"Invisibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little cruelly restored to this vision of a day long dead, I was still of the same opinion. Oh! I should have put on my boots and my waterproof and gone down to the little wood to meet the enchanter! He would have given me the cap of invisibility, the purse of Fortunatus, and a pair of seven-league boots. He would have taught me to conquer worlds, and to leave the easy triumphs of dreamers to madmen, philosophers, and poets, He would have made me a man of action, a statesman, a soldier, a founder of cities or a digger of graves. ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Street encounters were nearly as numerous as they would have been in daylight; but Letty went on her way as if, instead of the old gray rag, she wore the magic cloak of invisibility. So it was during the whole of the long half mile between Fifty-ninth Street and Forty-second Street. In spite of the fact that she was the only unescorted woman she saw, no invitation "to go to the bad" was proffered her. "There's quite a trick to it," Steptoe had said, in ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... wrote later to Humboldt, "that Procyon and Sirius form real binary systems, consisting of a visible and an invisible star. There is no reason to suppose luminosity an essential quality of cosmical bodies. The visibility of countless stars is no argument against the invisibility of countless others."[97] ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... Street, she combined the intense vitality of a dominating woman of the world with the mysterious and romantic quality of a myth. She was a legend in her lifetime, and she knew it. She tasted the joys of power, like those Eastern Emperors whose autocratic rule was based upon invisibility, with the mingled satisfactions of ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... a cleft in the earth to Nibelheim, the abode of the Nibelungs. There they find Alberich, by virtue of his magic gold, lording it over his fellow-dwarfs. He has compelled his brother Mime, the cleverest smith of them all, to fashion him a Tarnhelm, or helmet of invisibility, and the latter complains peevishly to the gods of the overbearing mastery which Alberich has established in Nibelheim. When Alberich appears, Wotan and Loge cunningly beguile him to exhibit the powers of his new treasures. The confiding dwarf, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Father are they all, and He it is whom the Outer Worlds behold [as men behold] the starry sky at night. Even as men [so gazing into the night] desire to see the Sun, so do the Outer Worlds desire to see Him because of the very Invisibility which surrounds Him. He it is who to the aeons gives life perpetually, and by His Word hath the Indivisible ... the Monad in order to know it. For it is by His Word that the Holy Pleroma exists. This is the Father, the Second Creator, by the breath ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... Massachusetts, shortly after daybreak on the morning of the 11th. Astronomically, the event was recorded by the observatory at Harvard as the sudden appearance of what apparently was a new star, increasing in the short space of a few hours from invisibility to a power beyond that of the first magnitude, and then as rapidly fading again to invisibility. This star was recorded by two of the other great North American observatories, and by one in the Argentine Republic. ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... is a bitter pill too, is the almost insurmountable difficulty already recognised of determining how a man, without approaching his victim, could manage to inflict a mortal stab in her breast. No cloak of complete invisibility has yet been found, ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... waited for Dickie. Waiting, she looked out through the window and saw the glow fade from the snowy crest of The Hill. The evening star let itself delicately down through the sweeping shadows of the earth from some mysterious fastness of invisibility. The room was dim when Dickie's knock ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... paled to indistinctness, then to invisibility, and the landscape came into view in the fresh, chilly dawn, showing a strong grey horse feeding with Fancy and Bunyip, two hundred yards away. I was in no hurry to start, but my friends were like greyhounds in the leash. Therefore, whilst I dozed ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... over Poole's 2d. box, a dirty handkerchief flying out of the tail of his long, black coat, and a green, bulging umbrella, pointing outwards, under his arm, to the infinite danger of all the passers-by. He was so commonplace a figure to Jeremy that, on ordinary days, he was shrouded by an invisibility of tradition. But, to-day, he was fresh and strange. "He'll be here to-morrow poking his nose into that box just the same, ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... was christened at the place; was in after years curate of it; and is now its incumbent. About two years ago, when he came to the church in the last-named capacity, the congregation was wretchedly thin—awfully scarce, and just on the borders of invisibility. It has since improved a little; but working up a forsaken place into real activity is a difficult task, which at times staggers the ablest of men. Mr. Brown is a scholar, and a thoroughly upright man. He believes not in fighting down other people's creeds; ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... anothers shadowe. It was replied it fell owt fitt, for at noone the short man mowght be the long mans shadowe and at night the contrary. A sweet dampe (a dislike of moist perfume). Wyld tyme on the grownd hath a sent like a Cypresse chest. Panis lapidosus grytty bread Plutoes Helmett; secrecy Invisibility Laconismus Omnem vocem mittere (from inchantmentes) Tertium caput; (of one ouercharged that hath a burden upon eyther showder and the 3rd. vpon his head). Triceps mercurius (great cunyng). ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... concealed plant. When he had descended he and his men escorted McMurdo to headquarters. Darkness had fallen, and a keen blizzard was blowing so that the streets were nearly deserted; but a few loiterers followed the group, and emboldened by invisibility shouted ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we shall afterwards see, almost infinitesimal. But in the economy of our earth the moon has played, and still plays, a part second only in importance to that of the sun himself. The moon is so close to us that her brilliant rays pale to invisibility countless orbs of a size and an intrinsic splendour incomparably greater than her own. The moon also occupies an exceptional position in the history of astronomy; for the law of gravitation, the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... blackness. But none of these imagined figures could cause the horror which he felt. He drove away the whole pack of them with a silent cry, a motionless dismissing wave of his hands. But there might be other beings round us, condemned to eternal invisibility lest the sight of them should drive men mad. We cannot see them, he thought. As a rule, we have no sensation of these gaunt neighbours, no suspicion of their approach, of their companionship. We do not hear their footsteps. We are utterly unconscious ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... these are the dreams.' But it is exactly the other way. The world and all that is about us, Manchester and its hubbub, warehouses crammed with cloth, and mills full of jennies and throstles—these are the shadows; and the things that only the believing eye beholds, that are wrapped in the invisibility of their own greatness, these, and these only, are the realities. We see with the bodily eyes the shadows on the wall, as it were, but we have to turn round and see with the eyes of our minds the light that flings the shadows. 'I will lift up my eyes' from the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... at the rink, however, were intoxicating, which largely made up for the invisibility of the receiving committee. The rink was somewhat larger than the town hall at Ashcroft, and the great, high, arched, glass ceiling was studded with electric lights like stars in the heavens. Extensive rows of seats ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... would, indeed, confine his actings within the narrow sphere of the organ or body to which he was limited; and tho' you were to suppose the body to have wings for a velocity of Motion equal to spirit, yet if it had not a power of invisibility too, and a capacity of conveying it self, undiscover'd, into all the secret recesses of mankind, and the same secret art or capacity of insinuation, suggestion, accusation, &c. by which his wicked designs are now propagated, and all his other devices assisted, by which he deludes ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... it was, however, he was sanguine of escaping without this jeopardy. No one had cause to suspect him. No one had seen him enter the Jeffrey grounds that fatal evening. There had been noised abroad no intimation of his grievance against the man. He had all the calm assurance of invisibility as he came to his abode, for a fog lay thick on the surface of the river and hung over all the land. He did not issue forth again freshly dressed till the sun was out once more, dispelling the vapors and conjuring the world back to sight and life. Nevertheless, ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... following tale. When after a moment's space these ended, the infuriated Sultan gave orders to behead the Shaykh, who also plunged his head into the tub; but the Wizard divined the ill-intent by "Mukashafah" (thought-reading); and by "Al-Ghayb 'an al-Absar" (invisibility) levanted to Damascus. The reader will do well to compare the older account with the "First Vizir's Story" (p. 17) in Mr. Gibb's "History of the Forty Vizirs," etc. As this scholar remarks, the Mi'raj, with all its wealth of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... he perceives that twelve men stagger beneath the weight she proposes to throw. He is, however, somewhat reassured when Siegfried whispers he need but go through the motions, while his friend, concealed by the Tarncappe,—the cloak of invisibility which endows the wearer with the strength of twelve men,—will perform the required feats in ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... against any one under eighteen. Half-a-crown to seven and sixpence, according to size. These panoplies on cards are for juvenile knights-errant and very useful—shield of safety, sandals of swiftness, helmet of invisibility." ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... north, Hervey would have that dim black mass, hovering on the verge of invisibility, to guide him. Traveling a little west of north he might have reached the road at a nearer point. But here the traveling was bad and the danger of getting lost greater. Tom had weighed one thing against another and told ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... by the progress of civilization. The world knows by this time that creation is an empty jest; we are all beginning to understand its bathos! And if we must grant that there is some mischievous supreme Farceur who, safely shrouded in invisibility, continues to perpetrate so poor and purposeless a joke for his own amusement and our torture, we need not, for that matter, admire his wit or flatter his ingenuity! For life is nothing but vexation and suffering; are we dogs that we should lick the hand ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... by four destroyers. Submarines, when detected, are the most easily destroyed craft. They have no protection against even a well-directed rifle bullet. Their whole protection is that of invisibility. Their plan of operation is to reach a position during the night, whence in the early morning they can single out an unprotected warship or cruiser not in motion, and launch against her side a well-directed torpedo, before ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... soldier!" Again Strom permitted himself a brief triumphant smile. "And we have the further advantage of invisibility. The ship is surrounded by a net of wires that create a field of force which bend light rays around us. That explains why your men have never caught us. But to get back to our subject. I will tell you something. Do you ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... And among these were Parvana, Patana, Jambha, Khara, Krodha-vasa, Hari, Praruja, Aruja and Praghasa, and others. And as these wicked ones were penetrating (the monkey host) in their invisible forms, Vibhishana, who had the knowledge thereof, broke the spell of their invisibility. And once seen, O king, by the powerful and long-leaping monkeys, they were all slain and prostrated on the earth, deprived of life. And unable to endure this, Ravana marched out at the head of his troops. And surrounded by his terrible army of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... driver of the Railway Delivery Van. I smiled at Boyce's ostrich-like faith in the invisibility of his hinder bulk. What could occur in Wellingsford without it being known at once to vanmen and postmen and barbers and servants and masters and mistresses? How could a man hope to conceal his goings and ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... except from his armchair to his bed, and from his bed to his armchair, and often employing his wife as his amanuensis in his most confidential correspondence. Some of his detractors whispered that his invisibility was to be ascribed quite as much to affectation as to gout. In truth his character, high and splendid as it was, wanted simplicity. With genius which did not need the aid of stage tricks, and with a spirit which should have been far above them, he had yet been, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... brooks, which they leaped with flying feet. It seemed that they would never tire, but the trained warriors behind them were no less enduring. Once, twice, thrice they caught sight of them, and when a longer period of invisibility passed they knew, nevertheless, that they were still there. Now Long Jim suddenly wavered, but gathered himself together in an instant and continued his long leaps. Henry glanced at him and saw a patch of red on the sleeve ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rushed us up the great Col, and whirled round a corner, suddenly a battalion of magnificent white warrior-mountains sprang at us from an ambush of invisibility. Then, no sooner had they struck awe to our hearts with their warlike majesty, than, repentant, they turned into lovely white ladies, bidding us welcome to the rich, ripe figs and purple grapes which they held ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... in the vast place. The windows showed not any colour nor light; the splendid pillars soared up into the air and disappeared as if they mounted to heights of invisibility in the sky at night. Very far away, at the other end of the church it seemed, one lamp was burning, high over the transept. One could not see the chains of support nor the roof above it; it seemed a great star, but so much all alone. We walked down the long aisle to stand nearer to it, the darkness ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington
... of explanation had roused Desmond's anxiety. He suspected a fresh supply of tobacco; and this sudden invisibility confirmed his worst fears. He spoke of them to his wife after breakfast: and for all her radiant hopefulness of heart, she had small consolation ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... brother, "is called the cap of invisibility, by which, whoever possesseth it may become sovereign of the world. When he puts it on, he may enter where he pleases, for none can perceive him, either genii or men, so that he may convey away whatever he chooses, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... very differently. Dusty air itself is only a kind of smoke, and it looks bright, and the thicker the smoke the brighter it looks; the blackness is simply the utter absence of smoke; there is nothing at all for the light to illuminate, accordingly we have the blankness of sheer invisibility. Here is a flame burning under the beam, and, to show what real smoke looks like, I will burn also this spirit lamp filled with turpentine instead of alcohol. Why the convention currents were free from dust was unknown; Tyndall thought the dust was burnt and consumed; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... however indistinguishable his body by our sense of sight, must leave traces of his passage. The study from beginning to end is finely realistic; and even the theory of the albino, Griffin, and in a lesser degree his method of winning the useless gift of invisibility, are convincing enough to make us wonder whether the thing is not scientifically possible. As a pure romance set in perfectly natural surroundings, The Invisible Man is possibly the high-water mark of Mr Wells' achievement in this kind. He has perfected his technique, ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... then, one could also infer on seeing old houses ruined in course of time that these ruins were produced by intelligent agents. For these are also effects of which we do not know of any intelligent agent, for both are effects, and the invisibility of the agent is present in both cases. If it is said that the world is such that we have a sense that it has been made by some one, then the question will be, whether you infer the agency of God from this sense or infer the sense of its having been ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... three gifts—the first will give Unbounded riches while you live; The second health where'er you be; The third, invisibility." ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... those of the child ought to have satisfied the Court and jury that she was either under the power of a delusion or practising an imposture. But, as they were predisposed to find something supernatural in the transaction, their minds seized upon the pretended invisibility of the mouse as conclusive proof ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... pleasure should I hear people cry out, 'Che garbato cavaliere, com' e pulito, disinvolto, spiritoso'! If all these things turned out to my mind, I would immediately assume my own shape, become visible, and embrace you: but if the contrary happened, I would preserve my invisibility, make the best of my way home again, and sink my disappointment upon you and the world. As, unfortunately, these supernatural powers of genii, fairies, sylphs, and gnomes, have had the fate of the oracles they succeeded, and have ceased for some time, I must content myself ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... no straws up there. There was nothing to render the winds perceptible until Krakatoa came to our aid. Krakatoa drove into those winds prodigious quantities of dust. Hundreds of cubic miles of air were thus deprived of that invisibility which ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... seems to be another reason why we should not become a poetical people. Formerly the poet embodied the hopes and desires of men in visible types. He gave them the shoes of swiftness, the cap of invisibility and the purse of Fortunatus. These were once stories for grown men, and not for the nursery as now. We are apt ignorantly to wonder how our forefathers could find satisfaction in fiction the absurdity of which any of our ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... was a hall that angled off into invisibility, and to the left of the desk was another one, going straight back past doors and two radiators until it ran into a ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... testing each step for crackling twigs. His great head swung much lower than the ridge of his shoulders as he paused occasionally to listen, his gray-brown form melting into the shadows as if he wore a cloak of invisibility. ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... gate of the palisade I looked, and saw the sandy neck joining the town to the main, and the deep and dark woods beyond, the fairy mantle giving invisibility to a host. Between us and that refuge dead men lay here and there, stiff and stark, with the black paint upon them, and the colored feathers of their headdresses red or blue against the sand. One warrior, shot through the back, crawled ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... seemed to spring up around him like magic; his prudent answers through his window to such as sought ghostly counsel; and above all, his invisibility, soon gained him a prodigious reputation, This was not diminished by the medical advice they now and then extorted from him sore against his will, by tears and entreaties; for if the patients got well they ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the Nara epoch, and indeed all through the annals of early Japan there runs a well-marked thread of superstition which owed something of its obtrusiveness to intercourse with Korea and China, whence came professors of the arts of invisibility and magic. A thunder deity making his occasional abode in lofty trees is gravely spoken of in the context of a campaign, and if at one moment a river is inhabited by a semi-human monster, at another a fish formed like a child is caught in the sea. There is, of course, an ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... and loved; nor cometh this apprehension from the experiences of others. We glean spiritual harvests from our own material losses. In this consuming heat false images are effaced from the canvas of mortal mind; and thus does the material pigment beneath fade into invisibility. ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... his head up. He was close to the line of the rocket's ascent. He could see a trail of red sparks which stretched to invisibility. It was an extraordinarily thin line. The separate flecks of crimson light which comprised it were distant in space. They were so far from each other that the signal-rocket was a complete failure as a device making a streak of light that ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the bloodhounds of the Sunday papers were sniffing along the platforms of all the termini in London. Priam's departure greatly prejudiced the cause of Mr. Oxford, especially when the bloodhounds failed and Priam persisted in his invisibility. If a man was an honest man, why should he flee the public gaze, and in the night? There was but a step from the posing of this question to the inevitable inference that Mr. Oxford's line of defence was really ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... ether is as mysterious as gravitation. With regard to ether we only infer its existence from the effects which we ascribe to it. Evidently the ether must extend as far as the most distant visible stars. But does it continue on indefinitely in outer space? If it does, then the invisibility of the other systems must be due to their distance diminishing the quantity of light that comes from them below the limit of perceptibility, or to the interposition of absorbing media; if it does not, then the reason why we cannot see them is owing ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... found her at all. But they remarked among themselves that one seldom seen e'er a sight of Therasa Joyce these times anywheres about. They supposed she was took up wid lookin' after her mother, who wasn't gettin' her health over well this good while back. I think myself that Theresa's invisibility could be only in part accounted for thus, as the explanation does not cover the fact that to slip the wrong side of the dyke, or turn aside among screening hillocks and hollows when she noticed the approach of her acquaintances, was the course ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... kind and new size of man. It was a more spirited, more original, more unconquerable and bewildering way of fighting than anybody had thought of before. To be suddenly in an enemy's presence a new kind and new size of man—colossal, baffling—to turn into invisibility before him, into intangibility, into another kind of being before the enemy's eyes, so that he could not possibly tell what to do, and so that none of the things that he had thought of to do would work.... This is what Christ was doing, it ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... had one effect, it revealed me to my schoolfellows as an existence. From that time forth I lay no longer under the stigma of invisibility; I had produced my material shape and had thrown my shadow for a moment into a legend. But, in other respects, things went on much ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... were drawing away, dissolving, as tenuous, as intangible, as those morning sunlit mists shifting and rising from before the massive blue ranges of the Great Smoky Mountains, and dallying with the distances into invisibility. ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... secret of invisibility was thus plainly revealed. It is not in his protective coloring, for though his back is modest of hue, his breast is conspicuously showy; nor is it in his size, for he is almost as large as an oriole; it is in his manners. The bird I was watching ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... was a brilliant but neurotic chemist who had discovered, among other things, the secret of invisibility. Cured of his instability by modern psychomedical techniques, he was hired by Arcot to help build an interplanetary vessel to go ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... the invisibility of the warring armies. On the beaches, certainly, there were tents and stores and men moving. But the rolling countryside beyond seemed bleak and deserted. Only occasionally a high-explosive shell threw up a spout of brown earth, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... help us all, if Mr. Gilmour tells us that he has met any unknown race in Mongolia, say, people with the power of making themselves invisible, for Tyndall will believe him, and Huxley account for them, and the Illustrated London News publish their portraits—in the stage of invisibility. We do not say the book is admirable, or perfect, or anything else superlative; but we do say, and this with sure confidence, that no one who begins it will leave it till the narrative ends, or doubt for an instant, whether he knows Defoe or not, that he has been enchained by something ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... believing myself unperceived, I noticed under the large oak in the roadside the figure of a young man who, by the imperfect light, appeared to be of Spanish extraction. But I evidently miscalculated my own invisibility; for he moved rapidly forward as I came to the window, and in a series of the most extraordinary pantomimic gestures saluted me. Beyond my experience of a few Greek plays in earlier days, I confess I am not an adept in the understanding ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... stature. No house could contain Bran, and certain divine people of Elysium who appeared to Fionn had rings "as thick as a three-ox goad."[516] Even the Fians are giants, and the skull of one of them could contain several men. The gods have also the attribute of invisibility, and are only seen by those to whom they wish to disclose themselves, or they have the power of concealing themselves in a magic mist. When they appear to mortals it is usually in mortal guise, sometimes in the form of a particular person, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... had used so much expedition, that he had accomplished his object, and nearly reached his home, before our tiny hero could overtake him. He nimbly drew his shell and cut off another beaver's tail. In all these pranks, he availed himself of his power of invisibility, and thus escaped observation. When the man saw that the trick had been so often repeated, his anger was greater than ever. He gave vent to his feelings in words. He looked carefully around to see whether he could discover any tracks. But he could find none. ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... its three champions and their ladies, Aurea, Atra, and Viridis; the yellow dwarfs, the magic boat, the wicked Red Knight, and his den, the Red Hold; the rings and spells and charms and garments of invisibility are like the wilder parts of Malory or the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... interrupted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. I was quite glad to see him; and we began chatting with all our old spirit, and he quite raved against my present life of confinement, an the invisibility it had occasioned, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... taken for granted only by the inexperienced. Without doubt editors love to surround themselves with an atmosphere of mystery, aloofness, and sovereignty, but in truth they are human beings, and may be so treated. The invisibility of editors is mainly a legend. If you call at a newspaper office and, presenting your card, ask in a firm voice to see the editor, the probability is that you will see him, or some one else clothed with authority. You ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... in an instant the whole party threw themselves flat upon the earth, with the wall of the Council House between themselves and that point in the forest from which the sound had come. Silence and invisibility followed, yet the ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... eyes toward me see me to glance through me to the building behind. I wonder if this is at all a common experience, or whether I was unduly sensitive that day, unduly wrought up? I began to feel like one clad in garments of invisibility. I could see, but was not seen. I could feel, but was not felt. In the country there are few who would not stop to speak to me, or at least appraise me with their eyes; but here I was a wraith, a ghost—not ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... haze grew about the sportster. At first, it was a barely perceptible fluorescence. Then, it became a fiercely incandescent glow. It flamed for a few seconds, then faded, becoming green, yellow, red, and at last, blinking to invisibility. ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... are coloured and marked like the sand and pebbles of their home; and they can even change colour to suit their background. They are wonderfully hidden, owing to this useful dodge. It is as if Mother Nature had given them the marvellous "cloak of invisibility," of which we read ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... What is their entering their names in a book, their coming together from all parts at the sound of a trumpet, their appearing sometimes clothed with light and fire upon them, then covering themselves and their instruments with invisibility? Are not all these but a blasphemous imitation of certain things recorded about our Saviour, or his prophets, or the saints ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... he conceived a son, who came out at his mouth, and was called Maiso. He had two others after him, one of them whose name was Visnu, was born out of his breast, the other called Brama, out of his belly. Before he returned to his invisibility, he assigned habitations and employments to his three children. He placed the eldest in the first heaven, and gave him an absolute command over the elements and mixed bodies. He lodged Visnu beneath his elder brother, and established him the judge of men, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... legends in which a hat conferring invisibility, or a glove, figures; but the stolen article is usually, as in most of the instances cited above, a cup or a drinking-horn. Many such articles are still preserved in various parts of Northern Europe. Of these the most celebrated are the Luck of Edenhall and the Oldenburg ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... history, and make them ghostlike and shadowy; but no distance has yet dimmed or will ever dim that human form divine. Other names are like those stars that blaze out for a while, and then smoulder down into almost complete invisibility; but He is the very Light itself, that burns and is not consumed. Other landmarks sink below the horizon as the tribes of men pursue their solemn march through the centuries, but the Cross on Calvary 'shall stand for an ensign of the people, and to it shall the Gentiles seek.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... cure the gout, and so on; and then when they found a plant which certainly grew and increased, but of which the organs of fructification were invisible, it was a clear conclusion that properly used the plant would confer the gift of invisibility. Whether the people really believed this or not we cannot say,[92:1] but they were quite ready to believe any wonder connected with the plant, and so it was a constant advertisement with the quacks. Even in Addison's ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... always at your service," replied the spirit, "and will answer your questions. With regard to my visibility and invisibility"—he continued, with a smile, "for I will not wait for you to ask the explanation of what is in your minds—it is very simple. A man's soul can never die; a manifestation of the soul is the spirit; this has entity, consciousness, and will, and these also live forever. As in the natural or material ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... preaching for three months his Law for the benefit of his mother.(3) Buddha had gone up to this heaven by his supernatural power,(4) without letting his disciples know; but seven days before the completion (of the three months) he laid aside his invisibility,(4) and Anuruddha,(5) with his heavenly eyes,(5) saw the World-honoured one, and immediately said to the honoured one, the great Mugalan, "Do you go and salute the World-honoured one." Mugalan forthwith went, and with head ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... moderate, but no one knows where he would have stopped if he had not been scared by the advent of Cardinal No. 4. Up to this time he had only asked for an inexhaustible purse, power to call up the Devil ad libitum, and a ring of invisibility to allow him free access to his mistress, who was unfortunately a ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... fertile for the true believers, and to be their slaves upon their arrival, which did occur some time after the occurrences which I now relate; it was not the custom for the females of Souffra to lead the life of invisibility, permitted only to those who administer to the delights of the followers of the Koran; and although it was with exceeding modesty of demeanour, still did they on great occasions expose their charms to the public gaze, for which error, no doubt if ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... lava spreads itself over the lunar surface. This theory accounts for the radiating nature of the streaks, their great and nearly equal thickness, their immense length, their inability to cast a shadow, and their invisibility at any time except at or near the Full Moon. Still it is nothing but a theory, and I don't deny that serious objections may be brought ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... its edge to the hunk of desert that stretched away toward Reno, out behind the motel. The third story, behind me, cut off the neon glare from the Strip and left the place in inky darkness. There was silence and invisibility out ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Braun said in irritation. "By Caesar, man, have you no imagination? Can't you see it was only a matter of time before someone, possibly working away on an entirely different subject of research, stumbled upon a practical method of achieving invisibility?" ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)
... saw the things on the floor! His foot crushed one with a slippery squash! Nameless, hideous, noisome things grown monstrous, risen from their lurking invisibility in the drops of water! Sodden, gray-black and green-slimed monsters of the deep; palpitating masses of pulp! One lay rocking, already as large as a football with streamers of ooze hanging from it, and squirting a black inky fluid. Others were rods of red jelly-pulp, already as large as ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... did not recognize the occupant, then several more residential roads were left behind, a highly respectable cemetery, a tin chapel, and the car, taking a hill as Fords know how, dropped Sandbourne-on-Sea to invisibility and surrounded itself with vast stretches of green and sun warmed country, June scented, and hazy ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... mother had taught him always to use the greatest civility,—"I hold your eye fast in my hand, and shall keep it safely for you, until you please to tell me where to find these Nymphs. The Nymphs, I mean, who keep the enchanted wallet, the flying slippers, and the what is it?—the helmet of invisibility." ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a coat just like a bunch of dried reeds and the shadows between, and he does the rest by standing with his bead stuck straight up and as still as a brass idol. Result—invisibility. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... journalist's mental operations are a model of order and continuity compared to those of the former American War Industries Chairman. Like the heroes of the ancient poems Mr. Baruch's mind has the faculty of invisibility. You see it here; a moment later you see it there, and for the life of you cannot tell how it got from here to there, a gift of incalculability which must have been of great service in Wall Street, but ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... than half of her polished hull was submerged, leaving little to be seen except her small superstructure and her pilot-house, both of which were painted a delicate blue-grey colour that would be scarcely visible against the horizon astern. The chances, therefore, were strongly in favour of her invisibility. On the other hand, there was just a possibility that some keen eye aboard the liner, anxiously scanning the horizon in quest of help, might have sighted her; in which case a glimpse of the white ensign might be comforting. ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... was now explained. The man had undoubtedly possessed the bird's nest which communicates its charm of invisibility to its possessor, though not equally so to his shadow; and this nest he had now thrown away. I looked all round, and soon discovered the shadow of this invisible nest. I sprang towards it, and was fortunate enough to seize the precious booty, and immediately ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... of a god, Hypatia? A god made up of our own intellectual notions, or rather of negations of them—of infinity and eternity, and invisibility, and impassibility—and why not of immortality, too, Hypatia? For I recollect we used to agree that it was a carnal degrading of the Supreme One to predicate of Him so merely ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... betray itself by a stealthy movement. The pretty cowrie, lemon-coloured and grey and brown, throws over its shining shoulders a shawl of the hue of the rock on which it crawls about, grey or brown or tawny, with white specks and dots which make for invisibility—a thin filmy shawl of exquisite sensitiveness. Touch it ever so lightly, and the helpless creature, discerning that its disguise has been penetrated, withdraws it, folding it into its shell, and closes its door against expected attack. It may feebly fall off the rock, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... accordance with this program—Philip proceeded stealthily and industriously to further the schemes of Mucio, to the exclusion of more urgent business. Noiseless and secret himself, and delighting in clothing so much as to glide, as it were, throughout Europe, wrapped in the mantle of invisibility, he was perpetually provoked by the noise, the bombast, and the bustle, which his less prudent confederates permitted themselves. While Philip for a long time hesitated to confide the secret of the League to Parma, whom it most imported to understand these ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... scheme of invisibility will be easily grasped by the reader if we take the example of the rainbow. The phenomenon of the rainbow, then, teaches us that what we know to be white light, or daylight, is composed of rays of various colors. If an object, say the ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... skirmishing line of the waiting city flung out to this distant station—including some go-ahead flappers with autograph books to sign. It was, however, one of those occasions when the Prince was considered to be wrapped in a robe of invisibility until he had been to Government House and started from there to drive inland to the city and ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... This invisibility, combined with the fact that the Snow Mountain gorals lived on almost inaccessible cliffs thickly covered with scrub spruce forest, made "still hunting" impossible. In fact, Baron Haendel-Mazzetti, who had explored this part of the Snow Mountains fairly thoroughly in ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... thought in his mind brought the storm again, and his ship went down, and he was drowned. But at last the remnant of them landed, and fought a battle with the Gods, and defeated them; whereafter the Gods put a druid invisibility on themselves, and retired into the hills; and there in their fairy palaces they remain to this day; indeed they do. They went back into the inwardness of things; whence, however, they were always appearing, and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Elementals; and from the latter they acquired—possibly in exchange for some of their own vitality, for spirits of this order are said to have envied man his material body—tuition in sorcery, and such properties as second sight, invisibility, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... standing in front of a tansu, or chest of drawers, that still contained her ornaments and her wearing-apparel. Her head and shoulders could be very distinctly seen; but from the waist downwards the figure thinned into invisibility;—it was like an imperfect reflection of her, and transparent as ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... this was an army, traveling in the borderland of the Unknown. Appearing momentarily as though coming out to scout around and see the contour and the characteristics of our realm; disappearing again into invisibility, to show themselves in an hour or so ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... will be cold, your feet will be cut and bleeding,—but what better does a thief deserve? If any see you, at the least they will take you for a madman; there will be trouble. But have no fear; bear a bold heart. None shall see you while I stalk at your side. I will cover you with the cloak of invisibility,—so that you may come in safety to the house of the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... moment. In the chart-room window beside me again a figure appeared! No image. A solid, living person, undisguised by any cloak of invisibility. George Prince had chanced my fire and had crept ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... A very common superstition, which still survives, is that the seeds of the fern have power to confer invisibility. ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... this country rendered impossible. Such an ideal state of things is, unfortunately out of the question. Quite on the contrary, this country of ours is honeycombed with spies. So it will ever be, as long as we have to work with natural means: at present we have no caps of invisibility ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... coming and going upon the footpaths. The cafes glittered and rang with noise. Here one little fat burgher was shouting that the town-guard was worth all the red-legs in the trenches; another as loudly was criticising the tactics of Bazaine and comparing him for his invisibility to a pasha in his seraglio; while a third sprang upon a table and announced fresh victories. An army was already on the way from Paris to relieve Metz. Only yesterday MacMahon had defeated the Prussians, any moment he ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... explained." Taken in this sense we shall be under the necessity of agreeing, that the Platonic doctrines in no wise merit this distinction, seeing he has only drawn the human mind from the contemplation of visible nature, to plunge it into the unfathomable depths of invisibility—of intangibility—of suppositious speculation, where it can find little other food except chimeras or conjecture. Such a philosophy is rather fantastical, yet it would seem we are required to subscribe to its positions ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... Save me, save me! I see you, if you can't see me. I am a mouse in the claws of the cat. I am done for. King. You are proud of your invisibility. But shall not my arrow see you? Stand still. Do not hope to escape by ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... perceiving with annoyance that the man was connecting the presence of the shark under the counter with Purchas's invisibility; "merely a rather sharp bilious attack, which is now over, I am glad to say. He will probably be on ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of the paradox evaporates in translation. Concealment is perhaps not so much actual invisibility (see supra ss. 9) as "showing no sign" of what you mean to do, of the plans that are formed ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... every land and in every place we came to; nor the would-be dandy, who lit cigars innumerable, and invariably flung them overboard after the first puff; nor the priests, who seemed to possess the gift of invisibility, so rarely did they show themselves; nor the hundred thousand events and personages that flash upon our path for a moment on our journey through life, and then linger in the memory only as the dim phantoms of a ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... glider position, horizontal and face downward, and the invisibility of all the machinery gave an extraordinary effect of independent levitation. Only by looking up, as it were, and turning my head back could I see the flat aeroplane bottom of the balloon and the rapid successive passages, swish, swish, swish of the vans of the propeller. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... short distance up the ravine, I could see that it ended abruptly in a perpendicular cliff. As the sides also were precipitous, it became necessary only to build a fence across the entrance into the main canon to become possessed of a corral completely closed in. Remembering the absolute invisibility of these sunken canons until the rider is almost directly over them, and also the extreme roughness and remoteness of the district, I could see that the spot ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... in it, but in essence was permanent. The rushing mighty wind and the cloven tongues of fire, and the strange speech in many languages, were all equally transient. The rushing wind swept on, and the house was no more filled with it. The tongues flickered into invisibility and disappeared from the heads. The hubbub of many languages was quickly silent. But that which these things but symbolised is permanent; and we are not to think of Pentecost as if it were a sudden gush from a great reservoir, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... Niagara contain no more erratic currents than the strata of air which is now immediately above us, a fact hard to realize on account of its invisibility." ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... is set aside by the Sutra. That which possesses invisibility and the other qualities stated in the text, and that which is higher than the high Indestructible, is no other than the highest Self. For the text declares attributes which belong to the highest Self only, viz. in I, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... other would feel his load propertionably heavier. With these beings of a moment he had no longer any common cause; they must go their separate ways, yet apparently the same,—they on the broad, dusty, beaten path, that seemed always full, but from which continually they so strangely vanished into invisibility, no one knowing, nor long inquiring, what had become of them; he on his lonely path, where he should tread secure, with no trouble but the loneliness, which would be none to him. For a little while he would seem to keep them company, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... they hurried onwards in the pursuit; but when they arrived at the seashore, the mysterious man and his carpet bag were no longer visible, unless a large boat which was pulling out to sea as fast as wind and tide would permit, gave a clue to his invisibility. Every eye was now cast out for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... gradually lifting from their minds all care and worry, dispersing the mental clouds that hover over all men at times, thinning the fog until it disappeared, rather than rolling the vapour away, as the warm sun dissipates into invisibility the opaque morning mists, leaving nothing but clear air, all round, and a ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... Black Fleet vanished. But Chris was in contact with the fleet's flagship once more, through the compact radio-telephone set of his scout. As he flew, his eyes fixed steadily on the plane ahead, he was rapping into the microphone the story of what had happened. He told of the invisibility of the strange marauder, of how accurately he had judged the time of his raids; of how he, Chris, had managed to prevent the destruction of ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall |
