"Imperceptible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there a quantity in God? There is; but not a physical quantity, But a supernatural quantity; One nevertheless that is plainly imperceptible to ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... lies on the almost imperceptible watershed which separates the Herat valley from the Caspian Sea. This city, only a few months ago, was entirely destroyed by a severe earthquake. Under date of January 28, 1894, the American press reported: "The bodies of ten thousand victims of the awful ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... mountains or the mediaeval speculation on their meaning. His letters to his wife from the Alps and Pyrenees record his impressions with a painstaking and detailed accuracy which does not forget the black-and-yellow spider performing somersaults on an imperceptible thread hung from one brier to another. The emotion after an hour on the Rigi-Kulm "is immense." "The tourist comes here to get a point of view; the thinker finds here an immense book in which each rock is a letter, each lake is a phrase, each village is an accent; from it arise, like a smoke, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... drawing-room, arranging it. She always hummed a little tune when she was alone, if possible some quaint old French air. Not that she was really alone now; only her invisible mother was with her. To do her justice, Flora took as much trouble to impress this almost imperceptible audience as if she represented ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... by the passage of an enormous dark body through space, became tilted or inclined to its orbit more than before, and that this, while it lasted, altered the flow of the magnetic currents, which, in an imperceptible manner, influence the minds of men. Hitherto the stream of human life had directed itself to the westward, but when this reversal of magnetism occurred, a general desire arose to return to the east. And those whose business is ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... the bowing and the smirking?" she asked, looking past him with innocent eyes. She made an imperceptible little movement toward him as if she expected him to whisper. She was of that school. But he was not. His was not the sort of mind to conceive any thought that required whispering. Some persons in fact ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... reader should be informed; for, besides that it conduces greatly to a perfect understanding of all history, there is no exercise of the mind of a sensible reader more pleasant than the tracing the several small and almost imperceptible links in every chain of events by which all the great actions of the world are produced. We will now in the next chapter proceed with ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... and tranquilly away. Ernest still dwelt in his native valley, and was now a man of middle age. By imperceptible degrees, he had become known among the people. Now, as heretofore, he labored for his bread, and was the same simple-hearted man that he had always been. But he had thought and felt so much, he had given so many of the best hours of his life to unworldly hopes for some ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... murmured drowsily, and the man looking down at her caught his breath sharply betwixt his teeth. Then, with an almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, he stepped ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... know, Gracious, only it seems to me you are like a pure white lily bell, and I want to creep into your heart and live in its fragrance, but—" She stopped abruptly. It seemed as though the almost imperceptible veil of reserve was falling ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... 272 and small stones beaten down with wooden mallets. They excel in the art of making terras. The houses are all flat roofed, so as to resist the heaviest rains: the declivity of the terrasses is so imperceptible, that it is just sufficient to give the rains a tendency to the great conduit or pipe that leads to the mitfere underneath the house, which is underground, and has a terras bottom, impervious to the water. Here is ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... vision than a reality. At first his painted visage only and the whites of his glittering eyes came into view as he raised his head above the surrounding brushwood and stretched his neck in order to obtain a better view of the camp. Then slowly, inch by inch, almost with imperceptible motion, he crept forward until the whole of his gaunt form was revealed. A scalping-knife gleamed in his right hand. The camp was strewn with twigs, but these he removed one by one, carefully clearing each spot before he ventured to ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... beheld a man weep in the prison. With difficulty I comforted him, and although from that day forth, he began to serve me more zealously than ever, if that were possible, and to watch over me, yet I perceived, from almost imperceptible signs, that his heart could never pardon me for my reproach; and yet the others laughed at us, persecuted him at every convenient opportunity, sometimes cursed him violently—but he lived in concord and friendship with ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... only twenty-six square inches. This is considerably augmented in the rainy season; the rivulet is then transformed into a torrent, and its heat diminishes for it appears that the hot springs themselves are subject only to imperceptible variations. All these springs are slightly impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen gas. The fetid smell, peculiar to this gas, can be perceived only by approaching very near the springs. In one of these wells only, the temperature of which is 56.2 degrees, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... Destree mounted the platform and, in a masterly improvisation, began by establishing a long, patient and scholarly parallel between Flemish and Italian art, between the great painters of Florence and Venice and those of Flanders and Brabant; and thence, by imperceptible degrees, he shifted his ground to the present distress in Belgium, to the atrocities and infamies committed by her oppressors, to the whole story, to the whole series of injustices, to the whole danger of this ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Beautiful. It seemed like some happy soul sunning itself in the light of its own thoughts. Its power was so tranquil and even, that it was only a critic who could perceive how much force and vigor were necessary to sustain the wing that floated aloft with so imperceptible an effort. There was no one faculty predominating tyrannically over the others; all seemed proportioned in the felicitous symmetry of a nature rounded, integral, and complete. And when the work was closed, it left behind it a tender warmth that played around the heart of the reader, and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... is to my mind only an elaboration of Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am.' I am, presupposes that I have been, and will be. If you can't destroy one drop of water, you can't destroy me. If you drop the water on red-hot iron, it instantly becomes an imperceptible mist, the mere ghost of itself, but it will ultimately become fluid again. It seems to me that the scientific fact gives a sound basis ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... morning shapes on the horizon—striking the plain into level prose again, and warming the air into genial March. Hour after hour the horses toiled on till the last cabin fell away to the east, like a sail at sea, till the road faded into a trail almost imperceptible ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... By some imperceptible means, Madame Dravikine saw to it that her nephew came in contact with those people who could be useful to him; and she was satisfied, if slightly surprised, to see the ease with which he talked. Ivan himself wondered that he felt so ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the Shawnees chanced to glance at the canoe. At the same instant, his keen eye detected its changed position, imperceptible almost as it was. With a guttural exclamation he arose and moved toward it, followed by his two companions. They had taken scarcely a step, when they saw the boat slide swiftly forward several feet, ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... strangers, the taste and fertile genius of the Troubadours, fostered by the countenance and elegance of the brilliant courts and splendid nobility of Provence, did not long leave theirs in the rough state in which we find it in the ninth century. But the change having been gradual and almost imperceptible, the French historians have fixed no epocha for the transition of the Romance into the Provencal. That the former language had not received any considerable alteration in the twelfth Century may be gathered from the comparison in the appendix: and, that it still bore the same name, appears ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.
... Then imperceptible changes came,—the changes that work so silently they are like destiny. Because it is unsafe to let the rascal bushrovers and voyageurs go off by themselves with $3000 worth to the canoe load, the merchants began to accompany them westward. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... now, as there ever has been, an onward progress toward truth on earth. But that true progress is seldom rapid, excepting perhaps in the final stages of some particular movement. It is, indeed, often so slow, so gradual, as to be imperceptible at the moment to common observation. It is often silent, wonderful, mysterious, sublime. It is the grand movement toward the Divine Will, working out all things for eventual good. In looking back, there are for every generation way-marks by which the course of that ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... when she's warm,' replied the lad, taking her across the ears with the point of the whip. The wheels followed merrily over the sound, hard road through the park, and the gentle though almost imperceptible fall of the ground giving an impetus to the vehicle, they bowled away as if they had four of the soundest, freshest legs in the world before them, instead of nothing but a belly-band between ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... and apparently aimless turns; on closer examination, however, it may be seen that this irregularity is not to be attributed to ignorance or caprice. Experience had taught the Egyptians the art of picking out, upon the almost imperceptible relief of the soil, the easiest lines to use against the inundation: of these they have followed carefully the sinuosities, and if the course of the dykes appears singular, it is to be ascribed to the natural configuration ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... again, that the same Lord brings it to the perfection of virtue only in the course of time? I should be glad to learn the reason, for I know it not. I do know, however, that in the beginning, when a trance lasts only the twinkling of an eye, and is almost imperceptible but for the effects it produces, the degree of strength which God then gives is very different from that which He gives when this grace is a trance ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... deliberation for which these affairs are celebrated. The slow approach, with frequent pauses to sit down and meditate, or "view the landscape o'er," the earnest and musical—if melancholy—exchange of salutations, the almost imperceptible drawing nearer, with the slightly waving tail the only sign of excitement, and at last the instantaneous dash, the slap or scratch (so rapid one can never tell which), the fiery expletive and retort, and the instant retreat, to sit down again. There seems to be some canon of feline etiquette which ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... intelligence had now developed into thought. Brain and soul strove to grasp what it all meant, and what the revelation was between Nature and herself. Nature was so vast; she was so insignificant; changes in its motionless inorganic life were imperceptible save through the telescopes of years; but she, like the wind, the water, and the clouds, was variable, inconstant. Was there any real relation between the vast, imperturbable earth, its seas, its forests, its mountains and its plains, its ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... towns of the older West moves slowly-almost as slowly as in the seaport villages or little towns of the East. Towns like Tyre and Bluff Siding have grown during the last twenty years, but very slowly, by almost imperceptible degrees. Lying too far away from the Mississippi to be affected by the lumber interest, they are merely trading points for the farmers, with no perceivable germs of ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... for the last time. I thought to myself—on so seeing him—(added the sculptor) that it is thus that I will chisel your bust in marble." Dannecker then requested me to draw my hand gently over the forehead—and to observe by what careful, and almost imperceptible gradations, this boldness of front had been accomplished; I listened to every word that he said about the extraordinary character then, as it were, before me, with an earnestness and pleasure which I can hardly describe; and walked round and round the bust with ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... been tempted to tell her too,' Cytherea went on, 'had I not found out that there exists a very odd, almost imperceptible, and yet real connection of some kind between her and Mr. Manston, which is more than that of a mutual interest in ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... be mentioned that the days as reckoned from sunset to sunset, sunrise to sunrise, and noon to noon, would give intervals of slightly different lengths. This would, however, be imperceptible so long as their lengths were not measured by some accurate mechanical time-measurer such as a clepsydra, sandglass, pendulum, ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... their beauty burned, Extort red secrets from the heart of Mars, Or measure the molten iron in the sun. He bent himself to nearer, lowlier, tasks; And seeing, first, that those deflected rays, Though it were only by the faintest bloom Of colour, imperceptible to our eyes, Must dim the vision of Galileo's glass, He made his own new weapon of the sky,— That first reflecting telescope which should hold In its deep mirror, as in a breathless pool The undistorted ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... veil of mist that hovered over the tranquil bosom of the river Severn, and rose and gathered itself into folds, as if preparing for departure at the approach of an enemy it were in vain to resist. With a murmur, so soft it was almost imperceptible, glided the stream, blue as the heaven it mirrored, between banks now green and gently shelving away, crowned with a growth of oak, hickory, pine, hemlock and savin, now rising into irregular masses of grey rocks, overgrown with moss, with here and there a stunted ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... his departure they were brought together again by some imperceptible influence. It was one of the Sunday afternoons when everybody was at church. Christophe had gone out too to make his final preparations for the journey. Sabine was sitting in her tiny garden warming herself in the last rays of the sun. Christophe came ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... everything just as it should be done. And not once during the long dinner, did she catch the eye of either Farnsworth or Mr. Peyton. Once or twice she looked at Mrs. Brewster with a note of inquiry in her eyes, and that lady gave an almost imperceptible nod of approval, so that Patty knew everything was going ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... remain in ignorance of some circumstance, some mobile secret, through the unveiling of which they would be more admired, or less esteemed, and which they well know how to hide under the subtle smile of an almost imperceptible mockery. Delighting in the pleasure of mystification, from the most spiritual or comic to the most bitter and melancholy, they may perhaps find in this deceptive raillery an external formula of disdain for the veiled expression of the superiority which they ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... THE NOVEL. Before the novel could reach its modern stage, of a more or less sincere attempt to express human life and character, it had to pass through several centuries of almost imperceptible development. Among the early precursors of the novel we must place a collection of tales known as the Greek Romances, dating from the second to the sixth centuries. These are imaginative and delightful stories of ideal love and marvelous adventure,[214] which profoundly affected romance writing for ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... steadiness and its intensity. This vacuum economised the graphite points between which the luminous arc was developed—an important point of economy for Captain Nemo, who could not easily have replaced them; and under these conditions their waste was imperceptible. When the Nautilus was ready to continue its submarine journey, I went down to the saloon. The panel was closed, and ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... An almost imperceptible smile passed over Beauvais's countenance. "So her Highness has captured your sympathies?" with a ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... Manuel Cagigal, proved to me, by his journal, that he observed the peak of the Azores at the distance of 37 leagues, when he was sure of his latitude within two minutes. The volcano was seen at 4 degrees south-east, so that the error in longitude must have an almost imperceptible influence in the estimation of the distance. Nevertheless, the angle which the peak of the Azores subtended was so great, that the captain of the Pizarro was of opinion this volcano must be visible at more than ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... imaginative thought in the happy isolation thus enjoyed, with all the concurrent delights of natural things, the wind moving like a spirit through the tree-branches, the drifting of poignant fragrances, even in winter-tide, from herb and sappy bark, imperceptible almost by the alertest sense in the day's manifold detachments. At this time, too, he composed much in the open air. This he rarely, if ever, did in later life. Not only many portions of "Paracelsus," but several scenes in "Strafford," were enacted first in these ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... kiss. The aerial dialogue of the nests bidding each other good night in the elms of the Champs-Elysees was audible. A few stars, daintily piercing the pale blue of the zenith, and visible to revery alone, formed imperceptible little splendors amid the immensity. Evening was unfolding over the head of Jean Valjean all the sweetness ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... extension. In reality, wherever extension is, there substance is also,—the non-existent has no extension,—and wherever space is, there matter is also. Empty space does not exist. When we say a vessel is empty, we mean that the bodies which fill it are imperceptible; if it were absolutely empty its sides would touch. Descartes argues against the atomic theory and against the finitude of the world, as he argues against empty space: matter, as well as space, has no smallest, indivisible parts, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... downward rush of the current seemed to gather strength; there were times when their progress was almost imperceptible. Sufficient snow had already fallen to cloak the land in whiteness, and they were very conscious that every day the temperature, was sinking lower. In the middle of the seventh night of their journey they felt something grate against their prow, and they knew that the river was freezing ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... the referee. There was no reply. Only here and there a foot moved uneasily as weights were thrown forward, and there was a general, almost imperceptible, tightening ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... with almost imperceptible motion, Mrs. Gammit slid her right hand, armed with the pepper-pot, over the edge of the window-sill. The porcupines, enraptured with the flavour of the herring-tub, never looked up. Mrs. Gammit was just about to turn the pepper-pot over, when she saw a third dim shape approaching, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... others. She felt that Aunt Kate's sharp eyes were upon her. Nearly always, she and her mother had taken their meals together; on Sunday, specially invited to dine with Mrs. Barrington and Miss Arran. Mrs. Boyd shrank from these occasions but the girl seemed guiding her with an almost imperceptible grace. ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... to see that sort of thing brought into the game. But they'll never find anything. The gentleman we are referring to works on noiseless rollers." Colonel Ramsay indicated the closed door by an almost imperceptible gesture of interrogation; and Rose replied by compressing her lips and shaking ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... finally by a continual pressing of that | | effect it will kill you. Put your ear to the huge locust tree and hear | | the gentle grating of a bore worm. Thou insignificant worm! What dost | | thou hope to do with that monster tree? Grate, grate, grate! For years | | that almost imperceptible grating goes on, while the mighty locust | | lifts its towering branches in fancied security. Finally, a storm | | comes and the locust hopes to brave it as he has many others; but, | | alas, its strength is undermined; Its vitals ...
— Vanity, All Is Vanity - A Lecture on Tobacco and its effects • Anonymous
... man—it comes forth like Minerva fully armed from the brain. Our sense of the ludicrous is produced by our peculiar mental constitution, and not by external objects, in which there is nothing either absurd or serious. As when the action of our mind is imperceptible—for instance, in hearing and seeing with our "bodily" senses—we think what we notice is something in the external world, although it is only so far dependent upon it that it could not exist without some kind of outer ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... whose slender stem they inserted between the man's teeth. In this way a little liquid was forced into his mouth, and presently his bared breast heaved slightly—so slightly that the motion was almost imperceptible. ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... dance a man and a woman enter the circle, each holding a cloth. Keeping time to the music, they approach each other with almost imperceptible movements of feet and toes, and a bending at the knees, meanwhile changing the position of the cloths. This is varied from time to time by a few quick, high steps. For fuller description see article by author ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... with its patches of uncut grass, where the yellow cowslips drooped. There was an air of dreamy repose about the place; even that whirling and silvery gray sea produced no sound; here the winds were stilled, and the black shadows of the trees on that smooth green lawn only moved with the imperceptible moving of the sun. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... by a luminous atmosphere. Between these two extreme types of a faint diffused mass on the one hand, and a bright star with a nebula surrounding it on the other, a graduated series of various other nebulae can be arranged. We thus have a series of links passing by imperceptible gradations from the most faintly diffused nebulae on the one side, ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... latent, secret, unknown, covert, impenetrable, obscure, undiscovered, unseen, dark, imperceptible, occult, unimagined, unthought-of. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... There was an almost imperceptible shake of the head from the sick woman, making his heart melt swiftly again. Then, dragging his limbs, he got out of the room and down ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... Street. Mr. Faringfield and Philip were occupied in setting the former's business upon its feet again, and something like the old routine had been resumed in the bereaved house. I knew that all this was due to Phil's imperceptible work. At last there came great news: Philip was to follow his letter to England, in the next Bristol vessel after the one that carried it. 'Twas but a brief note in which he told us this. "There is some news," wrote ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... conscious only of the faint hum of a generator at the other end of the room, and the quivering hand of the meter. I turned the dial back an imperceptible degree, and the hand steadied down exactly upon the numerals "2700." Then I touched ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... man and a woman enter the circle, each holding a cloth about the size of a skirt. The man extends his cloth toward the woman, and bringing it suddenly down, causes it to snap, which is the signal to begin. With almost imperceptible movement of the feet and toes and a bending at the knees, he approaches the woman, who in a like manner goes toward him. They pass and continue until at a distance about equal to the start, when they again turn and pass. Occasionally the man will take a few ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... as quiet a bit of nature as could be found anywhere; and Diana was very quiet looking at it. But Mrs. Bartlett's eye was upon her much more than upon her work; which, indeed, could go on quite well without such supervision. She broke silence at last, speaking with an imperceptible little sigh. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... he continued to question her with his eyes. Quite still she remained, save for an almost imperceptible movement of breathing. Against the dull beams from the aperture above, her hair darkly framed her face, pale, dim with half-lights, illusory. When he again spoke his voice sounded ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... views here maintained that it is impossible to say at what point in the ascending scale animals become capable of abstraction, etc.; but who can say at what age this occurs in our young children? We see at least that such powers are developed in children by imperceptible degrees. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... permitted himself to remark fatuously: "If I were to ask Henri for such and such a thing, he is a good enough friend of mine to do it." But he was careful never to ask anything of him. He feared him, and his fear, although imperceptible, reacted upon the others, and was of use to ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... and gradually, by imperceptible degrees, life crept back into his weary bones and leaden brain. His friend was patient and considerate, and they travelled slowly and talked little. At first Faxon had felt a great shrinking from whatever touched on ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... perhaps fallen to a point slightly lower, at which hight it may be expected to remain, other conditions also remaining constant. The gland steam must now be gradually turned off until the amount of steam vapor issuing from the glands is almost imperceptible. This should not lower the vacuum in the slightest degree. By gradual degrees the gland steam can be still farther cut down, until no steam vapor at all can be discerned issuing from the gland boxes. This reduction should be continued ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... poultry-yard, wishes to call up a picture of a hen, experiences a difficulty—his different memories rise up. The experiment becomes a cause of effacement; the images canceling one another decline to a state of imperceptible tendencies which their likeness and unlikeness prevent from predominating. Images become blunted by their collision just ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... forth their emissaries of religion and letters, who stop, here and there, along the coast of the vast continent of Africa, and with painful and tedious efforts make some almost imperceptible progress in the communication of knowledge, and in the general improvement of the natives who are immediately about them. Not thus slow and imperceptible is the transmission of the vices and bad passions which the subjects of Christian States carry to the land. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... listened to the song, sweet and simple in itself, but made with deft and almost imperceptible intonation on certain words, clearly for his ear, the stern lines ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... upright might think the snow covered by a very fine dust, but if your eyes are good, and you place your face within eighteen or twenty inches of the snow, you can easily discern the snow flea. Although so small as to be almost imperceptible to the naked eye, yet they are most active, jumping ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... them feel that life is a battle, yet that victory is sure to reward all who combat aright—that after the dust and heat of the struggle comes the repose of satisfied duty. Yet there is nothing didactic in the volume. Its influence upon the heart is like that of the dew of heaven, silent, gradual, imperceptible. Is not this a proof ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... would appear rational to suppose that some action of this sort takes place when mind acts upon, or influences, matter. Air is invisible, and practically imperceptible to our senses—when stationary. But set into motion, a current of air will close a door with a bang—will have the effect of definitely moving a heavy mass of inanimate matter, in the manner indicated. It may be that in somewhat ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... and corruption. There are a sort of middle tints and shades between the two extremes; there is something uncertain on the confines of the two empires which they first pass through, and which renders the change easy and imperceptible. There are even a sort of splendid impositions so well contrived, that, at the very time the path of rectitude is quitted forever, men seem to be advancing into some higher and nobler road of public ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... hopes than the probability of their disappointment, to take any comfort in his sympathy. Caterina, like the rest of us, turned away from sympathy which she suspected to be mingled with criticism, as the child turns away from the sweetmeat in which it suspects imperceptible medicine. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... that all men acted under an absolute necessity, in which he seemed protected by the then received doctrine of absolute decrees. He seemed to think that the universe was god, and that souls were material, Thought being only subtle and imperceptible motion. He thought interest and fear were the chief principles of society; and he put all morality in the following that which was our own private will or advantage. He thought religion had no other foundation than the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... understood by the crowd, who confounded him with vulgar tricksters, and his mask only appeared to them a trick the more, and a very common trick into the bargain. "He must think us very stupid," they said. "How could he possibly aim without having his eyes open?" And they thought there must be imperceptible holes in the oil-cloth, a sort of lattice work concealed in the material. It was useless for him to allow the public to examine the mask for themselves before the exhibition began. It was all very well that they could not discover any trick, but they were only all the more convinced ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... unless its history is well known, and unless it has been in the hands of responsible persons. The measurements of antler spread can be considered authentic only when the skull is intact. If the skull is split an almost imperceptible paring of the skull bones at the joint would suffice to drop the antlers either laterally out of their proper plane, or else pitch the main beam backward. By either of these devices a couple of inches can be gained on each side, making a difference of several inches in the aggregate. But ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... a vast transition. No period stands alone; the present is in every age merely the shifting point at which the past and the future meet. All things move onwards. But the movement sometimes takes the form of a cataract, at others of an even and almost imperceptible current. This is really another way of saying that the usually slow and gradual course of change is, at certain stages, interrupted by a more or less prolonged period of revolution. The process of growth, from being gradual and imperceptible, becomes ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... through all, and over all.... All day, glimpses from the other world, floating motes from that inner transcendental life, have been floating across me.... Have you not felt that your real soul was imperceptible to your mental vision, except at a few hallowed moments? That in everyday life the mind, looking at itself, sees only the brute intellect, grinding and working, not the Divine particle, which is life ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... would owe to no one; indulgence, and impunity. For these advantages there is only the trouble of wearing a cross, which is becoming; black or gray habits, which can be made as magnificent as one likes; a little imperceptible ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... Millicent's pretended friendliness. It seemed to Miss Loder that the only way to pierce this upstart girl's armour of complacency was to launch shafts of cleverly-veiled contempt; and although to Owen these darts were either imperceptible or merely accidental, Toni knew very well that they were intended ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... he was more comfortable when I came away." And with an almost imperceptible glance round the room he was in, Reuben turned and bounded lightly up the staircase. But all was dark there and in Mr. Linden's room. Reuben could not execute his commission so; and was turning to come down stairs again, when he encountered in the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... with that almost imperceptible twitching of her soft mouth which he knew to be a sign of suffering; and in her eyes there was ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... closely to his mouth, try the whole force of his lungs through it upon any light object. The amount of effect will be found surprisingly small; and unless the tube is a short one, it will be so far absorbed by friction and atmospheric resistance as to be almost imperceptible. Then let him hold the same tube near to the mouth, but not in contact, and repeat the experiment. With the best adjustment, the effect may be described as tenfold or fifty-fold, or almost any fold—the effect of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... inches long, but which recall the form of certain common ferns; these lie almost flat upon the ground. They fold together upward from the central stem at the least touch, and the plant thus makes itself almost imperceptible;—it seems to live so, that you feel guilty of murder if you break off a leaf. It is called Zhbe- moin-mis, or "Plant-did-I-amuse-myself," because it is supposed to tell naughty little children who play truant, or who delay much longer ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... I remember, going out of Carlos' room, she had just paused on the threshold for an almost imperceptible moment, the time to murmur, with feeling, "May Heaven reward you, Don Juan." This sound, faint and enchanting, like a breath of sweet wind, staggered me. Castro, sitting outside as usual, had scrambled to his feet and stood ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... oozed with a very palpable wetness. Just how it displaced the air in its path, is something which I cannot with certainty say. Was it formed as a low layer somewhere over the lake and slowly pushed along by a gentle, imperceptible, fan-shaped current of air? Fan-shaped, I say; for, as we shall see, it travelled simultaneously south and north; and I must infer that in exactly the same way it travelled west. Or was it formed originally like a tremendous column which flattened ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... providence, each passing occurrence, all the thoughts, the emotions, the solitary meditations, the reverential communion, the occasional intercourse with the few dwellers of the desert,—like the strokes, slight and almost imperceptible in their effect, which the block receives from the hand of the sculptor,—all were fitting the apparently exiled Hebrew for his high vocation ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... manner:—After laying his forefinger on his head and heart, he pointed to the fire burning in the chimney, signifying by his pantomimic action that the head and heart of Djalma were both in flames. No doubt Rodin understood him, for an imperceptible smile of satisfaction played upon his wan lips; then he said aloud to Faringhea, "I wish to be alone with the prince. Let down the shade and see that we are not interrupted." The half-caste bowed, and touched a spring near the sheet of plate-glass, which slid into the wall as ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... imperceptible start, and opened his long, dark eyes with questioning surprise at Bardo's blind face, as if his words—a mere phrase of common parlance at a time when men were often being ransomed from slavery or imprisonment—had some ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... {150c} speaking of the more gradual decay of the body after an easy natural death, than after a sudden and violent one; and so Buffon begins his first volume by saying that "we can descend, by almost imperceptible degrees, from the most perfect creature to the most formless matter—from the most highly organised matter to the ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... Moncrossen's first rush with a quick, short jab that reached the corner of his eye. With an almost imperceptible movement he leaned to one side, and the flail-like swing of the huge boss's arm passed harmlessly within an ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... Roberta's actual presence on the stage was proving a distinct advantage to those of the players who had parts with her. She warmed and held them to their tasks with the flash of her own eyes, not to mention an occasional almost imperceptible but pregnant gesture, and they found themselves somehow able to "forget the audience," as she had so many times advised them to do, the better that she herself seemed so ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... turning your eyes from the atrocious metamorphosis, exclaim it is chance—it is fate; arbitrary sounds and sterile syllables, with which no distinct idea can ever be associated. Alas! are there not imperceptible threads by which a regulating hand guides us through a crooked labyrinth from causes to effects, and prepares in silence the events of the universe? Prostrated by implacable vengeance, and despoiled of the ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... and of all sizes. Arnold, leading the forlorn hope, advanced perhaps one hundred yards before the main body....The snow was deeper than in the fields, because of the nature of the ground; and the path made (by the advance guard) was almost imperceptible because of the falling snow. Covering the locks of our guns with the lappets of our coats, holding down our heads (for it was impossible to bear up our faces against the imperious storm of wind and ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... itself! In what wonderful wrappers, enclosing layers of dried leaves, would he swathe his rosy and contented face, if his mother suspected him of a toothache! What botanical blotches would he cheerfully stick upon his cheek, or forehead, if the dear old lady convicted him of an imperceptible pimple there! Into this herbaceous penitentiary, situated on an upper staircase-landing: a low and narrow whitewashed cell, where bunches of dried leaves hung from rusty hooks in the ceiling, and were spread out upon shelves, in company with portentous bottles: would the ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... females of the Pammon group; and though, from the peculiar marking of the fore wings, it has at first sight a very different aspect, yet a closer examination shows that every one of its markings could be produced by slight and almost imperceptible modifications of the various allied forms. I fully believe, therefore, that I shall be correct in placing P. Romulus as a third Indian form of the female P. Pammon, corresponding to P. Melanides, the ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... silence gave way to a universal sigh of excitement and relief. District Attorney Fox's lips curled with an imperceptible smile of disdain, which might have impressed the jury if they had been looking his way; but they were all looking with eager and interested eyes at the prisoner, who had just uttered this ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... incomprehensible to us are the keenness of sight and wide range of vision of the eagle, which enable him to discover the rabbit nipping the clover amid the thick grass at a distance at which a like object would be to us altogether imperceptible. The chameleon is enabled to seize the little insects upon which it feeds by darting forth its wonderfully constructed tongue with such rapidity and with such delicacy of perception that "wonder-loving sages" have told us that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... argillaceous beds, which intervene between the two coal-seams. This same displacement has also been traced downward more than 150 feet below the metal coal, but it grows continually less and less until it becomes imperceptible. ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... Occurrences, which otherwise I had been ignorant of, but also enabled me ...to see into the most secret Springs which gave rise to the Actions I had either heard, or been Witness of—to judge of the various Passions of the Human Mind, and distinguish those imperceptible Degrees by which they become Masters of the Heart, and attain ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... the lameness will vary with the rapidity of the gait, and with the character of the road upon which the animal is made to travel. For instance, many animals in which the lameness is imperceptible at a walk become 'dead' lame at a fast trot. It is sufficiently explained when one remembers the greater movements of expansion and contraction of the posterior parts of the wall brought about by the increase in the rate of ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... several of the leading champions of "sound literary doctrines" have done him the honour to throw the gauntlet to him, even in his profound obscurity—to him, a simple, imperceptible spectator of this curious contest He will not have the presumption to pick it up. In the following pages will be found the observations with which he might oppose them—there will be found his sling and his stone; ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the canoe. It seemed an age to him before he saw a hand emerge from the bushes and take hold of the head-rope. The motion given to the canoe was so slight as to be almost imperceptible; it seemed as if it was only drifting gently before the slight breeze which was creeping over the surface of the lake. Half its length had disappeared from the open space, when an Indian appeared by the edge of the water. He looked at the ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... opening the door of her mother's room at intervals of five minutes and closing the same noiselessly, after a brief survey of the figure on the bed. As the tenantry of field and forest apprehend the approach of some natural cataclysm, by means of signs imperceptible to man's grosser senses, so to Diantha the curve of her mother's shoulder under the sheet, presaged a storm. Her uneasiness was due to a horrid uncertainty as to which would anger her mother the more, to be wakened too early or to be ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... around grinning at the pile of shovels lying in the fuzz-bush. The Martians seemed interested and appeared to communicate with one another in some imperceptible manner. ...
— The Terrible Answer • Arthur G. Hill
... grazes it. The contact is scarcely noticeable, we divine it rather than see it. It would have been profane to insist upon it, it would have been cruel not to have made us believe in it. All Rubens's furtive sensitiveness is in this imperceptible contact that says so many things, respects them all, and ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... bill against James Wilson, of course. And yet Job felt now doubly anxious and sad. It seemed the beginning of the end. He had got, by imperceptible degrees, to think Jem innocent. Little by little this persuasion had come ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... much more broken and undulating, while here and there, from the summit of a hill, elevated above the rest, the view which you command is both striking and extensive. At last, the White Mountain, as it is called, lies before you, and by an easy and almost imperceptible ascent, you arrive at its crest. There it will, indeed, be worth your while to pause; for a finer scene of its kind you will rarely look down upon in any country of ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... as this are instances of the slightest degree of a condition which if not remedied may pass into confirmed insanity. I believe the gradations to be almost imperceptible by which the one state passes into the other; and I have known instances in which the ungovernable temper and occasional fury of the child have passed in youth into abiding insanity which rendered the ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... opening; slowly—slowly—by almost imperceptible degrees. I held the pistol pointed rigidly before me and my gaze remained fixed intently on the dimly seen opening. I suppose I acted as ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have done in ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... "is Mr. Hallowell awake yet?" As he asked the question his eyebrows rose; with an almost imperceptible shake of the head he signaled for an answer in ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... as they sat down to dinner. Two or three of the village girls waited upon them, and in the open doorway sat a vision of loveliness, arrayed in yellow muslin, and directing the movements of the girls by almost imperceptible motions ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... faithful to the end, and gave the juvenile patron the benefit of the entire length and breadth of his art, omitting nothing that could add dignity or perfection to the operation. It was quite certain that, if there was anything like an imperceptible down on his face at the commencement of the process, there was nothing left of ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... be found that decisions based on the direct implications of the language used, and others based upon a remoter inference of what the parties must have meant, or would have said if they had spoken, shade into each other by imperceptible degrees. ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... always be some diversity of opinion in the matter; but the majority of us have accepted Thackeray's solution, and have dropped out of sight that hint of undesirable rivalry, which so troubled the precisians of the early Victorian age. To those who read Esmond now, noting carefully the almost imperceptible transformation of the motives on either side, as developed by the evolution of the story, the union of the hero and heroine at the end must appear not only credible but preordained. And that the gradual progress towards this ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... may be allowed to fasten on the mind, until, from want of candid examination, they come to be invested with the authority of truth. In the moral process which follows, each single step is slight, and its influence almost imperceptible; but this influence is perpetuated, and gains strength in each succeeding step, until the result is a total derangement of the moral ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... spotted. The bite of all these serpents is attended with great danger; indeed I believe there is not one of this class of animals that is not more or less venomous, though some in a very slight, and almost imperceptible degree. Their poison principally affects the blood, and is not hurtful to a sound skin. Yet I hardly ever cased one of the larger serpents for stuffing, but I turned sick with the extraordinary, musky, and loathsome smell of their ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... a positive, about ten pounds of positive, I should judge from the size of that volume, while Charlotte certainly argued from a negative viewpoint," said father, and his eyes twinkled as he gave me an almost imperceptible wink. By his answer he also avoided answering the question ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and that quickened us. Even the showers of rain had a revivifying effect, and shook up the brain from torpor. But now, when the river no longer ran in a proper sense, only glided seaward with an even, out-right, but imperceptible speed, and when the sky smiled upon us day after day without variety, we began to slip into that golden doze of the mind which follows upon much exercise in the open air. I have stupefied myself in this way more than once; indeed, I dearly love the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a double portion of severity into his countenance while laughing inwardly; but preserves a look peculiarly his own, a look of demure serenity, disturbed only by an arch sparkle of the eye, an almost imperceptible elevation of the brow, an almost imperceptible curl of the lip. His tone is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of a Cynic. It is that of a gentleman, in whom the quickest sense of the ridiculous is constantly tempered by good nature ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... still that it had that oily sort of haze that distinguishes the mirage in the East, when the air appears composed of little waving lines wavering to and fro that dazzle your eyes with their almost-imperceptible motion as you look at them; and the silence was unbroken save by the chuck-chuck-chuck of some meddlesome blackbird in the shrubbery annoying the sparrows in their nap, and the answering click-clink-tweedle-deedle-dum-tum-tweedle-um ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... to mean undifferentiated connective tissue; "exhalants" are imperceptible tubes arising from the capillaries and secreting fat, serum, marrow, etc.; the "absorbents and glands" are the lymphatics and the ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... of the dying light, or else I detected an almost imperceptible twitching of the grim lips. After a ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... or inlet, which was named by the governor Port Dalrymple, in compliment to Alexander Dalrymple, esq takes its course from the SE between two chains of rounded mountains, stretching inland from the sea with an almost imperceptible increase of elevation; and, after gradually approximating each other, seemed to unite, at the distance of between thirty and forty miles, in a body of rugged mountains more lofty than themselves. These two chains in their relative positions formed an ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... anything from log-rolling to bribery. In American legislatures it is to be hoped that downright bribery is rare. As for log-rolling, or exchange of favours, there are many phases of it in which that which may be perfectly innocent shades off by almost imperceptible degrees into that which is unseemly or dishonourable or even criminal; and it is in this hazy region that Satan likes to set his traps for ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... How amazingly the child has changed. She will be a useful ferment, I fancy. How strange it is always—this abrupt leap of the girl into the heritage of womanhood. The boy matures slowly, by imperceptible gradations. Now Leila seems to me years older than John, and the change is really somewhat startling; but then I have seen very little of young women. There is the ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... is now imperceptible and permanent, now periodical and violent; it depends upon the course which property takes. In a country where the property is pretty evenly distributed, and where little business is done,—the rights and claims of each being balanced by those ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... work approaches perfection. The first five chalk touches bring a head into existence out of nothing. No five touches in the whole course of the work will ever do so much as these, and the difference made by each touch is more and more imperceptible as the work approaches completion. Consequently, the ratio between the means employed and the effect produced is constantly decreasing, and therefore the least sensation of power is received from the most ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... the score of beauty between the crystal and the shell, let us say once more, is imperceptible. But fix attention for a moment, not upon their appearance, but upon their possibilities, upon their relation to the future, and upon their place in evolution. The crystal has reached its ultimate stage of development. ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... flared up before the nodding glass and metal of the top. His eyes looked at it, narrowed with attention, as if expecting an imperceptible sign. With his grave face he resembled a booted and misshapen pagan burning incense before the oracle of a Joss. There was no mistake. It was the lowest reading he had ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... her, the pains he had taken in choosing horses for her to ride, their long mornings on the river with Henriette, their hawking parties, and in all his tender brotherly care of her. The change in him had come about by almost imperceptible degrees: but it had been chiefly marked by a fitful temper that had cut her to the quick; now kind; now barely civil; courting her company to-day; to-morrow avoiding her, as if there were contagion in her presence. Then, after ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... promising trail, Breed caught a fugitive scent of meat. He circled and looped, now catching it, then losing it again. The broad valley stood white and silent, gripped in a dead calm, and the few vagrant breezes were imperceptible, merely the sluggish drift of local air pockets that shifted ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... not pretty—she was too tall for that—quite as tall as Wilbur himself, and her skeleton was too massive. Her face was red, and the glint of blue ice was in her eyes. Her eyelashes and eyebrows, as well as the almost imperceptible down that edged her cheek when she turned against the light, were blond almost to whiteness. What beauty she had was of the fine, hardy Norse type. Her hands were red and hard, and even beneath the coarse sleeve of the oilskin coat one could infer that the biceps and deltoids were large and ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... an imperceptible change crept over the three. The older woman was much alone—variable as an April day, now merry and caressing, now sombre and withdrawn. The girl clung to her mother more closely, sat for long minutes holding ...
— The Courting Of Lady Jane • Josephine Daskam
... Roman jurisprudence that it asserts the claim of the first occupant to the wild animals of the earth, the air, and the waters. In the progress from primitive equity to final injustice, the steps are silent, the shades are almost imperceptible, and the absolute monopoly is guarded by positive laws and artificial reason. The active, insatiable principle of self-love can alone supply the arts of life and the wages of industry; and as soon as civil government ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... I hastened to the master-guide. The sky was cloudless; the wind, almost imperceptible, was north-east. The chain of Mont Blanc, the higher summits of which were gilded by the rising sun, seemed to invite the many tourists to ascend it. One could not, in all politeness, refuse ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... the thick mantle of clouds which covers the sky breaks suddenly apart, disclosing an almost imperceptible portion of the azure canopy. Only for a moment the blue spot is visible, after which the dull vapoury mass closes over it, and again hides ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... King received from Pere Tellier the final benediction of the Company, as one of its members; that Pere Tellier made the King offer up prayers, partly heard, of a kind to leave no doubt of the matter; and that he had given him the robe, or the almost imperceptible sign, as it were, a sort of scapulary, which was found upon him. To conclude, the majority of those who approached the King in his last moments attributed his penitence to the artifices and persuasions of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... distance. The roar of the abyss, nothing can be compared to it. It is the great brutish howl of the universe. What we call matter, that unsearchable organism, that amalgamation of incommensurable energies, in which can occasionally be detected an almost imperceptible degree of intention which makes us shudder, that blind, benighted cosmos, that enigmatical Pan, has a cry, a strange cry, prolonged, obstinate, and continuous, which is less than speech and more than thunder. That cry is the hurricane. Other voices, songs, melodies, clamours, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... so ably that he has scarcely left anything for me to say about it. It is well-known that the change which, soon after the Revolution, began to take place in the opinions of a section of the old Puritan body, was a gradual, an almost imperceptible change. The principle of the English Presbyterians was to have no confession of faith and no form of prayer. Their trust deeds contained no accurate theological definitions. Nonsubscription was in truth the very bond which ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of which man is capable, that is not founded on the exterior; the relation that exists between visible and invisible, the perceptible and the imperceptible?—Lavater. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... an imperceptible pause—- just long enough for him to brush softly against Ben Edwards, and look up lovingly into a beaming face—and then Baldy stood at the head of the Allan and Darling Racing Team, a "likely Sweepstakes Winner," as the Daily Dog News had once ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... doer, maker, or as any other executive, his worth to the state as an incorruptible official, his worth to his family as a devoted husband and father, his worth to literature or art as a thinker or maker,—these values are imprinted upon his personality, howbeit with almost imperceptible lines. ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway |
