"Invulnerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prepare a coat of mail for him, in order that he might be invulnerable," whispered Amelia tremblingly; exhausted and remorseful, she sank back upon the tabouret. "The beautiful Kleist shall not ravish my beloved from me. He loves me—me alone; and he shall no longer complain of my cruelty. I dare not be cruel! I dare not make him unhappy, for she might ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... immediately pitched into oblivion. The room thundered with a great shout of laughter that went to the ceiling. I could see Bobbs making angry shouts against an invulnerable bank of uncontrolled merriment. And amid his victory old Fullbil sat with a vain ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... continued the Antiquary, pursuing his own train of thought and feeling"we harden ourselves in vain to treat with the indifference they deserve, the changes of this trumpery whirligig world. We strive ineffectually to be the self-sufficing invulnerable being, the teres atque rotundus of the poet;the stoical exemption which philosophy affects to give us over the pains and vexations of human life, is as imaginary as the state of mystical quietism and perfection aimed at ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... commencing a new campaign, and is to confront a navy hourly improving, and an invulnerable fleet, armed with cannon more effective than any yet used in naval warfare. It is to encounter, with conscripts, a million of hardy volunteers, and to do this with its supplies reduced and its credit broken. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... Success derides Ambition! If only been intellectually a little flexible in his morality Naturally as deceived as he wished to be Official wrath at sound of footfall or a fancied one Optional marriages, broken or renewed every seven years Pessimy is invulnerable Repeatedly, in contempt of the disgust of iteration Satirist is an executioner by profession Semblance of a tombstone lady beside her lord The banquet to be fervently remembered, should smoke The homage we pay him flatters us We must ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... and whoever rules it, that I must always be. I, who am the chief of wizards; I, the reader of men's hearts; I, the hearer of men's thoughts! I, the lord of the air and the lightning; I, the invulnerable. If you would murder, Prince, then do the deed; do it knowing that I have your secret, and that henceforth you who rule shall be my servant. Nay, you forget that I can see in the dark; lay down that assegai, or, by my spirit, ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... interesting part of the exhibition. The chief of the assailants did wonders; he was seen now here, now there, animating his men, and was twice hurled, with ladder and followers, from the second gradation of ramparts: but he was invulnerable, and seemed to receive an accession of courage on every fresh repulse. The rattle of the miniature cannon, the roll of the drums, the sound of trumpets, and the heroism of the actors on both sides, imparted an idea of reality ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... the flimsy work about the vessel were blown into the sea, her vitality would not be affected, though her aspect would indeed be mightily changed for the worse, but the Thunderer in her entirety, with her low-armoured hull, her central fighting-tower, her invulnerable turrets with their two 35-ton and two 38-ton guns, and all her armament and men, would still be there, as able and ready ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... matter well over. I am convinced that she will make a good wife," said the young man; and from his voice and manner Lady Ashley felt that his resolution was invulnerable. "There is absolutely no objection except the one concerning her relations—and that may be got over. Mother, you wish for my happiness: tell me ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... sq.; among the Indians of Guiana, 60 sq.; beating the girls and stinging them with ants, 61; stinging young men with ants and wasps as an initiatory rite, 61-63; stinging men and women with ants to improve their character or health or to render them invulnerable, 63 sq.; in such cases the beating or stinging was originally a purification, not a test of courage and endurance, 65 sq.; this explanation confirmed by the beating of girls among the Banivas of the Orinoco ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... mine is "an inheritance incorruptible." It is not exposed to the gnawing tooth of time. Moth and rust can not impair the treasure. It will not grow less as I grow old. Its glories are as invulnerable as ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... much notice of the goats and other things which had been stolen, but, in consequence of this, he ordered his men to shoot any thieves who came near. A short time afterwards, another band approaching, one of the men was shot, who turned out to be a magician, and was till then thought invulnerable. He was tracked by his blood, and afterwards died of his wound. The next day some of Speke's men were lured into the huts of the natives by an invitation to dinner, but, when they got them there, they stripped them stark-naked and let them go again. At night the same rascals stoned the camp. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... for a parley. Drake wanted water and fresh provisions. Drake was to be allowed to furnish himself undisturbed. He had secured what he most wanted. He had shown the King of Spain that he was not invulnerable in his own home dominion, and he sailed away unmolested. Madrid was in consternation. That the English could dare insult the first prince in Europe on the sacred soil of the Peninsula itself seemed like a dream. The Council of State sat for three days considering the meaning of it. ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... wrapped up in admiration of yourself. According to M. de Marivaux, who reviewed, as I am doing, the spirits of the mighty dead, you "conceived, on the strength of your reputation, a great and serious veneration for yourself and your genius." Probably you were protected by the invulnerable armour of an honest vanity, probably you declared that mere jealousy dictated the lines of Boileau, and that Chapelain's real fault was his ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... new spirit is abroad in the East. It arose on the shores of the Pacific when Japan proved that the great powers of Europe are not invulnerable. North and south and west it has spread, rousing China out of centuries of slumber, stirring India into ominous questioning, reviving memories of past glory in Persia, breeding discontent in Egypt, and luring ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... even if it were true, which he doubted. The Bines fortune was now hanging, as to all but some of the Western properties, on the turning of the three stocks. Yet the old man's confidence in the young man's acumen was invulnerable. No shaft that Percival was able to fashion had point enough to pierce it. And he was both to batter it down, for he still had the gambler's ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... there might be a need for fifty. They would have to destroy the Park utterly, even its mountains. And the fallout from so many atom bombs simply could not be risked. The invaders were effectively invulnerable. ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... borne down the stream in company with the earthen one, it was the object of her choice. Poor pipkin that Gilbert was, the contact had cost him a smashing blow, and for all clay of the more fragile mould, the best hope was to give the invulnerable material a wide berth. Talk of influence! Mr. Dusautoy might as well hope that a Wedgwood cream-jug would guide a copper cauldron and ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... firepots were hurled from the walls. The Christian towers did their work in the midst of flames, particularly the Tower of Godfrey, on whose roof a golden cross shone. The leaders fought amidst piles of their dead and seemed to be invulnerable themselves. Breaches were made in the walls behind which stood a living barricade of Saracens. An Egyptian emissary was caught, his message to the besieged squeezed from him, and his body was then hurled from a catapult into ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... vehement. But the lines of their passion were opposite. Hers was the primitive, crude, violent flux of the blood, emotional and undiscriminating, but wanting to mix and mingle. His was the hard, clear, invulnerable passion of the bones, finely tempered and unchangeable. She was the flint and he the steel. But in continual striking together they only destroyed each other. The fire was a third thing, belonging to ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... Brimfield secured the ball by inches on a fourth down near the middle of the field and her first desperate attack, a skin-tackle play with St. Clair carrying the pigskin, piled through for nearly ten yards, proving that Chambers was no longer invulnerable. Carmine, still in control, called for more speed and still more. The Maroon-and-Grey warriors fairly dashed to their positions after a play. Chambers called time for an injured guard and substituted two ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... before the Minie rifle and Whitworth cannon any more than the sickle can keep pace with the McCormick reaper, or the slow coach with the railway-car or the telegraph. Mail-clad steamers, impervious to shells and red-hot balls, and almost, if not quite, invulnerable by solid shot and balls from rifled cannon at the distance of a hundred yards, have been launched upon the deep, and already form an important part of the navies of France and England. They have been adopted by Russia, Austria, and Spain; and yet, although our country furnishes iron which has no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... self-complacency. He tapped his forehead and cried, "Trust to this. There is mind behind this surface. Your plan for releasing the schooner is great; mine for preserving the treasure is great too. You are the sailor, I the strategist; by combining our genius, we shall oppose an invulnerable front to adversity, and must end our days as ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... Indeed, she had done so from the first days she had seen Krool, and had endeavoured, without success, to induce Byng to send the man back to South Africa, and to leave him there last year when he went again to Johannesburg. It was the only thing in which Byng had proved invulnerable, and Krool had remained a menace which she vaguely felt and tried to conquer, which, in vain, Adrian Fellowes had endeavoured to remove. For in the years in which Fellowes had been Byng's secretary his relations with Krool seemed amiable and he had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and each mounting eighteen fifty-pounders, silenced the Russian fort at Kinburn. This was a lesson it would seem that any one might learn. Louis Napoleon did not fail to learn it. If a ship can be made invulnerable, or nearly so, in every part, then of what avail is that strategy which secures choice of position, and which, of old, almost decided the battle? Will not he come off victor who can produce guns from which the heaviest shot ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... horned bonnet is not an invulnerable shield against the arrows of death. Age and infirmities are more potent ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and whose approbation, therefore, must ensure it credit and success, the Life of Dr. Johnson is, with the greatest propriety, dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was the intimate and beloved friend of that great man; the friend, whom he declared to be 'the most invulnerable man he knew; whom, if he should quarrel with him, he should find the most difficulty how to abuse[54].' You, my dear Sir, studied him, and knew him well: you venerated and admired him. Yet, luminous as he was upon the whole, you perceived all the shades which mingled in the grand composition; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... of one blunt weapon, often enough stands agape at his own powerlessness before the invulnerable woman of his ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... and exchanged speaking glances with Julia. " However," she said calmly, "I have consulted Mr. Osmond and Dr. Short; but have not relied on them alone. I have taken her to Sir William Best. And to Dr. Chalmers. And to Dr. Kenyon." And she felt invulnerable behind her ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... this not account in some measure for the attitude assumed by the Empress Dowager towards the Boxer superstitions of 1900, and their pretentions to be able at will to call to their aid legions of spirit-soldiers, while at the same time they were themselves invulnerable to the bullets of ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... INVULNERABLE, and must be left, whether we relish it or not, in undisturbed enjoyment of his creed. Faith, says Tolstoy, is that by which men live. And faith-state and mystic state are practically ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... is bred a scholar, has the same effect that a good carriage of his person has on one who is to live in courts. The favour of women is so natural a passion, that I envied both the boys their success in the approbation of my guest; and I thought the only person invulnerable was my young trader. During the whole meal, I could observe in the children a mutual contempt and scorn of each other, arising from their different way of life and education, and took that occasion to advertise them of such growing distastes, which might ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... looked back at their work. No longer was the mighty plane unscathed, invulnerable, for now in its top gaped six great craters of incandescent metal that almost touched and coalesced. The great plane itself reeled, staggering, plunging downward; but long before it reached the hard soil below, it was brought into level flight, and ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... for compromise is the hopelessness of gaining anything better. This was the consideration urged so vehemently against the early Abolitionists. It was said: "Slavery is wrong—that we all admit—but it is a fixed fact, invulnerable, backed up by wealth, talent, pride and political influence, and all opposition is vain. You Abolitionists are mere sentimentalists, visionaries, doctrinaires." This had great influence with the indifferent, the timid, and especially with those who vaunt themselves ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... Bacchus,") to make speeches, and to march at the head of his company as a captain of volunteers, he will give you at once the why and because. He is the most zealous, the most conscientious, and the most invulnerable of total abstainers. There were days when he took tobacco: witness that portrait of himself, smoking a very long meerschaum pipe in "Love's Triumph," etched about 1845. There were times when he heard the chimes at midnight, and partook of that "richt gude willie ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... no more of that. Listen, dear girl, and follow my injunctions, as upon their strict observance depends our future happiness. To-morrow night I will conduct you to your poor deserted parent: together at his knees we will implore forgiveness. He will not be invulnerable to the tears and supplications of his child; and I will forget the wild dreams that have so long tyrannised over my kinder feelings, to fix all my thoughts upon love and Theodora. To the happy termination ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... than Soames had in that of his unseen master. What should a servant of Mr. King fear from the officers of the law? How puny a thing was the law in comparison with the director of that secret, powerful, invulnerable organization whereof to-day ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... this matter; and I was as perfectly easy as to the lawfulness of it as if I had been married to the prince and had had no other husband; so possible is it for us to roll ourselves up in wickedness, till we grow invulnerable by conscience; and that sentinel, once dozed, sleeps fast, not to be awakened while the tide of pleasure continues to flow, or till something dark and dreadful brings us ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... wrong, being so Maiesticall To offer it the shew of Violence, For it is as the Ayre, invulnerable, And our vaine ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... my pen does now. What! Captain Haskell? Our Captain dead? Who had ever thought that he might be killed? I now knew that I had considered him like Washington—invulnerable. He had passed through so many dangers unhurt, had been exposed to so many deaths that had refused to demand him, had so freely offered his life, had been so calm and yet so valiant in battle, had been so worshipped by all the left wing of the regiment and by the battalion, ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... my part to have remained quite silent, like the breeder; for, as Prof. Sedgwick remarked many years ago, in reference to the poor old Dean of York, who was never weary of inveighing against geologists, a man who talks about what he does not in the least understand, is invulnerable.") ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... without a tremor. He felt himself invulnerable—raised far above the shallowness of common judgment. Though he saw the Prince looking at him with black displeasure, the lucidity of his mind, of which he was very conscious, gave him an extraordinary assurance. He was not asked to ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... iSi vuelvo al mundo vivire soberanamente, sin que el velo de la preocupacion me oculte la felicidad, sin que la costumbre me aprisione entre sus redes! iQue invulnerable me hizo ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... surroundings, were placed for safety in the castrum puellarum, the maiden castle, a title in after days proudly (but perhaps not very justly) adapted to the supposed invulnerability of the fortress perched upon its rock. Very nearly invulnerable, however, it must have been in the days before artillery; too much so at least for one shut-up princess, who complained of her lofty prison as a place without verdure. If we may believe, notwithstanding the protest of that much-deceived antiquary the Laird of Monkbarns, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... and barked at her of course. Cui bono or malo? Why, like Job's mates, fill its poor belly with the east wind, or try to draw out leviathan with a hook, or his tongue with a cord thou lettest down? Yet who treads of the fight between invulnerable Achilles and heroic Hector, and admires Achilles? The admiral of the American fleet, sick of the premature pother, signaled the lazy solidity to return. The loathly monster, slowly, like a bull-dog wrenched ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... has she had to do with these Transatlantic Colonies of England? An unfortunate Country, if the English would but think; liable to be strangled at any time, for England's quarrels: the Achilles'-heel to invulnerable England; a sad function for Hanover, if it be a proud one, and amazingly lucrative to some Hanoverians. The Country is very dear to his Britannic Majesty in one sense, very dear to Britain in another! Nay Germany itself, through Hanover, is to be torn up by War for Transatlantic ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... but sure progress in restoring the ancient values of caste, based solely on natural qualification and not on birth. Every nation on earth has its own distinctive misery-producing karma to deal with and remove; India, too, with her versatile and invulnerable spirit, shall prove herself equal ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... rising of the dog-star, when neither the sun nor the moon shone, but an expiatory sacrifice of fruit and honey should previously have been offered to the earth. If this was carried out it had power to render the possessor invulnerable, to cure fevers, to eradicate poison, and to conciliate friendship. Notice also, that black hellebore, to be effective, was to be plucked not cut, and this with the right hand, which was then to be covered with a portion of the robe and secretly to be conveyed to the left ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... miracle performer to prove that he should not be destroyed; if he were, the earth would become overpopulated. With his bow and arrow and turquoise lance Naye{COMBINING BREVE}nezgani banished these curses from earth. He himself was invulnerable as he appeared before these monsters, for the reason that he always buried his veins near a tree before attacking them. After he had killed them all, he and his younger brother, Tubadzischi{COMBINING ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... were on a par with his own. Bujang was a quiet creature enough, drawn into the wicked plots of his brother and father-in-law, but they were bad to the core. A Seriff is supposed to be a descendant of the Prophet Mahomet, at any rate he is an Arab, and Messahore was said to be invulnerable and sacred in his person. He was a fine, handsome creature, with insinuating manners, but there was nothing more to say in his favour. He was at the bottom of every disturbance in the country, but was cunning enough to keep himself in the background. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... fleet gave occasion for Alexander to declare war against England. The war, however, which ensued between the two countries, amounted chiefly to a cessation of trade. England, protected by her fleet, was invulnerable; and Napoleon and Alexander both agreed that the only possible way of compelling England to assent to peace, was to shut her out from commerce with the rest of Europe. This was the origin of the famous continental system, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... the cross on the door made the inmates invulnerable, and when made with the finger on the breast it was ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... of a death ray! But they all stick to the same old plot. A merciless but well-meaning scientist, or hordes from a foreign planet, wipe out thousands of American citizens at one blow. Hundreds of airplanes are disintegrated before they discover that the enemy is invulnerable. An ultimatum in domineering tones gives the terror-stricken populace forty-eight hours in which to surrender. But, all unknown to the dastardly villains, an obscure young scientist labors to save his country and the girl he ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... like two telescopes on stands, and ran butt at each other like ram—goats, and quite as odoriferous, making the welkin ring again as their flint—hard skulls cracked together. Finding each other invulnerable in this direction, they closed, and began scrambling and biting and kicking, and tumbling over and over in the sand; while the skipper and I stood by cheering them on, and nearly suffocated with laughter. They never once struck with their closed fists ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... true that she was exceedingly wary, and had in her innumerable excursions gathered quite as much knowledge of the tricks of war as the most experienced scout, so that she felt almost intuitively the approach of danger. She had gradually become imbued with the idea that she was invulnerable. To-day, therefore, she moved along this dangerous trail with the greatest apparent nonchalance. Furthermore her thoughts so completely absorbed her that while ascending from the level of the Rito she unconsciously went on thinking of nothing else but of what Say Koitza had told ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... it was to no effort on her own part that the Queen-mother was indebted for the constant society of the monarch, but rather to the attractions of one of her maids of honour; and that for the first time in his life Louis XIII evinced symptoms of a passion to which he had hitherto been supposed invulnerable. Mademoiselle de Hautefort, the object of this apparent preference, was remarkable rather for intellect than beauty; her conversational powers were considerable, her mind well cultivated, and her judgment sound. She was, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... his leaping and bounding and howling, and dropped on the snow in a limp, lifeless heap, dead as last summer's lily-pads. One of the quills had driven straight through his left eye and into his brain. Was it any wonder if in time the Porcupine came to think himself invulnerable? ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... could do with tools whose handles were not of ash. Hence the reason that ash wood is generally used for tool handles. It was upon ash branches that witches were enabled to ride through the air; and those who ate on St. John's eve the red buds of the tree, were rendered invulnerable to witch influence. ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... and my fellowes Are ministers of Fate, the Elements Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well Wound the loud windes, or with bemockt-at-Stabs Kill the still closing waters, as diminish One dowle that's in my plumbe: My fellow ministers Are like-invulnerable: if you could hurt, Your swords are now too massie for your strengths, And will not be vplifted: But remember (For that's my businesse to you) that you three From Millaine did supplant good Prospero, Expos'd ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... thou hast kindled in my heart, Millions of slaves from many a dungeon damp Shall leap in joy, as the benumbing cramp Of ages leaves their limbs—no ill may harm Thy Cythna ever—truth its radiant stamp 1060 Has fixed, as an invulnerable charm, Upon her children's brow, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... offensively said; but the conviction it expressed was absolute. Sweetwater recognised the tone, as one of truth, and inwardly laid down his arms. He could never like the man; there was too much iron in his fibre; but he had to acknowledge that as a foe he was invulnerable and therefore admirable to one who had the good sense ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... the cruelty of the convoy officer when he refused places on the carts to those who asked for them, and paid no attention to the fact that there was a woman in travail in the train. All these people were evidently invulnerable and impregnable to the simplest feelings of compassion only because they held offices. "As officials they were impermeable to the feelings of humanity, as this paved ground is impermeable to the rain." Thus thought Nekhludoff as he looked at the railway embankment paved with stones of different ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... enchantment, their world is turned to dust. Like Tantalus they stretch lips and hands towards a water for ever vanishing, a fruit for ever withdrawn. At war with empty phantoms, they 'strike with their spirit's knife,' as Shelley has it, 'invulnerable nothings,' Dizzy and lost they move about in worlds not only unrealized, but unrealizable, 'children crying in the night, with no language but a cry,' and no father to cry to. And in all this blind confusion the only comfort vouchsafed is that somehow or other ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... assumptions, and to Deify errors on no other authority than their own heated imaginations, has in all ages been the practice of Theologians. Of that practice they are proud, as was the mouse of our Fabulist. Clothed in no other panoply than their own conceits; they deem themselves invulnerable. While uttering the wildest incoherencies their self-complacency remains undisturbed. They remind one of that ambitious crow who, thinking more highly of himself than was quite proper, strutted so proudly ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... Edwards' troop, which was in the van. This gave the soldiers their chance. They instantly responded with a volley, and Captain Edwards' troop charged. The fight lasted but a minute or two, for Sword-Bearer was struck by a bullet and fell, and as he had boasted himself invulnerable, and promised that his warriors should be invulnerable also if they would follow him, the hearts of the latter became as water and they broke in every direction. One of the amusing, though irritating, incidents ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... hemisphere. "The United States," said the Secretary, "is practically sovereign on this continent and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition.... Its infinite resources, combined with its isolated position, render it master of the situation and practically invulnerable against any ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... a slow cold strength pouring into all his veins. It was as though his enemies, in thinking to mix a mortal poison, had rendered him invulnerable. He bent over her ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... army, sustained with heroic firmness the efforts of his enemies. Resolved to fall with arms in his hand, he rushed on the battalions, and carried terror and death into the midst of their ranks. But his valour could only ennoble his fall. Still repulsed, still invulnerable, he relinquished the hope of meeting death or victory. In the night of the 19th of March he returned to Naples: the Queen appeared indignant at seeing him. "Madame," said he to her, "I was not able to find death." He departed immediately, that he might not fall into ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... not live. A robot exists. We newer models do not require shelter like an animal. We are rust-proof and invulnerable." He strode over to my micro-library, several racks of carefully arranged spools, and fingered them ...
— B-12's Moon Glow • Charles A. Stearns
... that it was some person associated with them—some one who became conscience-stricken. Ah! M'sieur Biddulph, if you only knew the marvellous cunning of that invulnerable gang. Had it not been for that informant, they would still be operating—in open defiance of the police of Europe. Criminal methods, if expert, only fail for want of funds. Are not some of our wealthiest financiers mere ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... invulnerable— what would I give to be invulnerable? and egad, I am almost weary of being a Man, and subject to beating: wou'd I were a Woman, a Man has but an ill time on't: if he has a mind to a Wench, the making Love is so plaguy tedious— then paying is ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... idealism which the generations had bred. He understood, while he looked down on her white hair and unlined face, that even if he took her with him to that basement room, she would see it not as it actually was, but as she wished it to be. Her romanticism was invulnerable because it had no contact, even through imagination, ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... to Manannan—his armour and sword, the one making the wearer invulnerable, the other terrifying all who beheld it; his horse and canoe; his swine, which came to life again when killed; his magic cloak; his cup which broke when a lie was spoken; his tablecloth, which, when waved, produced food. Many of these are found ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... every part of the structure, a number of pumps being adapted to afford an unlimited supply. It was thus believed that these terrible machines, capable of inflicting destruction, would themselves be invulnerable. The largest carried 21 guns, and their complement of men was 36 for each gun in use, exclusive of officers and mariners for ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... boiling pot, and the breast section followed it promptly. Three or four minutes after the bowl of rice was placed immediately in front of the man, and the breast part of the chicken laid in the bowl on the rice. Then followed these words: "Now the gall is good, we shall live in the pueblo invulnerable to disease." ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... remember the story. Like to the heel of Achilles, I say, that axe would be the only gate by which death could enter his invulnerable flesh, or rather it alone could make ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... Godefroid, "I am not afraid of robbers, for the same reasons that make those gentlemen invulnerable; and I despise life so heartily that if I were murdered by mistake I should ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... not even now see what I could have done save endure. To have struggled with him in the street, or to have exacted any lower recompense from him than his heart's best blood, would have been futile and degrading. Moreover, he was a boy whom no man could hurt; an invulnerable and dodging serpent who, when chased into a corner, flew out again between his captor's legs, scornfully yelping. I wrote, however, to Mr. Trabb by next day's post, to say that Mr. Pip must decline to deal further with one who could so far forget what he owed to the best interests of ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... self-improvement. In 1733 he began the acquisition of languages, teaching himself to read French fluently, and then passing on to Italian and Spanish. Chess was always a favorite amusement with him; and we can imagine the grave philosopher playing a cautious and invulnerable game, with now and then, when least expected, a brilliant sally. But his conscience seems always to have protested against the waste of time involved, and he now made use of the game to forward his studies. With his favorite antagonist he agreed that the victor ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... Bergenheim. Seated up on the bench as proudly as a queen upon her throne, with shining eyes, scornful lips, and arms tightly folded under her cashmere shawl, with that haughty gesture familiar to her, the young woman looked as invulnerable under this light wrap as if she had been covered with Ajax's shield, formed, if we can credit Homer, of seven bulls' hides and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... length picture of Lord Errol, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. This led Dr. Johnson and me to talk of our amiable and elegant friend, whose panegyrick he concluded by saying, 'Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir, is the most invulnerable man I know; the man with whom if you should quarrel, you would find the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... of his enemies. Among other frivolous crimes objected to him, he was accused of gaining the king's affections by enchantment, and of purloining from the royal treasury a gem, which had the virtue to render the wearer invulnerable, and of sending this valuable curiosity to the Prince of Wales [k]. The nobility, who hated Hubert on account of his zeal in resuming the rights and possessions of the crown, no sooner saw the opportunity favourable, than they inflamed the king's animosity against him, and pushed ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... often been some ardent Mullah going up and down the frontier, like Peter the Hermit, inciting them to break out. The notorious Mullah Powindah, who is still a firebrand on the border, is reported to possess a magical charm that renders his followers invulnerable before English bullets. Whether he led them in person to battle is not mentioned; though he could hardly adopt the excuse of Friar John, who, as Rabelais tells us, made a liberal distribution of mirific amulets ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... The religious aspect of the Boxer movement gave it strength. Its disciples believed that the spirits which defended China were incensed by the introduction of Western methods and ideals. Many of them believed themselves to be invulnerable to any Western weapon. (See Lord W. Cecil, Changing China, 1910, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... metals armor plate has been made invulnerable—except to projectiles pointed with similar material. Flying has been made possible through engines weighing no more than two pounds per horse power. The cylinders of combustion engines and the casing of cannon have been made to withstand the unprecedented pressure and corrosive ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... the long series of triumphs in which British valour and British resolution had again and again proved themselves invulnerable to the assaults of overwhelming numbers. They thought of the glories of the Peninsula, of the unbreakable strength of the thin red line at Waterloo, of the magnificent madness of Balaclava, and the invincible steadiness and discipline ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... no comment, nor altered in the minutest detail his manner. If ever a human being played the game, it was How Landor. With a blindness that was masterly, that was all but fatuous, he ignored the obvious. His equanimity and patience were invulnerable. Silent by nature, he grew fairly loquacious in an effort to be companionable. Probably no white man alive would have done as he did, would have borne what he did; perhaps it would have been better had he done differently; ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... and was viewed by the Rebel soldiers in both forts, who were now out of range of our guns, and lined the walls. Few audiences have ever witnessed so imposing a sight. The great ram came on for a single-handed contest with the fleet. She was believed to be invulnerable, and had powerful double engines by which she could be easily handled; while our monitors were so slow-gaited that they were unable to offer any serious obstacle to her approach. Farragut himself seemed ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... he was made of bronze and in these he was invulnerable. But beneath a sinew in his ankle there was a vein that ran up to his neck and that was covered by a thin skin. If that vein ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... Charles's prescience. The fame of Sir Charles Dilke in the realm of industrial legislation will mount high, but to trade- unionists nothing will endear his memory more than the knowledge that, if and in so far as they have now a charter invulnerable alike to the prejudice and the caprice of those who administer the law, it is largely due to the clear vision of Sir Charles Dilke, and to the skill and invincible courage with which ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... during the operations before Toulon he had had three horses killed under him, and showed Las Cases a great scar on his thigh which he said had been received in a bayonet charge at Toulon. "Men wondered at the fortune which kept me invulnerable; I always concealed my dangers in mystery." The hypothesis of his insignificance appears unlikely when we examine the memoirs written by his contemporaries, and consider the precise traditions of a later generation; it becomes untenable in view of what happened on ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... these things at the nation's expense as freely and lightly as the jewels he had tossed into her lap, or the collar of pearls worth sixteen hundred pounds he had put about her neck. The offers were ineffectual, and Charles, driven almost to distraction by such invulnerable virtue, might now have yielded to the insidious whispers of divorce and re-marriage had not my Lady Castlemaine taken a hand ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... heavy as the losses were, the Confederates took but one prisoner. At the third charge a tall, broad-shouldered captain, who seemed, like another son of Thetis, almost invulnerable, darted impetuously ahead of his men and reached the summit of the defence. Useless bravery! In an instant a volley point blank swept away the charging men behind him, and a gunner's sabrethrust bore him to the ground within the works, where he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... discernment ripe enough to perceive her raillery or as if he were not of consequence sufficient to be taken seriously, offended his vanity; and the man whom the devil cannot conquer through his vanity is invulnerable. Wynne had no answer now for the words of Mrs. Staggchase. He contented himself with a glance not entirely free from ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... to make astrology invulnerable to the blows of reason and of common sense, was the fact that in reality, the apparent rigor of its calculus and its theorems notwithstanding, it was not a science but a faith. We mean not only that {170} it implied belief in postulates that could not be proved—the same thing ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... led her out to her splendid carriage! In such guise I should have adored her. I endowed her with all the pride she lacked, stripped her of her virtues, her natural simple charm, and frank smile, in order to plunge her heart in our Styx of depravity that makes invulnerable, load her with our crimes, make of her the fantastical doll of our drawing-rooms, the frail being who lies about in the morning and comes to life again at night with the dawn of tapers. Pauline was fresh-hearted and affectionate—I would have ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... rage which bedewed our continent in behalf of the "average American girl" supposed to be satirized in Daisy Miller, and prevented the perception of the fact that, so far as the average American girl was studied at all in Daisy Miller, her indestructible innocence, her invulnerable new-worldliness, had never been so delicately appreciated. It was so plain that Mr. James disliked her vulgar conditions, that the very people to whom he revealed her essential sweetness and light were furious that he should have seemed not to see what existed ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... are the most marvellous. The salamander originates from a fire of myrtle wood[156] which has been kept burning for seven years steadily by means of magic arts. Not bigger than a mouse, it yet is invested with peculiar properties. One who smears himself with its blood is invulnerable,[157] and the web woven by it is a talisman against fire.[158] The people who lived at the deluge boasted that, were a fire flood to come, they would protect themselves with the blood ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... gods, displayed a valor at least equal to that of the Spaniards. Numbers were slightly in their favor, but this was far more than counter-balanced by the superior arms of the Spaniards; and by the armor, which rendered them almost invulnerable to the comparatively puny weapons of the Mexicans. And yet, for three hours the fight continued. At the end of that time, all the Mexicans, save two or three priests, were killed; while forty-five of the Spaniards had fallen, and almost all the ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... the Russian 32-pound and 18-pound shot and shell dropped into the sea from the iron plating of the French ships. Whatever injury was sustained was caused by the entrance of shot and splinters through the portholes. Unable to withstand the well-directed fire of their invulnerable enemy, the Russians hoisted the white flag, after having lost 45 killed and 130 wounded. The allies lost but two killed and had but forty-five wounded—all on board the armored ships. "Everything may be expected of these ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... the trail of Sublette's party. Five white men and one halfbreed were killed, and several wounded. Seven of the Nez Perces were also killed, and six wounded. They had an old chief, who was reputed as invulnerable. In the course of the action he was hit by a spent ball, and threw up blood; but his skin was unbroken. His people were now fully convinced that he was proof against powder ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... Fergusano; and so far is this glorious hero bewitched with these sorcerers, that he puts his whole trust in these conjurations and charms; and so far they have imposed on him, that with an enchanted ointment, which they had prepared for him, he shall be invulnerable, though he should face the mouth of a cannon: they have, at the earnest request of Hermione, calculated his nativity, and find him born to be a king; and, that before twenty moons expire, he shall be crowned in France: and flattering his easy ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... Arjuna after having been to the celestial regions, had there obtained celestial weapons from Indra himself then, O Sanjaya, I had no hope of success. When I heard that afterwards Arjuna had vanquished the Kalakeyas and the Paulomas proud with the boon they had obtained and which had rendered them invulnerable even to the celestials, then, O Sanjaya, I had no hope of success. When I heard that Arjuna, the chastiser of enemies, having gone to the regions of Indra for the destruction of the Asuras, had returned thence successful, then, O Sanjaya, I had no hope of success. When I heard that Bhima ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... bristling with lances, glittering with shields, whence rang a ceaseless clamor like the waves of the sea. A huge shield covered them to their feet, and, when they fought in retreat, they turned this enormous buckler on their backs and became (p. 035) invulnerable. The fury of the battle frenzied them. They were never seen to surrender. When victory was lost they stabbed themselves, for they believed that those who died by the hand of an enemy were condemned to serve him in ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... the ideas at the basis of Emerson's philosophy, and it is fair to speak of them in this place because they antedate everything else which we know of him. They had been for years in his mind before he spoke at all. It was in the armor of this invulnerable idealism and with weapons like shafts of light that he came ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... 9th to 13th, 1917, the Canadian corps, with some British support, captured Vimy Ridge, a point which had hitherto proved invulnerable. When a year later, the Germans, north and south, swept the British line to one side in gigantic thrusts they were unable to disturb this key point, Vimy Ridge, which served as an anchor to the sagging ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... another arrow, fitted it to the notch of the bow and let fly. Again the arrow hit the mark, it struck the centipede right in the middle of its head, only to glance off and fall to the ground. The centipede was invulnerable to weapons! When the Dragon King saw that even this brave warrior's arrows were powerless to kill the centipede, he lost heart and began ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... not invulnerable to these wounds; how, then, can I, an orphan girl, receive them with indifference?" She spoke passionately, and drooped her burning face till it touched ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... rhetorically (a kind of honesty on which Wamba or Launcelot Gobbo shall put the gloss for us). Nay, even those to whom Goethe and Byron are not the ideal of modern poetry may retort that Mephistopheles—that even Faust himself—is a much more "interesting" person than the sulky invulnerable son of Thetis, while Gulnare, Parisina, and others are not much worse than Dido. But these are mere details. The main purpose of the Preface is to assert in the most emphatic manner the Aristotelian ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... motionless, and was now looking down. Lady Ingleton positively hated the sister's dress at that moment. She thought of it as a sort of armor in which her visitor was encased, an armor which rendered her invulnerable. What shaft could penetrate that smooth black and white, that flowing panoply, and reach the heart Lady Ingleton desired to pierce? Suddenly Lady Ingleton felt cruel. She longed to tear away from Rosamund all the religion which seemed to be protecting her; she longed ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... or battlement; and the combatants, as they struggled in mortal agony, were sometimes seen to roll over the sheer sides of the precipice together. Cortes himself had a narrow escape from this dreadful fate.... The number of the enemy was double that of the Christians; but the invulnerable armor of the Spaniard, his sword of matchless temper, and his skill in the use of it, gave him advantages which far outweighed the odds of physical ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson |
