"Irresistible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leeward shore" they were doomed to experience during a moonless and starless night. They reduced their sails to a few yards of canvass, and lowered their yards on deck. The waves, that rolled the vessel with irresistible force, threatened to swallow them up; a tremendous sea carried away the boat which was hoisted up at the stern, and broke in all the bulkheads of the quarters. For safety of lives and property, all hands, after being revived with a glass ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... get into a cab and drive home. But the very sound of his voice, the very sight of him, seemed to excite her, and in a few moments she broke forth into the usual harangue. Several times the temptation to run away became almost irresistible, but with a noble effort of will he forced himself to remain with her. Hoping to avoid some part of the ridicule that was being so liberally showered upon him, he besought of her to keep up Drury Lane and not descend ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... Then his laugh bursts through his fingers, so to speak, grows in intensity, becomes irresistible, and passes into a whine. The crowd begins to fill the stage, concealing the body, Speransky, and Tony. The bells are rung in the monastery as at Easter, and at the same time the singing of thousands of voices ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... its psychological aspect. For once Leonardo has stripped bare not the body but the soul of desire,—the passion, the lust, the trembling and the shame. There is something frightening about Leda caught with the swan, about the effeminate Dionysus and John the Baptist's mouth "folded for a kiss of irresistible pleasure." If the stories then told about the children of Alexander VI and about Margaret of Navarre and Anne Boleyn were true, Mona Lisa ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... continent. While such startling changes are found right under our own eyes, surely we do not require the "doctrine of catastrophes" to explain the creation of this little ball—the earth! The silent, irresistible, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... is an irresistible weapon of wholesale murder, and is just as deadly no matter who pulls the trigger. It spreads terror as well as death by its loud discharge, and it leaves little clew as to who is responsible for the shot. Its ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... on a mountain slope, a cross current of air, or perhaps a tremor of the surface occasioned far off, starts the small snow-cap, that sliding, halting, impelled forward again, always accumulating, gathering momentum, finally becomes the irresistible avalanche. So Marcia Feversham, the following morning, gave the first slight impetus to the question that eventually menaced Tisdale with swift destruction. She was not taking the early train with her husband; she desired to break the long journey and, after ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... all this, Keith forgot to listen to his parents, who went on discussing so intently that he was able to leave his corner and reach the door to the kitchen unnoticed. An irresistible desire to see Granny at once had seized him. Back of it lay a vaguely sensed ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... goddess had arrayed herself in all her charms, and to crown all had borrowed of Venus her girdle, called "Cestus," which had the effect to heighten the wearer's charms to such a degree that they were quite irresistible. So prepared, Juno went to join her husband, who sat on Olympus watching the battle. When he beheld her she looked so charming that the fondness of his early love revived, and, forgetting the contending armies and all other affairs of state, he thought only of her and let the battle ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... scarcely taller than the gross-paunched parvenu who had married his only sister, his slim form seemed to tower over him in easy elegance. An aristocratic insolence and intelligence radiated from the handsome face that so many women had found irresistible, uniting, as it did, three universal types of beauty—the Jewish, the ancient Greek, and the Germanic. The Orient gave complexion and fire, the nose was Greek, the shape of the head not unlike Goethe's. The spirit of the fighter who knows not fear flashed from his ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a feeling of kindly but enormous force—elemental force, fresh, untutored, new, and young. There was buoyancy in it; a fine, breathless sense of uplifting and exhilaration; a sensation as of bigness and a return to the homely, human, natural life, to the primitive old impulses, irresistible, changeless, and unhampered; old as the ocean, stable as the hills, vast as the unplumbed depths of ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... yield to the arguments of Mme. Renault, but it succumbed to the entreaties of Clementine. The young creole twisted him around her finger with irresistible grace. ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... had sprung to Armand's lips. But fortunately at that very moment his eyes, glowing with anger, caught those of Blakeney fixed with lazy good-nature upon his. Something of that irresistible dignity which pervaded the whole personality of the man checked Armand's hotheaded ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... I have noticed his quiet and orderly conduct, and was really sorry when I found him concerned in this unhappy affair. His desire for freedom was, however, most ardent, and a chance of obtaining it was almost irresistible. He has since told me that a few words kindly spoken to himself and others by Captain Maconochie when they landed, sounded so pleasantly to him—such are his own words—that he determined from that moment he would endeavor to do well. He ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... superstitious credulity, prevailing among the negroes, has ever been considered as a most dangerous practice, to suppress which, in our West India colonies, the severest laws have been enacted. The Obeah is considered as a potent and most irresistible spell, withering and paralyzing, by indiscribable terrors and unusual sensations, the devoted victim. One negro who desires to be revenged on another, and is afraid to make an open and manly attack on his adversary, has usually recourse to this practice. Like the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... with an irresistible impulse to purchase the chest, and having a small silver coin of not more value than a silver penny, said to himself, "I will try my fate, possibly it may contain something valuable; but if not, I will disregard the disappointment;" ordered it to be conveyed to his lodging, and paid the price ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... fire would be hot upon her head when she should think how much she had received from him and how little she had done for him. And yet he loved her, with all his heart, and would even yet dream of bliss that might be possible with her,—had not the terrible hand of irresistible Fate come between them and marred it all. It was only a dream now. It could be no more than a dream. He put out his thin wasted hands and looked at them, and touched the hollowness of his own cheeks, and coughed that he might hear the hacking sound ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... the party Jim coaxed him, and Jim could be irresistible. Then Margaret said: "Oh, yes, I think I would go." She fixed up both of the boys, and scented their handkerchiefs with her "triple extract," and hoped they would have a nice time, insisting that one ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... they place upon the rocks just above high tide, a situation which the Dendrobes love. Mr. Micholitz required all his tact and all his most attractive presents before he could persuade the Papuans to let him even approach. But brass wire proved irresistible. They not only suffered him to disturb the bones of their ancestors, but even helped him to stow the plunder. One condition they made: that a favourite idol should be packed therewith; this admitted, they performed ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... built an extensive Arabian Empire, ruling first in Asia, then Africa, and finally Europe, spreading abroad with sudden and irresistible expansion, suddenly declined through internal dissensions and decay, having lasted but a few centuries. The peculiar tribal nature of the Arabian social order had not developed a strong central organization, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... was underneath the surface. Outside was the queenly magnificence and wifely glorification of her lot, a smooth current of irresistible prosperity. Underneath was the whirling and buzzing of the wheels of thought, the springs of motion ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... Neagle yesterday was an unfortunate affair, regretted, we believe, by no one more than by Justice Field, in whose defense the fatal shot was fired. There seems, however, to be an almost undivided sentiment that the killing was justifiable. Every circumstance attending the tragedy points to the irresistible conclusion that there was a premeditated determination on the part of Terry and his wife to provoke Justice Field to an encounter, in which Terry might either find an excuse for killing the man against whom he had threatened ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... "sick certificate," and arrived in England in the early part of June 1855. The Crimean war was then at its height, and the military authorities were beating up for recruits in every corner of the land. This summons for war was irresistible. I was suffering a little from blindness, brought on probably by my late losses and impoverishment of blood.[31] Still I lost no time in volunteering my services to take part in this great national object, thinking it was a duty, as a soldier, I owed my country, and delighting in the ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... most rebellious will. The countenance of this mysterious being, who claims to be responsible to God alone and to communicate, like Swedenborg, with angels, resembles that of a lion; concentrated, irresistible energy shines in it. His features, singularly contorted, have a terrible and even blasting aspect. His voice, which comes from the depths of his being, seems charged with some magnetic fluid; it penetrates the hearer at every pore. Disgusted ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... attaining no end but the worse injury of those who employed them. He might easily have used the miraculous power which He possessed for His own defense, and for the confusion of His enemies. Had He been selfishly ambitious, He might have organized a party so strong, that it would have become an irresistible force, which would have shattered the old order whose evils He denounced, and have made Him the dictator of a new order, based on the ideals in which He believed. He did none of these things, not through lassitude of spirit or failure to perceive their possible issues, but simply because these ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... realize that in very truth History has been one vast stupendous drama, world-embracing in its splendor, majestic, awful, irresistible in the insistence of its pointing finger of fate. It has indeed its comic interludes, a Prussian king befuddling ambassadors in his "Tobacco Parliament"; its pauses of intense and cumulative suspense, Queen Louise pleading to Napoleon for her country's life; but it has also ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... to find between the covers of this little book words of extraordinary potency or accents of irresistible heroism. However humiliating for my self-esteem, I must confess that the counsels of Marcus Aurelius are not for me. They are more fit for a moralist than for an artist. Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... into an irresistible trill of laughter. The South Wellmouth station agent joined her. Galusha smiled in a fatherly fashion upon ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sketched from the same work, are said, by Senor Velasquez, in the unpublished portion of his narrative, to be "irresistible likenesses" of the equally exclusive but somewhat more numerous priestly caste of Mahaboons, still existing in that city, and to which belonged Vaalpeor, an official guardian of those children, as mentioned in this memoir. Velasquez ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... should be a bishop. The members of the Linlithgow Convention, which accepted this scheme, were specially summoned by the king, and it was in no sense a free Assembly of the Church. But the royal power was, for the present, irresistible; in 1610 an Assembly which met at Glasgow established Episcopacy, and its action was, in 1612, ratified by the Scots Parliament. Three of the Scottish bishops[88] received English orders, to ensure the succession; but, to prevent ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... the torrent of young manhood was quite irresistible by any force that had yet been opposed to it. The Mayor and Sheriffs stood at the Guildhall, and read the royal proclamation by the light of a wax candle, held in the trembling hand of one of the clerks; but no one heard or heeded them, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the top of our speed. He began to circle round the cone of the crater, but in a diagonal direction so as to facilitate our progress. Presently the dust storm fell upon the mountain, which quivered under the shock; the loose stones, caught with the irresistible blasts of wind, flew about in a perfect hail as in an eruption. Happily we were on the opposite side, and sheltered from all harm. But for the precaution of our guide, our mangled bodies, torn and pounded into fragments, would have been carried afar like the ruins hurled ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... peculiarly British; at least it is a weapon which in the hands of a British soldier is irresistible. Though they maintained themselves with great determination, and stood to receive our fire till scarcely twenty yards divided us, the Americans would not hazard a charge. On the left, indeed, where the 21st advanced in column, it was not without much difficulty and a severe loss that any attempt ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... again brought us fine weather and a fair wind, which enabled us once more to quit the English harbour. In no situation are the vicissitudes so striking as those experienced at sea. The wind, which had so lately attacked us with irresistible fierceness, was now become too gentle, and we were detained nine days in the Channel by calms, before we ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... conceal it from himself—Elizabeth appealed to him. Being built on a large scale himself, he had always been attracted by small women. There was a smallness, a daintiness, a liveliness about Elizabeth that was almost irresistible. She was so capable, so cheerful in spite of the fact that she was having a hard time. And then their minds seemed to blend so remarkably. There were no odd corners to be smoothed away. Never in his life had he felt so supremely at his ease with one of the opposite sex. He loved ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... with the rest, as the Southern torrent, irresistible now, flowed toward Gettysburg, while Ewell and Hill led their men. The town was filled with the retreating Union troops and the cannon and rifles thundered incessantly in the rear, driving them on. The whole Southern curve was triumphant. Ewell's men entered the town after the fugitives, ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... structure, rising fifteen stories above the ground, and surmounted with an artistic tower, which could be seen from almost any part of the city. The home of the city's greatest daily, it looked as if it were always welcoming strangers to the metropolis, and Archie felt an irresistible impulse to enter. Everything connected with a newspaper had for him the greatest fascination, and he knew he would enjoy seeing through this wonderful building, which was almost wholly occupied by the departments of the Enterprise. So he entered the door, and passed ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... shall fulfill my commission when I have told you my story. I conjured him to allow me to sit up with him and share any danger which might arise, but he implored me with irresistible earnestness not to add to his troubles by thwarting his arrangements. Seeing that I was really distressing him by my pertinacity, I at last allowed him to close the door and to turn the key upon the outside. I shall ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tree, devils driven into the swine, and virtue going out of himself. In the story of Lazarus we cannot help suspecting some secret concert. Christ did perform some uncontested miracles, however and there was in his manner that inexpressible something which makes greatness irresistible. The mystic obscurity thrown over his future kingdom, the many parables he used, and his assured manner of speaking of future things, begot reverence. The prudence of his judgment and the strictness of his life are praiseworthy. He could pursue the destruction ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... beneath the funereal woods, and amid the flickering of pine-knot torches, preparing that stern revenge whose shuddering echoes should ring through the land so long. Two things were at last decided: to begin their work that night; and to begin it with a massacre so swift and irresistible as to create in a few days more terror than many battles, and so spare the need of future bloodshed. "It was agreed that we should commence at home on that night, and, until we had armed and equipped ourselves and gained sufficient force, neither ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... distinguished by white plumes, kilts, and shields, was moving to the attack of the two thousand remaining Greys, who stood waiting in the same ominous silence as before, till the foe was within forty yards or so, when they hurled themselves with irresistible force upon them. Again there came the awful roll of the meeting shields, and as we watched the tragedy ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... them with a wry mouth and a humorous twinkle in her eye that were eminently Scottish. But the rest used me with a certain reverence, as something come from afar and not entirely human. Nothing would put them at their ease but the irresistible gaiety of my native tongue. Between the old lady and myself I think there was a real attachment. She was never weary of sitting to me for her portrait, in her best cap and brigand hat, and with all her wrinkles tidily composed, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... charmers, charming never so wisely.' At length, the town is assaulted, conscience becomes alarmed, but the will remains stubborn. The beleaguering of the town—planting the ensigns—throwing up batteries—the slings casting, with irresistible force, portions of the Word into the mind—the battering-rams beating upon the gates, especially Eargate—exciting alarm under the fear of the just and awful punishment due to sin—all are described with an extraordinary ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... by French. These divisions, accompanied by groups of wire cutters and others armed with bangalore torpedoes, went through the successive bands of barbed wire that protected the enemy's front line and support trenches, in irresistible waves on schedule time, breaking down all defense of an enemy demoralized by the great volume of our artillery fire and our sudden approach out of ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... deeds—from that lofty teaching—so unlike every human system—so wondrously adapted to the wants and woes, the sins, the sorrows, and aching necessities of the human heart. All this had left on her own spirit, and on that of Lazarus and Mary, the irresistible impression and evidence that he was indeed the Lord of Glory—"the Hope of Israel, ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... Delacour. Clarence Hervey went on, and with much eloquence expressed his admiration of the mother who had stopped short in the career of dissipation to employ her inimitable talents in the education of her children; who had absolutely brought Virtue into fashion by the irresistible powers of wit ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... Marlowe, the New Girls chose the "Christmas Carol." Many other things were suggested, but Scrooge and Tiny Tim had apparently a warm place in their affections, and the appropriateness of the Christmas story for the end of term was irresistible. ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... single impulse the crowd rushes up the terrace. Its advance is irresistible. Both Judson and his hireling see the futility of attempting to resist the mob. They, therefore, withdraw within the house. As they enter they close the massive oak doors. Even as the doors swing to, the weight of a dozen powerful shoulders ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... an irresistible attraction, and he resolved more firmly than ever to leave no stone unturned to make himself master ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... A silence follows, when, after a few moments, a deafening cheer bursts forth, and an aide-de-camp gallops up to say that the orchard has been carried at the point of the bayonet, the Nassau sharp-shooters who held it having, after a desperate resistance, retired before the irresistible onset of the French infantry. "A moi! maintenant!" said General Foy, as he drew his sabre and rode down to the head of his splendid division, which, anxious for the word to advance, was standing in the valley. "En avant! mes braves!" cried he, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Emmott passed very rapidly from dislike to active detestation. Her iron strength of will, combined with an almost blatant vulgarity, gave the girl a sense of being borne down by an irresistible weight. Very soon her aversion became such that it was impossible to conceal it. And Mrs. Emmott laughed in her face. She hated Sylvia too, but she looked forward to subduing the unbending pride that so coldly withstood her, ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... his appointment to labor will naturally strive towards that rotation of labor which is peculiar to him, for the satisfaction of his inward requirements; and he can alter this labor in no other way than when he feels within himself an irresistible summons to some exclusive form of labor, and when the demands of other men for ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... loss of distinct sensation and voluntary power, analogous to intoxication. Not being able fully to determine whether the gas was "stimulant" or "depressing," he now breathed four quarts of it from his green bag, when an irresistible propensity to action followed, with motions, various and violent. Still, not being satisfied, he proceeded in his experiments, and at length found that he could breathe nine quarts for three minutes, and twelve quarts for rather more than four, but ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... girl gave rise to one of these striking imitations. Delsarte put such an irresistible comedy into it, that the audience was seized with an uncontrolable fit of mirth. The master's mimicry had far more to do with this than the poor girl's awkwardness. But she did not understand this. Her heart sank at this harsh ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... wave caught him in its curling crest, and swept him onwards. For the first time in his life, Oliver Trembath's massive strength was of no avail to him. He felt like a helpless infant. In another instant the breaker fell and swept him with irresistible violence up the beach amid a turmoil of hissing foam. No sooner did he touch the ground than he sprang to his feet, and staggered forward a few paces but the returning rush of water swept sand and ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... this was the thought which flashed through Dick's mind. And if Pilar had been desirable in motoring days, she was irresistible at home. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... yet, a Doomed Man. It only occurred to me yesterday that I had been dodging—missing rather than dodging—the common enemy for such a space of time. Then, I know, I respected him. It seemed he marched upon me, inexorable, irresistible; even at last I felt his grip upon me. I bowed in the shadow. And he passed. Ten years ago, and once since, he and I have been very near. But now he seems to me but a blind man, and we, with all our solemn folly of medicine and hygiene, but players in a game of Blind ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... this record has been going on more actively than ever during these last twenty years. We have only to look over the lists of the Faculties and teachers of our Universities to see the subdivision of labor carried out as never before. The movement is irresistible; it brings with it exactness, exhaustive knowledge, a narrow but complete self-satisfaction, with such accompanying faults as pedantry, triviality, and the kind of partial blindness which belong to intellectual myopia. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... I suppose, and are said to be quite irresistible during the latter part of their course. You need not laugh. If you knew how many women—some of them old enough to be the boys' mothers—had succumbed, you would take ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the strong spirit from within, irresistible, urged on the lad. One day while his mother conversed with him, inadvertently she uttered certain words, and he knew that the road to Emain Macha went past the mountain of Slieve Fuad. [Footnote: Now the Fews mountain lying on the direct way between ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... which we have rated it in our own minds; in some diseases, the patient has been observed to long for food, which scarce any extremity of hunger would in health have compelled him to swallow; but while his organs were thus depraved, the craving was irresistible, nor could any rest be obtained till it was appeased by compliance. Of the same nature are the irregular appetites of the mind; though they are often excited by trifles, they are equally disquieting with real wants: ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... me, you are irresistible, you are an angel, and your husband is a monster: for what does he mean by sending a siren to a young man whom he ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... going to be angry with me, Hugo!" she said. And she lifted her eyes again upon me—irresistible, compelling, solvent of dignities, and able to break ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... gave us hard work. The water was cold, we were wet and hungry, and when we arrived at a third that was more forbidding than the ones above we halted for dinner at its beginning. The muddy water boomed and plunged over innumerable rocks—a mad, irresistible flood. So great was the declivity of the river bed that boulders were rolled along under water with a sound like distant thunder. We had noticed this also in Lodore, but in Cataract it was more common. The rumbling was particularly noticeable ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the boundary and over Meridian Hill. To move along the drying road and feel the delicious warmth is enough. The cattle low long and loud, and look wistfully into the distance. I sympathize with them. Never a spring comes but I have an almost irresistible desire to depart. Some nomadic or migrating instinct or reminiscence stirs within me. I ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... alcohol is not the enemy; no abomination, physical, mental or moral, individual or social, of which it is not the friend. Further, words like these will stand on record, and may be remembered when there has been achieved that slow but irresistible education of public opinion, to which some few have devoted themselves, and of which the triumph is as certain as the triumph of all truth was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. To the many charges against alcohol made by the champions of life in the past, let there be ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... vein, and concluded by remarking that the only rift in the lute of his present enchanting experience was the fear that whereas he had nearly died of starvation several times during the past three years, he was now threatened with a far more ignominious end, so delicious and irresistible were the temptations that beset the wayfarer in this most hospitable land. Both speeches were gaily applauded, the conversation became animated and general, and Concha dropped her voice to the attentive ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... his own strength. But the recent struggle with the forest fire and that far more desperate battle with the same enemy years before, when the Wireless Patrol was in camp at Fort Brady, had given Charley a true estimate of the well-nigh irresistible fury of a fire in the forest, should conditions be favorable ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... know, Father, all that love and youth will dare; but I, whose earthly life has given me experience in such matters, have seen the impossibilities of sober minds yield to the irresistible energy of two plighted hearts. Oh, no; it ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... who was watching over me, perceiving my restlessness, awoke me; the dashing waves were around, the cloudy sky above, the fiend was not here: a sense of security, a feeling that a truce was established between the present hour and the irresistible, disastrous future imparted to me a kind of calm forgetfulness, of which the human mind is by ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... chance for a surprise. Henry and his comrades were aware that Indian bands still lurked in the forest, and they had several narrow escapes from the bullets of ambushed foes, but the progress of the army was irresistible. Nothing could check it for a moment, however much the Indian and Tory ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... things, their endeavor is to prove that nature is absolutely and wholly irresistible; and yet the same people allow that we take greater grief on ourselves than nature requires. What madness is it, then, in us to require the same from others? But there are many reasons for our taking grief on us. The first is from the opinion of some evil, on the discovery ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... massacred; but we have no reason to suppose, that they, or any of the rest concerned in this extraordinary instinct, are aware of the matter beforehand; and the same is to be said of the combats between the Queen-bees; they appear to be the result of an irresistible impulse, brought about, by the sudden pressure of a necessity. Bees appear to be very happy, during far the greater portion of their existence. A modern writer, of whom it is to be lamented that a certain want of refinement stopped short his perceptions, and degraded his philosophy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... holds it nearly if not quite as tightly with the right hand as with the left. Personally I grip quite as firmly with the right hand as with the other one. When the other way is adopted, the left hand being tight and the right hand simply watching it, as it were, there is an irresistible tendency for the latter to tighten up suddenly at some part of the upward or downward swing, and, as surely as there is a ball on the tee, when it does so there will be mischief. Depend upon it the instinct of activity will prevent the right hand from ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... the college was not in his hands, and such prayers would avail nothing with him. Nor would a brother praying simply for a brother avail much. A father asking for his son might be resisted. But the brother asking pardon for the brother on behalf of the father was almost irresistible. But this man had long been in a position in which he knew that no such prayers should ever prevail at all. In the first place it was not his business. If he did anything, it would only be by asking a favour when he knew that no favour should be granted;—and a favour ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... Church? Such considerations urged in favour of a community already distinguished by its wealth, as well as by its charity, were amply sufficient to establish its claim as the centre of Catholic unity. If, as is probable, the arrangement was concocted in Rome itself, they must have been felt to be irresistible. Hence Irenaeus, writing about A.D. 180, speaks of it even then as the recognized head of the Churches of the Empire. "To this Church," says he, "because it is more potentially principal, it is necessary that every Catholic Church should go, as in it the apostolic tradition has by the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Does the number of souls saved by the new bishops exceed that of the fat benefices they have swallowed? And are they not for the most part foreigners? As yet, the office of stadtholder has been held by Netherlanders; but do not the Spaniards betray their great and irresistible desire to possess themselves of these places? Will not people prefer being governed by their own countrymen, and according to their ancient customs, rather than by foreigners, who, from their first entrance into the land, endeavour to enrich themselves at the general expense, who measure everything ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... as fiercely as a corn-rick. The heat in the road increased, and now for an instant at the height of the conflagration all stood still, and gazed silently, awestruck and helpless, in the presence of so irresistible an enemy. Then, with minds full of the tragedy unfolded to them, they rushed forward again with the obtuse directness of waves, to their labour of saving goods from the houses adjoining, which it was evident were ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... as irresistible as 'The Campbells are Coming,' or 'Auld Lang Syne.' He has described some men and some events once and for all, and so takes his place with Thucydides, Tacitus and Gibbon. Pedants may try hard to forget ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... affections of this innocent girl had no object but himself and Mrs. Ormond, and they were strong, perhaps, in proportion as they were concentrated. The artless familiarity of her manner, and her unsuspicious confidence, amounting almost to credulity, had irresistible power over Mr. Hervey's mind; he felt them as appeals at once to his tenderness and his generosity. He treated her with the utmost delicacy, and his oath was never absent from his mind: but he felt ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... we bound, under the guidance of modern science? An irresistible current is drawing us on, and causing us to leave the morals of Philinthe in our rear. We are coming to those which Racine has engraven in immortal traits in the person of Mathan. When once conscience is put aside, all means are good in order to ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... horizon about four miles to the north-west, and an intervening plain of firm clay covered with atriplex and salsolae rose towards it from the very margin of the reedy basin of the river. Although anxious to see the junction of the Lachlan and Murrumbidgee, curiosity irresistible led me to the rising ground, while Mr. Stapylton traced the supposed line of the Lachlan and the overseer conducted the carts and party westward. Unlike the hills I had seen on the limits of interior plains ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... darling beauty! if I might only feed you every day of my life I should be happy! I curtsey to him every time I see him. If I were his master, the men should all off hats, and the women all curtsey, to Emperor Ajax, my dog! my own! my great, dear irresistible love! Then she nodded at me, 'I would make them, though.' And then at Temple, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... first by gratitude to the boy who had saved his child's life, and afterwards by the boy's own irresistible smile, these frequent visits had become a pleasure. There had been a little boy before Starr came to their home, but he had only lived a few weeks. The memory of that golden, fuzzy head, the little appealing fingers, the great blue eyes of his son still lingered bitterly ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... goods, to an unknown country, where she had no connections, returned with confirmed force. How friendless she was! But slenderly supplied with money, of course. A daring possibility had darted into his mind. It was an irresistible temptation,—and sailors are proverbially reckless. Matrimony hitherto had never entered into his views. It would entail leaving the navy and living with his uncle, who, though kind, was arbitrary enough, and would have very decided ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... whispered the words in his ear. Her hand covered his fingers caressingly. His forehead touched the lace upon her robe and he could hear her heart beating. An impulse almost irresistible came upon him to take her in his arms and hold her there, and find in her embrace that knowledge of the perfect womanhood which had been his dream through the years. He knew not what held ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... his harsh, eager tones, "so we arrive at the evolution of that consciousness which may justly be termed eternal—the consciousness which has become subject to these primary and irresistible laws, the understanding of which has baffled for so many ages the students of every country. So ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... midst of the irresistible whirl of words there came a pause. Some one looked at his watch and said: 'The steamboat.' They all rose; the gentlemen, who had to go to town, rushed off; the whole company was scattered to the four winds, and the problem—whether one can ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the water. Hardly any sound, but the murmur of the ripple at the water's edge and the cheruping of busy grasshoppers upon the lawn. Now and then a locust did sing out; he only said it was August and that the sun was shining hot and sleepily everywhere but under the cedar trees. His song was irresistible. Elizabeth closed her eyes and listened to it, in a queer kind of luxurious rest-taking which was had because mind and body would have it. Pain was put away, in a sort; for the senses of pain were blurred. The aromatic smell of the evergreens was wafted about her; and then came a touch, ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... the power of any superior Piece, except the King, which the player chooses. From this circumstance it frequently happens that one party, by skilful management of his Pawns, contrives to have two, and sometimes even three Queens on the board at once, a combination of force which of course is irresistible. ...
— The Blue Book of Chess - Teaching the Rudiments of the Game, and Giving an Analysis - of All the Recognized Openings • Howard Staunton and "Modern Authorities"
... apart from the house in the long, narrow garden at the back, and as he approached the door he stopped for a moment, and an almost irresistible impulse to go away and have nothing more to do with the unholy work in hand took possession of him. Then the love of his science and the longing to hear the marvels which could only be heard from the lips that had been silent for centuries ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... fair and softly wavy. Her colouring had all the delicacy which suggested the laying on by an artist's brush, and which no storm or sun seemed to have power to destroy. Her slight figure possessed all those perfect contours which are completely irresistible in early youth. Furthermore these things were supported to the utmost by the party frock she was wearing, and over which she had spent weeks ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... seemed irresistible. Still I held off. I was balancing between my wish to go and see Aunt Bretta at Southsea and the old lady and her niece at Plymouth, and trying to find my way back to my ship. I had an idea that the latter was the right thing to do. Still, unhappily, I had ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... marriage of love. He was sufficiently spoiled to be charming; she was ingenuous enough to be irresistible. Like two floating logs they met in a head-on rush, caught, and sped along together. Yet had Jeffrey Curtain kept at scrivening for twoscore years he could not have put a quirk into one of his stories weirder than the quirk ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... nothing more worth recording in the adventures of that day but for the fact that Everychild, at the last moment, felt an irresistible desire to explore the attic of the old house. And this he undertook to do, after all his companions had, as he supposed, ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... enthusiasm, "since a work of the same wealth of genius as Death's Jest-Book has been given to the world." And Browning wrote to Mr. Kelsall, the author of the memoir: "You might pick out scenes, passages, lyrics, fine as fine can be: the power of the man is immense and irresistible." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Humours, or Circumstances, or may be made profitable to the Publick by their particular Knowledge or Experience in the Matter proposed, to do their utmost on them by such a Time; to the End they may receive the inexpressible and irresistible Pleasure of seeing their Essay allowed of and relished by the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in its own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, which burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... him!" said Louis, acting, or at least appearing to act, under an irresistible and headlong impulse, which withdrew the usual guard which he maintained over his language. "Charles of Burgundy is unworthy of your attachment. He who can insult and strike his councillors—he who can distinguish ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... to be wealthy, and who all equally desired settlements in a land reputed the most productive in the East. An overwhelming flood of men—a quarter of a million, if we may believe Manetho—poured into the land, impetuous, irresistible. All at once, a danger had come beyond all possible previous calculation—a danger from which there was no escape. It was as when the northern barbarians swooped down in their countless thousands on the outlying ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... their eyes fell upon had something to do with eating. Even their own thoughts were fatal. No matter how much they tried to keep their minds off beefsteak and the like, it was all in vain; their fancy returned invariably, with irresistible force, back to that for which ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... at heart, overwhelmed with a quick burst of irresistible compassion for this brute agony he could not relieve. The sweetness was gone from the evening, the sense of peace, of security, and placid contentment was stricken from the landscape. The hideous ruin in the engine's path drove all thought of ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... charming, and the effect on men of acknowledged superiority in strength courage or intelligence. Of course, in both cases the effect is partly in the physical attractiveness of the flatterer and tends to become ridiculous when he or she is without charm. The simpering language that is irresistible when uttered by a starry-eyed maid of eighteen loses somewhat in beauty and effect when emanating from the lips of bespectacled forty. The power to use and the power to resist flattery in any of its forms have played almost as great a role in the history ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... are rightly named 'Wild Jennie'!" cried Katherine, laughing heartily, for the girl was irresistible ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon |
