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More "Impenetrable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by the story which Mr. Stanley has told of Darkest Africa and his journeyings 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 endeavours to realise this immensity ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Roman prince, boundless and comprehensive as the universal air,—like that also bright and apprehensible to the most vagrant eye, yet in parts (and those not far removed) unfathomable as outer darkness, (for no chamber in a dungeon could shroud in more impenetrable concealment a deed of murder than the upper chambers of the air,)—these attributes, so impressive to the imagination, and which all the subtlety of the Roman [Footnote: Or even of modern wit; witness the vain attempt of so many eminent sort, and illustrious Antecessors, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... have in discoursing of the Asperity of Bodies consider'd the little Protuberances of other Superficial particles which make up that Roughness, as if we took it for granted, that they must be perfectly Opacous and Impenetrable by the Beams of Light, and so, must contribute to the Variety of Colours as they terminate more or less Light, and reflect it to the Eye mix'd with more or less of thus or thus mingl'd Shades. But to deal Ingenuously with you, Pyrophilus, before I proceed any further, I must not conceal from ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... morning and continued through the day. In order to obtain a view of the country below, Captain Clarke followed the course of the brook, and with much fatigue, and after walking three miles, ascended the first spur of the mountains. The whole lower country he found covered with almost impenetrable thickets of small pine, with which is mixed a species of plant resembling arrow-wood, twelve or fifteen feet high, with thorny stems, almost interwoven with each other, and scattered among the fern and fallen timber: there is also a red ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... ten days through the woods far to the north. In that journey he had encountered many difficulties. Sometimes he had been tangled for hours at a time in a dense and almost impenetrable thicket. Again he had spent a half day in crossing a treacherous swamp. Or there had interposed in his trail abattises of down timber a quarter of a mile wide over which it had been necessary to pick a precarious way eight or ten feet from ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... 1916 one got used to meeting familiar friends in unfamiliar garbs, and in a certain delightful club, not a hundred miles from Leicester Square, which I will veil under the impenetrable disguise of the "Grill-room Club," I was not surprised to find two well-known and popular actors, the one in a naval uniform, the other in an airman's. I might add that the latter greatly distinguished himself in ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... man," said the impenetrable Mrs. Macallan, finishing my sentence for me. "We will leave it there, my dear, and get on to another subject. I wonder whether we shall ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... every year and no more frequently, for they were difficult to come by, regular payers of taxes and law-abiding, having quarrels with none. The bush (reputedly the abode of ghosts) was, save at one point, impenetrable. Nature had plaited a natural wall on one side, and had given the tribe the protection of high mountains to the north and a broad swamp to ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... its heart attuned to the eternal harmonies, and, after a life of usefulness on earth, go to a life of joy in heaven; or whether across it shall jar eternal discords, and, after a life of wrong-doing on earth, it shall go to a home of impenetrable darkness and an abyss of immeasurable plunge, is being decided by nursery song and Sabbath lesson and evening prayer and walk and ride and look and frown and smile. Oh, how many children in glory, crowding all the battlements, and lifting a million-voiced hosanna, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... which men die, There York appears! so prodigal is he Of royal blood, as ancient as the sea, Which down to him, so many ages told, Has through the veins of mighty monarchs roll'd! The great Achilles march'd not to the field Till Vulcan that impenetrable shield, And arms, had wrought; yet there no bullets flew, But shafts and darts which the weak Phrygians threw, 130 Our bolder hero on the deck does stand Exposed, the bulwark of his native land; Defensive arms laid by as useless here, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... then, having made this discovery, he is quite ready to 'reason' himself, but not in the manner of an earnest seeker after truth. Reason, for him, is a serviceable weapon of attack or defence, but he is like a man fighting with magic impenetrable armour. He enjoys a bout of logical fence; but it will decide nothing for him: his 'certitude' is independent of it. It is easy to see that such an attitude must appear profoundly dishonest to any man who accepts Locke's maxim about truth-seeking. ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... a thicket threaded by secret passages, bordered by hornbeam-hedges, four ells high, and so dense that one did not notice the thin iron balustrade which ran along them. Artistically contrived and impenetrable, the labyrinth meandered in every direction. It seemed to be endlessly long, and was so arranged that its perspectives deceived the eye. It also contained secret doors and underground passages, and a visitor soon grew aware that it had not been constructed as a ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... could settle permanently who is to be the Homer or Shakespeare of our time, it might be worth something; but we cannot. Is it Jones, or Smith, or ——? Alas! I get short-sighted on this point, and cannot penetrate the impenetrable dark. Make my remembrances acceptable to Longfellow, to Lowell, to Emerson, and to any ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... and compassion, but simply because she deemed it humiliating to allow one who bore her name to be placed in a doubtful and friendless position. All Madeleine's gentleness, cheerfulness, diligence to please, had failed to melt her aunt's impenetrable heart and make it expand to yield her a sacred place; the countess had misinterpreted her highest virtues,—grossly insulted her by attributing shameful motives to her most disinterested conduct, and destroyed all the merit of ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... gradually back on the Earl's fair face, now closed itself up, as the leaves of a poisoned flower; and the pupil of the eye receding, left to the orb that secret and strange expression which had baffled all readers of the heart in the look of his impenetrable father. ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... kind of mist spread itself upon the glass, and prevented me from distinguishing any object. This, however, gradually dissolved, and was succeeded by a thick, black smoke, which involved every thing in impenetrable obscurity. Just as I was about to turn to my guide, and demand the explanation of these appearances, the smoke rolled away, and instantaneously, there flashed forth a thousand bickering flames. "What," cried I, "is the meaning of these objects?" "Check, for one moment, your impatience, and ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the dugouts of the Somme hills compared to the protection that could be provided here! When the first series of bursts announced the storm you could not descend a flight of steps to a cavern whose roof was impenetrable even by five-hundred-pound shells. Little houses of sandbags with corrugated tin roofs, in some instances level with the earth, which any direct hit could "do in" were the best that generous army ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the houses were of brick, and the paths and roads were covered with gravel and lined with flowers. Nothing in the Congo is more curious than this pretty town of suburban villas and orderly machine shops; with the muddy river for a street and the impenetrable jungle for a back yard. The home of the director at Dima is the proud boast of the entire Congo. And all they say of it is true. It did have a billiard table and ice, and a piano, and M. Fumiere invited me to join his friends at an excellent dinner. In furnishing this celebrated ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... expeditions of former years, I go on to say: "The results of these numerous attempts, as I have pointed out, seem somewhat discouraging. They appear to show plainly enough that it is impossible to sail to the Pole by any route whatever; for everywhere the ice has proved an impenetrable barrier, and has stayed the progress of invaders on the threshold of the ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... themselves in circumstances by which they were equally harassed and perplexed. The sole expedient that their united counsel could suggest was to obtain a refuge below ground, and that was denied them by the strange and impenetrable substratum of the soil; yet hour by hour the sun's disc was lessening in its dimensions, and although at midday some faint radiance and glow were to be distinguished, during the night the painfulness of the ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... 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! ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... glittering face; and again, wrapped in a shroud, he fled into the sky and the doors of the clouds crashed together with a thunder-clap. Again the gale increased and the driving rain, and the dense, thick, almost impenetrable darkness. Again the drops murmured more gently, the thunder for a moment subsided; again it awoke and roared and water once more gushed forth. At last all became calm; one heard only the soughing of the trees around the house and the patter of ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... listlessly on the ground, where she remained for some time with her head bowed upon her knees, regardless of the beauty of the scene about her. Above, the sky was cloudless, a deep impenetrable blue, as seen through the heavy foliage of the grand primeval forest. At her feet stretched the calm, smooth lake, dotted here and there with tiny islands, so thickly wooded that they looked like escaped bits of the forest floating on the glassy ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... do we want?" he exclaimed, "with this vast, worthless area? This region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts, of those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of three thousand miles, rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting, and not a harbor on it? What use have we for ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... glow, the light of the burning shagbark, playing elfishly above the dying embers, outlined the stalwart, yet active figure and the impenetrable, musing features. But when, with an upward shower of sparks, the backlog fell asunder and the waning flame cast yet more gloomy shadows behind them, he leaned back in his heavy, hewn chair and again bent an attentive look upon ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... clatter of hoofs and shouts of "Whoa!" and "Stand still!" He tried to rise, but the tangle of twigs before him seemed impenetrable, so he gave it up and remained where he was. Then, after an interval, came ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... impervious to water, and, when prepared for use, is so tough that no knife or machine, however sharp or powerful, can cut, pierce, or indeed make any impression upon it, until it has passed through a process, in which fire has a great part, and is thus purposely deprived of its impenetrable nature. ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... envy her this faculty, but do not accuse her of employing it improperly. She will never disgrace herself nor the coronet which she already feels pressing lightly upon her head. As she trips out of sight, it may give any man a heart-pang to think that there is at least one lovely woman who is impenetrable to love; but then, if she were like those dear, soft, fond, impressible, confiding beauties of a former age, she would not be ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... after vainly trying for a long time to peer through the impenetrable veil of mist which hid the reef from sight, "that this last blow has settled ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... grain-fields and orchards, and studded with farm-houses, each the centre of its own free domain; hills clothed from base to brow with every variety of forest tree; and woods, some wild, tangled, and all but impenetrable, others clear of underbrush, shady, moss-carpeted and sun-checkered; noble masses of granite rock, great slabs of marble (of which there are fine quarries in the neighborhood), clear mountain brooks and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... exceedingly fertile. Numerous large gardens, with trees laden with all kinds of tropical fruits, and guarded by impenetrable hedges of the Indian fig-tree, form a half- circle round the lower portion of ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... singular man, who I think came tipsy once to Sir Francis's house?" Major Pendennis said, with impenetrable countenance. "Who is Altamont, ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... once, and told him all that I had learnt. He was aghast. Indeed, I never saw him more near to anger. For Philip of Spain was not the man to show wrath or any other emotion. He had a fish-like, cold, impenetrable inscrutability. True, his yellow skin grew yellower, his gaping mouth gaped wider, his goggle eyes goggled more than usual. Left to himself, I think he would have disgraced Don John and banished Escovedo there and then, as he did, indeed, suggest. And I have since had cause enough ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... his frequent remark, "I'm a very pally man." It was very true: it was difficult, indeed, for any one whom he thought might be useful to him, to avoid his friendship, for, in addition to all the advantages which great wealth bestows, he enjoyed an uncommonly thick skin, an armor-plate impenetrable ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... looking at her with veiled, impenetrable eyes. He paid no attention to her protest. It was as if he had not so ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... remained no doubt that some person or animal was moving stealthily through the grove, near where he was standing. It will be remembered that his position was such that the trunk of the large oak acted as an impenetrable screen between him and the camp-fire, which was burning so vigorously that its rays penetrated to a greater or less degree beyond him. Thus he could see anything moving within the circle of illumination, while he was as invisible to the keenest-eyed warrior as if the night was without ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... doused. So suddenly and unexpectedly did darkness swallow us from each other's ken that there was a gasp, and then for a moment a hushed silence. Before this was broken by any other sound out from the impenetrable gloom came a ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... tracts of pasture, here and there broken by a stony ridge, steep gully, or dried-up creek. All wild, vast and desolate; all the same monotonous gray coloring, except where the wattle, when in blossom, shows patches of feathery gold, or a belt of scrub lies green, glossy, and impenetrable as Indian jungle. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said Mabel, cheerfully. She thought this looked as if they were going to arrive at a better understanding. Mark looked at Vincent, but his face was impenetrable in the dim light as he added, again in an undertone, 'You are to say nothing until I give you leave. If you are not at the place by nine, remember, I ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... die, or conquer? Besides in one Night's Time he had cast up three Trenches, of which the two first were sufficient to defend them against the first Attack of the Enemy, which is always the most violent. The third would be an impenetrable Defence against their weak and broken Forces. Another considerable Advantage was, the dividing the Army into small Bodies, which must extremely harass the Enemy, as they must be under a Necessity of ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... walking in a country of darkness. I caught a laugh, the glance of some women, the voice of a young soldier—I felt behind us, watching us, the thick heavy figure of Rasputin. I smelt the eastern scent of the sunflower seeds, I looked back and glanced at the impenetrable superiority of the two policemen, and I laughed at myself for the knowledge that I thought I had, for the security upon which I thought that I rested, for the familiarity with which I had fancied I could approach my neighbours.... ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... for years; and a mighty phantom, under the mysterious name of Arch, in whose cloudy equipage were descried, gleaming at intervals, the crowns and sceptres of great potentates, sustained, whilst it agitated their hearts. London was one of the secret watchwords in their impenetrable cipher; Moscow was a countersign; Bavaria and Austria bore mysterious parts in the drama; and, though no sound was heard, nor voice given to the powers that were working, yet, as if by mere force of secret sympathy, all mankind who were worthy to participate in the enterprise seemed ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... reader will see how much more majesty there is in moderation than in extravagance, and how much more darkness, as far as sky is concerned, there is in gray than in black. It is not that the Plymouth and Dover skies are false,—such impenetrable forms of thunder-cloud are amongst the commonest phenomena of storm; but they have more of spent flash and past shower in them than the less passionate, but more truly stormy and threatening, volumes of the sky here. The Plymouth storm will very thoroughly wet the sails, and wash ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... disbelieve is verified, as soon as the morning breaks, by the appearance of Siegfried and Mime. The latter is acting as guide, and eagerly points out the mighty dragon's lair. But even then the youth still refuses to tremble, and when Mime describes Fafnir's fiery breath, coiling tail, and impenetrable hide, he good-naturedly declares he will save his most telling blow until the monster's side is exposed, and he can plunge Nothung deep into ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... and when dusk came on rocked him to sleep, and snugly folded the covering of his crib over the little throbbing heart, whose hours of trial were yet veiled by the impenetrable curtain of futurity. Mrs. Martin and her elder children had gone to a concert, and, of course, the nurse was to remain with Johnny until his mother's return. Standing beside the crib, and gazing down at the rosy cheeks and ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... partridge adds another figure to this fantastic embroidery upon the winter snow. Her course is a clear, strong line, sometimes quite wayward, but generally very direct, steering for the densest, most impenetrable places,—leading you over logs and through brush, alert and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few yards from you, and goes humming through the trees,—the complete triumph of endurance and vigor. Hardy native bird, may your tracks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... we can not too scrupulously guard, in the interest of the liberty of the citizen, this great and almost invaluable right. The friends of liberty under the common-law system have stood for it and stood by it, strenuously and assiduously, as the palladium of their liberties and the impenetrable shield of the people from oppression. By the order of the judge the defendant was deprived of this right, and if, in this case of minor consequence so far as regards the punishment inflicted, this can be ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 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, and we ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... pavements, hidden from all save the victims, whose very existence is officially denied; the closing of all personal communication with the outer world, except such as commends itself to the whims of the official censors; this morgue of human beings still alive—the impenetrable stupidity, futility and outrage of it all—slowly or not so slowly unbalance the mind and corrupt the nature. Meanwhile, newspapers clamor against the coddling of criminals, and the too indulgent officials smile sadly and protest that they have not the heart to be stern. "Coddling criminals"—the ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 of ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... leaning against the tarpaulin, and attentively listened to each and every sound about him. And everything was blended into one picture, which was familiar to him. Through fog and uncertainty, surrounded on all sides by gloom impenetrable to the eye, life of man is moving somewhere slowly and heavily. And men are grieved over their sins, they sigh heavily, and then fight for a warm place, and asking each other for the sake of possessing the place, they also receive blows from those who strive for order ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... constantly deferred his return to Paris until the morrow. What had she guessed in consequence of the encounter, the details of which she had asked of him with an emotion scarcely hidden in her eyes of a blue as clear, as transparent, as impenetrable at the same time, as the water of certain Alpine lakes at the foot of the glaciers. He thought he was doing right in corroborating the story of Boleslas Gorka's madness, which he knew better than any one else to be false. But was it not the surest means of exempting Madame Steno ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... up room most graspingly. Hawthorn and eglantine, roses of Sharon and stocky syringas, and other bushes and climbers, had entwined and confused their sprays and branches, till in places they formed an impenetrable mass. In other places, and even in the midst of this overgrown thicket, jessamine stars peeped out, lilies and violets grew half smothered, mignonette ran along where it could; even carnations and pinks were to be seen, in unhappy situations, and daisies and larkspur and ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... 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 ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... who recorded these events have narrated them under a thick and almost impenetrable veil of fiction. They say that Hercules engaged in combat with the God of that river, who immediately transformed himself into a serpent, by which was probably meant merely the serpentine windings of its ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... said I, 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 vol. 3 • Anon.
... addled and for ever confounded! I pause with reverential awe when I contemplate the ponderous tomes in different languages, with which they have endeavored to solve this question, so important to the happiness of society, but so involved in clouds of impenetrable obscurity. Historian after historian has engaged in the endless circle of hypothetical argument, and, after leading us a weary chase through octavos, quartos, and folios, has let us out at the end of his work ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... secured for myself a haven, a yet more impenetrable shade than this, against the time when, having seen four generations of men, two behind and two beyond, I may consider in silence what is likely to be the end of it all. It is true that I am getting old, but I am not yet prepared for a lodge in the wilderness. My present house has a wall on the village ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... our land of conquering steeds thou art come I 1 To this Heaven-fostered haunt, Earth's fairest home, Gleaming Colonos, where the nightingale In cool green covert warbleth ever clear, True to the clustering ivy and the dear Divine, impenetrable shade, From wildered boughs and myriad fruitage made, Sunless at noon, stormless in every gale. Wood-roving Bacchus there, with mazy round, And his nymph nurses ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... that a really clever servant will never give any one particulars respecting her work. She wraps them up in an impenetrable mystery. Like the farmers' wives, who, to our queries, gave no other answer than, "Why, that depends," they take care that no one shall be any the wiser for the ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... theologian." The Italics are ours. Our reason for doubting Stewart's familiarity with the "Thodice," and with Leibnitz in general, is derived in part from these phrases. We do not believe that any sincere student of Leibnitz has found him dark and impenetrable. Be it a merit or a fault, this predicate is inapplicable. Never was metaphysician more explicit and more intelligible. Had he been disposed to mysticize and to shroud himself in "impenetrable darkness," he would have found it difficult to indulge that propensity in French. Thanks to the strict ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... nothing happened at all, except that from the intentness of the elder man there seemed once more to radiate out that curious air of silence that Laurie was beginning to know so well—that silence that seemed impenetrable to the common sounds of the world and to exist altogether independent of them. Once and again he glanced round at the ordinary-looking room, the curtained windows, the dull furniture; and the second time he looked back ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... reproaches, turned back; but while she hesitated how to answer them, he went on, "You are insensible to my misery, and impenetrable to my entreaties; a secret enemy has had power to make me odious in your sight, though for her enmity I can assign no cause, though even her existence was this morning unknown to me! Ever ready to abandon, and most willing to condemn ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... with his master? who didn't secretly wish that he was his master? A man's wife labours under no such naive folly. She may envy her husband, true enough, certain of his more soothing prerogatives and sentimentalities. She may envy him his masculine liberty of movement and occupation, his impenetrable complacency, his peasant-like delight in petty vices, his capacity for hiding the harsh face of reality behind the cloak of romanticism, his general innocence and childishness. But she never envies him his puerile ego; she never envies him ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... 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 ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... after ten years, we find him waiting, in the chamber of death, for the stroke that is to break the fetters that so long have bound him. It has fallen. He is free again. In dying, the sufferer made no sign. Suddenly she plunged into the dark profound, so impenetrable to mortal eyes, and as the turbid waves closed, sighing over her, he who had called her wife turned from the couch on which her frail body remained, with an inward "Thank God! I am a ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... was profound, impenetrable; the rain fell with an uninterrupted roar. Near at hand one could hear the sound of dripping eaves and foliage and the eager, sucking sound of the drinking earth, and abruptly while Harran stood looking out, one hand upon the upraised sash, a great puff of the outside air invaded the room, odourous ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... is that they are acanaceous; covered all over with sharp thorns and needles. Spikes of all sorts and sizes bristle everywhere and admonish the tenderfoot to beware. Guarded by an impenetrable armor of prickly mail they defy encroachment and successfully repel all attempts at undue familiarity. To be torn by a cat-claw thorn or impaled on a stout dagger leaf of one of these plants would not only mean painful laceration ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... science, who knew not blood till thou wert known, whose pure, and hallowed inspirations have made men happier, and better, till thou wert born, implore for thee forgiveness, and whilst, with rapture she points to the immortal images of thy divine genius, may she cover with an impenetrable pall, the pale, and shuddering, and bleeding ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... on earth did this calm, thin, keen-eyed old man in black know that he had a father? He shuffles and stammers, but the quiet, impenetrable lawyer fixes his cold, glassy eye on him, and he is helpless. Subterfuge, he feels, is useless, and amazed, bewildered at the knowledge of his most private affairs possessed by his strange visitant, he admits the fact: he ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... in India. And in Europe almost nothing was left to tell the tale of the great pre-Christian eastern empires and systems of thought; so that from the establishment of State Christianity under Constantine, and the final settlement of the Canon at the Council of Nicaea, an impenetrable veil was drawn over the achievements and greatness of the Past, and all connexion therewith broken off. It was some time after this that we find the heliocentric theory, as well as that of other habitable ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... days the footsteps of the rose-bearing worshipper went before you through that narrow pass, performing, by so doing, the rite typical of new birth, revival, and the Covenant. She is the cavern, the secret lair of life and the casket in which that one great arcanum and impenetrable secret of motherhood is forever concealed—forever and forever. They found it hidden—those priests of old—in Woman and in the Rose, in fruits, and in all that lives or grows; they traced the mystery up to godhood; ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... of a very bold and courageous nature, and feared nothing more than to be thought cowards, attacked the serpents with their bows and arrows. It was fruitless, however, to wage war with creatures covered with an impenetrable coat of scales. The serpents were not even startled by the arrows, so that no resource but death remained to the twice twenty-four. Their food being soon gone, they were compelled to venture out in quest of the means of sustaining life. As fast as they came out at the gate of the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... my trip was toward the western hills, and before I came to them was confronted with an extensive stretch of chaparral brush, absolutely impenetrable, which I must go around or stop my progress in this direction. These thickets were a regular paradise for grizzly bears, for within the protection of this matted and thorny growth he is as safe as is the soldier in the rocky fort of Gibraltar. I soon found a way around ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... narrow 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
... up for about eight miles against one of three streams which unite at, and give its name to, Trinity, we turned off to the right, and got into a large dense swamp. The thicket was so tangled and impenetrable that we experienced the greatest difficulty in forcing our way through it; we were often obliged to get into the water up to our middles and shove, whilst most of the ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... to be credited against men who contended for a greater purity of gospel truth, nor against men of the practical and military knowledge of Lord Cobham. But over the whole of these transactions there hangs a veil of impenetrable mystery, and we can only say that the Lollards are charged with endeavouring to surprise the king and his brother at Eltham, as they were keeping their Christmas festivities there, and that this attempt failed through the Court receiving intimation ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... persistent calls and cross-questions of all manner of people in whom he had but small personal interest. He wished to have nothing whatever to say upon the subject, denied himself to reporters and relapsed into impenetrable reserve when importuned by brother officers whom he but slightly knew. One or two with whom he would gladly have held counsel were far removed, one at least forever, from his circle. The stalwart old inspector, Turnbull, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... monsters turned in sleep or writhed in agony; the hoarse cry of Teign betokened new tribulations to the ears of those who understood; and over the Moor there rolled and crowded down a sodden mantle of mist, within whose chilly heart every elevation of note vanished for days together. Wrapped in impenetrable folds were the high lands, and the gigantic vapour stretched a million dripping tentacles over forests and wastes into the valleys beneath. Now it crept even to the heart of the woods; now it stealthily dislimned in lonely places; now ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... all are, and how your parents train their first-born never to open the ranks! Oh, fortunate race! impenetrable phalanx of respectability, who make it impossible for the sinner to reform! You keep the way of repentance so rough that the foot of poor humanity cannot tread it. God will demand from you the lost souls whom your hardness has driven back ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Black, sobbing water, darkness impenetrable! The instinctive fear of apprehension caused him to look in every direction for possible eye-witnesses. Every drop of blood in his body seemed turned to ice with horror. Down there in that black, chill water lay the body of his wife, the woman he had loved ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... order. It has a philosophy, the purport and bearing of which we will inquire of Mr. Holyoake. The following is the answer of the chief of the secularists:—"All that concerns the origin and end of things, God and the immortal soul, is absolutely impenetrable for the human mind. The existence of God, in particular, must be referred to the number of abstract questions, with the ticket not determined. It is probable, however, that the nature which we know, must be the God whom we inquire after. What is called ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... from the desolate ranges. Mr. Tyers had been for many years a naval instructor on board a man-of-war, understood navigation and surveying, and, it is to be presumed, knew the distance he had travelled and the course to be followed in returning to Port Philip; but there were valleys filled with impenetrable scrub, creeks often too deep to ford, and boundless morasses, so that the journey was made crooked with continual deviations. If a black boy like McMillan's Friday had accompanied the expedition, his native ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... and man." He cannot apply the formula nor reconcile it with common sense. He occasionally hears from the pulpit the phrase "God-man"; but it is a mere phrase to him; it is not translated for him into a language that he can understand. So he registers the doctrine mentally as an impenetrable mystery and gives it no further attention, or perhaps turns away in disgust from the system whose central figure is so unintelligibly presented by its authorised exponents. The bare statement that ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... light vessels to a little way from the town of Port Logo which is now the residence of Alimami, a Mandingo chief, who assumes the title of emperor. The banks are overgrown with the mangrove tree, interwoven together, so as to form an almost impenetrable thicket, excluding the air, which, with the extreme heat of the sun, and the noxious insects which are extracted by its rays from the swamps and woods, renders this navigation intolerably oppressive. The chief part ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... that every slightest detail stood out in her memory, distinct as in the light of day. And simultaneously with that, a search-light had flashed upon the hidden places of her own soul, and she had had a vision which she knew that no veil of reserve, impenetrable though it might be, could annul. The night had fallen upon the Salute and wrapped it from sight, but was it the less real ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... are things of yesterday compared with his Highness the Devil. The Caesars themselves, the more ancient rulers of Assyria, and even the Pharaohs of the first dynasty, are modern beside him. His origin is lost in the impenetrable obscurity of primitive times. Nay, there have been sages who maintained his eternity, who made him coeval with God, and placed upon his head the crown of a divided sovereignty ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... in the street Henriette hesitated a brief moment, for the little light that was in the east had not yet crept downward along the weather-blackened house-fronts to the roadway, and in the old city, shrouded in opaque fog, the darkness still reigned impenetrable. In the tap-room of a low pot-house in the Rue au Beurre, dimly lighted by a tallow candle, she saw two drunken Turcos and a woman. It was not until she turned into the Rue Maqua that she encountered any signs of life: soldiers slinking ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... and terrain of the river forces, a few words regarding the two rivers and their surroundings will not be without interest. This region is composed of vast tundras or marshes and the balance of the entire province is covered with almost impenetrable forests of pine and evergreen of different varieties. The tundras or marshes are very treacherous, for the traveler marching along on what appears to be a rough strip of solid ground, suddenly may feel the same give way and he is precipitated ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... the country; and now the narrative of Elmore leading him to the spot, at which all inquiry seemed as yet to pause! Had he been led hither only to hear repeated that strange tale of sudden and wanton disappearance—to find an abrupt wall, a blank and impenetrable barrier to a course, hitherto so continuously guided on? had he been the sport of Fate, and not its instrument? No; he was filled with a serious and profound conviction, that a discovery that he of all men ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for a sky. A man accustomed to the grace and infinity of nature's foliage, with every vista a cathedral, and every bough a revelation, can scarcely but be angered when Poussin mocks him with a black round mass of impenetrable paint, diverging into feathers instead of leaves, and supported on a stick instead of a trunk. The fact is, there is one thing wanting in all the doing of these men, and that is the very virtue by which the work of human ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... have blotted out thy sins as a cloud, and thy transgressions as a thick cloud." All thy unkindnesses and unfaithfulnesses, thy treacherous dealings against the covenant, shall be forgotten; they shall do thee no harm. This will mightily strengthen the hands, and fortify the heart, and even make it impenetrable and impregnable against all the solicitations and importunities of old temptations: see a notable instance of this, "I will heal their backslidings, I will love them freely; for mine anger is turned away from him." "I will be as the dew to Israel." "His branches ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... no doubt that is what I must have meant," said Holmes, with his enigmatical smile. Lestrade had learned by more experiences than he would care to acknowledge that that razor-like brain could cut through that which was impenetrable to him. I saw him ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... herself entirely into her cabin, and Michael heard nothing of her except the deep sighs which at night penetrated to his ear through the thin partition. But she was never heard to weep; the heavy blow which had fallen on her had perhaps covered her heart with an impenetrable layer of ice. How glowing must that love ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... and shining leather helmets, imparted a somewhat military character to the scene) should succeed in ascertaining the place at which their assistance was required. The crowd, which had opened to admit the passage of the engine, immediately closed round it again in an apparently impenetrable phalanx, the individual members of which afforded as singular a variety of costume as can well be imagined, extending from the simple shirt of propriety to the decorated uniforms of the fire-brigade. As every one who had an opinion to give was bawling it out at the very top of his voice, whilst ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the lake above named, which, in its turn, is united with the Gulf of Mexico, and it would almost appear as if nature, in a capricious moment, had chosen thus distinctly to mark the boundary of the two vast countries which the Sabine severs. On the right bank of that river rises a black and impenetrable forest, so thickly matted and united by enormous thorns, that even the hunted deer or savanna wolf will rarely attempt an entrance. The earth is overgrown by an impenetrable carpet of creeping plants, under whose treacherous shelter innumerable rattlesnakes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... be but a pleasure deferred, then, Mr. Croyden," said Miss Erskine, impenetrable in her self conceit. "The next morning will do, quite as well—I shall come at ten o'clock—What a lovely evening this is, Mrs. Carrington!" preparing ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... our efforts to forward the calling of the next conference in the interest of permanent peace brought up dead against an invisible barrier, an impassable wall like the secret line drawn in the air by magic, thinner than a cobweb, more impenetrable than steel. What was it? Indifference? General scepticism? Preoccupation with other designs which made the discussion of peace plans premature and futile? I did not know. But certainly there was something in the way, and the undiscovered nature of ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... of the elm trees on Boston Mall and Common, and that they now threaten their entire destruction. Other causes, however, have probably contributed to the same end. It will be remembered that these trees have greatly suffered, in past times, from the ravages of canker-worms. Moreover, the impenetrable state of the surface soil, the exhausted condition of the subsoil, and the deprivation of all benefit from the decomposition of accumulated leaves, which, in a state of nature, the trees would have enjoyed, but ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... dark enchantment. The rivers now flowed out of, and not into the Mississippi, and Xavier called them bayous, and often it took much skill and foresight on his part not to be shot into the lane they made in the dark forest of an evening. And the forest,—it seemed an impenetrable mystery, a strange tangle of fantastic growths: the live-oak (chene vert), its wide-spreading limbs hung funereally with Spanish moss and twined in the mistletoe's death embrace; the dark cypress swamp with the conelike knees above the yellow back-waters; and here and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... when I was equipped with actual knowledge and black-and-white proofs of the facts. Weeks before the trial began Attorney Sherman L. Whipple, one of the great cross-examiners of the time, had made his boast that he would break through the "Standard Oil" magnate's heretofore impenetrable bulwarks, and when H. H. Rogers entered the court-room for the first time and let his eagle eye sweep the lawyers, the laymen, and the judge until it finally rested on Whipple, the glance was as absolute a challenge and a defiance as ever knights ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... like a God-Brahma, human idol of gilt crockery, with nothing in the belly of it (but a portion of boiled chicken daily, very ill-digested); and such a prostrate worship, from those around him, as was hardly seen elsewhere. Grave, inwardly unhappy-looking; but impenetrable, uncomplaining. Seems to have passed privately an Act of Parliament: 'Kaunitz-Rietberg here, as you see him, is the greatest now alive; he, I privately assure you!'—and, by continued private determination, to have got all men about him to ratify the same, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... clumsy and unconvincing performance of the role of the wronged husband; his heavy figure clothed in an ill-fitting suit of "blue dittos," his ill-kempt red beard and bock-stained moustache did not help him in his impersonation. Mme. Fenayrou, pale, colourless, insignificant, was cold and impenetrable. She described the murder of her lover "as if she were giving her cook a household recipe for making apricot Jam." Lucien was ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... a rush of remarks on the other side of this impenetrable hedge, made her raise her head, startled, from her work, eyes and ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The marquise 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, without ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... intemperate—nor from the presence of war though savage, and recognized as the handmaid of desolation. Frequently and admirably has Burns given way to these impulses of nature; both with reference to himself and in describing the condition of others. Who, but some impenetrable dunce or narrow-minded puritan in works of art, ever read without delight the picture which he has drawn of the convivial exaltation of the rustic adventurer, Tam o'Shanter? The poet fears not to tell the reader in the outset that his hero ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... off through the dusk, without farewell or salutation steadily as their own steers. And there are a few millions of them—unhandy men to cross in their ways, set, silent, indirect in speech, and as impenetrable as that other Eastern fanner who is the bedrock of another land. They do not appear in the city papers, they are not much heard in the streets, and they tell very little in ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... wandered in and out among the prostrate victims of many a summer tempest: now we were winding around dark "bays" of sweet-gum and magnolia; now skirting circular ponds of delicate young cypress; now crossing narrow "branches" sunk deep in impenetrable "hummocks" of close-crowded oak and ash and maple, thick-matted with vines and undergrowth; now pausing to gather orchis and pitcher-plants and sun-kisses and andromeda; now fording the broad bend of Peter's Creek where it flows, sapphire in the sunshine, out from the moss-draped live-oaks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... not look as if he shared young Sweetwater's cheerfulness. The mist surrounding this affair was as yet impenetrable to him. But then he was not twenty-three, with ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... conveyed the corpse to his den, where the little dragons vainly tried to get at the knight to eat his flesh, being daunted by the impenetrable armor, which would not ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... geographical position of a great and populous sub-continent, on its land side exposed only to incursions from the north through mountainous and desolate regions, everywhere difficult of access and in some parts impenetrable, and shut in on the other two sides of a roughly isosceles triangle by broad expanses of sea which cut it off from all direct intercourse with the West until, towards the close of the Middle Ages, European navigators opened up new ocean highways ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... who signalled them to follow down through ranks of small tables watched by more stately damsels. Newmark, reserved and precise, irreproachably correct in his neat gray, seemed enveloped in an aloofness as impenetrable as that of the head-waitress herself. Orde, however, was as breezy as ever. He hastened his stride to overtake ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... him that we are capable of feeling any emotion; indeed it is only in one small section of the complete idea he has of himself that he is capable of feeling any emotion either. The novelist's happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque sections, impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which the spirit can assimilate to itself. After which it matters not that the actions, the feelings of this new order of creatures appear to us in the guise of truth, since we have made them ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... shots. As their echo ceased, the giant arachnid dropped his prey, and then there came from him—clear, piercing, quivering through our nerves—that arrowy whistle that had caused us to shudder as we unwillingly listened to it darting out of the gloom of the impenetrable thickets. ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... woman flinched and looked to Laplante. Of course, she did not understand our words; but I think she was suspicious we were laughing at her. There was a vindictive flash across her face, then the usual impenetrable expression of the Indian came over her features. I noticed that her cheeks and forehead were scarred, and a cut had laid open her upper ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... withdrawing 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 Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... were themselves going northwards, and for a few days we skirted, in company with them, the western borders of the Cross Timbers. The immense prairies of Texas are for hundreds and hundreds of miles bordered on the east by a belt of thick and almost impenetrable forests, called the Cross Timbers. Their breadth varies from seventy to one hundred miles. There the oak and hiccory grow tall and beautiful, but the general appearance of the country is poor, broken, and rugged. These forests abound with deer and bears, ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... have deserved the praise of Xenophon and the ten thousand. In the rear, the marshal supported the weight of the pursuit; in the front, he moderated the impatience of the fugitives; and wherever the Comans approached, they were repelled by a line of impenetrable spears. On the third day, the weary troops beheld the sea, the solitary town of Rodosta, [27] and their friends, who had landed from the Asiatic shore. They embraced, they wept; but they united their arms and counsels; and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... when I was staying at a country inn. At a late hour I was told that the Governor of the prefecture was in a room overhead. I had called on him a few days before in his prefectural capital. He was a large daimyo-like figure, dignified and courteous, but seemingly impenetrable. There was no depth in our talk. His aloof and uncommunicative manner was deterring, but by this time I had learnt the elementary lesson of unending patience and freedom from hasty judgment that is the first step to an advance in ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... helmet, which he had not laid aside, the Jew's keen black eyes were watching, watching. But they saw nothing; for there is no one so impenetrable as a man with a clear conscience ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... Hardenberg, almost joyously, "if we need not be afraid of the eyes and ears of spies, your majesty will permit me to speak freely to you. My king, great events are maturing; while impenetrable darkness still seems to surround us, morning is gradually dawning, and the day of retribution is not distant. Europe is utterly tired of war, and this incessant bloodshed; she has practised forbearance until it is exhausted ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... had germinated and seedlings had sprung up amidst the riot of logs, growing as thick as grass. They were now about the height of a tall man's head, forming, with the tangled abatis of spiky trunks, a seemingly impenetrable jungle. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... woods, especially those consisting of evergreen trees; and this snow, like that upon high mountains, has become hardened by the repeated thawing and freezing of the surface, till it is more impenetrable than ice. But the snow that actually falls during April is usually only what Vermonters call "sugar-snow,"—falling in the night and just whitening the surface for an hour or two, and taking its name, not so much from its looks as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... sought an opportunity of testing the vaunted efficiency of the blockade. Unfortunately, two steamers had started the week previous, one to New Orleans, the other to Charleston; only sailing vessels were to be found, and about the movements of these, impenetrable mystery seemed wrapped. On the afternoon of the third day after their arrival, Eric, wearied with the morning's fruitless inquiry, was resting on the sofa at the hotel, while Electra watched the tide of passers-by, when Willis, Eric's servant, came in ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the Seraglio, the cloister with marble pillars, the hall of the ambassadors, the impenetrable gate guarded by eunuchs and ichoglans, have a romantic look in print; but not so in reality. Most of the marble is wood, almost all the gilding is faded, the guards are shabby, the foolish perspectives painted on the walls are half cracked off. The place ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and drew aside the heavy curtains. The storm was beating against the window-pane as he leaned his feverish face against the cool glass, gazing out into the impenetrable darkness without. ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... possible due north and south. Nothing of the great bend to the west, shown in all the previous maps, could be detected by either compass or chronometer, and the watch we used was an excellent one. The season of the year was very unfavourable. The "smokes" filled the air with an impenetrable haze, and the equinoctial gales made it impossible for us to cross to the eastern side. When we caught a glimpse of the sun rising from behind the mountains to the east, we made sketches and bearings of them at different ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... harness and wheels, the cracking of the postillions' whips, all contributed to making her head ache, and to chase slumber away. But gradually her thoughts became more confused, as the dim winter twilight gradually faded into night and a veil of impenetrable blackness spread itself outside the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... ruins, on which an accomplished architect would do well to employ, at least on paper, his talent of restoration. After this I attempted to make a way for myself through the gardens to the city. But I soon learned by experience what an impenetrable bulwark is formed by a hedge of agaves planted close together. You can see through their interlacing leaves, and you think, therefore, it will be easy to force a way through them; but the prickles on their leaves are very sensible obstacles. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... brooded over Southampton, and an impenetrable fog hung over sea and shore alike, penetrating the clothing, chilling the blood and depressing the spirits of every unlucky person who was so unfortunate as to come within the range of its influence. The passengers on the steamship America, from Bremen for New York via Southampton, ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... complaints he could think of, after which he settled down to long, rhythmic snores that could be heard all around the place, inside and out. The purple twilight merged into blue shadows, then into black, impenetrable darkness that swallowed up the pass and the two little white tents of the ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... of us ride along these tracks with the cattle. One or two have to be most of the time on foot, while the third leads their horses. They are plunging through the otherwise impenetrable scrub after dogs and cattle, which last will not keep the line. The whole journey takes about a week. We camp down at night, and half the next day is taken up with hunting for some of the beasts that have ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... warmed into forgetfulness, all the sweet side of me—if such there be—came out and sunned itself. And then I would remember me and needs must wear the ice again, as some dancing, glancing, limpid brook should sheathe itself in impenetrable crystals. And all those hours—for seldom were the moments when, against my will I was compelled to gladness—I became more and more alone; for Effie being the soul of the festivities,—since Mary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Bigot was not 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, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... important and entirely novel discovery—the psycho-physiological relations of the surface of the body, the manner in which every portion of the body responds to the brain and the soul, the final solution of the great and hitherto impenetrable mystery of the triune relations of soul, brain, and body. This discovery, constituting the science of Sarcognomy, became the basis of a new medical philosophy, explaining the influence of the body on the soul, in health, and disease, and the reciprocal influence of the soul ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... should know so little of what is in some sense so near us! that such a thin veil should be so impenetrable! I fancy the first thing I should do would be ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... view a beautiful and striking scenery. All nature appeared silently and impressively to proclaim the goodness and wisdom of God. Day unto day, in the revolutions of that glorious orb, which shed a flood of light over the impenetrable forests and wild wastes that surrounded me, uttereth speech. Yet His voice is not heard among the heathen, nor His name known throughout these vast territories by Europeans in general, but to swear by.——Oh! for wisdom, truly Christian faith, ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... profitable to some discouraged minds." Profitable! Ah, no; far from it! The overwhelming blackness of despair, the woful doubts and fears about destruction and utter annihilation which he felt so deeply and so continually, fall in a heavy, impenetrable cloud upon us as we read, until we feel that we too are in the "Suburbs of hell" and ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... months from the ken of history. For nearly eighteen years he preserved his incognito, vaguely heard of here and there in England, France, Germany, Flanders, but always involved in mystery. On that mystery, impenetrable to his father, Pickle threw light enough for the purposes of the English Government, but not during the ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... 290] grave in which there is no living thing to be found Where had he gone? She sought his footprints, as a dog seeks those of his master, but the rain and snow had obliterated them, and her eyes, full of tears, soon saw nothing but a grey, impenetrable mist. ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... is a common breeding bird in the swamps and islands of the Gulf coast and north to South Carolina and southern Illinois. The nests are placed in the mangroves in some of the most impenetrable swamps and are composed of twigs and lined with leaves or moss. They lay three or four chalky bluish white eggs. Size 2.30 x 1.40. Data.—Bird Is., Lake Kissimee, Florida, April 5, 1898. Three eggs. Nest made of weeds and grass, ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... since grown up, almost bewildering in its range, diversity of aims and style of procedure. It is a chaos, with many paths leading into the maze, but as yet very few take us to a position commanding a view of the whole intricate terrain with its impenetrable tangle and pitfalls. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... trees are allowed to run wild. In January they are pruned, and the branches left are entwined from tree to tree all along the line, and form impenetrable fences. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... Bradley and Costigan released upon them without compunction the full power of their frightful projectors. From the reflectors, through the doorway, there tore a concentrated double beam of pure destruction—but that beam did not reach its goal. Yards from the men it met a screen of impenetrable density. Instantly the gunners pressed their triggers and a stream of high-explosive shells issued from the roaring weapons. But shells, also, were futile. They struck the shield and vanished—vanished without exploding and without leaving ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... fever-stricken, over-worked West Africa who are able to go up mountains, naturally try for the adjacent Big Cameroon; the other reason is that Mungo Mah Etindeh, to which Burton refers as "the awful form of Little Cameroon," is mostly sheer cliff, and is from foot to summit clothed in an almost impenetrable forest. Behind these two mountains of volcanic origin, which cover an area on an isolated base of between 700 and 800 square miles in extent, there are distinctly visible from the coast two chains of mountains, or I should think ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... little old gentlemen, "Donder and Blitzen; it has been smoked out for dis hour!"—and they filled them up again in a great rage, and sinking back in their arm-chairs, puffed away so fast and so fiercely that the whole valley was immediately filled with impenetrable smoke. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... at about eighty degrees in the shade. From the number of people assembled one would have thought, if it had been in the United States, that some great mass convention was coming off. Under the impenetrable screen of the trees, in the dark, cool, refreshing shade, are thousands of chairs, for which one pays two cents apiece. Whole families come, locking up their door, bringing the baby, work, dinner, or lunch, take a certain number of chairs, and spend the day. As far as eye can reach ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... queen,' continued she, as that lady's serene countenance beamed upon her in apparently immovable calmness, 'does anything ever arouse you? Have you forgotten, my impenetrable spirit, the sad days of yore, when we sobbed out grand arias to the wretched accompaniment of Professor Tirili, blistered our young fingers on guitar strings, waded unprofitably in oceans of Locke and Bacon, and were oftener at the apex of a triangle than its comfortable ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... bodies now rubs off on the sticky stigma lobes, already matured at the bottom of a newly opened flower, in which they buzz, crawl, slide, and slip, seeking an avenue of escape. None presents itself: they are imprisoned. The hairs at the entrance, approached from within, form an impenetrable stockade. Must the poor little creatures perish? Is the flower heartless enough to murder its benefactors, on which the continuance of its species depends? By no means is it so shortsighted! A few tiny drops of nectar exuding from the center table prevent the visitors from starving. Presently ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... works of art in order to enjoy them; here they possess them merely to ticket them and lock them up carefully in a kind of mysterious underground room shut in by iron gratings called a godoun. On rare occasions, only to honor some visitor of distinction, do they open this impenetrable depositary. The true Japanese manner of understanding luxury consists in a scrupulous and indeed almost excessive cleanliness, white mats and white woodwork; an appearance of extreme simplicity, and an incredible nicety in the most ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... Mediterranean—that great inland sea upon whose shores the most famous cities of antiquity flourished, and toward which the tide of Assyrian and Persian conquests had rolled, and then retreated for ever. The boundaries of this mighty empire were great mountains, and deserts, and oceans, and impenetrable forests. On the east lay the Parthian empire, separated from the Roman by the Tigris and Euphrates, and the Armenian Mountains, beyond which were other great empires not known to the Greeks, like the Indian and the Chinese monarchies, with a different civilization. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... manager of the Planet, was a man in middle life. There was something in his massive frame which suggested massiveness, and a certain quality in the poise of his great head which indicated a balanced intellect. His face was impenetrable ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... this time.... But a new sensation had cropped up within him. It seemed to him as though some one were standing in the middle of the room, not far from him, and breathing in a barely perceptible manner. He hastily turned round, opened his eyes.... But what could be seen in that impenetrable darkness?—He began to fumble for a match on his night-stand ... and suddenly it seemed to him as though some soft, noiseless whirlwind dashed across the whole room, above him, through him—and the words: "'Tis I!" rang plainly in his ears. "'Tis I! ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... made itself heard amid the rushing waters and the impenetrable darkness. It was just ahead, and the next instant Ben had reached the other side of the ice raft, where, steadying himself with one hand, he groped about with the other, uttering encouraging ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... the same distance across; its formation appears to have been originally of sand that has accumulated upon a rocky basis, and has gradually grown into an island; it is thickly covered with a forest of dwarf trees and impenetrable brushwood. Some recent impressions of a human foot on the sand below high-water mark were seen, and several old fireplaces, and one or two of more recent date were observed, around which were strewed the ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... general summing up of fears and faiths. All his hope for New Orleans, he said, was in the forts down at the Passes. Should they fall the city could not stand. But amid their illimitable sea marshes and their impenetrable swamp forests, chin-deep in the floods of broken levees, he truly believed, they would hold out. Let them do so only till the first hot breath of real Delta summer should bring typhoid, breakbone, yellow, and swamp fevers, the last by all odds the ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Anne of Austria, whose memory and reason seemed to have become entirely suspended for a time, remained impenetrable, with vacant look, mind almost wandering, and hands hanging heavily down, as if life had ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... when they had first fled from the Iceni, a large party had penetrated there, and of these but a few returned, with tales of the destruction of their companions by huge serpents, and monsters of strange shapes, some of which were clothed in armour impenetrable to their heaviest weapons. From that time the spot had been avoided. Legends had multiplied concerning the creatures that dwelt there, and it now seemed to the chiefs that they must be gainers in any case ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... political men of the day was well known to both parties; they were like cards in the hands of gamblers,—the cleverest player won the game. During this council the two brothers maintained the most impenetrable reserve. A conversation which now took place between Catherine and certain of her friends will explain the object of this council, held by the Guises in the open air, in the hanging gardens, at break of day, as if they feared to speak within the ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... 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
... same occasion, when he should have been a reed, inclining here and there, as adverse gales of evidence disposed him, was seen to be a manufactured image on the seat of Justice, cast by Power, in most impenetrable brass. ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... admission to the Garden by overleaping the tangled thicket of shrubs and bushes which formed an impenetrable barrier and prevented any access to the enclosure within, he flew up on ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... improve his acquaintance with that family, but it was improbable that they would ever mention in his hearing the stranger who had casually been presented to them, or indeed ever again think of him. If she held her peace, the secret of Godwin's retirement must still remain impenetrable. He would pursue his ends as hitherto, thinking of her, if at all, as a weak woman who had immodestly betrayed a hopeless passion, and who could be trusted never ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... meditating in the cloudy regions of German philosophy—on difficulties which would seem beyond the limits of human reason, but which that philosophy too often promises to solve—with what success we may see from the rapid succession and impenetrable obscurities of its various systems. Alas! when will men learn that one of the highest achievements of philosophy is to know when it is vain to philosophise. When the obscure principles of these most uncouth ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... immediately followed the arrival of the new comers were the coolest and most salubrious of the year. But, even in those months, the pestilential influence of a tropical sun, shining on swamps rank with impenetrable thickets of black mangroves, began to be felt. The mortality was great; and it was but too clear that, before the summer was far advanced, the second colony would, like the first, have to choose between death ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a fleet of fire ships loaded with pitch pine cargoes. Farragut's lines wavered in the black confusion of rolling clouds of impenetrable smoke, lighted by the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... fog, as thick as pea soup, as George called out a little later. First the outlines of the shore were blotted out as though by an impenetrable curtain. Then even the boats, close as they were, began to go, until it was no longer possible to distinguish them from the sea of ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... overlooked the meadows in the rear, were breaching the wall for musketry. It was in this courtyard that Delaherche and Weiss found the young officer, straining his eyes to discover what was hidden behind the impenetrable mist. ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... centuries of silence followed, and then in 1552, the heroic Francis Xavier set his face towards China, only to be prostrated by fever on the Island of Sancian. As he despairingly realized that he would never be able to set his foot on that still impenetrable land, he moaned: "Oh, Rock, Rock, when wilt ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... 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
... his shoulder. The express cracked first, and the hollow-pointed ball struck Pinto under the shoulder. The 45-70 bullet struck a little lower and made havoc of the bear's liver. The shock knocked the bear off his pins, but he recovered and ran into a thicket of scrub oak. The thicket was impenetrable to a man, and there was no man present who wanted to penetrate it in the wake of a ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... He gave me one keen look—and then again the impenetrable mask! "My wife will have to do as other women in her position do—pay no attention to ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... trees looking like a long green wall. Far in front arose a transverse wall like to the first, and making at its intersection a right angle. At this angle, the road entered the wood, near to the ground this forest was absolutely impenetrable to the sight, by reason of the suffocating growth of briars, vines, palmettos and underbrush. We ought to have occupied these woods the night before, and have hemmed the enemy in the open beyond. We now knew that the foe was in our ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... Amathla was regarded as a brave, resolute, and upright man. He had saved the life of Assiola, and his murder was an act of horrible ingratitude. The Indians now abandoned their homes and took refuge in the impenetrable swamps. ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... storm-tossed waters close over him, and knew he had struck. In the moment he knew—oblivion, deep, ebon and impenetrable, blotted out knowledge. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... her of love. His eyes conveyed no message at any time. His straight gaze was impenetrable. He never even touched her hand unless she offered it to him. And gradually her confidence in him grew stronger. The instinct that bade her beware of him ceased to disquiet her. She found herself able to meet ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... by the arm as he spoke, and led her forward for two or three steps. At first the darkness appeared impenetrable, but presently her eyes became accustomed to the imperfect light, and she saw that she was standing in a long apartment, filled with all manner of odd, injured, and useless articles. Scraps of broken furniture, balks of timber, and strangely-shaped ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... beautiful thick coat of the woodland bisons allows them to laugh at the mosquito, for we come upon them in an almost impenetrable mosquito-infested muskeg. An untoward frost is more to be feared by these great brutes than the attacks of any insect. Thirty-eight years ago a heavy rainfall in the winter soaked the snow and formed ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... the gale increased in violence tenfold, and darkness settled down like an impenetrable pall over land and sea. The roar of breakers on the Goodwin Sands became so loud that it was sometimes heard on board the Gull-light above the howling of the tempest. The sea rose so much and ran so violently among the conflicting currents ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... East and South,—towards Arabia, the wild Ishmael bequeathing sworded Korans and subtile Aristotles as legacies to the sons of the freed-woman,—to solemn Egypt, riddle of nations, the vast, silent, impenetrable mystery of the world. By continual pondering over the footsteps of the Seekers, the Sought-for seemed to grow to vast proportions, and the Found to shrink to inappreciable littleness. For me, over the dreary ice-plains of the Poles, over the profound bosom of Africa, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... fancy portrait, but word for word from an enthusiastic admirer of Lowenthal's step-daughter. But where is she? It is not known. Where is the John Sherman letter to Anderson? Where is the Boston Belting Company's money? Where is Tom Collins? And where's Emma Collins? An impenetrable gloom shrouds them all. ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... men had worshipped for centuries in the wilderness, and whose malice they invoked against the stranger who ventured into the gloomy forest. Gods, they called them, and told strange tales of their dwelling among the impenetrable branches of the oldest trees and in the caverns of the shaggy hills; of their riding on the wind-horses and hurling spears of lightning against their foes. Gods they were not, but foul spirits of the air, rulers of the darkness. Was there not glory and honour in fighting with them, ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... Roebuck believed in the fine arts with all the earnestness of a man who does not understand them), and an impression of Dupont's engraving of Delaroche's Beaux Artes hemicycle, representing the great men of all ages. On the wall behind him, above the mantelshelf, is a family portrait of impenetrable obscurity. ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... celebrated on a scale of magnificence such as the world had not seen. Now, the loveliest spot in broad Scotland, where the Scottish King could celebrate the gay festivities, was the good town of Jedworth, or, as it is now called, Jedburgh. For it was situated, like an Eden, in the depth of an impenetrable forest; gardens circled it; wooded hills surrounded it; precipices threw their shadows over flowery glens; wooded hills embraced it, as the union of many arms; waters murmured amidst it; and it was a scene on which man could ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... the world had altered for him; he had passed out of the light into an impenetrable blackness. He sat with his head bent down, changed in a moment from a light-hearted ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... Mrs. Rusk. Here was a man who could tell them something of the old Frenchwoman, at last! Slyly they dawdled over his wares, until Madame had made her market and departed with me. But when the coveted opportunity came, the pedlar was quite impenetrable. 'He forgot everything; he did not believe as he ever saw the lady before. He called a Frenchwoman, all the world over, Madamasel—that wor the name on 'em all. He never seed her in partiklar afore, as he could bring to mind. He liked to see 'em always, 'cause they makes ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... phantom, under the mysterious name of Arch, in whose cloudy equipage were descried, gleaming at intervals, the crowns and sceptres of great potentates, sustained, whilst it agitated their hearts. London was one of the secret watchwords in their impenetrable cipher; Moscow was a countersign; Bavaria and Austria bore mysterious parts in the drama; and, though no sound was heard, nor voice given to the powers that were working, yet, as if by mere force of secret sympathy, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... in the fancy as a sour, single man, with grizzled hair, a scowling countenance, and a peremptory air, who lives in a dark apartment, with musty deeds about him, and an iron safe, as impenetrable as his heart, grabbing together what he does not enjoy, and what there is no one about him to enjoy. The debtor, on the other hand, is always pictured with a wife and six fair-haired daughters, bound together in affection and misery, full of sensibility, and suffering without ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... at a smart pace, for fully ten minutes, trying not to think, but feeling painfully conscious that my courage was ebbing fast. Then I paused for breath. Ugh! how foul the air smelt! I told myself that it was worse even than the impenetrable darkness—and that was bad enough. I recalled to mind how I had gone through tunnels—this very one among others—in a comfortable lighted carriage, and had drawn up the window, sharply and suddenly, to keep out the stale, poisonous air; and this was the atmosphere I was to breathe ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... impossibility of such a jump; it was easier to become a minister. Marie's precious replies were deposited in one of those portfolios with patent locks made by Huret or Fichet, two mechanics who were then waging war in advertisements and posters all over Paris, as to which could make the safest and most impenetrable locks. ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... state-room, at the bulwark, holding fast to a stanchion, and looking over the side at the white and seething water caused by her sudden and violent stoppage. The sea was comparatively smooth, the night pitch-dark, and the fog deep and impenetrable; the ship would rise with the swell, and come down with a bump and quiver that was decidedly unpleasant. Soon the passengers were out of their rooms, undressed, calling for help, and praying as though ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... vaster region from which, by repeated trade, their stone lamps and that steel knife had come. Subienkow bullied, and cajoled, and bribed. Every far-journeyer or strange tribesman was brought before him. Perils unaccountable and unthinkable were mentioned, as well as wild beasts, hostile tribes, impenetrable forests, and mighty mountain ranges; but always from beyond came the rumour and the tale of white-skinned men, blue of eye and fair of hair, who fought like devils and who sought always for furs. They were to the east—far, far to the east. No one had ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... presentation of the two saints, is no less striking in their several histories. The legend of Sebastian tells us nothing to be relied upon, except that he was a Roman soldier converted to the Christian faith, and martyred. In spite of the perplexity and mystery that involve the death of Antinous in impenetrable gloom, he is a true historic personage, no phantom of myth, but a man as real ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... took the offensive, and decided, not without religious misgivings, to pursue them to their retreats. As the inhabitants of Mendes and of Busiris had relegated the abode of their departed to the recesses of the impenetrable marshes of the Delta, so those of Siut and Thinis had at first believed that the souls of the deceased sought a home beyond the sands: the good jackal Anubis acted as their guide, through the gorge of the Cleft or through the gate of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... like the idea of the birch-hedge much, and if intermixed with holly and thorns, I think it might make an impenetrable thicket, having all the advantages of a hedge without the formality. I fancy you will also need a great number of (black) Italian poplars—which are among the most useful and best growers, as well as most beautiful of plants ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... she knew from internal consciousness that they were not, and that a palpable change had taken place. Her heroic resolutions of the morning passed away in inconsistent and impotent longing for one word or gesture to break down this impenetrable wall that seemed to have arisen between them, and to recall the old happy love-making days. Mrs. Rolleston asked her to sing. A bird robbed of its nest could not have felt more disinclined, yet she would try, though ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... emotion, sank listlessly on the ground, where she remained for some time with her head bowed upon her knees, regardless of the beauty of the scene about her. Above, the sky was cloudless, a deep impenetrable blue, as seen through the heavy foliage of the grand primeval forest. At her feet stretched the calm, smooth lake, dotted here and there with tiny islands, so thickly wooded that they looked like escaped bits of the forest floating on the glassy surface of the water. ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... in which I bore a part was at the farthest western point, where the remnants of four or five companies, half buried in the gloom of the impenetrable wood, on a line stretching along the whole crest of the hill, held these troops at bay. We lay or crouched behind leafy coverts, crawling from place to place as our range was reached by the enemy, shooting from the shield of tree-trunks or of tangled clumps ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... the first step we take brings with it the instructive lesson of our incapacity, and teaches the wholesome lesson of humility. From arrogantly claiming a right to worship a deity we comprehend, we soon come to feel that the impenetrable veil that is cast around the Godhead is an indispensable condition of our faith, reverence, and submission, A being that can be comprehended is not a ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... substantial of figure, firm but not coarse of feature, she had reached her forty-fifth year without an ailment or a wrinkle. Her eyes were steadfast, clear, and bright, well able to second her distinct calm voice, and handsome still, though their deep blue had waned into a quiet, impenetrable gray; while her broad clear forehead, straight nose, and red lips might well be considered as comely as ever, at least by those who loved her. Of these, however, there were not many; and she was content to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret, he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... 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 to his attention, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Mr. Robert, "if he happened to be in the blaming mood. Anyway, young man, there you have a direct challenge. Within the next week the inner sanctum of the Corrugated Trust is to be assailed by one who claims that he can penetrate the impenetrable, know the unknowable, and unscrew ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... irreproachable, those of nature fully made up the deficiency. What magnificent trees! What thick hedges! What dense and refreshing shade! The avenues were remarkably high and broad, and bordered with trees, which formed a vault impenetrable to the sun, while the eye lost itself in their many windings; from these other smaller walks diverged, where fresh surprises were in store at every step. At the end of the broadest of these was placed the menagerie, which was one of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... 70 north, in longitude 92 west, where the land, after having carried us as far east as 90, took a decidedly westerly direction, while land at the distance of 40 miles to southward, was seen extending east and west. At this extreme point our progress was arrested on the 1st of October by an impenetrable barrier of ice. We, however, found an excellent wintering port, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... no change in that sky from its state an hour before, except that perhaps it had lightened a little as the sun climbed higher behind that impenetrable dusky shroud. Hills, grass, men's faces—all bore to the priest's eyes the look of unreality; they were as things seen in a dream by eyes that roll with sleep through lids weighted with lead. Even to other physical senses that unreality was present; and once more he remembered ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... let his eyes dream upon the delicate blades and stalks and leafage which one so seldom regards. If he chose to gaze further, there were fair tracts of shadowed sward, with sunny gleamings scattered where the trees were thinner, and above him the heaven of clustering leaves, here of impenetrable dark-green, there translucent-golden. A rustling whisper, in the air and on the ground, was the only ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... takes advantage even of the nakedness and dreary vacuity of his subject. His imagination peoples the shades of death, and broods over the silent air. He is the severest of all writers, the most hard and impenetrable, the most opposite to the flowery and glittering; who relies most on his own power, and the sense of it in others, and who leaves most room to the imagination of his readers. Dante's only endeavour is to interest; and he interests by exciting our sympathy ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... and as the package has not gone yet, I add a note. I have been analyzing and comparing all sorts of plants in our garden to-day, and I wish you had been with me. On my last sheet I send some nuts for you to pick, some wholly, some half, others not at all, cracked. Schimper is lost in the great impenetrable world of suns, with their planets, moons, and comets; he soars even into the region of the double stars, the ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... him, and escaped in an impenetrable disguise to Glathion, where not long afterward I died. My dying just then was most annoying, for I was on the point of being married, and she was a remarkably attractive girl,—King Tyrnog's daughter, from Craintnor way. She would have been my thirteenth ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... 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
... reached the brook we went along the bank, but were soon compelled to leave it owing to the impenetrable tangles of alders, around which we had to circle. The doctor stopped to show me some tracks of otters, and then we came to a place where the bank was steep, and a little smooth path was worn down upon its face, ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... the owl, as she raised her nightly wail from the withered branch of the venerable oak. At length, a low rustling among the bushes on the right, caught his ear. He gazed long toward the spot whence the sound seemed to proceed; but saw nothing, save the impenetrable gloom of the thick forest which surrounded the encampment. Then, as he marched onward, he heard the joyful cry of "all's well," after which he seated himself upon a stump, and fell into a reverie. While he thus sat, a savage entered the open space behind, and, after buckling ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... 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 ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... consigns to oblivion all that scientific bodies have hitherto published on that subject."[3112] Anterior to his treatise on "Man," the relationships between moral and physics were incomprehensible. "Descartes, Helvetius, Hailer, Lecat, Hume, Voltaire, Bonnet, held this to be an impenetrable secret, 'an enigma.'" He has solved the problem, he has fixed the seat of the soul, he has determined the medium through which the soul communicates with the body.[3113]—In the higher sciences, those treating of nature generally, or of human society, he reaches the climax. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... perished on the spot where they were produced, or were consumed by the foe. The "plains of Carolina" drank up the most precious blood of her citizens. Black and smoking ruins marked the places where had been the habitations of her children. Driven from their homes into the gloomy and almost impenetrable swamps, even there the spirit of liberty survived, and South Carolina (sustained by the example of her Sumters and her Marions) proved by her conduct that, though her soil might be overrun, the spirit of her people ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... the Yellowknife seemed to be no longer a river, but a narrow lake, and the third day the rowers came into the Nine Lake country at noon, and until another dusk the bateau threaded its way through twisting channels and impenetrable forests, and beached at last at the edge of a great open where the timber had been cut. There was more excitement here, but it was too dark for David to understand the meaning of it. There were many voices; dogs ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... have a more extensive view of his range. As the ascent was too fatiguing for the child, he left him on a small plain at the bottom, with strict injunctions not to stir from it till his return. Scarcely, however, had he gained the summit, when the horizon was suddenly darkened by one of those impenetrable mists which frequently descend so rapidly amidst these mountains, as almost to turn day into night, and that in the course of a few minutes. The anxious father instantly hastened back to find his child, but, owing to the unusual darkness, he missed his ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... It wasn't till much later that I found this had not been the case with Kent Mulville, whose hope for the best never twirled the thumbs of him more placidly than when he happened to know the worst. He had known it on the occasion I speak of—that is immediately after. He was impenetrable then, but ultimately confessed. What he confessed was more than I shall now venture to make public. It was of course familiar to me that Saltram was incapable of keeping the engagements which, after their separation, ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... fear, for it is hard for the body to live in eternity. In the evening with Gordon Craig. Is he right about masks? A mask is a symbol, but a face may be a sacrament. The Mass, after all, is the supreme dream and drama of the world. Sadness is majesty, as I found the other night, and majesty is always impenetrable, for it is a secret full of awe and mysterious silence. Tonight I see that great drama, whether it be a tragedy or no, must reveal time poised in infinity. Beauty, I think, contains everything save the human will, and it is the ideal of the will to be thus ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... has been no further menace; perhaps there never will be. And again, the invisible realm of which Don, Jane and I were vouchsafed so strange a glimpse, lies across a void impenetrable. Earth scientists have the projector, with its current batteries apparently almost exhausted. And they have the transition mechanism which we three were wearing. But of those, the vital element had been removed by Tako—and was gone with him. ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... guns a few months afterwards, and where Grant made 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 ever built, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... to discover the place of his retreat were vain. No wonder, methought, that he wrapped himself in the folds of impenetrable secrecy. Curbed, checked, baffled in the midst of his career, no wonder that he shrunk into obscurity, that he fled from justice and revenge, that he dared not meet the rebukes of that eye which, dissolving in tenderness or flashing with disdain, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the eye, and his human dimensions made out at leisure. The sight of a well-lighted house, and a well-dressed audience, shall arm the most nervous child against any apprehensions: as Tom Brown says of the impenetrable skin of Achilles with his impenetrable armor over it, "Bully Dawson would have fought the devil with ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... 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 ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... The hush held Until I staggered up and cried aloud, And then it seemed that something far too great For knowledge, and illimitable as God, Rent the dark sky like lightning, and I fell, And, falling, heard a wild and rushing wind Of music, and saw lights that blinded me With white, impenetrable swords, and felt A pressure of soft hands upon my lips, Upon my eyelids — and since then I cough At times, and have strange thoughts about the stars, That some day — some day — Come, I must be quick! My master will be back soon. Let me ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... stray, And joyless seasons hold unequal sway, He saw the pine its daring mantle rear, Break the rude blast, and mock the brumal year, Shag the green zone that bounds the boreal skies, And bid all southern vegetation rise. Wild o'er the vast impenetrable round The untrod bowers of shadowy nature frown'd; Millennial cedars wave their honors wide, The fir's tall boughs, the oak's umbrageous pride, The branching beech, the aspen's trembling shade Veil the dim heaven, and brown the dusky glade. For ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... they brought, but the emissaries or agents of the owners. Often they came merely to show a horse, and were not at all sure that his owner would part with him on any terms, as he was a favorite with the ladies of the family. An impenetrable mystery hung about the owner, through which he sometimes dimly loomed as a gentleman in failing health, who had to give up his daily drives, and had no use for the horse. There were cases in which the dealer came secretly, from pure zeal, to show a horse whose ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... smell is wafted out over the waters. You see priceless orchids entwined with the mangroves in endless profusion. Behind this verdure stretches the dense equatorial forest in which Stanley battled years ago in an almost impenetrable gloom. Aigrettes and birds of paradise fly on all sides and every hour reveals a hideous crocodile ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... when they are molested, they deliberately wind themselves up, coil their tails over their bodies, and remain in conscious security against the fruitless blows of their enemies, who soon weary of the wounds caused from the prickly scales of impenetrable armour. ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... but plainly, for the curtain of patterned filet-work hanging flat against the glass was almost transparent from within the house, though impenetrable from outside. Was it her imagination that saw him look cautiously round before leaving the protection of the doorway? Was it her imagination that watched while he crossed the pavement hurriedly, to spring ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... patiently and apparently with contentment to the restrictions with which he was surrounded. Physically weakly, his health was at all times delicate, but his intelligence was remarkable and his will-power extraordinary. Cold and impenetrable in manner and expression, unbending in his haughty aloofness, he knew how with perfect courtesy to keep his own counsel and to refrain from giving utterance to an unguarded word. But behind this chilling and sphinx-like exterior was a mind of singular precocity, already filled ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
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