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Indelible   /ɪndˈɛlɪbəl/   Listen
Indelible

adjective
(Formerly written also indeleble, which accords with the etymology of the word)
1.
Cannot be removed or erased.  Synonym: unerasable.  "Indelible memories"



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"Indelible" Quotes from Famous Books



... buffeting about in the world, but so rapid and complete had been the development of prose fiction during her literary life that she was unable quite to comprehend the magnitude of the change. Her early training in romance writing had left too indelible a stamp upon her mind. She was never able to apprehend the full possibilities of the newer fiction, and her success as a novelist was only an evidence of her ability to create the image of a literary form without ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... 1. Probably Marti is not far from the truth in suggesting 610 B.C. The reference to Thebes is intelligible even at this later date, when we remember that the capture of so strong a city, already famous in Homer's time, must have left an indelible impression on the mind of Western Asia. It is no doubt abstractly possible that the prophecy is not intimately connected with any historical situation, and therefore might be much earlier; but to say nothing of the concreteness of the detail, ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... box, she examined it. It was an ordinary sailor's tobacco box, she pressed the spring, opened it, and found a piece of paper folded in four and inscribed as follows, the writing done with a purple indelible pencil: ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... I mean those great sanctuaries we call Cathedrals which stand about England like half-dismantled castles and remind us more poignantly than any other thing of all we are fain to forget. There are the indelible words of our history most clearly written. Consider the bricks of S. Martin's, the rude stones of the little church of Bradford, the mighty Norman work of Romsey, the Early English happiness of Salisbury, the riches and security of the long nave of Winchester. Do we ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... of purely intellectual pursuits. As a rule every great success in the money world means the failure and misery of hundreds of antagonists. Every success in the world of intellect and character is an aid and profit to society. Character is a mark cut upon something, and this indelible mark determines the only true value of all people and all their work. Dr. Hunter said: "No man was ever a great man who wanted to be one." Artists cannot help putting themselves and their own characters into their works. The vulgar artist cannot paint a virtuous picture. ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... him an account of the morning's incidents, describing Ferrara's chambers with a minute exactness which revealed how deep, how indelible an impression their strangeness had ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... life, according to this view, is but a link added to the chain of the innumerable lives which we have left behind us. It is true, we do not remember those past existences; but all the same, they have left their indelible mark upon us. Our fortunes, too, in this present existence, are determined by our meritorious or unmeritorious behavior in the past. If, for example, a man acts as your enemy to-day, it is because in a previous state you wantonly injured him or some one like him. Bear ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... officers, headed by a red-tabbed staff captain, came along. Even if I had not recognised him from his portraits—or because two winters before the war he and I stayed in the same hotel at Nice—there was no doubt as to his identity. Name and title appeared written in indelible pencil on his box-respirator. He told me he was looking for a headquarters for his brigade, and he had heard that the sunken road was a likely spot. "I don't know how long we shall be here," I replied, "but we intend to carry out as many improvements ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... report on the doings of the enemy, and another report of one's own doings, and a report on the direction of the wind, and so on. Then there are various indents to fill up—scrawled on a wobbly writing-block with a blunt indelible pencil by the light of a guttering candle—for ammunition, and ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... light flooding the room, bathed her with glory, spreading a halo around her. He held his breath and gazed upon the drooping figure and bewitching face; and, in after years, when his dark hair had grown silvery grey, he remembered the lovely sun-lit vision that so entranced him, leaving an indelible image on heart and brain. He gently removed the hands, and holding them in his, said, in the measured, low tone so ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... his primitive church, were not spared when the deviated from the right path, what will he do to the darkness of this our age, in which, besides all the huge and heinous sins, which it has common with all the wicked of the world committed, is found an innate, indelible, and irremediable load of folly and inconstancy?" "What, wretched man (I say to myself) is it given to you, as if you were an illustrious and learned teacher, to oppose the force of so violent a torrent, and keep the charge committed to you against such a series of inveterate crimes which ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas

... of a physical well-being, which the troublesome accidents of chance and time only served to intensify, Montaigne surveyed the grotesque panorama of human life with a massive and indelible satisfaction. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... an origin of nobility; but the family of that name disclaiming any kindred with his vices, he was thereupon, as it is said, ingrafted into another stock(42) scarcely less distinguished, tho' fallen into indelible disgraces; and by this means he has been made, if the conjectures of certain critics are well founded, the Dramatic successor, tho', having respect to chronology, the natural proavus of another Sir John, who was no less than a Knight of the most ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... at every stage (for they have let him pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the whole particulars of his Route, his Weather-observations, the picturesque Sketches he took, though all regularly jotted down (in indelible sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior Penman), are these nowhere forthcoming? Perhaps quite lost: one other leaf of that mighty Volume (of human Memory) left to fly abroad, unprinted, unpublished, unbound up, as waste ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... girl in the movie and she, too, has been hypnotized. Even though the audience is sophisticated enough to realize that this science-fiction drama is purely entertainment, the theme is repeated sufficiently in novels, comics, and television to make an indelible impression on the subconscious mind. It's the technique of telling the "big lie" so many times that it becomes believable. We are all influenced by this procedure. There is an excellent book explaining this very premise. It is called Battle For The Mind by William Sargent. It describes in detail ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... occasionally met little children dedicated to the Virgin, and, to this end, clothed in white raiment from head to foot: my friend, Dambergeac, had received a different consecration. His father, a great patriot of the Revolution, had determined that his son should bear into the world a sign of indelible republicanism; so, to the great displeasure of his godmother and the parish curate, Dambergeac was christened by the pagan name of Harmodius. It was a kind of moral tricolor-cockade, which the child was ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... upon Fletcher's part. Nothing was further from his thoughts at any time than to make an impression upon those around him. Perhaps for this very reason the mark he did make was indelible. No man ever spent an hour with the Vicar of Madeley without being spiritually ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen

... its end. He leaned toward her and said "Above us and your husband is God. Go in now, sister, my dear, good sister." She dared not look up but through her closed lids she saw the benevolence, the deep, inexhaustible kindliness, the indelible respect for man which shone in his eyes and played about his gentle mouth. And as he was her conscious and unconscious standard, so now she knew that she was not bad, could not become so, he would carry her in his strong arms, protected, as a mother ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... in Pocahontas County, Virginia in the drab and awful surroundings of slavery. The whipping post and cruelty in general made an indelible impression in my mind. I can see my older brothers in their tow-shirts that fell knee-length which was sometimes their only garment, toiling laborously under a cruel lash as the burning sun beamed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... her master's ire. Flight certainly is the method preferred on similar occasions; but then by adopting it she would tacitly confess herself guilty, and her tender reputation would be sullied with an indelible stain; by bravely encountering, on the other hand, the irritated father, she could stoutly deny all cognizance of the affair, and boldly call on all the saints of Heaven to assert her innocence, witnesses to whose testimony Martha always confidently appealed, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... stairs, backing away to the library, of which the door was the nearest open one. He distinctly recorded the words that passed through his mind. He might have uttered them audibly, so indelible was the impression with which they cut ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... purifying efficacy, and is it possible that the Gods, who gave to fire the power of refining metals and to the winds power to sweep the clouds from the sky, should desire that a man—made in their own image—that a man should be tainted from his birth to his death with an indelible stain?" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... but a scrap of paper obviously torn from a penny cash book. No ink had been used in transcribing the two or three lines which were scrawled across this scrap—the vehicle this time was an indelible pencil, which the writer appeared to have moistened with his tongue every now and then, some letters being thicker and darker than others. The message, if mysterious, was straightforward enough. "Sir," it ran, "if so be as you'd like to have a bit ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... are masterpieces of their kind. Easy and conversational, they touch upon no subject without leaving an indelible impression of the writer's originality; and the myriad matters of universal interest with which many of them are teeming will render them a precious legacy to the world, when the time shall have arrived for their publication. Of late, Italy has claimed the lion's share in these unrhymed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... from the heat, and his doeskin shirt was thrown open at the throat, showing his broad white chest, and in its centre the barbarous blue discolorations of the "warrior's marks." These disfigurements, made by the puncturing of the flesh with gars' teeth and inserting in the wound paint and pitch, indelible testimonials to his deeds of courage and prowess, Otasite valued as he did naught else on earth, and he would have parted with his right hand as readily. The first had been bestowed upon him after he had gone, a mighty gun-man, against the Muscogees. The others ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... in point of fact, surveying the district round her capital to be, marking each point—bush, stone, grass-tuft, tree-trunk, flower-cluster, clod, branch, anything and everything, great and small—and jotting down in indelible memory fluid, upon whatever she kept for a brain, just precisely the position of every landmark. And as she rose her circles ever widened, so that at last her big compound eyes took in quite a big stretch ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... print, so that my reverence for him—as a professor of magic I mean—was profound. How could I have brought myself to believe that anything questionable could possibly find place in the straight and upright ranks of printed letters? To be able to record one's own words in indelible ink—was that a slight thing? To stand unscreened yet unabashed, self-confessed before the world,—how could one withhold belief in the face of such supreme self-confidence? I remember how once I got the types for the letters of my name from some printing press, and what ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... service, with songs from the "Y" hymn book and a fine snappy address as a speaker stood on a hummock surrounded by the silent, thoughtful bunch. The sky was our canopy and with the moonlight filtering through the branches of the pines, an indelible impression was registered ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West

... attained to that subtlety to determine how he could have the key of knowledge that had no knowledge himself. They baptized far and near, and yet taught nowhere what was the formal, material, efficient, and final cause of baptism, nor made the least mention of delible and indelible characters. They worshiped, 'tis true, but in spirit, following herein no other than that of the Gospel, "God is a Spirit, and they that worship, must worship him in spirit and truth;" yet it does not appear it was at that time revealed to them ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... but do you see this electricity? Consequently, as such is my nature and constitution, you can judge for yourself, as you are a doctor, that it is unjust for them to censure me, and they ought to comprehend me!' The following incident remained indelible in Alexey Sergeitch's memory. He was standing one day on guard indoors, in the palace—he was only sixteen at the time—and behold the empress comes walking past him; he salutes ... 'and she,' Alexey Sergeitch would exclaim ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... examinations, experiences even at subsequent times when the high school or university examinations are far in the past, distressing dreams filled with the anxiety that precedes an examination. Freud (Trdtg., p. 196 ff.) clearly says that this kind of dream is especially the indelible memories of the punishments which we have suffered in childhood for misdeeds and which make themselves felt again in our innermost souls at the critical periods of our studies, at the Dies irae, dies ilia of the severe examinations. After we have ceased to be pupils ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... Paris: my own harshness to her there came back upon me like a blow. The indelible impression of my hardness had been given then, and she dreaded it now. She had been conquered then; her will and desire had been broken down to mine; she had been forced to yield and to suffer; she had appealed to me and found me inflexible, relentless; ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... to what has been on my mind so long—a tragedy that, in spite of all that had gone before, and of what came after, is the most indelible of all the memories which cling round me of that eventful time. Abner Cushing, the Vermonter had declared at different times that he should never see his native Green Mountain again. Since the change in our commander, however, he had been another man—always ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... than in the broadest daylight. The sleeping city was absolutely still; a company of white hoods, a field full of little alps, below the twinkling stars. Villon cursed his fortune. Would it were still snowing! Now, wherever he went, he left an indelible trail behind him on the glittering streets; wherever he went, he was still tethered to the house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he went, he must weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope that bound him to the crime and ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... likened the practice of their religion to military service. When the neophyte joined he was compelled to take an oath (sacramentum) similar to the one required of recruits in the army, and there is no doubt that an indelible mark was likewise branded on his body with a hot iron. The third degree of the mystical hierarchy was that of "soldier" (miles). Thenceforward the initiate belonged to the sacred militia of the invincible god and fought ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... wailing, By the muffled drum of sorrow, By the solemn tramp of mourners, By the fun'ral march of soldiers. We are rearing brilliant guide-posts, To the brave men of this era; We are pointing to their actions, With indelible mementos. Thus may generations rescue Sleeping heroes from oblivion; May no recreant prove wanting, In a sacred trust of homage. Let the archives of the city, The proud city of Lancaster, Still perpetuate ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... yesterday, but I should be much surprised if I forgot any of these things which I have heard very long ago. I listened at the time with childlike interest to the old man's narrative; he was very ready to teach me, and I asked him again and again to repeat his words, so that like an indelible picture they were branded into my mind. As soon as the day broke, I rehearsed them as he spoke them to my companions, that they, as well as myself, might have something to say. And now, Socrates, to make an end of my preface, ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... mention that his very laudable ambition to obtain histrionic honours was at the outset very nearly nipped in the bud. He, of course, had to disclose the fact that in his earlier life he had committed a pardonable youthful indiscretion and had had both his forearms fancifully adorned in indelible blue tattoo with a representation of snakes, mermaids, and sundry. A solemn council of the senior members of the company was forthwith held, presided over by the Mem Sahib, "Old Party," and "Syl" Dignam. After a good deal of anxious thought and discussion ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey

... say, that those shameful tumults, while they reflect indelible disgrace upon the time in which they occurred, and all who had act or part in them, teach a good lesson. That what we falsely call a religious cry is easily raised by men who have no religion, and who ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... as it will immediately be shown, for very wise and important purposes, a permanent and indelible distinction between the effect of civilization and opulence on the production of food, and on the preparation of manufactures. In the latter, the discoveries of science, the exertions of skill, the application of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... are paired these Cinaedes sans shame Mamurra and Caesar, both of pathic fame. No wonder! Both are fouled with foulest blight, One urban being, Formian t'other wight, And deeply printed with indelible stain: 5 Morbose is either, and the twin-like twain Share single Couchlet; peers in shallow lore, Nor this nor that for lechery hungers more, As rival wenchers who the maidens claim Right well are paired these Cinaedes ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... consider what powerful support would be his! Was it not enough to make the fool of me which I appeared? How could I look on without agony? Was not the very sight of the friend who sat behind you; was not the recollection of what had been, the knowledge of her influence, the indelible, immovable impression of what persuasion had once done—was it not all ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh

... world; Margaret knew better. Her brother's heart lay before her like an open book, and she saw indelible lines of grief and anguish there. The old homestead, with its wide lands, belonged to John Greylston. He had bought it years before from the other heirs; and Margaret, the only remaining one, possessed neither claim nor right in it. She had a handsome annuity, however, and nearly all the rich ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous

... will help to an understanding of native life. The book does not pretend to give a scientific description of the people of the New Hebrides; that will appear later; it is meant simply to transmit some of the indelible impressions the traveller was privileged to receive,—impressions both stern and sweet. The author will be amply repaid if he succeeds in giving the reader some slight idea of the charm and the terrors ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... gentle melancholy (especially among the women), and at the black, rich, silky-gleaming hair curling in abundance over the temples and falling in profusion over the neck,—to what human race can belong this singular variety,—in which there is a dominant characteristic that seems indelible, and always shows more and more strongly in proportion as the type is further removed from the African element. It is the Carib blood—blended with blood of Europeans and of blacks,—which in spite of all subsequent crossings, and in spite of the fact that it has ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... physically unable to make myself ill again; but age, that cruel and unavoidable disease, compels me to be in good health in spite of myself. The illness I allude to, which the Italians call 'mal francais', although we might claim the honour of its first importation, does not shorten life, but it leaves indelible marks on the face. Those scars, less honourable perhaps than those which are won in the service of Mars, being obtained through pleasure, ought not to leave any ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... homage, which could be due only to one lord, while simple homage might be due to every lord under whom the person in question held land. The English doctrine, which was at one time adopted in the United States, asserted that allegiance was indelible:— Nemo potest exuere patriam. Accordingly, as the law stood before 1870, every person who by birth or naturalization satisfied the conditions described in the article ALIEN, though he should be removed in infancy to another country where his family resided, owed an allegiance ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... with the years and a peevish discontent was carving indelible lines upon her face which was rapidly losing its delicate contour and bloom. Marion's pink and white beauty was at its zenith, and the social attentions she was beginning to receive only served to render her elder sister more than ever irritable and envious. Louis was ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... statesmen, of whom only one, the Duke of Wellington, was an Irishman, while Castlereagh was the only other Irishman who has sat in the Cabinet since union. Pitt promised equal laws when the union was formed, but the broken promises made to Ireland are unhappily written in indelible characters in the history of the country. It is to me astonishing that so little weight is attached by many to the fact that Irish wishes of self-government were represented only ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... from clerical candidates for personal services; and if singular eagerness in pursuit of preferment, and singular homage to the influence of the queen's bed-chamber-woman, could stamp them with shame, the brand would be at once broad and indelible. But it must be remembered, that there are contemptible minds in every profession, that these men acted in direct violation of the principles of their religion, and that the church is no more accountable for the delinquencies of its members, than the courts of law for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... he had witnessed Sylla's coming to Rome, the camp- fires in the Forum, the Octavian massacre, the return of his uncle and Cinna, and the bloody triumph of the party to which his father belonged. He was just at the age when such scenes make an indelible impression; and the connection of his family with Marius suggests easily the persons whom he must have most often seen, and the conversation to which he must have listened at his father's table. His most intimate companions were the younger Marius, the adopted son of his uncle; ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... You refuse to reveal this mystery to me, which, as you yourself admit, involves deceit, treachery and bloodshed, and which, for aught I know, has set an indelible stain upon your life! I love you truly, love you with all the passion of a woman's nature, but I must know this history that I may judge whether you are worthy ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... with his deeper feelings, the result of a sailor's habits, blended with native character. "But this indeed surpasses all my expectations! Why, she has, in truth, made a most judicious selection of phrases. 'No. 168. **** indelible;' '169. **** end only with life;' '170. **** I fear yours ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Martyrs; and chance, in this case, served him better than all the forethought in the world. For on the outer boulevard he saw two men in earnest colloquy upon a seat. One was dark, young, and handsome, secularly dressed, but with an indelible clerical stamp; the other answered in every particular to the description given him by the clerk. Francis felt his heart beat high in his bosom; he knew he was now about to hear the voice of his father; and making a wide circuit, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... as ever. When I returned to him about an hour since, I renewed the subject, and stated that I thought it was the custom to make a note of any particular marks upon the children, by which they might be eventually reclaimed. He replied that it was customary when they were indelible, but not otherwise: that he had no indelible mark, although a large wart had been on the back of his neck as long as he could remember; 'but,' added he, 'it is of no use,—all hopes of finding my parents have long since been abandoned, and I must submit to my unfortunate destiny. I have thought ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... little smile, but did not answer. She lighted a large lamp and held the marked corner of one of the handkerchiefs against the hot chimney. The heat made the indelible ink turn dark, although the writing had been so faint Guy hardly ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... classic virtues of industry, frugality and truth-telling were inculcated by this excellent mother, and her strong commonsense made its indelible impress upon the mind ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... collection. It may suffice to say at present, that this decoration is formed by pricking the skin with sharp instruments till it just bleeds, and afterwards rubbing some coloured powders into the punctures, which leave indelible stains.—E.] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... England in 1850, he typifies the cosmopolitan origins of American unionism. His early contact in the union of his trade with men like Strasser, upon whom the ideas of Marx and the International Workingmen's Association had left an indelible stamp, and his thorough study of Marx gave him that grounding both in idealism and class consciousness which has produced many strong leaders of American unions and saved them from defection to other interests. Aggressive and uncompromising in a perpetual ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... dumbly, in the horrible room he had flown from, and with the covering of his eyes oblivion and reassurance seemed to fall on him. But they fell for a moment only; then his lids opened again to the monstrous vision. There it was, stamped on his pupils, a part of him forever, an indelible horror burnt into his body and brain. But why into his—just his? Why had he alone been chosen to see what he had seen? What business was it of HIS, in God's name! Any one of the others, thus enlightened, might have exposed the horror and defeated it; but HE, the one ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... time, it was the custom (as I learnt from my terrible experience of that Sessions) to devote a concluding day to the passing of Sentences, and to make a finishing effect with the Sentence of Death. But for the indelible picture that my remembrance now holds before me, I could scarcely believe, even as I write these words, that I saw two-and-thirty men and women put before the Judge to receive that sentence together. Foremost among the two-and-thirty was he; seated, that he might ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... princess and of her own shuddering daughter said that this terrible vision came of the fatigue of the day, and the exhaustion and excitement that had followed. She also knew that on poor Eleanor that fearful Eastern's Eve had left an indelible impression, recurring in any state of weakness or fever. She scarcely marvelled at the strange and frightful fancies, except that she believed enough in second-sight to be concerned at the mention of the shroud enfolding the young Beauchamp, who bore the fanciful title of the King ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... well as the foreign influence of the nation, had fatally declined under the ruinous errors of the Second Philip, this spirit propagated itself even to the most flourishing period of their literature, and plainly imprinted upon it an indelible stamp. Here, in all their dazzling features, but associated with far higher mental culture, the middle ages were, as it were, renewed—those times when princes and nobles loved to indite the lays of love and bravery, and when, with hearts devoted equally to their lady-love ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... records from our past. The ink is indelible; and besides all that we have visibly written in these terrible autobiographies of ours, there is much that has sunk into the page, there is many a 'secret fault,' the record of which will need the fire of that last day to make it legible, Alas ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... on Germany. The German Government repudiated the report and did all it could, by the personal apology of the secretary of state and by police protection, to make amends for what Herr von Jagow termed "the indelible stain on the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... an indelible impression on Robert's mind. The way was so simple, so clear, so sure, that if only men like Hardie could go round every town and village in the land, he believed that a Utopia might be brought into being in a very few years; ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... priests would quit their hold upon the consciences, wills, and the passions of men, when their spiritual despotism was the most powerful engine for their own aggrandisement? The Roman Catholic priesthood must ever stand alone. It had set the indelible mark of separation on its own forehead, by its unnatural, though politic, restrictions, by its claim to exclusive pre-eminence, and by its dangerous and unconstitutional connexion with a foreign state. Ascendancy, he contended, would be placed within the reach of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... to the Professor for a few pence by a marine dealer in the east of London. The room was large, clean, respectable, and poor with that poverty suggesting the starvation of every human need except mere bread. There was nothing on the walls but the paper, an expanse of arsenical green, soiled with indelible smudges here and there, and with stains resembling faded maps ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... scholarly looking man of forty years, with broad, singularly bony shoulders, an expression of kindly humour, and a plain, strong face upon which suffering had left its indelible suggestion of defeated physical purpose. Nothing about him was impressive, nothing even arresting to a casual glance, and not even the shooting light from the keen gray eyes, grown a little wistful from the emotional repression of the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... which produces the same deep and indelible impression. Yet Arles is a far more interesting town than Nismes, partly because of the Rhone delta which begins there, partly because of its ruinous antiquity, and partly also because of the strong local character of its ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... poem, begun in 1878, was finished the next year in Copenhagen. Bjrnson attended a school in Molde from his eleventh to his eighteenth year. The varied beauty, not too grand and not too somber, of the scenery about Molde left on him indelible impressions. ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... The basis of the doctrine of the indelible character of baptism. Cf. Augustine, Contra epist. Parm., II, 13. 28. "Each [baptism and the right of giving baptism] is indeed a sacrament, and by a certain consecration each is given to a man, this when he is baptized, that when he is ordained; therefore in the Catholic ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... the body are formed by needles of various sizes set in a frame. A number of hawk bells attached to this frame serve by their noise to cover the suppressed groans of the sufferer, and, probably for the same reason, the process is accompanied with singing. An indelible stain is produced by rubbing a little finely-powdered willow-charcoal into the punctures. A half-breed, whose arm I amputated, declared, that tattooing was not only the most painful operation of the two, but rendered infinitely more difficult to bear by its ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin

... Desire's school. Mother said that I must be useful at home. She sent me to Temperance, and Temperance sent me to play, or told me to go "a visitin'." I did not care to visit, for in consequence of being turned out of school, which was considered an indelible disgrace and long remembered, my schoolmates regarded me in the light of a Pariah, and put on insufferably superior airs when they saw me. So, like Veronica, I amused myself, and passed days on the sea-shore, or in the fields and woods, mother keeping me in long ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... an expensive hat, by Lincoln and Bennett, and I see you have judiciously written your name in indelible marking-ink on the lining. Now, a new hat suggests a discarded predecessor. What do you do ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... into the midst of the events portrayed in the story she reads or is told, and the characters and descriptions become real to her; she rejoices when justice wins, and is sad when virtue goes unrewarded. The pictures the language paints on her memory appear to make an indelible impression; and many times, when an experience comes to her similar in character, the language starts forth with wonderful accuracy, like the reflection from ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... father's. This was a man, who, under his pleasant exterior of a landed gentleman, was rigid and inflexible. He had already borne a great deal, remember; but this was disgrace, an indelible stain upon a stainless name. Therefore this father, who was at the same time a just and good man, disinherited his favorite child and eldest son. House, slaves, lands, money, the great position of the head of a powerful family, came to Freeman Hynds, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... experiences of the West Highlands during that first tour, and they left what I believe to be an indelible impression, for to this day I remember quite distinctly under what kind of effect each of these scenes presented itself. The artistic results of the tour consisted of sketches in oil and pencil, quite without value except to remind ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... less than twenty francs, and everybody knew that the dear old boy was as poor as a church mouse and that, moreover, he had enjoyed nothing but a bowing acquaintance with the deceased lady. He had indeed only spoken to her once in his life. But her face—her face had left an indelible impression on his sensitive and ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... sufficient. Cattle were classified as northern, central, and southern animals, and, except in case of severe drouth in the preceding years, were pretty nearly uniform in size throughout each section. The prairie section of the State left its indelible imprint on the cattle bred in the open country, while the coast, as well as the piney woods and black-jack sections, did the same, thus making ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... Indelible the memories of these talks, which often brought out illustrations of racial temperament. One company was more horrified over having found a German tied to a trench parados to be killed by British shell fire as a field punishment than by ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... the same time. She, she there, at the vary moment of the consummation of his shame. She before him when he had just dug an abyss between them. What should he say? Would she not read on his troubled face the shameful secret of the drama within? Was not his crime written on his sullied brow in indelible soars? He would have wished the earth to ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... him to something superior to the lean, volcanic cowboy he had hitherto been. His old slouching gait, in spite of his evident weakness, was quite gone; his shaggy head was held erect, and he gazed upon his enemy with eyes which the other could not face. For the time, at least, the indelible stamp of his disastrous life was disguised by the fire of his eyes and the set of his features. And this moral strength he conveyed in every action in a manner which no violence, no extent of vocabulary could have done. This man ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... profits. The men and women cover their teeth with thin plates of gold, so exactly fitted, that the teeth seem as if they were actually of solid gold. The men make a kind of lists or stripes round their legs and arms, by pricking the places with needles, and rubbing in a black indelible liquid, and these marks are esteemed as great decorations. They give themselves up entirely to riding and hunting, and martial exercises, leaving all the household cares to the women, who are assisted ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... contention of an old, dull, debauched buffoon Cyclops, with the heaven-directed favourite of Minerva; who, after having quietly borne all the monster's obscene and impious ribaldry, endeth the farce in punishing him with the mark of an indelible brand in his forehead. May we not then be excused, if for the future we consider the epics of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, together with this our poem, as a complete tetralogy, in which the last worthily holdeth the place or station ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... women around her by the splendor of her toilette. Nothing now remained of the gay worldling but the golden hair which she was condemned to see always the same, since its tint had been fixed by dyes as indelible as the ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... is an indispensable introduction to the knowledge of plots of more importance which preceded the great event that marked the close of the Consulship: I allude to the conspiracy of Georges, Cadoudal, Moreau, and Pichegru, and that indelible stain on the character of Napoleon,—the death of the Duc d'Enghien. Different opinions have been expressed concerning Georges' conspiracy. I shall not contradict any of them. I will relate what I learned and what I saw, in order to throw some light on ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... inner side of brass rim, M, and held in place by the clamp, N. The electric sparks above spoken of pierce the strip of paper with small holes and colored marks. These holes, etc, show the exact limits to which the pointer has traveled under pressure, and thus an indelible record is kept by the electrical indications shown upon the strip of paper. The paper can have the pressures corresponding to gauge printed upon the same, when the holes are made prominent by holding the paper to the light, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various

... if we would abandon Africa to the Mohammedans, and leave off our man-stealing trade and practices on the Western Coast, the dusky children of the torrid zones would gradually advance in civilization. But is not the bare idea of such an alternative an indelible disgrace to Christendom? ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... threw open the folds of the robe of skins that covered his chest, and disclosed upon his naked bosom the picture of a turtle. It was painted upon or pricked into the skin in divers colors, so as to be indelible, and though rudely done, was sufficiently well executed to convey an idea which could not be mistaken of what was intended ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... key of knowledge effectually for others, who has no knowledge actually in himself. Again, they baptized all nations, and yet never taught what was the formal, material, efficient, and final cause of baptism, and certainly never dreamt of distinguishing between a delible and an indelible character in this sacrament They worshipped in the spirit, following their master's injunction, God is a spirit, and they which worship him, must worship him in spirit, and in truth; yet it does not appear that it was ever ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... charm, Or love philter, not in the regular Pharm- Acopoeia, and thus, from pure malice prepense, Had bewitched and bamboozled the young lady's sense; Others thought, with more reason, the secret to lie In a magical wash or indelible dye; While Society, with its censorious eye And judgment impartial, stood ready to damn What wasn't ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... was not at all perplexed how to clothe his ideas. That quality, so sought after by other writers, and so necessary for hiding faults, was quite natural to him. When he describes women, a few rapid strokes suffice to engrave an indelible image on the mind of the reader. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... of 1789-93, must have made a feeble impression, if it has failed to print a deep and indelible conviction on the mind, that the acts of that great and wicked drama would some day be bitterly expiated. To expect anything else would be to impeach the principles of everlasting justice. Bearing in remembrance the horrid excesses of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various

... posterity, the meanest valet will relate what he has seen or heard; his gossip circulates rapidly, and forms public opinion, which at length ascribes to the most august persons characters which, however untrue they may be, are almost always indelible. ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... &c 265; deterioration &c 659. indefeasible, irretrievable, intransmutable^, incommutable^, irresoluble^, irrevocable, irreversible, reverseless^, inextinguishable, irreducible; indissoluble, indissolvable^; indestructible, undying, imperishable, incorruptible, indelible, indeciduous^; insusceptible, insusceptible of change. Int. stet. Phr. littera ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... night for several hours, gave immense satisfaction to the adherents of the new doctrine, and eventually an ample store of more modern instances was accumulated to confirm Satan in his enlarged privileges."[2] Satan, it seems, imprinted upon his clients an indelible ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... disappeared, a few bubbles of froth and blood marking the spot where he went down. He had been shot dead. I will not attempt to describe my feelings at this moment, they burned themselves in on my heart at the time, and the impression is indelible. Whether I had or had not acted, in one sense, unjustly, by ousting myself so conspicuously forward in the attempt to capture him, after what had passed between us, forced itself upon my judgment. I had certainly promised that I would, in no way that I could help, be instrumental in his destruction ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... glistening valleys through which it wandered, or rather amid which it slept; and the refreshing verdure of which assured me, just as convincingly as actual observation could have done, of the constant presence of a large body of water; and left an indelible impression upon my mind, which subsequent consideration has only served to deepen, that the Victoria will afford a certain pathway far into the centre of that country, of which it is one of the largest ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... be acknowledged that, in other points, the analogy is much less perfect. The opinion which sees in solution a phenomenon resembling fusion, and which has left an indelible trace in everyday language (we shall always say: to melt sugar in water) is certainly not without foundation. Certain of the reasons which might be invoked to uphold this opinion are too evident to be repeated here, though others more recondite might be quoted. The fact that ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... man's twelve two-horse loads that were pathetic. There were many sorts of things in those twelve loads, of many lands, of many dates, but all of one stamp. The mark was sometimes hard to find, corroded sometimes nearly past deciphering, yet never quite gone. The red letters were indelible on every piece, from the gross of antique candle-moulds (against the kerosene's giving out) to an ancient coffin-plate, far oxidized, and engraved "Jones," which, the old man said, as he pried it off the side of the barn, "might ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... was indeed privileged, and I shall always carry with me the charm and inspiration of his glorious personality. The campus was never so sad as on the day which brought the news of his death—it seemed almost incredible that one man in five short months could have left so indelible an impress of his character on ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... the ground, but did not conceal ugly and vile thoughts, or who abused the language of books in favor of that more enduring vernacular of the street, or who confused the table implements, or did the hundred and one other little things that are supposedly the indelible marks of an inferior culture. A most fastidious person himself, as was obvious, he looked in others for a fastidiousness of spirit rather than for a correct performance of the whims of refinement. For the one, as everybody knows but forgets, is eternal, and the other is merely transitory—the ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... develop the moral backbone; and if a boy does not give in, he will find his moral courage increasing with each moral fight. Just let that thought stay in your mind, underscored in bold-faced italics, and printed in indelible ink; and if you have a tendency to be a spiritual "jelly-back," it will be like a rod of ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... snarling Lion of St. Mark, and everywhere one hears the liquid accents of the Latin. Zara, like Fiume, is an Italian colony set down on a Slavonian shore, and, like its sister-city to the north, it bears the indelible and unmistakable ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... the mind, whilst contemplating the continually increasing field of human knowledge, that the weak arm of man may want the physical force required to render that knowledge available. The experience of the past, has stamped with the indelible character of truth, the maxim, that knowledge is power. It not merely gives to its votaries control over the mental faculties of their species, but is itself the generator of physical force. The discovery of the expansive ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... very good man—a man who makes his wife's life a hell, even in a refined way, isn't exactly a saint, to my way of thinking. But that's the worst that could be said of him and it doesn't entail any indelible disgrace on his family, I suppose. I am not ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Commons. Although you may not hereafter have opportunities of adding to the personal debt I owe you, and of bringing it vividly before my mind by fresh acts of courage and kindness, I assure you, the recollection of it is already indelible.' Hitherto, Lord John—for the old name is the one under which his family and his friends still like to apply to him—had been a poor man; but the death, in the spring of this year, of his brother the Duke of Bedford, with whom, from youth to age, his intercourse ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... of an Overture in C major (6/8 time), and of a Sonata in B flat major arranged as a duet; the latter pleased my sister Ottilie, who played it with me, so much that I arranged it for orchestra. But another work of this period, an Overture in B flat major, left an indelible impression on my mind on account of an incident connected with it. This composition, in fact, was the outcome of my study of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in about the same degree as Leubald und Adelaide was the result of my study ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... cheerful faces of these garden-strays. The situation of old Fort Nassau, in Pennsylvania, so long a matter of uncertainty, is said to have been definitely determined by the familiar garden flowers found growing on one of these disputed sites. It is a tender thought that this indelible mark is left upon the face of our native land through the affection of our forbears for ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... theses upon the door of his native state, and mighty was the reverberation. In a few weeks Page's Greensboro address had made its way all over the Southern States, and his melancholy figure, "the forgotten man" had become part of the indelible imagery of the Southern people. The portrait etched itself deeply into the popular consciousness for the very good reason that its truth was pretty generally recognized. The higher type of newspaper, though it winced somewhat at Page's ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... doubling, and the crazed ones are at rest." The causes of the insane diathesis (constitution) are frequently traceable to the methods of life of those who produce children under such circumstances and conditions that the offspring bear the indelible birthmark of mental weakness. Early dissipations of the father produce an exhausted and enfeebled body; and a demoralized mind and an unholy and unhealthy existence in the mother, are causes. Fast living of parents in society ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... Spaniard, probably turned of seventy, came toward me with an air of kindness, understanding from the black I had been shipwrecked. As the old man was examining my sores, he discovered on my arm a handsome impression of the Crucifix that had been pricked in with indelible ink, in the East Indies some years before, which he kissed with apparent rapture, saying to me, "Anglois very much of the christian," supposing me to be a Roman Catholic.—This drew around me all the members of the family, who kneeled in succession, kissing ...
— Narrative of the shipwreck of the brig Betsey, of Wiscasset, Maine, and murder of five of her crew, by pirates, • Daniel Collins



Words linked to "Indelible" :   ineradicable, unerasable, indelible ink



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