"Adamantine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... circumstances he had a few, fine, adamantine rules for conduct, which he was going to steadfastly apply, and he thought no more of the girl's feelings under them than one thinks of the inanimate parcel one is cording with what one ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion, down To bottomless perdition; there to dwell In adamantine ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... successful efforts to save his soul from its awful doom. The infinite majesty of God's will, the law of the universe, had been insulted by disobedience. The only just retribution was the suffering of an endless death. The adamantine sanctities of God's government made forgiveness impossible. Thus all men were lost, to be the prey of blackness, and fire, and the undying worm, through the remediless ages of eternity. Just then God had pity on the souls he had made, and himself came to the rescue. In the person ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... you have made up your mind," cried the lady hysterically, who knew from a twelve years' experience that John Temple's made-up mind was like an adamantine wall to ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... the might of England flushed To anticipate the scene; And her van the fleeter rushed O'er the deadly space between. "Hearts of oak!" our captain cried; when each gun From its adamantine lips Spread a death-shade round the ships, Like the hurricane eclipse Of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... and strong on ev'ry side With treble walls, which Phlegethon surrounds, Whose fiery flood the burning empire bounds; And, press'd betwixt the rocks, the bellowing noise resounds Wide is the fronting gate, and, rais'd on high With adamantine columns, threats the sky. Vain is the force of man, and Heav'n's as vain, To crush the pillars which the pile sustain. Sublime on these a tow'r of steel is rear'd; And dire Tisiphone there keeps the ward, Girt in her sanguine gown, by night and day, Observant of ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... Tartarian emperor, Tamar Cham, Joy'd not so much in his imperial crown, As Sophos joys in Lelia's hoped-for love, Whose looks would pierce an adamantine heart, And makes the proud beholders stand at gaze, To draw love's picture from her ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... affability and prime manliness, besides those associations of sentiment and imagination which, if there must be an aristocracy, lend it an artistic consistency. But here, where everybody says that all men are equal, and everybody is afraid they will be; where there are no adamantine barriers of birth and caste; people are anxiously exclusive. And though the forms of aristocracy flourish more gorgeously in their native soil, the genuine virus can be found in New York almost as readily ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... was in his own power, that prudence supplied the place of all other divinities, and that happiness is the unfailing consequence of virtue. But surely the quiver of Omnipotence is stored with arrows against which the shield of human virtue, however adamantine it has been boasted, is held up in vain; we do not always suffer by our crimes; we are not always protected by our innocence.' The Adventurer, No. 120. See also Rasselas, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... even in visions. A few comfit-makers made "Lemon Pil Candy, Angelica Candy, Candy'd Eryngo Root & Carroway Comfits;" and a few sweetmeats came to port in foreign vessels, "Sugar'd Corrinder Seeds," "Glaz'd Almonds," and strings of rock-candy. Whole jars of the latter adamantine, crystalline, saccharine delight graced the shelves of many a colonial cupboard. And I suppose favored Salem children, the happy sons and daughters of opulent epicurean Salem shipowners, had even in colonial days Black Jacks and Salem Gibraltars. The first-named dainties, though dearly ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... is closely clad in blue brocaded satin. The fit is scrupulous, yet no woman's figure is revealed. You are decorously shapeless. Your satin trousers even are lined with fur. Your hair is stiff and lustrous as polished ebony, bound at the neck in an adamantine knot, in which dull ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... And, lantern'd in his breast, from realms of day Bore the bright treasure to his Man of clay;— High on cold Caucasus by VULCAN bound, The lean impatient Vulture fluttering round, 375 His writhing limbs in vain he twists and strains To break or loose the adamantine chains. The gluttonous bird, exulting in his pangs, Tears his ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... chilled, and stalk about shivering, from place to place; he would exclaim, "Surely this is not life; this means annihilation. No flesh and blood can long endure this; this frozen earth is bound in the everlasting embraces of adamantine frost, and can never develop vegetation for the sustenance of any living thing." He little dreams of the priceless myriads of germs which bountiful Nature has safely garnered in the warm bosom of our mother earth; he sees no evidence ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... her, felt as one does who has been reading a fairy-tale and is called to the family meal. All the things he had meant to say, that had seemed so eloquent, now seemed foolish. He awoke her hastily in case his courage should fail before that most adamantine thing—an unsympathetic atmosphere. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... blossoms He insures the ultimate protection of the fruit. What protection, analogous to this, has He established for animals; or, taking up the question in the ideal case, for man, the supreme of His creatures? We perceive that He has relied upon love, upon love strengthened to the adamantine force of insanity or delirium, by the mere aspect of utter, utter helplessness in the human infant. It is not by power, by means visibly developed, that this result is secured, but by means spiritual and ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... adopt concerning volition, or the governing determinations of the mind, all will agree in the fact, that the energies of the human soul, when aroused, may be strung like fibres of steel, giving and adamantine firmness and indomitable force to the will. We have seen this exemplified in the fortitude with which one sometimes endures surgical operation; in the heated courage of the soldier, rushing with the loud huzza into the very face of the engulphing battery; in the cool, calculating resolution ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... had taken upon itself that appalling and exasperating calmness of very good people who never get angry, but drive others to frenzy by the simple occlusion of an adamantine veil between their own feelings and their opponents'. "I'll tell you all about it after I've put up the horse," he said hurriedly, glad to escape until the veil was lifted again. "I suppose ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... wonderful in the way Parson Brush kept control of himself. Externally he was as calm as when standing in front of the adamantine blackboard, giving instruction to Nellie Dawson, while down deep in his heart, raged a tempest such as rouses into life the darkest passions that can nerve a man to wrong doing. Believing it necessary to stir the ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... to a few brothers, as palms or pines or roses among common weeds, not from greater absolute value, but from a more convenient nature. But 'tis almost chemistry at last, though a meta-chemistry. I remember you were such an impatient blasphemer, however musically, against the adamantine identities, in your youth, that you should take your turn of resignation now, and be a preacher of peace. But there is a little raising of the eyebrow, now and then, in the most passive acceptance,—if of an intellectual turn. Here comes out around me at this ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... keyholes were carefully stopped up; creaking floors were calked; windows were picketed by uncompromising articles of furniture deployed to keep my ruthless refugee from adventuring too close to the danger zone; and adamantine instructions were served out to all of my vassals. Everything appeared to be in tip-top shape ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... be known, must be loved. And though you have all the knowledge of a von Humboldt, and do not love her, you will never understand her or her teachings. You will go through life with her, and yet parted from her as by an adamantine wall. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... called infinitely little, and yet its meaning for Archie was immense. "I did not know the old man had so much blood in him." He had never dreamed this sire of his, this aboriginal antique, this adamantine Adam, had even so much of a heart as to be moved in the least degree for another - and that other himself, who had insulted him! With the generosity of youth, Archie was instantly under arms upon the other ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... company; for, self-contained and stern as was his nature, he could soften, in times of extremity, to a gentleness that strongly appealed to the hearts of those around him; and though he could not impart, to minds of less adamantine temper, the audacity of hope with which he still clung to the final accomplishment of his purposes, the contagion of his courage touched, nevertheless, the drooping spirits of his followers. [Footnote: "L'egalite d'humeur du Chef ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... fire! Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love. E'en as I melt, not uninspired, the wax, May Mindian Delphis melt this hour with love: And, swiftly as this brazen wheel whirls round, May Aphrodite whirl him to my door. Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love. Next burn the husks. Hell's adamantine floor And aught that else stands firm can Artemis move. Thestylis, the hounds bay up and down the town: The goddess stands i' the crossroads: sound the gongs. Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love. Hushed are the voices of the winds and seas; ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... whose hat fitted too tightly; and that mark, gentlemen, had the undulating outline of nothing more nor less than a tiara, and on the apex of the uppermost extremity was a deep indentation about the size of a shilling, that could have been made only by some adamantine substance! The mystery was solved! The robber of the Duchess of ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... the inspired pencil of the artist. The malignant, scowling Shawnees, steadily advancing upon the dauntless Huron, who, though his moccasins were soaked with the blood from his own wounds, stood as firm and immovable as the adamantine rock. His left leg was thrown somewhat in advance of his right, as if he were about to spring, but in such a manner that his weight was perfectly balanced. The knife was held firmly, but not as it would have been were he about to strike. The tomahawk, however, ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... was exactly what he should not have said. Here he was, talking like a gentleman at large who was free to come and go and roam about the world at pleasure, when that gallant coachmaker had vowed but the night before that Miss Varden held him bound in adamantine chains; and had positively stated in so many words that she was killing him by inches, and that in a fortnight more or thereabouts he expected to make a decent end and leave the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Reviewers who were hired To do the work of his reviewing, With adamantine nerves, grew tired;— 730 Gaping and torpid they retired, To dream of ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... ordered in those stormy hours His adamantine chains for one and all, Brute "Force" and soulless "Strength" the only Power On which he chose ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... Than vision's wing could bear my gaze, I knew Hell's desolate kingdoms stretched their iron wastes, Hell's burning mountains waved their brands of flame, Hell's lava rivers plunged in fury down Their adamantine beds. ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... ago, before Bessie and I had ever met, I had fluttered around Fanny Meyrick for a season, attracted by her bright brown eyes and the gypsy flush on her cheek. But there were other moths fluttering around that adamantine candle too; and I was not long in discovering that the brown eyes were bright for each and all, and that the gypsy flush was never stirred by feeling or by thought. It was merely a fixed ensign of health and good spirits. Consequently the charm ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... Prometheus, And thrusts him down from heaven. He, wandering here, In mournful terms, with sad and heavy cheer, Complained to Cupid. Cupid for his sake, To be revenged on Jove did undertake. And those on whom heaven, earth, and hell relies, I mean the adamantine Destinies, He wounds with love, and forced them equally To dote upon deceitful Mercury. They offered him the deadly fatal knife That shears the slender threads of human life. At his fair feathered feet the engines laid Which th' earth from ugly Chaos' den upweighed. These he regarded ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe
... belongs to one sense with what belongs to another, extorting images of colour at a word, raising ideas of harmony without breaking the stillness of the air. He can lead on the dance of words till their sinuous movements call forth, as if by mesmerism, the likeness of some adamantine rigidity, time is converted into space, and music begets sculpture. To see for the sake of seeing, to hear for the sake of hearing, are subsidiary exercises of his complex metaphysical art, to be counted among its rudiments. Picture and music ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... you, Adelbert, that your wife made a mistake also? Did it ever bore itself through your adamantine skull that it is not an unbroken round of gayety for a young girl to shut herself up in a lonesome house for three years, gradually acquiring children, and meantime being "sassed" by her husband because she is not ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... domestic life had become so completely embittered that every vestige of old-time happiness had fled. The agency of the Police Magistrate was sought to decree terms of separation, as there was an adamantine resolve on the part of each to no longer live with the other. Thus, in a frame of mind altogether repelling the notion of conversion to gentler views, or the idea of laudable endeavor, on the part of another, to instil milder counsels, being availingly expended, they repaired to the Police Magistrate's ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... When a murder is in the paulo-post-futurum tense, and a rumor of it comes to our ears, by all means let us treat it morally. But suppose it over and done, and that you can say of it,[Greek: Tetelesai], or (in that adamantine molossus of Medea) [Greek: eirzasai]; suppose the poor murdered man to be out of his pain, and the rascal that did it off like a shot, nobody knows whither; suppose, lastly, that we have done our best, by ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... its cross-roads. There's a solid idea!... Perhaps I have twenty or thirty years to live, and I shall pass away like the others. Like the others? O Totality, the misery of being there no longer! Ah! I would like to set out to-morrow and search all through the world for the most adamantine processes of embalming. They, too, were the little people of History, learning to read, trimming their nails, lighting the dirty lamp every evening, in love, gluttonous, vain, fond of compliments, handshakes, and kisses, living on bell-town gossip, saying, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... goodly vessels driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish. Forgive me, then, and let us part, at least, as friends part. I have assailed thy resolution in vain, and mine own is fixed as the adamantine ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the claims our times avow, The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of shade; And comes Despair, whom not her calm may cow, And coldly on that adamantine brow Scrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade. But Faith (who from the scrawl indignant turns) With blood warm oozing from her wounded trust, Inscribes even on her shards of broken urns The sign o' the ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... genuine feeling of love, was bound in adamantine chains to her sister. Time and fortune, that shatter all human institutions and prove human feelings, consolidated the union of their hearts and their destinies. A stranger on stronger proof of the influence of sisterly affection could not ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... from the maid's bed to his own, Then in the spirituals of pride, Planted himself at Dulman's side. Thrice did the ever-faithful slave, With voice which might have reach'd the grave, And broke Death's adamantine chain, On Dulman call, but call'd in vain. 1210 Thrice with an arm, which might have made The Theban boxer curse his trade, The drone he shook, who rear'd the head, And thrice fell backward on his bed. What could be done? Where force hath fail'd, Policy often hath prevail'd; And what—an inference ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... through long years, and imperiled to the death by the folly and obstinacy of the husbands, are redeemed at last by the queenly patience and wisdom of the wives. In Measure for Measure, the foul injustice of the judge, and the foul cowardice of the brother, are opposed to the victorious truth and adamantine purity of a woman. In Coriolanus, the mother's counsel, acted upon in time, would have saved her son from all evil; his momentary forgetfulness of it is his ruin; her prayer, at last, granted, saves him—not, indeed, from death, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... fault. My recollection of Liszt is a vivid one: to me he was iron; Tausig, steel; Rubinstein, gold. This metallic classification is not intended to praise gold at the expense of steel, or iron to the detriment of gold. It is merely my way of describing the adamantine qualities of Liszt and Tausig—two magnetic mountains of the kind told of in Sinbad, the Sailor, to which was attracted whatever came within their radius. And Rubinstein—what a man, what an artist, what a heart! As Joseffy once put it, Rubinstein's was ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... for a streak of open water, studying the movement of the floes which pressed against us, I would hear him shouting to the ship below us as if coaxing her, encouraging her, commanding her to hammer a way for us through the adamantine floes: ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... great man!" cried Barker, rising also. "You've knocked me sensible again. I am ashamed to say it, but I was getting romantic. Of course, what you say is adamantine sense. Fighting, being physical, must be mathematical. We were beaten because we were neither mathematical nor physical nor anything else—because we deserved to be beaten. Hold all the approaches, and with our force we must have him. When shall ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... square and a hundred feet high, built of the native Kentish ragstone and Caen stone; and the adamantine mortar or cement used in its construction was made with sand, evidently procured at the seaside some distance from Rochester, for it contains remains of cardium, pecten, solen, and other marine shells, which would not be found in river sand. Mr. Roach Smith suggested ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... world and by his prowess dazzle all mankind for the purpose of attracting one pair of eyes. The same occurs to the lady, and she determines to make all men fall at her feet by way of illustrating to one adamantine heart that he was a dullard to have passed over her charms. And this young lady of the rose and lily complexion, and knight of the bright-hued locks and herculean muscles, being young—sufficiently young to be downcast by imaginary stumbling-blocks—had ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... the adamantine youth, "what is the name of the house with a big gate, about a half ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Mr. Perkins called personally upon that lady, and laid before her the question of Johnnie's health, she was adamantine in her refusal. Even the sight of a two-dollar bill could not sway her, offered, as Mr. Perkins explained, not in the hope of bribing her to do anything that was forbidden, but as pay in case Johnnie proved to be any trouble; for she had explained, "Kids is fierce for ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Pierre Philibert, sending the blood to her cheeks. There is a magnetic touch in loving fingers which is never mistaken, though their contact be but for a second of time: it anticipates the strong grasp of love which will ere long embrace body and soul in adamantine chains of a union not to be broken even ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... finances and buttress themselves against the eventual facts. Naturally, the minor speculators throughout the city—those who had expected to make a fortune out of this crash—raged and complained, but, being faced by an adamantine exchange directorate, a subservient press, and the alliance between the big bankers and the heavy quadrumvirate, there was nothing to be done. The respective bank presidents talked solemnly of "a mere temporary flurry," Hand, Schryhart, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... pitiful policy of taxing imports of German fabric gloves, or the rest of the ridiculous "litter of mice" that has thus far been yielded by the Safeguarding of Industries Act, is the crowning proof at once of the insincerity and ineptitude of tariffism where it has a free hand, and of the adamantine strength of the Free Trade case. If any further illustration were needed, it is supplied by the other tariffist procedure in regard to the promise made five years ago to Canada that she, with the other Dominions, ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... meddle with literature," thought I, fixing myself in adamantine resolution, "it shall be ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... I burn the husks, and thou, O Artemis, hast power to move hell's adamantine gates, and all else that is as stubborn. Thestylis, hark, 'tis so; the hounds are baying up and down the town! The Goddess stands where the three ways meet! Hasten, and clash the ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... shine illustrious through the sable curtain of my ink, and in sublimity transcend the galaxy itself, though wafted on the pinions of a gray goose quill! But, ah! celestial enchantress! the necromancy of thy tyrannical charms hath fettered my faculties with adamantine chains, which, unless thy compassion shall melt I must eternally remain in the Tartarean gulf of dismal despair. Vouchsafe, therefore, O thou brightest luminary of this terrestrial sphere! to warm, as well as shine; ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... state they must never forget their responsibility to the Most High. Wuczicz, dressed in the coarse frieze jacket and boots of a Servian peasant, heard, with a reverential inclination of the head, the discourse of the prelate, but nought relaxed one muscle of that adamantine visage: the finer but more luminous features of Petronevich were under the control of a less powerful will. At certain passages his intelligent eye was moistened with tears. Two deacons then prayed successively for the Sultan, the Emperor of Russia, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Suffrage in the District of Columbia," said Mr. Sumner, "concerns directly some twenty thousand colored persons, whom it will lift to the adamantine platform of equal rights. If it were regarded simply in its bearings on the District it would be difficult to exaggerate its value; but when it is regarded as an example to the whole country under the sanction ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... concrete; cement. V. render hard &c. adj.; harden, stiffen, indurate, petrify, temper, ossify, vitrify; accrust[obs3]. Adj. hard, rigid, stubborn, stiff, firm; starch, starched; stark, unbending, unlimber, unyielding; inflexible, tense; indurate, indurated; gritty, proof. adamant, adamantine, adamantean[obs3]; concrete, stony, granitic, calculous, lithic[obs3], vitreous; horny, corneous[obs3]; bony; osseous, ossific[obs3]; cartilaginous; hard as a rock &c. n.; stiff as buckram, stiff as a poker; stiff as starch, stiff ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... man could reform Russia? Who could reform a volcano? There are frightful energies beneath that adamantine surface—energies which have been confined by a rude, imperfectly organized system of force; a chain-work of abuses roughly welded together as occasion required. It is a system created by emergencies,—improvised, not grown,—in ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... your sight (We, wretched mortals! lost in doubts below, But guess by rumour, and but boast we know), Oh! say what heroes, fired by thirst of fame, Or urged by wrongs, to Troy's destruction came! To count them all demands a thousand tongues, A throat of brass and adamantine lungs. ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... a bitter experience of many centuries they have learned that it does not pay for the individual to assert himself against the dictates of the caste, or for the lower castes to rise in rebellion against their lot. They discovered that they were merely butting their heads against an adamantine rock. So they have lost every ambition and hope; and he who would lift them up must first remove that leaden despair which rests upon them like ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... to the last item of it, has daily to be done. Which proved infinitely beneficial to the Crown-Prince, after all. Hereby, to his Athenian-French elegancies, and airy promptitudes and brilliancies, there shall lie as basis an adamantine Spartanism and Stoicism; very rare, but very indispensable, for such a superstructure. Well exemplified, through after life, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the last new pattern, worthy of a child's delicious sleep; and they would only have discovered that the room was three hundred years old when they had drawn aside the window curtains, and had revealed the adamantine solidity of the outer walls. Or, if they had been allowed to pursue their investigations a little further, and had found their way next into Mrs. Linley's sitting room, here again a transformation scene would have revealed more modern luxury, presented in the perfection which implies ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... preserving all that is valuable of their taste and qualities; so ordering them, that they may delight the palate, without disordering the stomach, by leaving out those inflammatory ingredients which are only fit for an "iron throat and adamantine bowels," and those costly materials which no rational being would destroy, for the wanton purpose of merely giving a fine name to the compositions they enter into, to whose excellence they contribute nothing else. For instance, consuming two partridges to make sauce ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... that, when described, it was too late to alter the helm. Its giant shape filled the foreground, towering high above the masts, grim and gaunt and ghastly, immovable as the adamantine buttresses of a frowning seaboard, while the liner lurched and staggered like a wounded thing in agony as her engines slowly drew her back from the rampart against which ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... resting on the wave it spread Its floors of flashing light, Its vast and azure dome; And on the verge of that obscure abyss 225 Where crystal battlements o'erhang the gulf Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuse Their lustre through its adamantine gates. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... no more be shaken by the puny attacks of men or devils than the everlasting mountains can be disturbed by the storm-blasts which howl around them. What more, then, is needed, than to shut up the wicked in a prison-house, through whose adamantine walls the accusing cry can never pierce, and whose doors are for ever barred by the holy decree of the Almighty? Ah! were it so, even this thought might possibly gratify pride and enmity, could a condemned, though not judged spirit for ever carry with it ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... due to reflection, and of which there are six varieties:—([alpha]) adamantine (which some authorities, experts and merchants subdivide as detailed below); ([beta]) pearly; ([gamma]) silky; ([delta]) resinous; ([epsilon]) vitreous; ([zeta]) metallic. These ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... for one moment, gazing on his adherents, tried veterans every man of them, case-hardened in the furnace of Sylla's fiery discipline, with proud confidence and triumph in his eye; and then addressed them in clear high tones, piercing as those of an adamantine trumpet. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... my father's murderer, my life-long enemy, and let him go unsought, rather than give up Claire. Yet as I prayed, my entreaties and my tears went up to no compassionate God, but beat themselves upon the adamantine face of Dead Man's Rock that still rose inexorable between me ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... cornfield, where the sleepy poppy nods its red-cowled head, and the weak-eyed mole plies his dark work; but thy soaring is even unto heaven. Or let me add (for my appetite for similes is truly canine at this moment), that as the Italian nobles their new-fashioned doors, so thou dost make the adamantine gate of Democracy turn on its golden hinges to most sweet ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... husband she had chosen. She was of too weak a mind to hide these growing doubts and ever-augmenting suspicions. The miserable truth oozed out of her in foolish little speeches; those continual droppings that wear the hardest stone, and which wore even the adamantine surface of the Captain's tranquil temper. There was a homoeopathic admixture of this jealous poison in all the food he ate. He could rarely get through a tete-a-tete breakfast or dinner ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... suddenly AEneas turned, and lo, a city lay Wide-spread 'neath crags upon the left, girt with a wall threefold; And round about in hurrying flood a flaming river rolled, 550 E'en Phlegethon of Tartarus, with rattling, stony roar: In face with adamantine posts was wrought the mighty door, Such as no force of men nor might of heaven-abiders high May cleave with steel; an iron tower thence riseth to the sky: And there is set Tisiphone, with girded ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... determined kind of look, almost hard. Into the life of every woman who is a mother there comes a time when she learns, suddenly, that her little girl is trying not to be a little girl any longer but to become a woman. It is a hard moment for mothers, and no wonder that they seem unwarrantedly adamantine. Mrs. Merriam instinctively knew that wanting furs and wanting boys spelled the same evil. But Missy, who was fifteen instead of thirty-seven and whose emotions and desires were still as hazy and uncorrelated as they were acute, ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... Frequent were the temptations and assaults of the evil spirits that he encountered, and many the hardships that he endured through the lack of herbs that he needed for meat, because the desert, being dry, yielded even these in but scant supply. But, being kindled by love of her Master, this adamantine and indomitable soul bore these annoyances more easily than other men bear their pleasures. Wherefore he failed not of the succour that is from above, but, many as were the sorrows and toils Chat he endured, comfort came ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... Peasley relieved the situation; she had a habit of relieving situations—when she did not make them tenser. She had gotten into the Shakespeare Reading Society purely by persistence and the possession of adamantine self-confidence. From that shot-proof exterior snubs, hints and reproofs glanced like blown peas from the hull of a battleship. "Heaven knows," confided Mrs. Captain Wingate to Miss Taylor and the Reverend Mrs. Dishup, "why Amelia Peasley ever wanted to join the Society. She doesn't know whether ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... them,—nothing, indeed, but pitch-pine and cypress. Oak, pine, and cypress would fall into the same category, when contrasted with the imperishable iron. Some new agency of steel must be invented to cope with the adamantine iron. And it becomes our Government, both for the armament of our ships and for defence against iron steamers, to adopt at the earliest moment every improvement ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... lukewarm blood, Swiftly distilling from the bastard's breast. My father's ghost still haunts me for revenge, Crying, Revenge my overhastened death. My brother's exile and mine own divorce Banish remorse clean from my brazen heart, All mercy from mine adamantine breasts. ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... great; but was he good? His brain was right; how was his heart? He saw heaven; he looked down on hell. He saw Satan, and Sin his daughter, and Death their horrible offspring. Angels serried before him their battalions; the long lines of adamantine shields flashed back on his blind eyeballs the unutterable splendour of heaven. Devils gathered their legions in his sight; their dim, discrowned, and tarnished armies passed rank and file before him. Milton tried to see the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... commands, the Creator remained in his own nature. And his children, receiving from him the immortal principle, borrowed from the world portions of earth, air, fire, water, hereafter to be returned, which they fastened together, not with the adamantine bonds which bound themselves, but by little invisible pegs, making each separate body out of all the elements, subject to influx and efflux, and containing the courses of the soul. These swelling and ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... of good and bad each had, in its turn, a perfect and distinct existence? He chose to think that this was the case. Who, within his inner consciousness, does not feel that same ferine, savage man struggling against the stern, adamantine bonds of morality and decorum? Were those bonds burst asunder, as it was with this man, might not the wild beast rush forth, as it had rushed forth in him, to rend and to tear? Such were the questions that Mainwaring asked himself. And how had it all come about? By what easy gradations had the respectable ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... at, he laughs again; and stricken hard, Turns to his stroke his adamantine scales, That fear no discipline of human ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... forms with steps impassive mock Earth's vaulted roofs of adamantine rock; Round her still centre tread the burning soil, 140 And watch the billowy Lavas, as they boil; Where, in basaltic caves imprison'd deep, Reluctant fires in dread suspension sleep; Or sphere on sphere in widening waves expand, And glad with genial warmth the incumbent land. 145 So when the Mother-bird ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... tramp the streets by day and night, your hours are very long; Yet since you love the G.P.O. that thus your feet employs, We must not see you flouted by a perky pack of hoys. Swift rally round the Master who quavers not nor quakes, Our Red Knight of the Pillar-Box, the adamantine RAIKES. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... discuss whether Dr. Cumming's interpretation accords with the meaning of the New Testament writers: we simply point to the fact that the text becomes elastic for him when he wants freer play for his prejudices, while he makes it an adamantine barrier against the admission that mercy will ultimately triumph—that God, i.e., Love, will be all in all. He assures us that he does not "delight to dwell on the misery of the lost:" and we believe him. That ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... a frown, and the back view of a sharp shoulder blade. To her mid-Victorian mind Sinclair Spencer was not conducting himself as a gentleman should, and her half-considered resolve to drop him from her visiting list became adamantine as she observed his appearance. Slipping her hand inside Kathleen's arm she led ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... to the loaded tables and delicious morsels of other days, and are likely at such times to put hard crackers and glory on one side, the good things of home and peace on the other and owing probably to the unsubstantial quality of glory, and the adamantine quality of the crackers, arrive at conclusions not at all favorable ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... dwelling-place for the non-employee. Our worthy Uncle of the chin whiskers makes it quite plain that, while he may tolerate the mere visitor, he does not care to have him hanging around; makes it so plain, in fact, that a few weeks purely of sight-seeing on the Zone implies an adamantine financial backing. In his screened and full-provided towns, where the employee lives in such well-furnished comfort, the tourist might beat his knuckles bare and shake yellow gold in the other hand, and be coldly refused even a lodging for the ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on my forehead, my obstinacy was adamantine. I reflected for some time, and then answered as if I had discovered a new idea, "I ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... of them were of gigantic proportions and strange outlines. There were hills with lofty summits, marvellous castles, turreted and towered, and majestic cathedrals, their icy pinnacles and spires reaching high above the top-masts of the ship and their polished adamantine surfaces sparkling in the brilliant sunshine and scintillating fire and colour with the wondrous ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... deep surrounds. The thoughts which roll within my ravish'd breast, To me, no seer, the inspiring gods suggest; Nor skill'd nor studious, with prophetic eye To judge the winged omens of the sky. Yet hear this certain speech, nor deem it vain; Though adamantine bonds the chief restrain, The dire restraint his wisdom will defeat, And soon restore him to his regal seat. But generous youth! sincere and free declare, Are you, of manly growth, his royal heir? For sure Ulysses in your look appears, The same his features, if the same his years. Such ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... Kindled with new life, the nations teemed with a progeny of heroes, and the stormy glories of the sixteenth century rose on awakened Europe. But Spain was the citadel of darkness,—a monastic cell, an inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce. She was the bulwark of the Church, against whose adamantine front the wrath of innovation beat in vain. In every country of Europe the party of freedom and reform was the national party, the party of reaction and absolutism was the Spanish party, leaning on Spain, looking to her for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... seeing her become any better—so serene she seems in her settled and unutterable sadness.' Such, we have often fancied, was the feeling of the great Florentine toward the world, and which—pained, pitying, yearning enthusiast that he was!—escaped irresistibly from those deep- set eyes, that adamantine jaw, and that brow, wearing the laurel, proudly yet painfully, as if it were a crown of everlasting fire! Dunbar was not altogether a Dante, either in melancholy or in power, but his 'Dance' reveals kindred moods, operating at times ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... down, in the depth of my life's mystery, (Like the siren that under the deep ocean dwells, Whom the wind as it wails, and the wave as it swells, Cannot stir in the calm of her coralline halls, 'Mid the world's adamantine and dim pedestals; At whose feet sit the sylphs and sea fairies; for whom The almondine glimmers, the soft samphires bloom)— Thou abidest and reignest forever, O Queen Of that better world which ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... of mathematics, which are those of nature, and logic, which are those of mind, be fully understood, no one will seek such an argument in the former but in the latter only, for they alone, as I have shown, are purposive, and they are wholly so. The only God that nature points to is an adamantine Fate. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... it so pleasantly announces, and for whose christening should be erected a cathedral more vast than St. Peter's, a temple rarer than that of Baalbec. But while our sensitive cousin across the water would pin us down to a credo as absurd as that of Tertullian, and hedge us in with the adamantine wall of his own lordly fiat, let us, who fondly hope we have a literature, whose principal defect—a defect to which the one infallible remedy is daily applied by the winged mower—is youth, inquire into its leading characteristics, seeing if haply we may descry the elements ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... my pilgrimage, Ye would lie down and join your moans with mine. Let this poor wretch but pass, who war doth wage With heaven, the elements, the powers divine! I beg for pity or for death. No more! But open, ope Hell's adamantine door! ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... stamped with a species of beauty which never fades—the beauty of a loving look. Ah! the brow of snow and the peach-bloom cheek may snare the heart of man for a time, but the loving look alone can forge that adamantine chain that time, age, eternity ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... own way." He told Emerson so, whereupon they went and dined together. The independence of the poet probably impressed Emerson more than his yielding would have done, for had not he preached the adamantine doctrine of self-trust? "To believe your own thought," he says, "to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true of all men,—that ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... he undoubtedly was, had not the adamantine hardness of character which enabled his admiral to risk all on the hazards of the moment; or possibly the Grand Turk was deficient in that clearness of strategical instinct which never in any circumstances forgoes a present advantage for something which may ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... of the earth which was towards the sun. Observe, now, the vital office of humor in Hawthorne's thought. It gleams out upon us from behind many of the gravest of his conceptions, like the silver side of a dark leaf turning in the wind. Wherever the concretion of guilt is most adamantine, there he lets his fine slender jet of humor play like a lambent fire, until the dark mass crumbles, and the choragos of the tragedy begins his mournful yet hopeful chant among the ruins. This may be verified in ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... us victors over the world and ourselves. If we can grasp Him by our faith and keep ourselves near Him, then union with Him as of the Vine and the branches, which will result inevitably in suffering here, will result as inevitably in joy hereafter. For He will never relax the adamantine grasp of His strong hand until He raises us to Himself, and 'if so be that we suffer with Him we shall also be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... out upon the mark. It was as level as though planed; bent down and stared in utter disbelief of what my own eyes beheld. For stone and earth had been crushed, compressed, into a smooth, microscopically grained, adamantine complex, and in this matrix poppies still bearing traces of their coloring were imbedded like fossils. A cyclone can and does grip straws and thrust them unbroken through an inch board—but what force was there which could take the delicate petals ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... his and their persistent, inevitable and inexorable hangers-on and supplicants. I do not perceive the alleged failure of his health or powers, and I do not believe it; but assuredly, it were no marvel if such really were the case. It must be an adamantine constitution and temper that could long bear with impunity the daily contact with a Lincoln, a Seward, a Halleck, and others less noted, indeed, but not ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... the request of the District Attorney, Drake was to be taken "dead or alive," but according to an adamantine principle of the Force, he must be taken not only alive, but unscathed if that were humanly possible. This meant that he must not be given an opportunity to run and so render shooting necessary. If, however, he should break away, his chance of escape ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... Black Canon of the Gunnison. Could any time be more appropriate? Clouds rolled over us in dense masses, and at intervals the moon flashed upon us like a dark lantern. Could anything be more picturesque? We knew that much of the darkness, the blackness of darkness, was adamantine rock; some of it an inky flood—a veritable river of death—rolling close beneath us, but quite invisible most of the time; and the night itself a profound mystery, through which we burned an endless tunnel—like a firebrand ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... drunk with blood to vomit crime;[nz] And fatal have her Saturnalia been[oa] To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime; Because the deadly days which we have seen, And vile Ambition, that built up between Man and his hopes an adamantine wall, And the base pageant[477] last upon the scene, Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall Which nips Life's tree, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... in his Bohemian days, carried an adamantine shield, the gift of some fairy relative. Not only was it impenetrable, but, so intolerable was its lustre, it overthrew all foes before the lance's point could reach them. Observing this, the chivalric monarch had a cover made for ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... It was dangerous business. A pretty breeze blew; and with anything of a wind our antelope of a schooner took to her heels with speed. Lightly built,—not, like vessels designed for this coast, double-planked and perhaps iron-prowed,—she would easily have been staved by a shock upon this adamantine ice. The mate stood at the bow, shouting, "Luff! Bear away! Hard up! Hard down!" And his voice wanting strength and his articulation distinctness, I was fain, at the pinch of the game, to come to his aid, and trumpet his orders after him with my best stentorship. The old pilot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... plot and scheme of their own accord. There was unalloyed pleasure in the composition of that first story, and the knowledge that it was to be actually printed and published, and not to be declined with thanks by adamantine magazine editors, like a certain short story which I had lately written, and which contained the germ of "Lady Audley's Secret." Indeed, at this period of my life, the postman's knock had become associated in my mind with the sharp sound of a rejected MS. dropping through ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... Mrs. Siddons, about whom all the world has been talking, exposed her beautiful, adamantine, soft, and lovely person, for the first time at Smock Alley Theatre in the bewitching, melting, and all tearful character of Isabella. From the repeated panegyrics of the impartial London newspapers, we were ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... the coral-insect of the South," said the voice within; "insignificant in himself, he rears a giant structure—which will yet cause the wreck of the ship of state, should its keel grate too closely on that adamantine wall. 'L'etat c'est moi,' said Louis XIV., and that 'slavery is the South' is as true an utterance. Our staple—our patriarchal institution—our prosperity—are one and indissoluble, and the sooner the issue comes the better ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... grew more sternly prominent than the reality, duskier in their depth and shadow, and more lurid in their light; the frown, that had merely flitted across his brow, seemed to have contorted it with an adamantine wrinkle. On meeting him again, I was often filled with remorse, when his deep eyes beamed kindly upon me, as with the glow of a household fire that was burning in a cave. "He is a man after all," thought I; "his Maker's own truest image, a philanthropic man!—not that steel engine ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... once to build the depot; the snow here was excellent for this purpose — as hard as glass. In a short time an immense erection of adamantine blocks of snow rose into the air, containing provisions for five men for six days and for eighteen dogs for five days. A number of small articles were also ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... gates were of brass, iron, and adamantine rock, reaching high to the mighty roof, and most horrible were the ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... waves also awakened Cerberus, the three-headed watch dog, besides actuating "The Dingus." This electronic device Nick had stolen to operate the three ponderous triple-fold gates of adamantine, ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... they know that even supposing the object becomes perfectly unworthy, unfaithful, abusive, and with every vice indulged openly before them, they may wince, they may thoroughly despise her, but the chain holds them fast in adamantine bonds, which neither the persuasion of friends nor their own knowledge of the perfect unworthiness of the ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... Symptoms of too great interest bore one. I enjoy more the men who are impervious to me. Now there's my father. He comes nearer understanding me than anybody else, but he's quite adamantine to my wiles." ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... Brougham) was achieving the immortal victory, and the illustrious triumph, protecting innocence and truth by the adamantine shield of his prodigious eloquence, it has been my lot to discharge only a few random arrows at the defeated champions of this disgraceful cause." Dr. Lushington followed on the 26th of October, with a luminous view of the case, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... warlike mountaineers on January 26, 1887, sent a thrill of horror through the Peninsula. The internal situation was also far from promising. The breakdown of attempts at a compromise between the monarchy and Pope Leo XIII. revealed the adamantine hostility of the Vatican to the King's Government in Rome. A prey to these discouragements, King Umberto and his advisers were willing to renew the Triple Alliance (March 1887), though on terms no more advantageous than before. Signor Depretis, the chief champion of the alliance, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Hurl'd headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy th' ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... dwindling sphere of ours, but a fact and a law supreme, holding sway beyond the uttermost star, valid in infinity and eternity, at this hour, the sovereign law of life for whatsoever or whomsoever lives and knows, the adamantine foundation upon which all law, civilisation, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... wonder—dangerously fascinating employment to a woman—if he had ever cared for her. There seemed an adamantine wall built up around him, and yet the fruit in the inner garden was more rarely sweet than she had ever dreamed it could be. She could not know that the passion for her he had put away with such despairing hands, was blossoming all the ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... reading intently, Mr. Goodworth was thinking profoundly, the rain was falling inveterately, the fog was thickening dirtily, and the austerity of the severe-looking parlor was hardening apace into its most adamantine Sunday grimness, as Zack was brought to say his lesson at his father's knees. He got through it perfectly again; but his childish manner, during this third trial, altered from frankness to distrustfulness; and he looked much oftener, while he said his task, at Mr. Goodworth than at his father. ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... she would have cracked like a nutshell against those adamantine walls. But to get into the harbour it was the only way, and as the skipper said afterwards, when I remonstrated on his apparent foolhardiness, "Needs must, when the ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... her extraordinary charms should seduce any man was such, that he not only employed women as executioners, but refused to permit her a priest or monk, thus forcing her to die unshriven, and refusing her the benefit of any penitence that may have lurked in her adamantine heart." ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the one chink which the buffet boards disclose, and thinks one; the travelled person, disdaining haste, smiles on all with a pitying leer; the foolish man, who has forgotten something, makes public his conviction that he will lose his train. The adamantine official alone is at his ease, and, as the minutes go, the knell of the train-loser sounds the deeper, the horrid jargon is ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... said Chevenix; "he does. He was sure of you all through, from the beginning, as you say. That's why he didn't write or expect letters from you. He nattered himself that he was secure. Poor old Nevile!" He felt sorry now for Ingram. She was really adamantine. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... dark eyes gleamed with an avaricious light at sight of the roll of yellow banknotes which Smith flung carelessly upon the bar, but he had earned his living by his wits too long to betray eagerness. He masked the adamantine hardness of his grasping nature beneath an air of generous and ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... that, under the strain of war, the far-flung British Empire, with its heterogeneous elements and racial jealousies, would promptly crumble. It was a vital error. Instead of crumbling it hardened into a unity which is adamantine. Canada has already contributed half a million men to the British armies, Australia three hundred thousand. South Africa, by undertaking her own defense, released the imperial regiments stationed there. She not only suppressed the German-fomented ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... On the aspiring adamantine trunk Of a huge tree, whose root, with slaughter drunk Sends forth a scent of war, La Mancha's knight, Frantic with valor, and returned from fight, His bloody standard trembling in the air, Hangs up his glittering armor beaming far, With that fine-tempered steel whose ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "Edward, dear Edward!" he heard distinctly uttered at a few yards from his bed side. The storm was laid; the wind was hushed; the sea had ceased to rave: it was two o'clock in the morning; and every motion was audible. Recollecting the adamantine strength of his prison, Bertram felt his German superstitions stealing over him; but again he heard the voice; and, opening his eyes, he saw a dull light in the room. Instantly he raised his head; and he beheld the figure of a young woman standing by a little table. She was muffled ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... she said gently—her gentleness was adamantine—"under any circumstances whatever, consider, for a moment even, the possibility of parting with the picture ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... pahoehoe, and that they advance very slowly, being full of solid points, or centres of cooling: that a- a, in fact, grains like sugar. Its hardness is indescribable. It is an aggregate of upright, rugged, adamantine points, and at a distance, a river of it looks like a dark ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... betwixt, The darts were in the cover fix'd, Or, often blunted and recoil'd, On Plutarch's Moral struck, were spoil'd. The Queen of Wisdom could foresee, But not prevent, the Fates' decree: And human caution tries in vain To break that adamantine chain. Vanessa, though by Pallas taught, By Love invulnerable thought, Searching in books for wisdom's aid, Was, in the very search, betray'd. Cupid, though all his darts were lost, Yet still resolved ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... then the descent continued in clouds of volcanic dust, winding in and out among cinder-cones, brick-red, old rose, and purplish black of colour. Above us, higher and higher, towered the crater-walls, while we journeyed on across innumerable lava-flows, turning and twisting a devious way among the adamantine billows of a petrified sea. Saw-toothed waves of lava vexed the surface of this weird ocean, while on either hand arose jagged crests and spiracles of fantastic shape. Our way led on past a bottomless pit ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... had caught on his wrist, which was seriously damaged, as well as excruciatingly painful, but the second had taken effect on his head. His assailant had evidently gone away then, leaving him for dead; but, as a matter of fact, he was only stunned by the shock, and had, thanks to the adamantine thickness of the negro skull and the ill-direction of the chopper, only a very bad scalp-wound, the bone being no more than grazed. He had lain insensible for some time, and must have come to his senses soon after the housemaid had left the room. Terrified at the knowledge that his enemies ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... and good and strong—a suppressed strength. He looks passion-proof; but if he ever falls in love! And what a triumph for a thief to capture an adamantine heart! But I don't ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... fury, pursued me closely. The pistol was soon ready, and then looking back, I saw his head five or six yards behind my horse's tail. To fire at it would be useless, for a bullet flattens against the adamantine skull of a buffalo bull. Inclining my body to the left, I turned my horse in that direction as sharply as his speed would permit. The bull, rushing blindly on with great force and weight, did not turn so quickly. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr. |
