"Irresistible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into an irresistible trill of laughter. The South Wellmouth station agent joined her. Galusha smiled in a fatherly fashion upon ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... me that there is an irresistible tendency in the Negro mind in this land to dwell morbidly and absorbingly upon the servile past. The urgent needs of the present, the fast-crowding and momentous interests of the future appear to be forgotten. Duty for to-day, ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... But there is such a calm conviction on M. de Chatelain's part that he is doing his work faultlessly, that, in view of the ludicrous errors, additions and variations with which his text abounds, the effect is irresistible. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Love is a powerful bond, which, when cherished, will make those who are bound together by it irresistible. ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... loyalty on her part, for none knew so well as he how the townspeople looked upon their attachment. A most satisfying promise for the future, he gloated; here was the proof that she loved him, that her tantalizing outbursts of temper were not to be taken seriously, that his power over her was irresistible. There were times when he felt uncomfortably dubious as to his hold upon her affections. She was whimsical, perverse, maddening in her sudden transitions of mood. And she had threatened more than once to have nothing more to do with him unless he mended his ways! Now he smiled ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... on that point, my good sir," said Angioletto, cracking a walnut; "your sword shall fly the length of the room. I have a pass that is irresistible. You ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... this remarkable man the purest impulses of an ideal humanity conflicted strangely with a savagery entirely inimical to all civilisation, so that my feelings during my intercourse with him fluctuated between involuntary horror and irresistible attraction. I frequently called for him to share my lonely wanderings. This he gladly did, not only for the sake of necessary bodily exercise, but also because he could do so in this part of the world without fear of meeting his pursuers. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... her, and showed as plainly as they could—and how plainly women can show things when they like!—that they were eager to welcome her into the county's social circle; and it required no effort on their part, for Nell's charm, which Drake had found so potent, was irresistible. There was some playing and singing, and the countess wanted Nell to do one or the other; but she shook ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... recognized him with an exchange of consciousness. Then, as if compelled by an irresistible importance in their topic, they began again; that is, one of them began to talk again, and the other to listen, and Gaites from almost the first word joined the listener with all his might, though he diligently held up his paper between himself and the ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... sense-impressions and ideas to lie in the greater vividness of the former, so did they; only Hume saw no necessity to go beyond the impression, whereas the Stoics did. Certain impressions, they maintained, carried with them an irresistible conviction of their own reality, and this, not merely in the sense that they existed; but also that they were referable to an external cause. These were called "gripping phantasies." Such a phantasy did not ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... February, or early in the Spring, when the overcharged rivers, bursting their boundaries and overflowing the neighboring lowlands, sometimes occasion great damage to property, sweeping away bridges, and mills, and dams, with irresistible violence. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... for that influence which should mould the character, guide the opinions, and form the tastes of his child. The other guardian was a clergyman, his father's private tutor and heart-friend; scarcely his parent's senior, but exercising over him irresistible influence, for he was a man of shining talents and abounding knowledge, brilliant and profound. But unhappily, shortly after Lothair became an orphan, this distinguished man seceded from the Anglican ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... injustice; yet it does not arithmetically violate the rule that taxation ought to be in proportion to means. When it is said that a temporary income ought to be taxed less than a permanent one, the reply is irresistible that it is taxed less: for the income which lasts only ten years pays the tax only ten years, while that which lasts forever pays forever. The claim in favor of terminable incomes does not rest on grounds of arithmetic, but of human wants and feelings. It is ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... we are, as it seems to me, led up by a train of reasoning which is positively irresistible to the idea that, so far from matter being the only existence, it has no existence of its own apart from some mind which knows it—in which and for which it exists. The existence of a Mind possessing universal knowledge ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... speaking, however, I, as thousands—nay, millions —of others had done, succumbed to the magic of his eloquence and the irresistible logic of his brilliant mind; and I must here confess that never before or since have I heard a more masterful, a more inspired, plea for the integrity of the Union and the indivisibility of the Nation than Senator Douglas ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... aimed against precocious youths who gave themselves the airs of manhood before their time. "Does your mother know you're out?" was the provoking query addressed to young men of more than reasonable swagger, who smoked cigars in the streets, and wore false whiskers to look irresistible. We have seen many a conceited fellow who could not suffer a woman to pass him without staring her out of countenance, reduced at once into his natural insignificance by the mere utterance of this phrase. Apprentice lads and shopmen in their Sunday clothes held the words in abhorrence, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... backs up, flows over the banks and fills up all the summer fish ponds along the shore. Some of it forces its way through, foaming into a white spray. By-and-bye, under the combined influence of the rushing water and the ever increasing weight of the ice, the gorge gives way and the irresistible floes pass on with a mighty crash to their dissolution in the summery waters away down the Mississippi. After many months of shrouded death this new life of the river is also a ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... disheartened. If she saw the rocks ahead, against whose fatal shoulders she was being swept—if she heard, dinning in her ears, the rush and roar of the headlong, irresistible rapids—if her eyes could penetrate the void which opened darkly beyond—she only nerved herself the more resolutely, her glance was all the firmer, her determination the ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... irresistible impulse to hug her with both arms again, and they happened to be on the verge of the river current. Hardacre and Finlayson both shouted, "Look out, sir!" but he was not looking out—his sailor eyes were otherwise occupied, and so he did not perceive the ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... very easy to adopt the appropriate attitude towards him. For Denis was good-natured and cheerful and never conceited at all, nor vain when there was anything more to the purpose for him to be; qualities which have an irresistible fascination in distinguished personages and make their followers' duty a pleasure. It was wonderful how his sojourn enlivened everybody, even his mournful little old grandmother, whose gratification expressed ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... expressed by the Greeks, under the personality of Athena. You would, perhaps, hardly bear with me if I endeavored further to show you—what is nevertheless perfectly true—the analogy between the spiritual power of Athena in her gentle ministry, yet irresistible anger, with the ministry of anther Spirit whom we also, holding for the universal power of life, are forbidden, at our worst peril, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... peasants, who are happiest when they sing in the minor mode. Kullak calls this "a bravura study for velocity and lightness in both hands. Accentuation fiery!" while Von Bulow believes that "the irresistible interest inspired by the spirited content of this truly classical and model piece of music may become a stumbling block in attempting to conquer the technical difficulties." Hardly. The technics of this composition do not lie beneath the surface. ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... majority of the crew got safely into the long boat, and the Girdlestones, with Miggs and four seamen, occupied the gig. It was no easy thing to prevent the boats from being stove, as the waves alternately drove them from the ship's side or brought the two together with a force which seemed irresistible. By skilful management, however, they both succeeded in casting off ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... true opposite of synergism is not Calvinism with its double election, irresistible grace, denial of universal redemption, etc., but the monergism of grace, embracing particularly the tenets that in consequence of Adam's fall man is spiritually dead and utterly unable to contribute in any degree or ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... evolution. * * * * From this point of view it is easy to conclude that "whatever is, is right." * * * * If we accept this belief in the beneficent and progressive character of all natural processes, the conclusion is irresistible that nature's methods should ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... undermined at their base by warmer water or reiterated shocks their centre of gravity rises, and the whole thing turns over. This is what has happened; one of these blocks, as it fell, struck the Nautilus, then, gliding under its hull, raised it with irresistible force, bringing it into beds which are not so thick, where it is lying ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... its irresistible attractions, in an incredibly brief space of time made Bridge in this country a game of the past, the only Auction laws available had been drafted in London by a joint committee of the Portland and Bath Clubs. They were taken from the rules ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... that which, she was well persuaded, the Marchese could alone offer to her;—had revealed it to her, not in obedience to any moral principle; not by any what-do-you-take-me-for process of indignant virtue; but by an instinctive feeling irresistible and not to be gainsayed, that the love she had to bestow must possess its object wholly and entirely, or not at all. It was quite a matter of course that Ludovico would marry some lady in his rank of life. She was not ignorant of the position in which he stood with regard to the Contessa Violante. ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... in a darkened place, tempted him, aroused impulses nearly irresistible. Her slender figure, the pretty face, grown familiar and more desirable through all these years, swept him to a harsher revolt than he had conquered in the library. In the face of Graham, in spite of his own intolerable position he knew he ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... hand. Then his laugh bursts through his fingers, so to speak, grows in intensity, becomes irresistible, and passes into a whine. The crowd begins to fill the stage, concealing the body, Speransky, and Tony. The bells are rung in the monastery as at Easter, and at the same time the singing of thousands of ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... not read in the lines of her forehead that she was coveting for Fernand the honors and the wealth of Felipe! When I said so to her, she would reply with tears, laying bare the wounds of a heart, which of right was the undivided property of both her sons, but which an irresistible passion gave ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... are assembled is a charter of limited powers. After full and solemn deliberation upon all or any of the objects which, urged by an irresistible sense of my own duty, I have recommended to your attention should you come to the conclusion that, however desirable in themselves, the enactment of laws for effecting them would transcend the powers committed to you by that venerable instrument which we are all bound to support, let no consideration ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams • John Quincy Adams
... we reflect that it is really little more than a revising assembly, elected by the same voters as the House of Representatives to deal with the same questions, and having no special functions of its own, the conclusion seems irresistible that the election must be contested by the same national parties, and that the same method of ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... attachment for a village beauty, who did not return his love. He makes no concealment of his rebuff, but appears to enjoy discoursing in a sentimental way upon his disappointment. He wears such an air of meek resignation when he speaks of his cruel fair one that the effect is quite irresistible, and I find it difficult to accord him that sympathy which his unhappy fate demands. Fortunately for him, his troubles, deep-seated as they are, appear to have very little effect upon his appetite. He sits down ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the dimly lighted hall into the brilliant cage of the elevator. It dropped, silently, swiftly, to the ground floor, somehow suggesting to the girl the workings of her implacable, irresistible destiny. So precisely, she felt, she was being whirled on to her fate, like a dry leaf in a gale, with no more volition, as impotent ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... administrator, Frederic had undoubtedly many titles to praise. Order was strictly maintained throughout his dominions. Property was secure. A great liberty of speaking and of writing was allowed. Confident in the irresistible strength derived from a great army, the King looked down on malcontents and libellers with a wise disdain; and gave little encouragement to spies and informers. When he was told of the disaffection of one of his subject, he merely asked, "How many thousand men can he bring into the field?" He once ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... given her. It was her twentieth birthday, so she seized the excuse for wearing the precious ornament which generally lay locked in its painted casket on the shelf at her bed head. It was not at herself she gazed, but the ever-changing gleam of the shells was irresistible. How well she remembered that evening when in the moonlight under the elder tree at Garthowen, Gethin had held them out to her, with a dawning love in his eyes, and her heart had bounded towards him with that strong impulse, which alas! she now knew was love!—love that permeated ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... Yet the temptation was irresistible. Mother Moscow, as runs the caressing Russian phrase, is indeed the source of all Muscovite inspiration. Watered by the winding stream of the same name, its heart is the Kremlin, its citadel of Russian architecture, Russian orthodoxy, Russian authority, and Russian learning. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Remember in what plight Louis de Bourbon enters the battle for Christ and fatherland!' Then, lowering his head, he charges with his three hundred horse upon the eight hundred lances of the Duke of Anjou. The first shock of this charge was irresistible; such for a moment was the disorder amongst the Catholics that many of them believed the day was lost; but fresh bodies of royalists arrive one after another. The prince has his horse killed under him; and, in the midst of the confusion, hampered by his wounds, he cannot ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... hours of relaxation and cleaning may be indispensable to the effective performance of their harder labours, but while looking at them, the conclusion that the ants were engaged merely in play was irresistible. ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... mildness was always irresistible. "If that's all he told you I said about him," I replied, "he didn't do justice to my remarks." And I explained that I had described Penrose as "a lying, oily hypocrite," come to advise the Idaho Mormons that the Presidency wished them to vote a certain ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... Sulla was seized with a violent and irresistible desire to take Athens, whether it was that he was ambitious to contend against a city which retained only the shadow of its former glory, or that he was moved by passion to revenge the scoffs and jeers with which the tyrant Aristion ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... orders of creatures, cases in which the nature is constitutionally so modified that altruistic activities have become one with egoistic activities, there is an irresistible implication that a parallel identification will, under parallel conditions, take place among human beings. Social insects furnish us with instances completely to the point,—and instances showing us, indeed, to what a marvelous degree the life of the individual may be absorbed ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... that line of conduct he had marked out to himself, than that he had undertaken to defend the deviation, and exerted himself to unlearn principles that did him honour. You profess to believe that indulgences of this sort are unavoidable, and the temptations to them irresistible. And is man then reduced to a par with the brutes? Is there a single passion of the soul, that does not then cease to be blameless, when it is no longer directed and restrained by the dictates of reason? A thousand ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... and almost whispered the words in his ear. Her hand covered his fingers caressingly. His forehead touched the lace upon her robe and he could hear her heart beating. An impulse almost irresistible came upon him to take her in his arms and hold her there, and find in her embrace that knowledge of the perfect womanhood which had been his dream through the years. He knew not ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... fissures so tiny that they are hardly noticeable. Yet in time they will rend the rock asunder and firmly hold a stately tree. Now the seed of the gospel has been fairly lodged in the Chinese Empire. It is a seed of indestructible vitality and irresistible transforming power. It has taken root, and it is destined to produce mighty changes. It was not without reason that Christianity was spoken of as a force that "turned the world upside down,'' though it only does this where the world was wrong side up. ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... study. The only answer is that the irregularities of human nature—those more shameful parts of it, which in some characters survive the generations of social pressure that have crushed them down in civilised communities—had an irresistible attraction for the curiosity of his genius. The whole story is full of power; it abounds in phrases that have the stamp of genius; and suppressed vehemence lends to it strength. But it is fatally wanting in the elements of tenderness, beauty, and sympathy. If we chance ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... perseverance in an unequal combat could only have arisen from one of two motives—either from an opinion that a ship of such magnitude, as they had never before beheld, could only be come to their coast to take their country from them; or an irresistible temptation to endeavour, at all hazards, to possess themselves of so valuable a prize. Be that as it may, the dread inspired by the effects of the cannon, and perhaps a conviction of the truth of what had been explained to them, that the 'strangers wanted only provisions and water,' had the ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... known that Guy was refused anything he had a mind to ask. Charlton, though taken by surprise, and certainly not too much prepossessed in his favour, was won by an influence that, where its owner chose to exert it, was generally found irresistible; and not only accepted the invitation, but was conscious to himself of doing it with a good deal of pleasure. Even when Mr. Carleton made the further request that Captain Rossitur would, in the meantime, see no one on business of any kind, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... conversation upon the subject of female sovereigns, and the duties of their sex and rank; and then applying her general reflections to herself in particular, told them that she hoped to guard herself all her life against weaknesses of the heart; but that if ever an irresistible feeling should make her alter her resolution, it should be only in favour of a man proof against ambition, not engaged in State affairs, but attached only to a private life and its calm enjoyments,—in a word, if her heart should ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... thoughts drove through his brain on this Indian-summer night, they all merged into the one obsession that he could no longer stay. The irresistible logic of the brain stretched to an abnormal tenuity, and an intolerable brightness was with him. He was in the throes of that intense visualization which comes with insomnia, when one is awake yet apart from the waking world, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a wall; there is a world between them! It is his 'credo' against their 'ignoro'; it is, his 'expecto' against their 'non video'. Yet in his 'credo' there lies a power of which they do not dream; and it rings out in a trumpet note across the centuries, saluting the life force that opposes its irresistible "I will" to the feeble "Thou canst not" of the worldly-wise. Thus, in about the year 1483, did three learned men sit in judgment upon our ignorant Christopher. Three learned men: Doctors Rodrigo, Joseph the Jew, and the ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... in his manner. Nature had endowed him liberally with virile fascination. My hard uncongenial life had rendered me weak. He was drawing me to him; he was irresistible. Yes; I would be his wife. I grew dizzy, and turned my head sharply backwards and took a long gasping breath, another and another, of that fresh cool air suggestive of the grand old sea and creak of cordage and bustle and strife of life. ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... inherited all his father's love of money, joined to an irresistible passion for everything that he called pleasure; and as he was already continually quarrelling with his younger brother, who was as continually impertinent to him, George's prospect in life was not particularly bright. As to turning his mind to any useful ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... The temptation to push farther and farther to the east was almost irresistible, but with the young ice forming rapidly around them, Scott, on February 1, decided to return, and on their way back along the barrier they experienced much lower temperatures than on the outward journey. During the return journey they landed ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... to seize the only advantage they possessed, the advantage of time, and to smite before their enemy was ready. It was therefore, only in a technical or formal sense that they can be said to have begun the war; for a weak State, which sees its enemy approach with a power that will soon be irresistible, has only two alternatives, to submit or to attack at once. In such a quarrel the responsibility does not necessarily rest with those who strike first. It rests with those whose action has ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... more valiant attempts. A parlour billiard-table, standing against the wall, supplied an irresistible topic. "We have a full-size table at home," he said, and could have mutilated his tongue that instant. "I like a small one best," he assured the doctor, who ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... irresistible. He stopped, and stepped into the magic cavern of darkness, gleaming with the forge-fire, where George Lobban, the smith, having hammered a glowing horseshoe into shape, gripped it with his pincers and flung it ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... to say, the love of money is founded first on the intenseness of desire for given things; a youth will rob the till, now-a-days, for pantomime tickets and cigars; the "strength" of the currency being irresistible to him, in consequence of his ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... natural and so continual in everything, that I have never seen any one approach her, either in form or mind. Her wit was copious and of all kinds: she was flattering, caressing, insinuating, moderate, wishing to please for pleasing's sake, with charms irresistible when she strove to persuade and win over; accompanying all this, she had a grandeur that encouraged instead of frightening; a delicious conversation, inexhaustible and very amusing, for she had seen many countries and persons; a voice and way of speaking extremely agreeable, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... obliged to paddle hard to maintain their position. Harold wondered at first that they had not kept closer to the island, but he soon understood their reason for keeping at a distance. The massive blocks of ice, pressed forward by, the irresistible force behind, began to shoot from the top of the island into the water, gliding far on beneath the surface with the impetus of the fall, and then shooting up again with a force which would have destroyed the canoe at once ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... as no one has ever ventured even to hint that he made money corruptly out of his official position—the conclusion is irresistible that he was a good business man and that he made farming pay, particularly ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... to resort to powerful means and attract you by the bait of the most fabulous enterprises. You must confess that my letter was jolly smart! The three rushes, the blue gown; simply irresistible! And, when I had thrown in a few puzzles of my own invention, such as the seventy-five beads of the necklace and the old woman with the silver rosary, I knew that you were bound to succumb to the temptation. Don't be angry with me. ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... had washed over him, with a naked head, and his grey hair glistening, shouted like a Stentor, "Haul in your fore-braces, boys! away with the yard, like a fiddlestick!" Every nerve was strained; the unwilling yards, pressed upon by an almost irresistible column of air, yielded slowly, and as the sail met the gale more perpendicularly, or at right angles to its surface, it dragged the vast hull through the sea with a power equal to that of a steam-engine. Ere another sea could follow, the Montauk was glancing through the ocean at ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... and arguments seemed irresistible. Still I held off. I was balancing between my wish to go and see Aunt Bretta at Southsea and the old lady and her niece at Plymouth, and trying to find my way back to my ship. I had an idea that the latter was the right thing to do. Still, unhappily, I had not ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... joy forever," even to retrospection,—haunting by their pure individuality the temple of memory, permanently enshrined in heartfelt admiration as illustrations of what is noble in man and woman, significant in history, powerful in expression, or irresistible in grace,—we feel what a world of varied interest is hinted by the very name of Sculpture. Through it the most just and clear idea of Grecian culture is revealed to the many. The solemn mystery of Egyptian and the grand scale of Assyrian civilization are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... crimson curtains near to the bandstand, a dignified figure all in white, emerged and tripped along the grassy way, halting now and then to gaze fixedly at some imaginary object just above the heads of those on the upper row of seats, the very drollery of which gaze was irresistible. ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Kelly could be quite irresistible when he chose, and he had evidently made up his mind to comfort the girl's forlornness so far as in him lay. She yielded to him with the air of being too indifferent to do otherwise. But Kelly had seen that moment's eagerness, and he built ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... resting on the tiniest of feet, with hands so charming that you would feel an almost irresistible desire to fold them caressingly within your own—the rich complexion of a brunette with the bloom of Hebe on her cheek—her hair like burnished jet—eyes large, lustrous and black—but (alas that there should be a but!) poor Ursula ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... relationship of the Sun to the Planets, and the telescopic discoveries of Galileo and of those who followed him, spread a spirit of inquiry and philosophic thought throughout Europe, and once more did astronomy rise in estimation; and the irresistible logic of its mathematical process of reasoning soon placed it in the position it has ever since occupied as the foremost ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... onslaught of this iron man. Round after round he scrambled his way in, slap-bang, right and left, every hit tremendously sent home. Sometimes he covered his own face with his left, and sometimes he disdained to use any guard at all, but his springing hits were irresistible. The rain lashed down upon them, pouring from their faces and running in crimson trickles over their bodies, but neither gave any heed to it save to manoeuvre always with the view of bringing it in to each ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have developed among us. We forgive and forget treason in our leaders and excuse their vacillation and weakness in every crisis. Now the youthful element should step forward, the young Norway, invincible in its indignation and irresistible in its strength. But the young Norway does not step forward; indeed no, we have mollycoddled it with hymns and rot about peace eternal; we have taught it to admire gentleness and submissiveness; ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... to herself the error, perhaps the madness, of her conduct. She was fascinated. She could not reason; she could not communicate to her father all that had happened. A thousand times her lips moved to reveal her secret; a thousand times an irresistible power restrained them. She remained silent, moody, and restless: she plucked flowers, and threw them to the wind: she gazed upon the sea, and watched the birds in abstraction wilder than their wing: and yet she would not doubt her betrothed. That voice so sweet ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... truths, once his comfort, now presented themselves before him in the clearest light; But they only served to drive him to distraction. They destroyed his ill-grounded hopes of escaping punishment; and dispelled by the irresistible brightness of Truth and convinction, Philosophy's deceitful vapours faded away ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... story and the other Tales of New Mexico, which Mr. Lummis has here supplied for the younger generation, have all his usual fascination. He knows how to tell his thrilling stories in a way that is irresistible? to ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... I had power in my hands! And then I felt the irresistible vocation within me! The prisoned millions lay all over the country, deep in the bowels of the earth, calling aloud to me! They shrieked to me to free them! But no one else heard their cry—I alone had ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... heave." The sergeant sat down suddenly as the bayonet came out, and immediately crawled to the subaltern. "There'll be another with him, sir, for a cert." The two peered over the bank towards the German lines, while drawn by an irresistible impulse Samuel crept towards the dead man. He peered into the distorted face, he looked at the still twitching body, and an uncontrollable fit of shuddering took him and gripped him. His knees knocked together; his tongue stuck to the roof of ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... in her prefaces to her sisters' novels that he appears, darkly. Charlotte, outraged by the infamous article in the Quarterly, was determined that what had been said of her should never be said of Anne and Emily. She felt that their works offered irresistible provocation to the scandalous reviewer. She thought it necessary to explain how they came by their ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... innocent and pure, leaving only acrid and sour matter which resists its influence. The effect produced by poisons on animals is still more plain to see: its malignity extends to every part that it reaches, and all that it touches is vitiated; it burns and scorches all the inner parts with a strange, irresistible fire. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... that which can thus keep account of its subjects, and which sees, from its seat, the limits of its empire. The caprices of the human will then show themselves in all their intolerable extravagance, and, moreover, with irresistible promptness. It is then, too, that inequality of conditions makes itself more rudely felt; riches, might, independence, every advantage and every right present themselves every instant to the gaze of misery, weakness, and servitude. The inhabitants of fiefs could ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... possible—those two conditions of the political life are repugnant to her ardent and devoted nature. Even amongst women in whom those gifts are met with in the highest degree, clearness of perception has been almost always obscured by the ardour of pursuit or that of patronage—by the irresistible desire of pushing to the extremity of success her own ideas, and especially those ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... compared. The gravest historians, as well as the lightest story tellers, frame their narrations for effect, and the tendency in all ages to shape and fashion the narrative with a view to the particular effect designed by the individual narrator to be produced has been found entirely irresistible. It is necessary to compare, with great diligence and careful scrutiny, a great many different accounts, in order to learn how little there is to be exactly ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... a beautiful day in our early New Zealand autumn. For a week past, a furious north-westerly gale had been blowing down the gorges of the Rakaia and the Selwyn, as if it had come out of a funnel, and sweeping across the great shelterless plains with irresistible force. We had been close prisoners to the house all those days, dreading to open a door to go out for wood or water, lest a terrific blast should rush in and whip the light shingle roof off. Not an animal could be seen out of doors; they had all taken shelter on the lee-side ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... a good pianist, and he obligingly played for them to dance. The piano belonged to the Tucker twins. Norma and Alice were "rushed" with partners, and they quite forgot their clothes in the enjoyment of dancing to irresistible music. ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... spoke of fate; for was it not that which lured him, by its irresistible power, towards the icy steppes where his power and glory sank beneath the snow? If at times a swift and sombre anticipation of evil crowned his mind, what was that presentiment by the side of the terrible reality? What would the ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... right ideas, but I fail only too often to find the right word for what I think and feel. Hereafter, my dear Louisa, frequent occasions will arise when you will have to speak for both of us. By means of your irresistible smile and genial conversation you will have to win the hearts of people, while I shall be content if I can ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... under which nearly every man of us, (often the greatest brawler for freedom,) is enslav'd. Can we attain such enfranchisement—the true Democracy, and the height of it? While we are from birth to death the subjects of irresistible law, enclosing every movement and minute, we yet escape, by a paradox, into true free will. Strange as it may seem, we only attain to freedom by a knowledge of, and implicit obedience to, Law. Great—unspeakably ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... with his head turned in the direction from which the sounds seemed to come, he felt as if something rushed against him; and ere he could discover the cause, he was pushed from his saddle with gentle but irresistible force. Before he reached the ground his senses were gone, and he lay long in a state of insensibility; for the sunset had not ceased to gild the top of the distant hill when he fell,—and when he again became conscious of existence, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... are no poets, novelists, dramatists or painters; a new (and original) field would here be opened to the excellence of their arts. Can you not imagine, kind reader, how irresistible the effect would be if, at the most passionate point of their love scenes, instead of "their trembling lips meeting in a thrilling kiss" the hero and heroine were to furiously scratch each ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... hearty enthusiasm, "since a work of the same wealth of genius as Death's Jest-Book has been given to the world." And Browning wrote to Mr. Kelsall, the author of the memoir: "You might pick out scenes, passages, lyrics, fine as fine can be: the power of the man is immense and irresistible." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... masts tottered and fell, though still attached to the hull. For an instant I concluded that the ice must have separated, or perhaps the edges broke with the force of the concussion; for, as I gazed, the wrecked mass of hull and spars and canvas seemed drawn suddenly downwards with irresistible force, and a few fragments, which had been hurled by the force of the concussion to a distance, were all that remained of the hapless vessel. Not a soul of her crew could have had time ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... at the outset and were never retrieved. Mistakes which have lost battles and campaigns innumerable, and in this instance lost a war. The vigor and irresistible audacity which is gained by "taking the start" was lost to us by the defensive policy, and our troops were scattered so widely that even an energetic defense could nowhere be made, except in Virginia. The Government did not mass the troops for attack upon vulnerable points in the enemy's ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... window, and looked over the balcony; the gulf below him looked dreadful in the darkness, and he drew back. But air and liberty have an attraction so irresistible to a prisoner, that Francois, on withdrawing from the window, felt as if he were being stifled, and for an instant something like disgust of life and indifference to death passed through his mind. He fancied he ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... think otherwise if I could," she answered. "Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl—you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... revealed not as predestining character or quality, but as shaping characters for ends for which under His hand they yield suitable qualities. The parable illustrates not arbitrariness of election nor irresistible sovereignty but a double freedom—freedom in God to change His decrees for moral reasons, freedom on man's part to thwart God's designs for him. In further illustration of this remember again the wonderful words, Be thou not dismayed before ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... she scarcely knew even herself. She had been a spoilt child, she had grown into a spoilt woman. Men, at least, had been ready enough to do her bidding all her life. Her beauty was of that peculiar kind, half seductive, half pathetic, wholly irresistible. And now there had come this strange, almost impossible person, against the armor of whose indifference she had spent herself in vain. Her eyes filled with tears once more as she looked at him, and Tavernake became uneasy. He glanced ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Already we have had a good deal of incendiarism about the country, and some of the highest aristocracy have pledged themselves to raise the people above themselves, and have advised sedition and conspiracy; have shown to the debased and unenlightened multitude that their force is physically irresistible, and recommended them to make use of it, promising that if they hold in power, they will only use that power to the abolition of our farce of a constitution, of a church, and of a king; and that if the nation is to be governed at all, it shall only ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the water's edge and the cheruping of busy grasshoppers upon the lawn. Now and then a locust did sing out; he only said it was August and that the sun was shining hot and sleepily everywhere but under the cedar trees. His song was irresistible. Elizabeth closed her eyes and listened to it, in a queer kind of luxurious rest-taking which was had because mind and body would have it. Pain was put away, in a sort; for the senses of pain were blurred. The aromatic smell of the evergreens ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... "an old family servant" carries with it a thousand kind associations in all parts of the world; and there is no claim upon the home-bred charities of the heart more irresistible than that of having been "born in the house." It is common to see grey-headed domestics of this kind attached to an English family of the "old school," who continue in it to the day of their death in the enjoyment of steady unaffected kindness, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... inclined to believe that he had passed this dreaded disorder. Even when the first symptoms of sickness seized him, we continued willing to hope that they proceeded from a different cause. But at length the disease burst forth with irresistible fury. It were superfluous to say, that nothing which medical skill and unremitting attention could perform, were left unexerted to mitigate his sufferings, and prolong a life, which humanity and affectionate concern towards his sick compatriots, ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... activity and excitement, for about ten o'clock the men in advance shouted the gladdening cry of "Buffalo, buffalo!" and in the hollow of the prairie just below us, a band of bulls were grazing. The temptation was irresistible, and Shaw and I rode down upon them. We were badly mounted on our traveling horses, but by hard lashing we overtook them, and Shaw, running alongside of a bull, shot into him both balls of his double-barreled gun. Looking round as I galloped past, I saw the bull in his mortal fury rushing again ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... his whole person—a melodious, haunting phrase of music that thrilled him exquisitely. Next, he knew that she stood close before him, shaking his hand, and looking straight into his eyes with an expression of the most complete trust and sympathy imaginable, and that he felt a well-nigh irresistible desire to draw her yet closer to him and kiss her little shining face. Thirdly—though the three impressions were as a matter of fact almost simultaneous—that the huge figure of the clergyman stood behind them, watching with the utmost intentness and interest, ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... considered remarkably clever, and a terrible quiz; and the large congregation necessarily containing many persons inferior in dress and demeanour to the distinguished aristocratic minority, divine service offered irresistible temptations to joking, through the medium of telegraphic communications from the galleries to the aisles and back again. I remember blushing very much, and thinking Miss Landor was laughing at me, because I was appearing in coat-tails for the first time, ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... and ere long I found Mrs. Lumley—for that was the lady's name—a most amusing and satirical personage, with a variety of anecdotes about all her friends and acquaintances, and a sort of flippant charm of manner that was quite irresistible. ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... of Baptist principles. His friend, Luther Rice, arriving by the other vessel, came by and by to the same conclusion; and the two, with their wives, were baptized by immersion in the Baptist church at Calcutta. The announcement of this news in America was an irresistible appeal to the already powerful and rapidly growing Baptist denomination to assume the support of the two missionaries who now offered themselves to the service of the Baptist churches. Rice returned to urge the appeal on their immediate attention, while Judson remained to enter on that noble apostolate ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... had soon, as on yesternight, become one, as each pushed forward to sustain the other. The enemy "pressed forward in crowds rather than in any regular formation" (Sickles); but the momentum of these splendid troops was well-nigh irresistible. Nichols's brigade of Trimble's division, and Iverson's and Rodes's of Rodes's division, pressed forward to sustain the first line on the north of the road, and repel the flank attack, constantly renewed by Berry. Another advance of the entire line was ordered. ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... upon this affair, except to say that, turn about being fair play, Cootes got up and gave such a representation as he was able of a pas seul. When he had done, our visitors started anew, and the gansas proving irresistible, Cootes and I joined in. The steps, poise of body, motion of the arms and hands are so marked and peculiar that a little observation and practice enabled us in a short time to produce at least a fair imitation; indeed, so successful were our efforts that we were informed we should be ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... anticipations. The Morris, like that magic beanstalk, seemed to outwit the laws of nature: we saw it in the heart of London rise up from its long sleep before our very eyes. In connection with this affair, the mention of that well-beloved fable is appropriate and irresistible. The first dance that was set before these Londoners—upon this occasion which we enthusiasts make bold to call historic—was Bean-setting. It represents the setting of the seed in springtime. Of course the music, ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... faith in the article and your readiness to let your prospect judge it on its merits. A two by three inch square of cloth, a bit of wood to show the finish, any "chip off the block" itself speaks more eloquently than all the paper and ink your money can buy. How irresistible becomes a varnish maker's appeal when he encloses in his letters a small varnished piece of wood, on the back of which he has printed, "This maple panel has been finished with two coats of '61' Floor Varnish. Hit it with a hammer. Stamp on it. You may dent the wood, but you can't crack the ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... world is richer in stories of everything appertaining to the supernatural than Germany. The Rhine is the favourite river of nymphs and sirens, to whose irresistible and fatal fascinations so many men have fallen victims. Along its shores are countless haunted castles, in its woods ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... there went up a great cry from the audience, an irresistible tribute to his splendid bravery. It was spontaneous, it was hysterical, it was tremendous. Men and women sprang to their feet, shouting and waving and weeping. The crowd, crushed in the corridor, caught the cry and passed ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... irresistible: the way of the French Revolution was repugnant alike to God and government, that of the American was approved by both. Filipinos of reflective turn of mind began to study America; some even had gone there; for, ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... the meantime, he could do nothing but hold a little monosyllabic communication; and once, when he and his servant both went out at the same time, they lost their dinner, which, left to simmer over the fire, proved irresistible to the Patagonians. They, however, differed from the Fuegians in not ordinarily ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... pupil, a beautiful girl entrusted to him by her uncle, a simpleminded old canon of the Cathedral of Paris, under whose roof he ensconced himself by false pretences and with the full intention of gaining the niece for himself. Abelard seems to have exercised an irresistible fascination for men and women alike, and his plot succeeded to admiration. Stricken by a belated remorse, he finally married Heloise against her unselfish protests and partly to legitimatize his unborn child, and shortly after he was surprised and overpowered ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... of cavalry force in the army of mankind. They are not always to be relied upon for that steady "hammering away," which was Grant's one method; but there is a certain Sheridan quality about them, light-armed, audacious, quick, irresistible. They go before the main army; their swift wits go scouting far in advance; they are the first to scent danger, or to spy out chances of success. Their charge is like that of a Tartar horde, or the wild sweep of the Apaches. They are upon you from some wholly unexpected quarter; ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the orchestra struck up a one-step and at that irresistible summons the boys began a ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... itself unalienable. But the question still recurs, How came this right to be in the British parliament? Chronus says that "admitting that we are all one dominion, there is, and must be, a supreme, irresistible, absolute, uncontrouled authority, in which must reside the power of making and establishing laws," "and all others must conform to it, and be govern'd by it". But if we are all one dominion; or if I understand him, the members of one state, tho' so remotely situated, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... words was unmistakable. For an odd flashing moment he had had something like a mental vision of an irresistible force pouring forth from those closed houses, a force like the force of a great river, carrying all things with it, and with healing virtue in its waters. The thought was utterly foreign to him. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... the strong spirit from within, irresistible, urged on the lad. One day while his mother conversed with him, inadvertently she uttered certain words, and he knew that the road to Emain Macha went past the mountain of Slieve Fuad. [Footnote: Now the Fews mountain lying on the direct way between ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... I dare not; no, no, don't leave me here." Sim's importunity was irresistible, and Ralph yielded more out of pity than by persuasion. A second horse was ordered, and in less than half an hour the travellers, fortified by a meal, were riding side by side on the high road from Kendal to ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... that the table had not been rubbed, and she jumped up and ran inside again. But it was not long before the fir trees began their old song; Heidi felt it in all her limbs, and again the desire to run outside was irresistible, and she was off to play and leap to the tune of the waving branches. The grandfather, who was busy in his work-shed, stepped out from time to time smiling to watch her at her gambols. He had just gone back to ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... spite of all those changes of brain. If memory be but a series of impressions registered on the brain these could no more survive the dissolution of the brain than impressions on wax could survive the melting of the wax. Surely my memory, my irresistible conviction of personal identity with my past makes it abundantly clear that "I" am a mysterious unchanging spiritual being behind ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... curtain was already rung up. Some dreadful scene was already prepared for them; the setting and stage were ready, the prompter, and who was he? was in the box ready to tell them the next line if any of them faltered. The prompter, surely he was destiny, fate, the irresistible course of events, with which no man can struggle, any more than the actor can struggle with or alter the lines that are set down for him. He may mumble them, he may act dispiritedly and tamely, but he has undertaken a certain part; he has to ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... the north where they learned magic, they dwelt in four cities, from each of which they brought a magical treasure—the stone of Fal, which "roared under every king," Lug's unconquerable spear, Nuada's irresistible sword, the Dagda's inexhaustible cauldron. But they are more than wizards or Druids. They are re-born as mortals; they have a divine world of their own, they interfere in and influence human affairs. The euhemerists did ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... fight rose to a riotous clamor. At Tommy's order the women of the city had been concentrated into a few strong towers. The machines of the city were left undefended for a time. A few strong patrols of fighting men, strategically placed, flung themselves with irresistible force upon certain bands of maddened Ragged Men. But where a combat raged, there the Ragged Men swarmed howling. Their hatred impelled them to suicidal courage and to unspeakable atrocities. From his tower, ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... offered an irresistible invitation to the mumbling fly which had escaped with the Wildcat from the Sheriff's office. The fly enjoyed the viscous environment until he succeeded in getting himself all squashed up in an instinctive gesture back of which were ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... those of a whole line of the scholars of the Renaissance who lived with the noblest literature of the world and wrote of each other in the language of Billingsgate fishwives. So the sublimity of his life is wholly that of an irresistible will, set from the first on achieving great deeds and victoriously achieving them in defiance of adverse men and fates. But this is quite compatible with qualities the reverse of agreeable. It is the business of sublimity to ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... irresistible challenge to any woman. Judith's eyes kindled. Neil slouched lower on the steps, dropping his head in his hands. "Everard," he threw out presently, "has bought ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... frolic and fun with the children. They kissed him in fondness, and planted him promptly in a second of the wagons. They knew a hundred devices for bringing him joy and merriment, not the least important of which was the irresistible march of destruction on ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... believing in purgatory; for denying the reality of hell; for pretending that priests can forgive sins; for preaching that God is an essence; for denying that witches rode through the air on sticks; for doubting the total depravity of the human heart; for laughing at irresistible grace, predestination, and particular redemption; for denying that good bread could be made of the body of a dead man; for pretending that the Pope was not managing this world for God, and in place of God, for disputing the efficacy of a vicarious atonement; ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... defence, very nice distinctions have been drawn, and very ingenious sophistry employed, to prove that the best of people may, within certain limits, crack jokes, or laugh at jokes cracked for them. These efforts to accommodate stern dogmas to that pleasant stubborn fact in man's constitution, his irresistible craving for play, and irresistible impulse to laugh at whatever is really laughable, are about as necessary as would be an essay maintaining the harmlessness of sunshine. The fact has priority over the dogmas, and is altogether too strong to need the patronizing special-pleading ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... spiritual culture sometimes exercise their subtlest and most artful charm when life is already passing from them. Searching and irresistible as are the changes of the human spirit on its way to perfection, there is yet so much elasticity of temper that what must pass away sooner or later is not disengaged all at once, even from the highest order ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... for what seemed hours, on the still form, that there was a gold chain round the neck, and two rings on the finger of the hand that rested upon the beach. As the gloom of the afternoon deepened, a sense of pity and yearning quite new to her, and which destroyed all fear, crept over the child. An irresistible longing urged her to draw back the tangled hair from the face. For a moment she turned away terrified, but then knelt down, and with trembling hands began to draw out the weeds, and to smooth back the heavy brown hair from the cold face. She grew ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... soundingly upon the floor. A titter of laughter ran over the room, and she sprang to her feet. She was quite unhurt, except her dignity, but even this she did not notice. The funny side of anything, though the joke was on herself, was always irresistible to Elizabeth. Miss Hillary might kill her the next moment, but for the present she must laugh, and laugh she did aloud, showing her gleaming teeth in a short spasm of merriment. But the fun vanished as quickly as it had come. She had no sooner struggled into ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... spoken, it seemed as if nothing could follow but obedience.' Once, when she had given some direction, a doctor ventured to remark that the thing could not be done. 'But it must be done,' said Miss Nightingale. A chance bystander, who heard the words, never forgot through all his life the irresistible authority of them. And they were spoken quietly— ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... avoided him because of his vicious mode of life, I had found no difficulty in taking up our old intimacy. At the time of which I am writing I was sure that he was my friend and had given him good reason to think the same of me. There was an attraction about him that was winning and irresistible even to men. What must it have been ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major |
