"Impenetrability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... English muffins that rested upon poor Brinley's digestion as the world may fairly be presumed to rest upon the shoulders of Atlas, and, indeed, it is a tradition in the Brinley family that one of this cook's pie-crusts rivalled Harveyized steel in its impenetrability. ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... the king's friends time to defend him. A breast-plate was secretly made for the king. It consisted of fifteen folds of Italian taffeta, and was formed into an under waistcoat and a wide belt. Its impenetrability was tried, and it resisted all thrusts of the dagger, and several balls were turned aside by it. Madame Campan wore it for three days as an under petticoat before an opportunity could be found for the king to try it on unperceived. At length, one ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Ethel glanced at each other; and both felt the impenetrability of Flora's nature, so smooth, that all thrusts ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... gases, there is a continual absorption of motion to produce the cohesion of composition and aggregation. And the specific heats of compound gases will be found greater than those of simple gases, in proportion to the loss of volume by combination, ceteris paribus. If impenetrability be a law of matter, the more a portion of atomic matter is condensed, the less ether will be found in the same space. The same is also true when the natural density or specific gravity of a gas is greater ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... quality is the more general, property the more limited term. A quality is inherent; a property may be transient; physicists now, however, prefer to term those qualities manifested by all bodies (such as impenetrability, extension, etc.), general properties of matter, while those peculiar to certain substances or to certain states of those substances (as fluidity, malleability, etc.) are termed specific properties; in this wider use of the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... which the solidarity of units is so complete that the movements and sentiments of all are completely regulated with reference to their interests and behavior as a group. This control by the in-group over its members makes for solidity and impenetrability in its relations with the out-group. Sumner in his Folkways indicates how internal sympathetic contacts and group egotism result in double standards of behavior: good-will and co-operation within the members of the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... his treatise on husbandry, Virgil was at work on the Georgics, and then compare the diction of the two, it seems almost incredible that they should have been contemporaries. In all literature there is probably no such instance of rock-like impenetrability to fashion; for him Alexandria might never have existed. He recalls the age of Cato rather than that of Cicero. His versatility was as great as his industry. There was scarcely any department of prose or poetry, provided ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... attested. Not quite inexplicable, either: he came from the Gods, and had the Gloves of Gwron on his hands: he had the wisdom you cannot fathom, which meets all events and problems as they come, and finds their solution in its superhuman self, where the human brain-mind finds only dense impenetrability.—Marquis Ting saw and wondered.—"Could you do this for the whole state?" he asked.—"Surely; and for the whole empire," said Confucius. The Marquis made him, first Assistant-Superintendent of Works, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they're the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... not dispute whether this acceptation of the word solid be nearer to its original signification than that which mathematicians use it in. It suffices that I think the common notion of solidity will allow, if not justify, this use of it; but if any one think it better to call it IMPENETRABILITY, he has my consent. Only I have thought the term solidity the more proper to express this idea, not only because of its vulgar use in that sense, but also because it carries something more of positive in it ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... from the choice of a fundamental, or at least principal, character, which becomes the substitute for all the rest that is omitted. Thus, extension, resistance, or impenetrability, come to represent, through simplification and abbreviation, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... interpret the expression of his eyes. There was neither anger, nor horror, nor pleading in their cool indomitable stare, but only a hard, bright impenetrability, shuttering the soul behind it from the aching gaze of ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... relief they reached the house at last; the silence and impenetrability of this woman by his side, whom he had always thought so ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at him steadfastly, and her heart sank. The change in his outward appearance seemed typical of some deeper and more final alteration in his whole nature. She felt herself powerless against the absolute impenetrability of his tone and manner. She felt that he had fought a battle within himself and conquered; that for some reason or other he had decided to walk no longer in the pleasanter paths of life. She had come to him unexpectedly, ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... but decided change in her manner, which did not pass away: a sort of hardness and impenetrability: and so incorporated into her nature did these traits seem, that one would have supposed they had always been there. Some unpleasant visitors take a surprisingly short time to make ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... acting upon one another, by normal pressure at mathematical points of contact—of course no forces of friction are supposed. It is exceedingly interesting to see how thus, with no other postulates than inertia, rigidity, and mutual impenetrability, we can thoroughly model not only an elastic solid, and any combination of elastic solids, but so complex and recondite a phenomenon as the passage of polarized light through a magnetic field. But now, with the view of ultimately discarding ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... did he say he'd come next?" But Rose could not tell. There were times when Rose's impenetrability was, to put ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... light that I could distinguish in some degree the outlines of the cell and, little by little, the heavy handle of the door. This diverted me; the monotonous darkness so irritating in its impenetrability that it prevented me from seeing myself was broken; my blood flowed more quietly; I ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... see that air possesses similar appearances of impenetrability with other matter: for it excludes bodies from the ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... those properties," said the Saturnian, "without which we believe that the planet could not subsist as it is, we count 300 of them, like extension, impenetrability, mobility, gravity, divisibility, ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... of weeping parents and guardians, and all sorts of complications; but now I saw that I simply had to keep my mouth shut, and nothing in that way could arise. And, indeed, the more I lay and smoked and thought, the more evident became the wisdom of impenetrability. ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... matter. The assumption, and the form of speaking have remained, though the denial of all other properties to matter but that of extension, on which denial the whole system of Dualism is grounded, has been long exploded. For since impenetrability is intelligible only as a mode of resistance; its admission places the essence of matter in an act or power, which it possesses in common with spirit; and body and spirit are therefore no longer absolutely heterogeneous, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... doubt, regarded their position as impregnable, which, considering its difficulty of access and almost natural impenetrability, it ought to have been, if properly defended. They had only found out their error when too late, thus justifying my former remark to the military officers, that an attack where least expected is almost invariably crowned ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... instances of behaviour equally singular, and which betrayed a mixture of shrewdness and folly, of kindness and impudence, which justified, perhaps, the common notion that his intellects were unsound. Nothing was more remarkable than his impenetrability to ridicule and censure. You might revile him for hours, and he would listen to you with invincible composure. To awaken anger or shame in him was impossible. He would answer, but in such a way as to show him totally unaware of your true meaning. He would afterwards ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... her hands from the desk; folded them in her lap; and sat looking towards the fire, with the impenetrability ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... without hypocrisy, for though the firmness of mind which he boasted was hardness and impenetrability, yet he really felt the ascendency which he vaunted; while the interest which he actually felt in the fortunes of Leicester gave unusual emotion to ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the most democratic of forces, protecting the proletariat in some measure against the possibility of unhindered oppression by an omnipotent capitalism. The English masses are already by the mere impenetrability of the commercial structure above them much worse off than the corresponding masses in the United States. What their condition might be if for a generation the social restraint put upon wealth by the power of the throne and the established ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson |
