"Impenetrable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the river, but no villages or cultivated lands appeared; nothing was to be seen save flooded plains and gloomy, impenetrable forests. The river turned out to be a tributary of a much larger river. It was, indeed, the great river Amazon. Orellana now decided to go on down this great river and to desert Pizarro. True, his men ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... fire. Analysis and introspection might come later; but for the moment she was not even troubled by the excesses of the upholstery or the restless convolutions of the furniture. The sense of being once more lapped and folded in ease, as in some dense mild medium impenetrable to discomfort, effectually stilled the faintest note ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... white, appeared in a corner of the window and privily beckoned him to approach. He did so, and looked in. The carriage was occupied by a single small and very dainty figure, swathed head and shoulders in impenetrable folds of white lace; and a voice, speaking low and silvery, addressed him in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the coloring is always worth more than the form, the sensation than the idea. Their heroes and heroines are grotesque beings, sentimental caricatures, souls not to be comprehended, always placed in unnatural situations, and surrounded with dark, gloomy, and impenetrable mysteries. If their readers can be made to exclaim at every page: 'Inconceivable! astonishing! original!' they consider their work perfect. Such poets seldom attempt long poems; if they should imprudently do so, we find but little sequence, and nothing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... across the heart of the Lost Continent. In all that spirited narrative of heroic endeavour, nothing has so much impressed the imagination, as his description of the immense forest, which offered an almost impenetrable barrier to his advance. The intrepid explorer, in his own phrase, "marched, tore, ploughed, and cut his way for one hundred and sixty days through this inner womb of the true tropical forest." The mind of man with difficulty ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... even more so than the occasion seemed to warrant, but they studied each other's faces furtively, as if each sought in the other some clue to the mystery which was to himself impenetrable. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... Walls. Often as he lay in his bed trying to believe he was warm enough, he would set off for it down the lanes of blinding city light through which the scream of the trolley pursued him, only to see it glimmer palely on him through impenetrable plate glass, or defended from him by huge trespass signs that appeared to have some relation to the fact that he was not yet so rich as he expected to be. Times when he would wake out of his sleep, it would be to a strange sense of severances and loss, and though he did not know exactly what ailed ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... that the door might be opened, doubtless for the disembodied spirit to pass out, all these rites were understood by Jacky to imply that the last scene was at hand. Why witness it? it would make him still more uncomfortable. Therefore he ran, and never once looked back, and plunged into the impenetrable gloom of ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... were very great, as the ground was exceptionally rocky, and the growth of cedars almost impenetrable for wheeled carriages. Retiring sullenly under a heavy fire, while the general line was reformed to my right and rear, my division was at length drawn through the cedars and debouched into an open space near the Murfreesboro' pike, behind the right ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of property in his child, that these people—the mere dust of the earth, as he thought them—should be necessary to him; and it was natural that in proportion as he felt disturbed by it, he should deplore the occurrence which had made them so. For all his starched, impenetrable dignity and composure, he wiped blinding tears from his eyes as he paced up and down his room; and often said, with an emotion of which he would not, for the world, have had ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... sunset; but through the gray moonlit haze, Leonard kept his face to the window, pertinaciously clearing openings in the bedewed glass, as though the varying outline of the horizon had a fascination for him. At last, after ten minutes of glaring gas at a junction had by contrast rendered the mist impenetrable, and reduced the view to brightened clouds of steam, and to white telegraphic posts, erecting themselves every moment, with their wires changing their perspective in incessant monotony, he ceased his gaze, and sat upright in his place, with the same strange ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the prince-royal was informed that the British commanders would proceed to hostilities; and as a direct refusal was given, operations soon commenced. The English army landed on the 16th of August without opposition; and Copenhagen was closely invested on the land side, while the fleet formed an impenetrable blockade by sea. A proclamation was issued by Lord Cathcart, notifying to the inhabitants of Zealand the motives of the expedition, and the conduct that would be observed towards them, with an assurance, that whenever ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... three. There was perceptible to him no change in that face upon the pillow. He brought a lamp from the dressing table and looked at her, shading the light with his hand. Impenetrable mask! Profound and awful mystery. Much more than a house that dreadfully engrossed spirit was preparing to leave. This meagre form, scarcely discernible beneath the coverlet, had been its fortress, once new, once ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... spent in dread of fog, in dread of ice, and the ship seemed to respond to the dread of the men as her horn called out into the impenetrable wilderness of mists ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... undecided whether to announce on the best authority that the idea was true, or that it was quite unfounded. One thing only was certain; whatever she decided to say, she would say on the best authority. If it turned out incorrect in the end, Miss S. would take credit for an impenetrable discretion and an unswerving loyalty to the friends who had given her ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... find him arguing as follows in support of the proposals to amend the Constitution which led to the Bill of Rights: "If they are incorporated into the Constitution, independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the Legislature or Executive; they will be naturally led to resist every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... passage they were indeed in a cave. For a few feet around the small opening daylight shone dimly in, but it was lost in impenetrable gloom above and to the rear. A mass of something dense loomed in front of them and Apple swimming boldly up declared, it to be a pile ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... an ancestor of FITZGERALD'S friend. "Posh" is a mixture of old boots—of which a practically unlimited supply can be found on the beaches of seaside resorts—and seaweed, boiled into a jelly, allowed to solidify, and then frozen hard in cold storage. "Posh" is not only (1) impenetrable but also (2) hygienic, the iodine in the seaweed lending it a peculiarly antiseptic quality, and (3) picturesque, the colour of the compound being a dark purple, which is exceedingly pleasing to the eye. Lastly, the cost of production is slight, as the raw ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... incessantly, The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky, If I might lend their life a voice, Seem to bear rather than rejoice. And, even could the intemperate prayer Man iterates, while these forbear, For movement, for an ampler sphere, Pierce fate's impenetrable ear, Not milder is the general lot Because our spirits have forgot, In actions's dizzying eddy whirled, The something that infects the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... illusions to help her through the hours which must have been sleepless I shouldn't like to say. It ended at last; and this strange victim of the de Barral failure, whose name would never be known to the Official Receiver, came down to breakfast, impenetrable in her everyday perfection. From the very first, somehow, she had accepted the fatal news for true. All her life she had never believed in her luck, with that pessimism of the passionate who at bottom feel themselves ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... she uttered, "these woods are impenetrable enough to furnish hiding-place for Robin Hood and all his men. Surely there must be an inn or house somewhere near. Patience! I will find shelter. On, ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... up to a crowd of thronging thoughts. Of Undine's origin she knew a good deal, but not the whole; and the terrible Kuhleborn especially remained to her an awful, an impenetrable mystery—never, indeed, had she once heard his name. Musing upon these wondrous things, she unclasped, without being fully conscious of what she was doing, a golden necklace, which Huldbrand, on one of the preceding days of their passage, had bought for her of a travelling trader; ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... in front of me, and some one had fallen in. The poor wretch was doomed to drown in that horrid and impenetrable darkness. I shuddered at the thought of that fate, and moved faster under the whip of impulse. The next moment I brought sharply up against a stone post by which ships were warped in and fastened. Below was the water, and ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... door; and stopping the car she waited, smiling, until he joined her. While she watched him cross the pavement, she rejoiced in the thoroughbred fineness and thinness of his appearance—in his clear-cut Roman features and in the impenetrable reticence of his expression. Yes, she loved him as well as she could love any man; and that, she told herself, with a touch of cynical amusement, was just so much and no more, just enough to bring happiness, but not ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... was, however, commanded from several points on the east, and, according to the Confederate authorities, appeared to have been carelessly chosen. Meade's front, except at the extreme river-flank, was covered by impenetrable woods. The Mine road intersected his left flank, and the River road was parallel to and a mile in ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... nimbly, airily, easily more dramatic in arts of manoeuvre. But Dempsey, tall, sullen, composed, followed him steadily. He seemed slow beside that flying white figure, but that wheeling amble was deadly sure. He was always on the inner arc, Carpentier on the outer; the long, swarthy arms were impenetrable in front of his vitals; again and again he followed up, seeking to corner his man; Carpentier would fling a shining arm at the dark jaw; a clinch would follow in which the two leaned together in that curious ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... addressing myself to Saadi, "that it has pleased God, whose ways are secret and impenetrable, that I should not be enriched by your liberality, but that I must remain poor: however, the obligation is the same as if it ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... are to be seen, covered with beautiful blossoms, at all seasons of the year. Jeraniums flourish in such abundance, that, in various parts of the settlement, they are made into hedges, and are so thick as to be almost impenetrable; they are always in leaf and flower, and emit an odour of the most fragrant ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... knew how to deal with vehemence. He loved to play with the emotions of a passionate fellow-creature: it was only the imperturbably calm of a certain enemy of his that was wont to shake his own impenetrable armour of reserve. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... people." There was, however, one person who was abundantly satisfied, and that was old John Price; but nothing could be got from him, though a host of questioners assailed him as he made his way down to the house, on the morning of the birthday gathering, seated on an old pony as prudent and impenetrable as himself. ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... the view in every direction; and yet the clear sky is immediately above, and the ground over which I am walking is perfectly dry. After the first violent burst there is very little wind, and the impenetrable walls of vapor encompassing me round about at so near a distance, and yet not interfering with me in any way, present a most singular appearance. While appreciating the extreme novelty of the situation, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... intrepidity. As for us, we honour every display of courage, even in the ranks of those who are opposed to us. One day the tribune was surrounded with darkness; it seemed as if an abyss had opened around it; and in this darkness one heard a noise like the roaring of the sea; and suddenly, in that impenetrable night, above that ledge of marble to which clung the strong hand of Danton, one saw arise a pike bearing a bleeding head! Boissy d'Anglas ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... up. I could almost have sworn on which step they last struck. At this interesting moment Sophia Brooks uttered a piercing shriek and collapsed into my arms, sending the electric torch rattling down the steps, and leaving us in impenetrable darkness. Really, I profess myself to be a gallant man, but there are situations which have a tendency to cause annoyance. I carried the limp creature cautiously down the stairs, fearing the fate of the butler, and at last got her into the dining-room, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... nine in the evening, and crossed the lake in a motor launch. It was very dark and the forest surrounding the calm expanse of water looked like an impenetrable wall, an unscalable rampart. There was not a sound but the faint chugging of the motor. The members of the party, tired after their long trip on the train and two hours' drive up the rough road from the station to the lake, surrendered to the high mountain stillness, and even Rollo Todd, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... allowance for it, before leaving the schooner, but we were where the Gulf Stream and the Arctic Current are not very far apart and the resulting tides are strong and changeable. We were in the grip of two great elemental and relentless forces, the impenetrable fog, cutting off all our communications, and the strong ocean current sweeping us away into the uninhabited waste of waters. From my experience of the year before, I knew what it meant to be lost in the fog on the Banks, practically in mid-ocean; I understood ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... hour later I conducted Mademoiselle Sophie to her father, and two days after I left the town of T——, and the image of the girl with the childlike face and the soul impenetrable as stone slipped quickly ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... kingdom had asserted its sovereignty. At his back loomed a dense forest, impenetrable to the foot of man, defying his puny hand armed with axe or saw. The trees were not high, few of them being above twenty feet, but from their branches creepers and parasites hung in tangled profusion, interlaced, joining tree to tree ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... him. Surely this man, who was usually the most composed, and impenetrable, and suave of men, must have been considerably annoyed thus to give way ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... Field Hospitals is a post which I think must have been created for him," Colonel Grey remarked. "He's an impenetrable sort ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... something inexpressibly sweet, appealing, and touching in this impenetrable slumber, when it was at its deepest. She looked so young, so delicate, so lovely; it was as if she had entered into a shrine, and some sacred curtain had been dropped to shield her from all the cares and perplexities of life. She lived, she breathed, and yet all the ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... was a little more genial than it had been in the old days. Nevertheless this was still the old Amy Warlock, stiff, masculine, impenetrable. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... I reckon by the toil and turmoil of the mind, I am already an old man. I have lived for ages. I am far, very far, on my voyage. Let me cast my eyes back on the vast sea that I have traversed; there is a mist settled over it, almost as impenetrable as that which glooms before me. Let me pause. Methinks that I see it gradually break, and partial sunbeams struggle through it. Now the distant waves rise, and wanton and play, pure and lucid. 'Tis the day-spring ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... filled another pipe, sat doggedly down in front of the fire, and speedily enveloped himself, and his friend, and all that the room contained, in thick, impenetrable clouds of smoke. ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... so, and through that block—the supposedly impenetrable shield of a Prime Operator—Garlock insinuated a probe. He did not crack the screen or break it down by force; he neutralized and counter-phased, painlessly and almost imperceptibly, its ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... behalf. Barker became an important member of Johnson's family, some of whom reproached him for his liberality to the nigger. No one ever solved the great problem as to what services were rendered by Barker to his master, whose wig was "as impenetrable by a comb as a quickset hedge," and whose clothes were never touched by ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... remorse at dooming a being so bright and fair to such a miserable existence, or whether there was not more anger than sorrow in that impenetrable calm none could tell; he was very attentive, and tried to sooth with gentle words, but woe to any of the attendants who dared to make any remark upon her in his hearing; all she said was treated indifferently as the ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... the very last person who would convince a man with the proper suspicious impartiality. One remembers a certain consultation of politicians which is recorded in the Spelling-book; and the opinion of that patriotic sage who avowed that, for a real blameless constitution, an impenetrable shield for liberty, and cheap defence of nations, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... distant from his ears. He fell. He knew he fell. For hours it seemed to him he continued to fall in an abyss of blackness that was wholly horrifying. It was a blackness peopled with hideous invisible shadows. So impenetrable was the inky void that even sound ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... that car which is furnished with the banner bearing the device of the ape; the driver of that car is Vasudeva! Dhananjaya himself is the warrior who fighteth from it; his, again, is that celestial bow called Gandiva; he owneth again those steeds fleet as the wind; his coat of mail is impenetrable and of celestial make; his two large quivers are inexhaustible; his arms have been obtained from the great Indra, Rudra, Kuvera, Yama and Varuna; and upon his car, again, are those maces of frightful mien, and diverse other great weapons having the thunderbolt ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... inevitably in lines athwart, As on some thunder-blasted Titan's brow His record of rebellion. Not the day Shall strike forth music from so stern a chord, Touching this marble: darkness, none knows how, And stars impenetrable of midnight, may. So looms the likeness of thy ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and narrow, shut in by high banks, and overhanging trees. The forests on each side were thick and impenetrable; so that there was no landing-place, excepting here and there where a footpath wound down to some fishing-ground, or some place where the natives ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... of those timid and feeble folk who are equally unable to make war or peace, and refused to look beyond the question of his own personal safety, guaranteed as it was by the dikes and marshes of Ravenna. As all attempts to conduct a satisfactory negotiation with this emperor failed before his impenetrable stupidity, Alaric, after instituting a second siege and blockade of Rome in 409, came to terms with the senate, and with their consent set up a rival emperor and invested the prefect of the city, a Creek named Attalus, with the diadem ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... undoubtedly acquainted with the same process of reasoning; for, like the vesper-bird, she, too, nests in open, unprotected places, avoiding all show of concealment,—coming from the tangled and almost impenetrable parts of the forest to the clean, open woods, where she can command all the approaches and fly with equal ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... like his face?" Miss Woodruff inquired. Mr. Drew, as if aware of their scrutiny, had turned his eyes upon them for a moment. They were large, jaded eyes, lustrous, yet with the lustre of a surface rather than of depth; dense, velvety and impenetrable. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... hard, white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... appeared to be the final heathen triumph and settlement, and is supposed to have lurked like an outlaw in a lonely islet in the impenetrable marshlands of the Parret; towards those wild western lands to which aboriginal races are held to have been driven by fate itself. But Alfred, as he himself wrote in words that are his challenge to the period, held that a Christian man was unconcerned ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... scarcely believe his eyes, therefore, when he saw the flame flicker and expire. His sight had surely deceived him. And now, since the light did not reappear, there must be some smoke wreath or impenetrable mist brooding about the tower's gray old head, and obscuring it from the lower world. But no! For right over the dim battlements, as the wind chased away a mass of clouds, he beheld a star, and moreover, by an earnest concentration ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... always be buried, so the scientists say, for Herculaneum was snuggled close up under Vesuvius, and the hissing-hot lava came down in waves; and first it slugged the doomed town to death and then slagged it over with impenetrable, flint-hard deposits. Pompeii, though, lay farther away, and was entombed in dust and ashes only; so that it has been comparatively easy to unearth it and make it whole again. Even so, after one hundred and sixty-odd years of more or less desultory explorations, ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... treasure lay buried. Finally, I set out by compass, and indicated, by means of two long slender rods stuck upright into the sand, a line that would take them straight into the bush where it was thickest and most impenetrable, and told them to cut a straight line in that direction, exactly two thousand yards in length from a peg which I had driven at the margin of ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... way to Mrs. Richie's house. It was so deep with mud now that sometimes she had to walk outside the wheel-ruts into the wiry beach-grass. The road toiled among the dunes; on the shore on her right she could hear the creaming lap of the waves; but rain was driving in from the sea in an impenetrable curtain, and only when in some turn of the wind it lifted and shifted could she catch a glimpse of the scarf of foam lying on the sands, or see the gray heave of an endless expanse that might be water or might be sky folded down into the water. It was growing dark; sometimes she blundered ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... forth in one full stream. The fountain is nearly double the volume of that of the Jordan at Banias, and much more beautiful. The foundations of an ancient building, probably a temple, overhang it, and tall poplars and sycamores cover it with impenetrable shade. From the low aperture, where it bursts into the light, its waters, white with foam, bound away flashing in the chance rays of sunshine, until they are lost to sight in the dense, dark foliage. ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... keep in mind—the most curious phenomenon in all Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and its deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or fanaticism of the other states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to last, like a masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial interest,—this the one motive of all her important political acts, or enduring national animosities. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... to domestic details, must also inspect the mail and only show us letters when absolutely necessary, as well as to say 'not at home,' with the impenetrable New York butler manner ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... have been that that was daily, and little by little, pressing down her eyelids and deepening the quivering lines of her impenetrable face. She had a certain solitary grandeur, the pathos attaching to the last of a race, of a type; the air of waiting for the deluge, of listening for an inevitable ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... we saw, we heard no voices call; The impenetrable wall Cast down its shadow, like an awful doubt, On ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... military parade in honor of the President, with infantry, with straggling cavalrymen, with artillery. All the paths of the Common and the Garden were filled, and near the Coliseum the throngs densified on every side into an almost impenetrable mass, that made the doors of the building difficult to approach ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... inventions have brought into close relation widely separated peoples and make them better acquainted. Geographic and political divisions will continue to exist, but distances have been effaced. Swift ships and fast trains are becoming cosmopolitan. They invade fields which a few years ago were impenetrable. The world's products are exchanged as never before and with increasing transportation facilities come increasing knowledge and larger trade. Prices are fixed with mathematical precision by supply and demand. The world's selling prices ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... answer you by becoming more and more august, more and more gracious, more and more ancient and mellow! But this lad has seen how to bowl me out. He has answered me back, vaunt for vaunt, rhetoric for rhetoric. He has lifted the only shield I cannot break, the shield of an impenetrable pomposity. Listen to him. You have come, my Lord, ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... I have seen pass under my eyes many equivocal and terrible situations, which not only agonized my conscience but gave me many cruel hours of indecision. Man is often so little responsible and circumstances are often so powerful. Our impenetrable nature is so capricious, our instincts are so mysterious that we must be tolerant and even indulgent in the presence of faults which are not really crimes, and which exhibit nothing vicious or ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... party needed rest, and none of them opened their eyes until morning. As a simple precaution the scout smothered the fire entirely, by scraping the ashes over the embers. Not a ray of moonlight could reach them, and they were wrapped in the most impenetrable darkness. ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... reverberated through his brain, rising in an intolerable crescendo, blotting out other sensory perception. He fought to regain control of his fading senses, but the castle court blurred and he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. He started sliding down an endless, dark chute, ending in impenetrable blackness. ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... This finally became so dense that the negro veered to the left, where there was a grassy ledge, along which we made more rapid progress, although facing greater danger of discovery. However, the night was black, and to any picket looking down from above the ravine must have appeared a dark, impenetrable void, while our feet in the grass scarcely made a sound. Once we saw a moving figure above us, barely visible against the sky-line, and halted breathlessly, every eye uplifted, until the apparition vanished; and once, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... sprang up around the castle, which, as the years passed on, grew and grew until it formed an impenetrable barrier around the sleeping Palace. The old people of the country died, and their children grew up and died also, and their children, and their children, and the story of the sleeping Princess became a legend, handed down from one ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... room, Grace turned her lamp low, and sitting down by the window, drew back the curtains. The rain still fell, the November wind surged through the trees, and the blackness was impenetrable. Was this wintry tempest, as her brother had said, ominous of coming trouble and storms ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... fine character that Burke drew of him see Payne's Burke, i. 122. There is, I think, a hit at Lord Bute's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir F. Dashwood (Lord Le Despencer), who was described as 'a man to whom a sum of five figures was an impenetrable secret.' Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George III, i. 172, note. He himself said, 'People will point at me, and cry, "there goes the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever appeared."' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... the very essence of Warner's nature was the feverish desire of fame: it poured through his veins like lava; it preyed as a worm upon his cheek; it corroded his natural sleep; it blackened the colour of his thoughts; it shut out, as with an impenetrable wall, the wholesome energies and enjoyments and objects of living men; and, taking from him all the vividness of the present, all the tenderness of the past, constrained his heart to dwell forever and forever ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... here," retorted the impenetrable Dryfesdale, "but keep thy sinful oaths and silly threats for those that regard them—I do mine office, and carry the keys to the seneschal.—Adieu, my young master! the cool night air will ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... doors, there are windows at least, through which a prying eye can detect some indication that betrays the mystery. How different is it here! The bore arrives; the outer door is shut; it is black and solid, and perfectly impenetrable, as is your secret; the doors are all alike; he can distinguish mine from yours by the geographical position only. He may knock; he may call; he may kick if he will; he may inquire of a neighbour, but he can inform him ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various
... square miles, rich in every element of material wealth and commercial prosperity, all tributary to Duluth. Look at it, sir (pointing to the map). Here are inexhaustible mines of gold, immeasurable veins of silver, impenetrable depths of boundless forest, vast coal-measures, wide, extended plains of richest pasturage, all, all embraced in this vast territory, which must, in the very nature of things, empty the untold treasures of its commerce into the lap of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... for some hours, and at nightfall, in the labyrinth of houses ranging from the Rue du Petit Carreau to the Rue du Temple, there was fighting. The Pagevin, Neuve Saint Eustache, Montorgueil, Rambuteau, Beaubourg, and Transnonain barricades were gallantly defended. There, there was an impenetrable network of streets and crossways barricaded by the People, surrounded ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... bivouac," continued Ingolby aloud, as he gazed ahead of him through the opening greenery, beyond which lay Gabriel Druse's home. Where he was the woods were thick, and here and there on either side it was almost impenetrable. Few people ever came through this wood. It belonged in greater part to Gabriel Druse, and in lesser part to the Hudson's Bay Company and the Government; and as the land was not valuable till it was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... man, but which at no remote period will be adorned with villas and the ornaments of civilized life. The winds from the mountain gorges roll its placid waters into a furious sea, and crest its billows with foam. Forests of pine, deep, dark and almost impenetrable, are scattered at random along its banks, and its beautiful margin presents every variety of sand and pebbly beach, glittering with crystals, carnelians and chalcedony. The Indians approach it under the fear of a superstition originating in the volcanic forces surrounding it, which ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... rolled back a mile from the river, tumbled precipitately into a deep yawning gully. From the timbered eminence the prospect below was as dank and gloomy as a paleolithic fern forest. Sodden, mossy, and almost impenetrable, the hill split and dropped into Choke Gulch. From far down within the black and tangled fastnesses came the solemn ripple of slow-running water. A veil of weird loneliness hung over the cavernous place and ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... impenetrable to that low voice so full of pathos and love. But he was at a loss what to reply: strange influences were flowing round him, carrying him out of himself. He kissed the gentle head that reclined on his bosom. "Caroline," said he, "your advice is wise and good ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... correctly described the Ohio, or the Wabash, as but the tributary of a much more majestic stream, far away in the west, which, pouring its flood through the impenetrable forest, emptied itself they knew not where. Of the magnitude of this distant river, the Mississippi, its source, rise and termination, they could give no intelligible account. They endeavored to give some idea of the amount of game ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... confectioners, fiddlers, dancers, and everything that is most unmanly and unfit for war; on the Grecian side, I discern none of the costly trifles, but I see iron that forms their weapons, and composes impenetrable arms. I see men who have been brought up to despise every hardship, and face every danger; who are accustomed to observe their ranks, to obey their leader, to take every advantage of their enemy, and ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... bewildered him more and more; he couldn't understand me! Our education is unchristian, our civilisation is pagan. They both ought to bring us in closer relations with our fellow-creatures, and they both only put us more widely apart! Every one of us dwells in an impenetrable solitude! We understand each other a little if our circumstances are similar, but if they are different all our words leave us ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... they had mistaken the path altogether. The very aspect of the country was different; the growth of the trees, the flow of the stream, all indicated a change of soil and scene. Darkness was fast drawing its impenetrable veil around them; a few stars were stealing out, and gleaming down as if with pitying glance upon the young wanderers, but they could not light up their pathway or point their homeward track. The only sounds, save ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... preternaturally sly in the absolute darkness, but even through that impenetrable veil I knew it for a sham. I had laid hold of the hand-rail. It shook violently in my hand; he also was holding it where he stood. And these suppressed tremors, or rather their detection in this way, struck a strange chill to my heart, just as I was ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... as they openly and freely declare, by fear alone. That such a union will be formed at no distant day, we have every reason to believe; and the period may be accelerated by their growing wants, and the policy of Mexico to annoy Texas, and raise an impenetrable barrier in the direction of ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the hood on her shoulders. She knew what Lur meant, the suit which had protected her in the underworld was impervious to everything outside its surface—or to every substance its makers knew—just as Lur's own hide made his flesh impenetrable. But the fashioners of her suit had probably never known of the living lake and what if she had no defense against the ...
— The Gifts of Asti • Andre Alice Norton
... sat at ease, his spirited blue eye engaged in the contemplation of the navy's commander. He was trying to estimate this sombre and fantastic lad, whose impenetrable stolidity puzzled him. Himself a fugitive, his life sought, and chafing under the smart of defeat and failure, it was characteristic of him to transfer instantly his interest to the study of a thing new to him. It was like him, too, to have ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... the little black daggers of the smaller workers. And with no eyelids to close, and eyes which were themselves a mockery, the nerve shriveling and never reaching the brain, what could sleep mean to them? Wrapped ever in an impenetrable cloak of darkness and silence, life was yet one great activity, directed, ordered, commanded by scent and odor alone. Hour after hour, as I sat close to the nest, I was aware of this odor, sometimes subtle, again wafted in ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... was impenetrable. Camille tried to make Calyste talk, hoping that his artless mind would betray itself; but the youth excused himself on the ground that his mother expected him, and he left Les Touches at eleven o'clock,—not, however, ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... sight no more elaborate, impenetrable, water-tight arrangement for keeping a government from letting in an idea or ever having one of its own or ever doing anything for anybody, could have been conceived than the Constitution of the United States, as the average ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... determined perseverance in enormous guilt. But religion in Italy is not, as in Protestant countries, a cloak to be worn on particular days; or a passport which those who do not wish to be railed at carry with them to exhibit; or a gloomy passion for penetrating the impenetrable mysteries of our being, which terrifies its possessor at the darkness of the abyss to the brink of which it has conducted him. Religion coexists, as it were, in the mind of an Italian Catholic, with a faith in that of which all men have the most certain knowledge. It is interwoven ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... an impenetrable expression. Her tones as she spoke were quite as matter-of-fact as his own had been. In them was no wonder, ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... phrase, however, itself a paradox, yet corresponding to something which we know to be true, which throws some faint glimmer of light upon this impenetrable darkness and seems to extend Christ's experience upon the Cross so as to touch our own human life. It is a phrase that describes a condition well known to spiritual persons: "To leave God for God." (1) The simplest and lowest form of this state is that condition in which ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... "Lady, a heart impenetrable beyond the sex of women the dwellers on Olympus gave to you. There is no other woman of such stubborn spirit to stand off from the husband who, after many grievous toils, comes in the twentieth year home to his native land. Come, then, good nurse, and ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... there, hung, wrenching ghastlily, then sprung clear, and, backing slowly, limping, growling horribly, flat-eared and beaten, the side-striped jackal began his slow, backward retreat into the heart of the nearly impenetrable thorns, where the winner was not such a fool as to follow him. And the black-backed jackal never saw him again. Living or dead, he faded out of our jackal's ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... as always before, the old Jew has remained impenetrable. Besides he is almost in his second childhood, and his wife not ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... prime distinctions is his power to visualize scenes. The terror, beauty, caprice, and mercilessness of the sea; the silence and strangeness of the impenetrable tropical forest; atmospheres tense with storm or brilliant with sunshine,—these he records with strong effect. But though he has gained his fame largely as a chronicler of remote seas and shores, his handling of the human element ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... there appeared a lofty wall of dim gray cloud, which rose high in the air, fading away into the faintest outline. Overhead, the blue sky became rapidly more obscured; Ile Haute changed again from its grayish blue to a lighter shade, and then became blended with the impenetrable fog that was fast enclosing all things; and finally the clouds grew nearer, till the land nearest them was snatched from view, and all around was alike shrouded under the universal veil; nothing whatever was visible. For a hundred yards, or so, around ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... their privacy, a portion was committed to certain ciphers, which their ingenious inventor deemed, no doubt, to be utterly impregnable. In stenography, however, the art of lock-picking always keeps ahead of the art of locking, as that of inventing destructive missiles seems to outstrip that of forging impenetrable plates. Wodrow's trick was the same as that of Samuel Pepys, and productive of the same consequences—the excitement of a rabid curiosity, which at last found its way into the recesses of his secret communings. They are now printed, in the fine type ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Geoffrey stood impenetrable—waiting with his offered arm. Pale and resolute, she lifted her noble head—called back the courage which had faltered for a moment—and took his arm. He led her to the door. "Don't let Blanche fret ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... perfume are unrivalled in the whole vegetable kingdom. This last magnificent creature grows to the size of a forest tree in these swamps, but seldom adorns a high or dry soil, or suffers itself to be successfully transplanted. Under all these the spiked palmetto forms an impenetrable covert, and from glittering graceful branch to branch hang garlands of evergreen creepers, on which the mocking-birds are swinging and singing even now; while I, bethinking me of the pinching cold that is at this hour tyrannising over your region, look round on this strange scene—on ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... discriminate the janizaries, who have been gradually raised to an establishment of forty thousand men; a national cavalry (the spahis of modern times); twenty thousand cuirassiers of Europe, clad in black and impenetrable armor; the troops of Anatolia, whose princes had taken refuge in the camp of Timur: and a colony of Tartars, whom he had driven from Kiptchak, and to whom Bajazet had assigned a settlement in the plains of Adrianople. The fearless confidence of the Sultan urged him to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... it is true. . . . But such green, green, green, as flutters in the vineyard down below the windows, that I never saw; nor yet such lilac and such purple as float between me and the distant hills; nor yet in anything, picture, book, or vestal boredom, such awful, solemn, impenetrable blue, as in that same sea. It has such an absorbing, silent, deep, profound effect, that I can't help thinking it suggested the idea of Styx. It looks as if a draught of it, only so much as you could scoop up on the beach in the hollow of your hand, would wash ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... "The mystery, for so I must call it, is at present dark and impenetrable. I am not going to send for the police to make a clumsy and painful investigation at once, because I still cling to the belief that something will occur to you two boys that will help us to pierce what now looks very black and impenetrable. You ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... upland farms they must have looked eastward upon yet higher mountains, rising impenetrable above the snowline; but to north and south and west they might turn to lower regions; and by degrees, perhaps as they grew too numerous for comfort, a few families wandered off along the more inviting routes. Whichever way they started, their adventurous spirit ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... of 22,400 men around Santiago, with its 26,000 Spanish soldiers, and then Spain succumbed in despair. In a semi-circle extending around Santiago, from Daliquiri on the east clear around to Cobre on the west, our troops were stretched a cordon of almost impenetrable thickness and strength. First came General Bates, with the Ninth, Tenth, Third, Thirteenth, Twenty-first and Twenty-fourth U.S. Infantry. On his right crouched General Sumner, commanding the Third, Sixth and Ninth U.S. Cavalry. Next along the arc were the Seventh, ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... details: but for that there would be needed time, courage and paper. There is plenty of paper, indeed, but my courage is at low ebb, and as to the time that is yet left me, it may be compared to the life of a candle-flame. Soon tomorrow's sun will rise—a demon sun as impenetrable as life itself. So goodbye, my dear sir; read this and bear me no ill will; pardon me those things that will appear evil to you and do not complain too much if there is exhaled a disagreeable odor which is not exactly that of the rose. You asked me for ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... to the cool, narrow, shaded river, over which the bending trees met and arched, and he begged me not to interfere with the trailing blackberry branches which crept about the roots and stems of the superb wild-rose trees, making sweet but impenetrable thickets interwoven with honeysuckle, even in the midst of the alleys ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... talking the thing over. When we came to a plantation we would walk all around it, and examine the woods and swamps adjacent, because the people of the South had learned that a horse or a mule was not safe anywhere out of the most impenetrable swamp. It was dark when Jim and I decided to camp for the night, and we went into a deserted cotton gin and prepared for a sleep. It was almost dark, and Jim said he had just seen a chicken, near a cabin, fly up in a peach tree to roost, and he was going to have the ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... go when, they want to grow beards? This is a question as yet unanswered, and the whole subject is shrouded in impenetrable mystery. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... strange. The snow had now almost ceased; only a belated flake passed now and again across the picture. But the broad stretch of level before them was a ghastly white, broken only by gigantic masses and moving shapes and lengthy strips of impenetrable darkness, vast ungainly Titans of shadow. All about them, huge metallic structures, iron girders, inhumanly vast as it seemed to him, interlaced, and the edges of wind-wheels, scarcely moving in the lull, I passed in great shining curves steeper and steeper up into a luminous haze. Wherever the ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... a spot where, by climbing the highest tree, we could see a fine large sheet of water, surrounded on all sides by an impenetrable belt of reeds. This was the river Chobe, and is called Zambesi. We struggled through the high, serrated grass, the heat stifling for want of air, and when we reached one of the islands, my strong moleskins were worn through at the knees, and the leather trousers of my companion ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... was a brother-in-law of Andreas Doederlein, though he seemed to take anything but pride in the relationship. If any one mentioned Doederlein's name in his presence, he screwed up his face, and began to shuffle about uneasily on his chair. He was an unfathomable, impenetrable personality. Even if his years—he was forty-five—had not won for him a measure of esteem, the malicious and mordant scorn he heaped on his fellow-men would have done so. People said he had a good deal of money. If this was brought ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... yet your face had the expression of proud satisfaction. But this by the way! The principal thing is, you will be King Henry's seventh wife! But in order to become so, there is need for great heedfulness, a complete knowledge of present relations, constant observation of all persons, impenetrable dissimulation, and lastly, above all things, a very intimate and profound knowledge of the king, of the history of his reign, and of his character. Do you possess this knowledge? Know you what it is to wish to become King Henry's seventh ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... accompany him to Newport News to witness the launching of a new type of battleship. It was said to be, and probably was, impenetrable. Experts who had tested a model built on a large scale had declared that this invention would render obsolete every battleship in existence. The principle was this: Running back from the bow for a distance of 60 feet only about 4 feet of the hull ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... winter came floods and snow-storms, great tempests from the north and bitter winds that cut men down as though they had been smitten by the sword. The rivers and lagoons were frozen over; the meagre sustenance of the earth lay hidden beneath an impenetrable crust of snow and ice, until those who had hitherto found it a desperate chance to live from day to day now abandoned the unequal struggle for the more attractive certainty of a swift and painless death. One by one the fires went out in the houses of the dead; ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... presence of such overwhelming beauty. Nowhere else does the rhododendron attain such size or luxuriance. There it produces a tall trunk, and towers among the trees; it spreads its branches far and wide until they interlock and form almost impenetrable thickets locally called "hells" where pioneer explorers wandered, lost themselves and perished; it glorifies the loneliest mountain road with superb bouquets of its delicate flowers set among dark, glossy foliage scarcely less attractive. The mountain in bloom is worth travelling a ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... crowd along the street, in the balconies and windows with an eager intensity. He was looking for the sweet familiar face of the loveliest girl on earth, and knew that he looked in vain, for even though she were one among the many her features would be obscured by an impenetrable veil. If she were there, he wondered what her thoughts might be on beholding the humble R. Schmidt in the role of a royal prince receiving the laudations of ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... forest—huge tree-trunks loomed a dead drab, like mute sentinels, grim and ominous, that barred their way; now, in the full glare, the foliage took on the softest fairy shade of green; now, tapering off, heavier in color, it merged into impenetrable black; and, with the jouncing of the car, the light rays jiggling up and down gave an unnatural semblance as of moving, animate things before them, a myriad of them, ever retreating, but ever marshalling their forces again as ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... all faded and mottled, cracked and blistered! It had no knocker, not even a slit for letters. All that it had was a large-ish key-hole. On this my eyes rested; and presently I moved to it, stooped down to it, peered through it. I had a glimpse of—darkness impenetrable. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... morbid state of feeling would pervade our minds, and the world would be full of enchantments, necromancy, and cunning craftiness. Blessed be God for the silence of the dead! We are glad that our weak and foolish hearts, so prone to love the creature more than the Creator, are broken off, by the impenetrable veil of death, from all connection with the departed. The salutary influences of death on survivors would be greatly lessened, if our connection and communication with them were continued. God is ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... only person who could speak the language of the Indians that would be met on the way or who had ever been over the route to be traveled. With her baby in her arms she was the unerring guide through the almost impenetrable mountain passes and on several occasions saved not only the equipment and documents but the lives of the party. In recognition of this service the women of Oregon formed the Sacajawea Association, with the following officers: Mrs. Eva Emery Dye, president; ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... bigger than an Horse (whose back is impenetrable) hath knaggy horns as also the Hart, 4. Alces, 3. major equo (cujus tergus est impenetrabilis) habet ramosa cornua: ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... firmness of intelligence; nor did it silence the diviner melodies of the soul. Yet, once more, the heavens in which such a deity dwells are too high, his power is too impalpable, the mysterious air which he has poured around his being is too awful and impenetrable, for the rays from the sun of such majesty to reach more than a few contemplative spirits, and these only in their hours of tranquillity and expansion. The thought is too vague, too far, to bring comfort ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... silence, the rustle of paper, the quick spurt of a match, and then the uplifting of a flickering flame. But it revealed only the heads and shoulders of three horsemen, framed within a nebulous ring of light, that still left their horses and even their lower figures in impenetrable shadow. Then the flame leaped up and died out with a few zigzagging sparks that were falling to the ground, when a third voice, that was low but somewhat ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... was a complete blank, and the darkness seemed impenetrable, while his mind absolutely refused to answer ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... more. He had married, and a child was born, and on that occasion he implored for "three pound," plaintively declaring that he was "more like a mannick than a B. of B.K. (supposed to mean a Baronet of British Kingdom) to have a child born in such a hovel." Still the new man wrapped himself in impenetrable secrecy. The Dowager Lady Tichborne complained that while pressed to send everybody money, she was not even allowed to know the whereabouts nor present name of her lost Roger; and she entreated piteously to be allowed to communicate more directly. ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... a mysticism about the Oriental and his mode of life that challenges the imagination and induces a curiosity hard to decipher. The dress of the Chinese, their strange customs, their difficult language, and their apparently impenetrable mask-like faces appeal to the fancy and throw a veil of mystery ...
— Pung Chow - The Game of a Hundred Intelligences. Also known as Mah-Diao, Mah-Jong, Mah-Cheuk, Mah-Juck and Pe-Ling • Lew Lysle Harr
... The grove was thickly stocked with underwood—principally the smaller species of "mezquite." There was also a network of vines and llianas that, stretching upward, twined around the limbs of the live-oaks—the latter forming the highest and largest timber of all. The underwood was impenetrable to the eye, though a hunter could have crept through it in pursuit of game. At night, however, even under moonlight, it appeared a ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... it in sight. All my caution and all recollection of what the Indians had said was now forgot, so great was my interest in this bird-army; but as they moved on without pause, they quickly left me behind, and presently my career was stopped by an impenetrable tangle of bushes, vines, and roots of large trees extending like huge cables along the ground. In the midst of this leafy labyrinth I sat down on a projecting root to cool my blood before attempting to make my way back to my former ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... echoed by the captain. As for the crew, so utterly stupefied were they that they did not seem to comprehend the suicidal act. For an instant Monte-Cristo and Giacomo saw the steward whirling about amid the tumultuous flood; then he was swept away, and vanished in the impenetrable darkness beyond. ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... discontented men were again gathered on the shore for another leave-taking. Hard by, the unfinished ship lay on the stocks, white and fresh from the saw and axe, ceaselessly reminding them of the hardship and peril that was in store. Here you would have seen the calm impenetrable face of La Salle, and with him the Mohegan hunter, who seems to have felt towards him that admiring attachment which he could always inspire in his Indian retainers. Besides the Mohegan, four Frenchmen were to accompany him: Hunaud, La Violette, Collin, and Dautray. [Footnote: ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... where the ravine had opened through the cliffs to the amphitheatre; but no traces of such opening remained. The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall over which the torrent came tumbling in a sheet of feathery foam, and fell into a broad deep basin, black from the shadows of the surrounding forest. Here, then, poor Rip was brought to a ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... and here the traveller enters the primeval forests of the tropics. Here is the home of the cinchona tree, here orchids bloom among the tall trunks, and here whole woods are entangled in a network of lianas. Immense areas of Brazil and Bolivia are covered with impenetrable primeval forests, which even still present an obstacle to ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... single White Macartney roses. The Macartney, being an evergreen thorn, and said to make as close a hedge as the Osage Orange and much more beautiful, is quite a favorite at the South. They usually train the rose-shrubs for hedge on some kind of paling or wire fence. They render some of them impenetrable even by rabbits or sparrows; this is done by layers, and trimming twice a year, commencing after the first three months' growth. Pruning is the most important matter in the whole business of hedging. A hedge set out ever so well, and ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... of mud and rushes rise upon a low island in the marshes; and all communication with neighbouring tribes and with the town in which they sell the product of their rice-fields, is carried on by boats. The brakes are more impenetrable than the thickest underwood, but the natives have cut alleys through them, along which they impel their large flat-bottomed teradas with poles.[23] Sometimes a sudden rise of the river will raise the level of these generally stagnant waters by a yard or ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... dissolved the partition. At night-time, this "alcove"—as our "maid" was wont to call it—had, in my eyes, a specially sinister and suggestive character. Tom's distant and solitary candle glimmered vainly into its darkness. There it was always overlooking him—always itself impenetrable. But this was only part of the effect. The whole room was, I can't tell how, repulsive to me. There was, I suppose, in its proportions and features, a latent discord—a certain mysterious and indescribable relation, which jarred indistinctly upon some secret sense of the ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... we struggled, the forest apparently growing more dense at every step, and at length we seemed so surrounded with impenetrable thickets that we were obliged to halt and consult as to the best route to the team, which ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... at Avignon; he had been warned the day before by the police of Toulon that a formal order for his arrest was out; thus it was impossible that he should remain any longer in France. Corsica, with its hospitable towns, its friendly mountains, its impenetrable forests, was hardly fifty leagues distant; he must reach Corsica, and wait in its towns, mountains, and forests until the crowned heads of Europe should decide the fate of the man they had called brother for ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of affairs in this life but in the ordering of all the future existences that man has conceived—is Public Opinion. Public opinion is the decree of human nature determined in impenetrable secrecy, enforced with ceremonious and bewildering circumlocution. It is thus double-natured. The organized public opinion that we see, hear, feel and obey is the costumed officialism of human nature, through ages of custom charged with enforcing upon ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... the "echoes ring" and reverberate on the 5th and 6th of May, the year following. We found, too, the "Chancellor House," this lone, large, dismal-looking building standing alone in this Wilderness and surrounded on all sides by an almost impenetrable forest of scrubby oaks and tangled vines. The house was a large, old-fashioned hotel, situated on a cleared plateau, a piazza above and below, reaching around on three sides. It was called "Chancellorsville," but where the "ville" came in, or for what the structure was ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... impenetrable from the densely-wooded glens, frightful precipices, and sharp mountain ridges absolutely inaccessible, is but little known, even to the natives themselves; and so, instead of striking directly across from one village to another, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... friend's last field service postcard, brief and enigmatic, and now six weeks old. I could find in it no more than when it first came. Midnight struck, and I went to the outer gate. The midnight had nothing to tell me. Not that it was silent; we would not call it mere silence, that brooding and impenetrable darkness charged with doom unrevealed, which is now our silent ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... and the false standards by which she is surrounded, would like to meet and perhaps eventually marry some young man who is more worth while than the "pet cats" of her acquaintance, she is practically powerless to do so. She is cut off by the impenetrable artificial barrier of her own exclusiveness. She may hear of such young men—young fellows of ambition, of adventurous spirit, of genius, who have already achieved something in the world, but they are outside ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... advanced to the attack. The dismounted Cavalry of Sheridan contested the advance, in order to give Ord and Griffin as much time as possible to form, then, mounting and moving rapidly aside, they suddenly uncovered, to the charging Rebels, Ord's impenetrable barrier of Infantry, advancing upon them at a double-quick! At the same time that this appalling sight staggered them, and rolled them back in despair, they became aware that Sheridan's impetuous Cavalry, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... order to put his talents to the test, warfare is about to drain all its resources, and call to its aid every known invention. What is it that is presented to my vision? I see not merely men to meet in combat but inaccessible mountains: on one side are ravines and precipices; on the other impenetrable forests in the heart of which are marshes, and in proximity to streams are impregnable intrenchments; everywhere are lofty fortresses and forests of felled trees lying across roads which are frightful; ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... Soudan trees, or trees with tropical aspects. Our route lay through rocky valleys, over a bed of fine granite sand. The rocks were all blackened, forming a gloomy landscape, especially as all the morning the heavens were one impenetrable mass of clouds. The atmosphere felt, at first, damp and suffocating; but at length the wind got up, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... the introductory word is the object of the preposition, and the whole clause is not; thus, "The rocks presented a high impenetrable wall, over which the ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... Jungle. He goes, and greets the rakshasa, calling him uncle, and having regaled him with deer and rhinoceroses as he had done his "aunt," the rakshasa tells him that in order to obtain the flower he must go through an impenetrable forest of kachiri,[FN439] and say to it "O mother kachiri, make way for me, else I perish," upon which a passage will be opened for him. Next he will come to the ocean, which he must petition in the same terms, and it would make a way for him. After crossing the ocean ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... rounds about his palace, to prevent any disturbance. His busy genius required silence. The noise of coaches was to be kept away from his residence, and the streets leading to it were frequently blocked up with chains. His own circle was as silent as the approaches to his palace; dark, reserved, and impenetrable, he was more sparing of his words than of his gifts; while the little that he spoke was harsh and imperious. He never smiled, and the coldness of his temperament was proof against sensual seductions. Ever occupied with grand schemes, he ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... thickets and hedges which are growing in all the wild luxuriance of nature. Indeed, the dwelling of the proprietor was a mystery even to the farmer who worked the soil; for its surrounding copses were an impenetrable veil to his eyes, beyond which neither he nor his family were ever allowed ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... all over, and I know my fate. I told you I would send you word, if anything decisive happened; but an impenetrable mystery hung over the affair till lately. It is at last (by the merest accident in the world) dissipated; and I keep my promise, both for your satisfaction, and for the ease ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt |
