abroad no intimation of his grievance against the man. He had all the calm assurance of invisibility as he came to his abode, for a fog lay thick on the surface of the river and hung over all the land. He did not issue forth again freshly dressed till the sun was out once more, dispelling the vapors and conjuring the world back to sight and life. Nevertheless, he made no secret of having ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... look in my direction, and those who did turn their eyes toward me see me to glance through me to the building behind. I wonder if this is at all a common experience, or whether I was unduly sensitive that day, unduly wrought up? I began to feel like one clad in garments of invisibility. I could see, but was not seen. I could feel, but was not felt. In the country there are few who would not stop to speak to me, or at least appraise me with their eyes; but here I was a wraith, ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... which they peopled their groves and fountains, are true kindred of the brain, to the innocent, intelligent, and generally gentle inhabitants of the Gaelic Fairyland. The Sidhe, a tender, tutelary spirit, attached herself to heroes, accompanied them in battle, shrouded them with invisibility, dressed their wounds with more than mortal skill, and watched over them with more than mortal love; the Banshee, a sad, Cassandra-like spirit, shrieked her weird warning in advance of death, but with a ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... these worlds, and follow a fleet as it starts for their home nebula. Gradually, as they run, I will fade into invisibility, and they will not know that I have dropped back here to complete the work, but will think I am still following. Probably they will run to some other nebula in an effort to throw me off, but they will most certainly send back a ship ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... gifts—the first will give Unbounded riches while you live; The second health where'er you be; The third, invisibility." ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... the rink, however, were intoxicating, which largely made up for the invisibility of the receiving committee. The rink was somewhat larger than the town hall at Ashcroft, and the great, high, arched, glass ceiling was studded with electric lights like stars in the heavens. Extensive rows of seats for spectators encircled the entire room, and in the centre, ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... gently but firmly trying to pull Bob's arm from her waist, her distressful difficulty being that in freeing her waist she enslaved her hand, and in getting her hand free she enslaved her waist. Finding the struggle a futile one, owing to the invisibility of her antagonist, and her wish to keep its nature secret from the other two, she arose, and saying that she did not care to see any more, felt her way downstairs. Bob followed, leaving Loveday and ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... of his mother.(3) Buddha had gone up to this heaven by his supernatural power,(4) without letting his disciples know; but seven days before the completion (of the three months) he laid aside his invisibility,(4) and Anuruddha,(5) with his heavenly eyes,(5) saw the World-honoured one, and immediately said to the honoured one, the great Mugalan, "Do you go and salute the World-honoured one." Mugalan forthwith ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... of explanation had roused Desmond's anxiety. He suspected a fresh supply of tobacco; and this sudden invisibility confirmed his worst fears. He spoke of them to his wife after breakfast: and for all her radiant hopefulness of heart, she had small consolation ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... said the elder brother, "is called the cap of invisibility, by which, whoever possesseth it may become sovereign of the world. When he puts it on, he may enter where he pleases, for none can perceive him, either genii or men, so that he may convey away whatever he chooses, unseen, in security. He may enter the cabinets of kings ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... binary systems, consisting of a visible and an invisible star. There is no reason to suppose luminosity an essential quality of cosmical bodies. The visibility of countless stars is no argument against the invisibility of countless others." This grand conception led Peters to compute more accurately the orbit, and to assign the place of the invisible companion of Sirius. In 1862 Alvan G. Clark was testing a new 18-inch object-glass (now at Chicago) upon Sirius, and, knowing nothing ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... loophole in the gate of the palisade I looked and saw the sandy neck joining the town to the mainland, and the deep and dark woods beyond, the fairy mantle giving invisibility to the foe. I drew back from my loophole and held out my hand to a woman for a loaded musket. A quick murmur like the drawing of a breath came from our line. The governor, standing near me, cast an anxious glance along the stretch of wooden stakes that were neither so high nor so thick ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... foot, or from which no wanderer who may have been blown there ever returned. It is enough to claim for him the merit of discovery in the true sense of the word. The New World was covered from the Old by a veil of distance, of time and space, of absence, invisibility, virtual non-existence; ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Tantalus life of it in consequence, and when they do get a chance of sinning without being found out, they drink down pleasure by the bucketful. Depend on it, if some one would make them a present of Gyges's ring of invisibility, or Hades's cap, they would cut the acquaintance of toil without further ceremony, and elbow their way into the presence of Pleasure; they would all be Dionysiuses then. As long as Dionysius was well, he thought that there was some good in all this talk about endurance; but when he fell ill, ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... year. He was christened at the place; was in after years curate of it; and is now its incumbent. About two years ago, when he came to the church in the last-named capacity, the congregation was wretchedly thin—awfully scarce, and just on the borders of invisibility. It has since improved a little; but working up a forsaken place into real activity is a difficult task, which at times staggers the ablest of men. Mr. Brown is a scholar, and a thoroughly upright man. He believes not in fighting down other people's creeds; never rails against ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... singular that there should be no coffee in the house, but a sufficiency of tea. Germans are not usually tea-drinkers and they do take coffee. But perhaps there was nothing in this. Rather more remarkable was the invisibility of the coachman. Why could he not be sent to fetch the coffee, and why did not he, rather than the housekeeper, come to take the place of Mr. Weiss when the latter had to ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... better does a thief deserve? If any see you, at the least they will take you for a madman; there will be trouble. But have no fear; bear a bold heart. None shall see you while I stalk at your side. I will cover you with the cloak of invisibility,—so that you may come in safety to the house ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... hillocks, down little valleys, and across brooks, which they leaped with flying feet. It seemed that they would never tire, but the trained warriors behind them were no less enduring. Once, twice, thrice they caught sight of them, and when a longer period of invisibility passed they knew, nevertheless, that they were still there. Now Long Jim suddenly wavered, but gathered himself together in an instant and continued his long leaps. Henry glanced at him and saw a patch of red on the sleeve of ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... months in profound retirement at Hayes, his favorite villa, scarcely moving except from his armchair to his bed, and from his bed to his armchair, and often employing his wife as his amanuensis in his most confidential correspondence. Some of his detractors whispered that his invisibility was to be ascribed quite as much to affectation as to gout. In truth his character, high and splendid as it was, wanted simplicity. With genius which did not need the aid of stage tricks, and with a spirit which should have been far above them, he ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fern-seed. A very common superstition, which still survives, is that the seeds of the fern have power to confer invisibility. ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... wished he had kept to himself the brave prophecy made to Doris. Nevertheless, dawn found him unshaken in his determination to make good that prophecy. If, instead of spending the whole morning in doing his duty to the insurance company, he had been able to spend an early part of it in a state of invisibility within Bullard's private office, he would have justified himself beyond his ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... necessity of agreeing, that the Platonic doctrines in no wise merit this distinction, seeing he has only drawn the human mind from the contemplation of visible nature, to plunge it into the unfathomable depths of invisibility—of intangibility—of suppositious speculation, where it can find little other food except chimeras or conjecture. Such a philosophy is rather fantastical, yet it would seem we are required to subscribe to its positions without being allowed to compare them with reason, to examine them ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... its benign influence, gradually lifting from their minds all care and worry, dispersing the mental clouds that hover over all men at times, thinning the fog until it disappeared, rather than rolling the vapour away, as the warm sun dissipates into invisibility the opaque morning mists, leaving nothing but clear air, all round, ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... king to secure as his wife Brunhild, queen of Issland. The latter had announced publicly that he only should be her husband who could beat her in hurling a spear, throwing a huge stone, and in leaping. Siegfried, who possessed a cloak of invisibility, aided Gunther in these three contests, and Brunhild became his wife. In return for these services, Gunther gave Siegfried ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of the Niebelungen hoard. He is twice vanquished by Siegfried, who gets possession of his cloak of invisibility, and makes himself master of the hoard.—The Niebelungen ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... gravitation. With regard to ether we only infer its existence from the effects which we ascribe to it. Evidently the ether must extend as far as the most distant visible stars. But does it continue on indefinitely in outer space? If it does, then the invisibility of the other systems must be due to their distance diminishing the quantity of light that comes from them below the limit of perceptibility, or to the interposition of absorbing media; if it does not, then the reason why we cannot see them is owing to the ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... like sheaves of dazzling silver arrows; and over the water, and softly riding down the glen, came soft, filmy clouds of mist, so fine and delicate that they constantly faded into invisibility; while every now and then there were passing glimpses of colour appearing and disappearing over the rushing torrent, as if there had been a rainbow somewhere up above—one which had broken up, and these were its fragments ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... and other flat-fish, as we noticed in Lesson 2, are coloured and marked like the sand and pebbles of their home; and they can even change colour to suit their background. They are wonderfully hidden, owing to this useful dodge. It is as if Mother Nature had given them the marvellous "cloak of invisibility," of which ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... where he has supposed he would see a stranger. He forgot his shame in having a mother who ran an iron-mill; he even forgot that impudent thrust in the ribs; a spark of sympathy leaped between them as real in its invisibility as the white glitter of the molten iron sputtering over their heads. "Yes," he said, "it's all that, and ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... as his requests transpired they were moderate, but no one knows where he would have stopped if he had not been scared by the advent of Cardinal No. 4. Up to this time he had only asked for an inexhaustible purse, power to call up the Devil ad libitum, and a ring of invisibility to allow him free access to his mistress, who was ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... one seldom seen e'er a sight of Therasa Joyce these times anywheres about. They supposed she was took up wid lookin' after her mother, who wasn't gettin' her health over well this good while back. I think myself that Theresa's invisibility could be only in part accounted for thus, as the explanation does not cover the fact that to slip the wrong side of the dyke, or turn aside among screening hillocks and hollows when she noticed the approach of her acquaintances, was the course she always adopted if she could achieve ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... tramp of horses, but saw the shadowy figures of several men hovering on what may be termed the line of invisibility. Sometimes they were distinguished quite clearly, and then seemed to vanish; but the youths ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... time was peopled by Allah with infidels, to render it fertile for the true believers, and to be their slaves upon their arrival, which did occur some time after the occurrences which I now relate; it was not the custom for the females of Souffra to lead the life of invisibility, permitted only to those who administer to the delights of the followers of the Koran; and although it was with exceeding modesty of demeanour, still did they on great occasions expose their charms to the public gaze, for which error, no doubt if they had had souls, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the other way. The world and all that is about us, Manchester and its hubbub, warehouses crammed with cloth, and mills full of jennies and throstles—these are the shadows; and the things that only the believing eye beholds, that are wrapped in the invisibility of their own greatness, these, and these only, are the realities. We see with the bodily eyes the shadows on the wall, as it were, but we have to turn round and see with the eyes of our minds the light that flings the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... greater than the rate at which sound travels. The bullets were much more disturbing; they seemed to be less open in their warfare, and to steal up and sneak by, leaving no sign, and only to whisper as they passed. They moved under a cloak of invisibility, and made one feel as though he were the blind man in a game of blind-man's-buff, where every one tapped him in passing, leaving him puzzled and ignorant as to whither they had gone and from what point ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... and he stood with the ax ready for the onset of the monsters, more terrible now, in their invisibility, than before. Then of a sudden there sounded subterranean rumblings. The ground seemed to open almost under ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... into the east. When the sun rose, its unclouded, level rays paled the dancing barrier of flames almost to invisibility. Refreshed by their few hours' sleep in the vital warmth, Grom and the girl stood erect in the flooding light and scanned the strange landscape. Grom's sagacious eyes noted the fertility of the level lands at a distance from ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... time, the stars paled to indistinctness, then to invisibility, and the landscape came into view in the fresh, chilly dawn, showing a strong grey horse feeding with Fancy and Bunyip, two hundred yards away. I was in no hurry to start, but my friends were like greyhounds in the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... universe as we understand it, it is likely that more than one-half the stars which actually exist are too faint to be seen by human vision, even when armed with the most powerful telescopes. But their invisibility is due only to their distance and the faintness of their intrinsic light, and not to ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... his mother had taught him always to use the greatest civility,—"I hold your eye fast in my hand, and shall keep it safely for you, until you please to tell me where to find these Nymphs. The Nymphs, I mean, who keep the enchanted wallet, the flying slippers, and the what is it?—the helmet of invisibility." ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fell owt fitt, for at noone the short man mowght be the long mans shadowe and at night the contrary. A sweet dampe (a dislike of moist perfume). Wyld tyme on the grownd hath a sent like a Cypresse chest. Panis lapidosus grytty bread Plutoes Helmett; secrecy Invisibility Laconismus Omnem vocem mittere (from inchantmentes) Tertium caput; (of one ouercharged that hath a burden upon eyther showder and the 3rd. vpon his head). Triceps mercurius (great cunyng). Creta ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... lost in the thunder of the ship. The blunt bow lifted where the sun made dazzling brilliance of her sweeping curves, and with a blast that thundered from her stern the first unit of the space forces of the Earth swept upward in an arc of speed that ended in invisibility. No enveloping air could hold her now; she was launched in the ocean of space that ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... for anything elfin or gnomish. Compare Icel. Hulda, a hiding, covering. It implies the invisibility of the ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... world before, and drew the rabble after him, as a monster makes a show. When he had once provided for his safety, by impenetrable secrecy, he had nothing to combat but truth and justice, enemies whom he knows to be feeble in the dark. Being then at liberty to indulge himself in all the immunities of invisibility; out of the reach of danger, he has been bold; out of the reach of shame, he has been confident. As a rhetorician, he has had the art of persuading, when he seconded desire; as a reasoner, he has convinced those who had no doubt before; as a moralist, he has taught, that ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... mouse was invisible to all eyes but those of the child ought to have satisfied the Court and jury that she was either under the power of a delusion or practising an imposture. But, as they were predisposed to find something supernatural in the transaction, their minds seized upon the pretended invisibility of the mouse as conclusive ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... be another reason why we should not become a poetical people. Formerly the poet embodied the hopes and desires of men in visible types. He gave them the shoes of swiftness, the cap of invisibility and the purse of Fortunatus. These were once stories for grown men, and not for the nursery as now. We are apt ignorantly to wonder how our forefathers could find satisfaction in fiction the absurdity of which any of our primary-school children ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... effect. Your brain clears. The things that loomed so large, the "Flandria," and the English Field Ambulance and its miseries, and the terrifying recklessness of its Commandant, are reduced suddenly to invisibility. You can see nothing but the second Waterloo. You forget that you have ever been a prisoner in an Hotel-Hospital. You understand the mystic fascination of the road under your windows, going south-east from Ghent to Brussels, somewhere towards Waterloo. ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... and this is a bitter pill too, is the almost insurmountable difficulty already recognised of determining how a man, without approaching his victim, could manage to inflict a mortal stab in her breast. No cloak of complete invisibility has yet been found, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... you have been sponsor, Miss Essie. Well this is my garden of flowers. Then of fellow insects I have a somewhat confused variety. Mr. Stoutenburgh sings round his hearth in the shape of a black cricket. Mr. Linden passes unnoticed in the invisibility of a midge—nothing more dangerous. Mr. Somers does all the mischief he can in the way of devouring widows' houses. The two Messrs. De Staff" (two very spruce and moustachioed young gentlemen) "figure as wasp and snail—one would hardly think they belonged to the same family—but there is ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... plant. When he had descended he and his men escorted McMurdo to headquarters. Darkness had fallen, and a keen blizzard was blowing so that the streets were nearly deserted; but a few loiterers followed the group, and emboldened by invisibility shouted imprecations ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the word with which he accounted for the little man's invisibility, as he dropped off ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... credence in the Nara epoch, and indeed all through the annals of early Japan there runs a well-marked thread of superstition which owed something of its obtrusiveness to intercourse with Korea and China, whence came professors of the arts of invisibility and magic. A thunder deity making his occasional abode in lofty trees is gravely spoken of in the context of a campaign, and if at one moment a river is inhabited by a semi-human monster, at another a fish formed like a child is caught in the sea. There is, of course, an herb of longevity—"a ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... him out of the lift. Edward Henry, crossing a marble floor, next entered an enormous marble apartment chiefly populated by easy-chairs and tables. He sat down to a table and fiercely rang a bell which reposed thereon. Several of her menials simultaneously appeared out of invisibility, and one of them hurried obsequiously ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... where that Nibelungen Land specially is. Its very name is Nebel-land, or Nifl-land, the land of Darkness, of Invisibility.... Far beyond the firm horizon, that wonder-bearing region swims on the infinite waters, unseen by bodily eye, or, at most, discerned as a faint streak hanging in the blue depths, uncertain whether island or cloud."—Carlyle, on ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... ever find them in?" flashed Lancelot. "I suppose they do exist and are occasionally seen of mortal eyes. I suppose wives and friends and mothers gaze on them with no sense of special privilege, unconscious of their invisibility to the profane eyes of ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... invisible below the tops of the landing wheels, as though the plane were sinking into invisibility, slowly dissolving from ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... indistinguishable his body by our sense of sight, must leave traces of his passage. The study from beginning to end is finely realistic; and even the theory of the albino, Griffin, and in a lesser degree his method of winning the useless gift of invisibility, are convincing enough to make us wonder whether the thing is not scientifically possible. As a pure romance set in perfectly natural surroundings, The Invisible Man is possibly the high-water mark of Mr ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... Fields knew all this, but she had a brave heart, and determined that by some means or other she would overcome all obstacles, and rescue Cadichon from the power of Gangana. So, taking with her the water of invisibility, she sprinkled it over her, and mounting her favourite winged lizard, set out for the island. When it appeared in sight she wrapped herself in her fireproof mantle; then, bidding the lizard return home, she slipped past the dragons and ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... north, Hervey would have that dim black mass, hovering on the verge of invisibility, to guide him. Traveling a little west of north he might have reached the road at a nearer point. But here the traveling was bad and the danger of getting lost greater. Tom had weighed one thing against another and told Hervey to ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... have liked to write him one of those terse, courteous, biting notes, for which she was famous; and her fingers, morally, tingled to box his ears. But what was to be done with mere 'London?' Wylder was hidden from mortal sight, like a heaven-protected hero in the 'Iliad,' and a cloud of invisibility girdled him. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... opened on her bed, and felt all the patterns, and had all the papers described. She was all satisfaction and thanks, and swore me to do her full justice to Lady Ailesbury, and Mrs. Damer. Lord Harrington and Lady Harriet are arrived; but have announced and persisted in a strict invisibility. I know nothing of my ch'ere patrie, but what I learn from the London Chronicle; and that tells me, that the trading towns are suing out lettres de noblesse, that is, entreating the King to put an end to commerce, that they may all be gentlemen. Here agriculture, economy, reformation, philosophy, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... sward were dark; And I, who thought the splendour ours Because the place was, t'wards it flew, And there, amidst the glittering showers, Gazed vainly for the glorious view. With whatsoever's lovely, know It is not ours; stand off to see, Or beauty's apparition so Puts on invisibility. ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... is with me. I walk in the avenue, and eat all the delightful dinners without seeing the spots upon the table-cloth, and behold all the beautiful Aurelias without swearing at old Carbuncle. I am the guest who, for the small price of invisibility, drinks only the best wines, and talks only to the most agreeable people. That is something, I can tell you, for you might be asked to lead out old Mrs. Peony. My fancy slips in between you and Aurelia, sit you never so closely together. It not only hears ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... grey hollowness in the vast place. The windows showed not any colour nor light; the splendid pillars soared up into the air and disappeared as if they mounted to heights of invisibility in the sky at night. Very far away, at the other end of the church it seemed, one lamp was burning, high over the transept. One could not see the chains of support nor the roof above it; it seemed a great ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... inhuman, a force of nature like a landslide, a tidal wave, or lava sweeping down a mountain. It was not of this earth, but mysterious, ghostlike. It carried all the mystery and menace of a fog rolling toward you across the sea. The uniform aided this impression. In it each man moved under a cloak of invisibility. Only after the most numerous and severe tests at all distances, with all materials and combinations of colors that give forth no color, could this gray have been discovered. That it was selected to clothe and disguise the German when he fights ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... and going upon the footpaths. The cafes glittered and rang with noise. Here one little fat burgher was shouting that the town-guard was worth all the red-legs in the trenches; another as loudly was criticising the tactics of Bazaine and comparing him for his invisibility to a pasha in his seraglio; while a third sprang upon a table and announced fresh victories. An army was already on the way from Paris to relieve Metz. Only yesterday MacMahon had defeated the Prussians, any moment he might be expected from the Ardennes. Nor were they only ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... 'How can two walk together except they be agreed?' And if we reflect upon the history of our own feelings and realisation of God's presence with us, we shall see that impurity always drew a membrane over the eye of our souls, or cast a mist of invisibility over the heavens. The smallest sin hides God from us. A very, very little grain of dye stuff will darken miles of a river, and make it incapable of reflecting the blue sky and the sparkling stars. The least evil done ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... equally beloved wife in every land and in every place we came to; nor the would-be dandy, who lit cigars innumerable, and invariably flung them overboard after the first puff; nor the priests, who seemed to possess the gift of invisibility, so rarely did they show themselves; nor the hundred thousand events and personages that flash upon our path for a moment on our journey through life, and then linger in the memory only as the dim phantoms of a dream that ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... shortly after daybreak on the morning of the 11th. Astronomically, the event was recorded by the observatory at Harvard as the sudden appearance of what apparently was a new star, increasing in the short space of a few hours from invisibility to a power beyond that of the first magnitude, and then as rapidly fading again to invisibility. This star was recorded by two of the other great North American observatories, and by one in the Argentine Republic. That it was comparatively small in mass and exceedingly close to the earth, ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... his Lectures upon Education, gives an account of a boy singularly addicted to reverie. The desire of invisibility had seized his mind, and for several years he had indulged his fancy with imagining all the pleasures that he should command, and all the feats that he could perform, if he were in possession of Gyges's ring. The reader ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... fever, cover themselves with streaks of light and tremulous spots, different colored clouds passing over their epidermis with every thrill. The cuttlefish and ink fish, upon perceiving that they are pursued, enwrap themselves in a cloud of invisibility, just as did the enchanters of old in the books of chivalry, darkening the water with the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the ptarmigan and the stinging insects, the mountains themselves had joined in the weird game and were donning their fernseed caps of invisibility. Now the air around and about me seemed to be filled with powdered dust of mica that glinted, sparkled and scintillated in the sunshine. The breeze which was tossing about the bright atoms loosened the handkerchief which swathed my nose and ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... parapet and looked over its edge to the hunk of desert that stretched away toward Reno, out behind the motel. The third story, behind me, cut off the neon glare from the Strip and left the place in inky darkness. There was silence and invisibility out ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... argued that the launch must be no great way off, in spite of its invisibility. I then put myself in the place of Small, and looked at it as a man of his capacity would. He would probably consider that to send back the launch or to keep it at a wharf would make pursuit easy if the police did happen to get on his track. How, then, could he conceal the launch and ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... star, and spread evenly around it was a circular nebulous disk, pale yet sparkling and conspicuous. This disk was sharply bordered by a narrow black ring, and outside the ring the luminous haze of the nebula again appeared, gradually fading toward the edge to invisibility. The accompanying cut, which exaggerates the brightness of the nebula as compared with the star, gives but a faint idea of this most singular object. If its peculiarities were within the reach of ordinary telescopes, there are few scenes ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... plead extreme youth once more, and the Owl was forced to be resigned. The small tent in which guard and prisoner were to sleep was almost in the center of the camp and Robert truly would have needed wings and the power of invisibility to escape then. Instead of it he let the thought pass for a while and went to ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... this was an army, traveling in the borderland of the Unknown. Appearing momentarily as though coming out to scout around and see the contour and the characteristics of our realm; disappearing again into invisibility, to show themselves in an hour or so many ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... silence of the wood came the sharp crack of rifles, the zip-zip of bullets, the shouts of men who had given up the game of invisibility. It was a sharp encounter one night when the Loyal North Lancashires held the village of Vaux, and our men brought back many German helmets and other trophies as proofs of victory. Then to bed in the village, and a good night's rest, as when English knights fought the French, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... If it were allowable to suppose such an agency, it might be equally so to refuse admitting it; every one may be amused or not with a pure fiction, an imaginary creation. But do not plead, that the invisibility of diabolical agency is any proof or any presumption of its reality; but simply that it is no objection, that it has no power to neutralize the evidence produced, and that unbelievers have no authority, on ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... Khara, Krodha-vasa, Hari, Praruja, Aruja and Praghasa, and others. And as these wicked ones were penetrating (the monkey host) in their invisible forms, Vibhishana, who had the knowledge thereof, broke the spell of their invisibility. And once seen, O king, by the powerful and long-leaping monkeys, they were all slain and prostrated on the earth, deprived of life. And unable to endure this, Ravana marched out at the head of his troops. And surrounded by his terrible army of Rakshasas and Pisachas, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... service," replied the spirit, "and will answer your questions. With regard to my visibility and invisibility"—he continued, with a smile, "for I will not wait for you to ask the explanation of what is in your minds—it is very simple. A man's soul can never die; a manifestation of the soul is the spirit; this has entity, consciousness, and will, and these also live forever. As in the natural or material ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... eminences permits us to project with our own expression, which, otherwise, would be subdued into invisibility: ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... is set aside by the Sutra. That which possesses invisibility and the other qualities stated in the text, and that which is higher than the high Indestructible, is no other than the highest Self. For the text declares attributes which belong to the highest Self only, viz. in I, 1, 9, 'He who knows all, cognises all,' &c. ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... was a hall that angled off into invisibility, and to the left of the desk was another one, going straight back past doors and two radiators until it ran into a right-angled turn ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... favorite Mephistopheles, you wrapped the mantle of invisibility about you, and heard ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... while the ark of the testament was like the foot-stool to Him that sat on the propitiatory. These three things denote three things in that higher world: namely, God Who is above all, and incomprehensible to any creature. Hence no likeness of Him was set up; to denote His invisibility. But there was something to represent his seat; since, to wit, the creature, which is beneath God, as the seat under the sitter, is comprehensible. Again in that higher world there are spiritual substances called angels. These are signified by the two cherubim, looking one towards ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... was the driver of the Railway Delivery Van. I smiled at Boyce's ostrich-like faith in the invisibility of his hinder bulk. What could occur in Wellingsford without it being known at once to vanmen and postmen and barbers and servants and masters and mistresses? How could a man hope to conceal his goings and comings and secret actions? He might just as well expect to ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... turned to walk toward the musicians, and what the gown overlooked the walk demonstrated. The man was fat enough to make him seem short until he approached. His face and baldish dome were desert-reddened, and his eyebrows were faded to invisibility. Jorgensen. ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... which possesses the qualities of invisibility, &c., on account of the declaration ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... his voice showing more anger. "One weapon or whatever you want to call it. Practical invisibility. But that's enough. An invisible man with a knife is more deadly than a dozen ordinary men with modern armament. Are you sure you know nothing of this, ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... The Mackay scheme of invisibility will be easily grasped by the reader if we take the example of the rainbow. The phenomenon of the rainbow, then, teaches us that what we know to be white light, or daylight, is composed of rays of various colors. If an object, say the hull of a vessel ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... personally that we have but one variety, and that differences in color are due largely to the different surroundings in which they live. Of all birds the grouse is most invisible when quiet, his coloring blends so perfectly with the roots and leaves and tree stems among which he hides. This wonderful invisibility is increased by the fact that he changes color easily. He is darker in summer, lighter in winter, like the rabbit. When he lives in dark woods he becomes a glossy red-brown; and when his haunt is among the birches he ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long |
