"Perceptible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a little more, and then a little more, and fell backward. Fortunately, the chair in which he had been sitting received him, and he lay there insensible as a corpse. When at last his eyes opened, there was no gleam of triumph, no shade of anger, nothing perceptible of guilt or menace, in the young woman's countenance. The flush had returned to her cheeks; her dimpled chin had sunk upon her full white throat; sorrow, shame, and pride seemed struggling in her handsome face, and she stood ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... were indistinguishable in the gloom. Edmund boldly continued to approach until we were within a hundred feet of the shaft of light, which we could now perceive issued directly from the ground. Suddenly, with the slightest perceptible bump, we touched the soil, and the car came to rest. ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... hasty march made to escape the King's troops, who, he heard, were coming to the islands to pursue him. Among the few humane traits in the character of Simon Fraser, the habitual respect and affection borne by the Highlanders to parents appears to have been perceptible. He speaks of Thomas of Beaufort in his Life with regret and regard; but seals those expressions of tenderness with an oath that he "would revenge himself on his own and his father's enemies with their blood, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... are single, and walled around by cliffs, ever varying in shape and height, and have seldom any perceptible communication with each other. These hollows are of all dimensions, from the narrowness and depth of a well, to the amplitude of one hundred yards. Winter's snow is frequently found in these cavities at midsummer. The streams that burst forth from every crevice are thrown, ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... criminalistic importance. I did once believe that they might be of considerable influence on the perception of witnesses, but I have not succeeded in discovering a single example in which this influence is perceptible. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... last, which was not to be found among the head-lines of Boston's old copy-books, little Rebecca looked like to drop, and with a frightened gesture begged us to be seated, which we all accomplished with a perceptible stiffening of the young ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... is this very conscientiousness, of course, which leads him to adopt so much elaborate syntax from bygone masters of style. Finally,—the point in which, I think, Dio has come nearest to the gloomy Athenian,—something of the matter-of-fact directness of Thukydides is perceptible in this Roman History. The operator unrolls before us the long panorama of wars and plots and bribes and murders: his pictures speak, but he himself seldom interjects a word. Sometimes the lack of comment seems almost brutal, but what need to ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... of heredity was no more plainly perceptible than was the extent of individual variation. If a member of a bad family wished to reform, he had every opportunity to do so; if a member of a good family had vicious propensities, there was nothing to check them. All qualities, good and bad, are intensified and accentuated in ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... in speed was felt, and as they found themselves travelling more rapidly in a circle, the centrifugal force now became distinctly perceptible. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... develop its true philosophy. Its fundamental error is the assumption that all our knowledge is confined to the observation and classification of sensible phenomena—that is, to changes perceptible by the senses. Psychology, based, as it is, upon self-observation and self-reflection, is a "mere illusion; and logic and ethics, so far as they are built upon it as their foundation, are altogether baseless." ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... another matter. But who could have failed to feel genial towards the quiet, scholarly, altogether charming gentleman of Sunnyside? Also the legs of Irving fitted well and often under the Hone mahogany, and the part of the author that was perceptible above the table gave a flavour and dignity to the board. Somehow we see Hone's cheeks puffed out with pride as he chronicles: "My old friend, Washington Irving, who visits his native country after an absence of seventeen years. I passed ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... and spoke with enthusiasm of Lord Nelson. But the literary use he made of his nautical experience ended with "Black-eyed Susan." He was a boy when he came ashore and threw himself on the very different sea of London; and it is the influence of London that is most perceptible in his mature works. Here his work was done, his battles fought, his mind formed; and you may observe in his writings a certain romantic and ideal way of speaking of the country, which shows that to him it was a place of retreat and luxury, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... to be crushed lifeless by the heavy glass, and they fall to the ground below, ready to be plucked for the oven. Inside the lantern the thud made by these birds when they strike is readily felt. Although they are comparatively small, yet so great is their velocity that the impact creates a perceptible jar, and the lantern is disfigured with plashes of their blood. Upon stormy and foggy nights the destruction of birds is found to be greatest. When the weather is clear and fair many smaller birds, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... metal fouling of cupro-nickel. It is necessary, therefore, to remove all metal fouling before assurance can be had that all powder fouling, has been removed and that the bore may be safely oiled. Normally, after firing a barrel in good condition the metal fouling is so slight as to be hardly perceptible. It is merely a smear of infinitesimal thickness, easily removed by solvents of cupro-nickel. However, due to pitting, the presence of dust, other abrasives, or to accumulation, metal fouling may occur in clearly visible flakes or patches of much greater ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... different from this," and Brand smiled slightly, a winning, deprecating smile, as with the least perceptible motion of his head he indicated the company that filled his spacious drawing room. "But a man doesn't want his relaxations to be all alike, any more than he wants all flowers to be of ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... the steppes of Russia, and Bruce those on the deserts of Africa, and nowhere is there mention made of any condensation of vapour. I have seen scores of whirlwinds in Australia, many rising to a height of over one hundred feet; yet there was never any perceptible condensation of vapour, though some of them were of sufficient force to tear off limbs of trees, and carry up the tents of gold-diggers into the air. Franklin describes a whirlwind of greater violence than any of these. It commenced in Maryland by taking ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... the tree and examined the work. The paint was still soft and fresh on the raw wood. Flies swarmed about it. I looked at Little Otter, making a sign, and his scarcely perceptible nod told me that I had ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... floating log to another in the zigzag to shore. When they stepped on a small log they re-leaped immediately, leaving a swirl of foam where the little timber had sunk under them; when they encountered one larger, they hesitated for a barely perceptible instant. Thus their progression was of fascinating and graceful irregularity. The other two ran the length of their footing, and, overleaping an open of water, landed heavily and firmly on the very ends of two small floating logs. In this manner the force of the jump rushed the little timbers ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... winter of long duration. In the tropics, owing to the comparatively slight difference in the obliquity of the Sun's rays, one season is, as regards temperature, not much different from the other; but in the temperate regions of the Earth the vicissitudes of the seasons are more perceptible and can be best distinguished by the growth of vegetation, and the changes observable in the foliage of shrubs and trees. In spring there is the budding, in summer the blossom, in autumn the fruit-bearing, and in winter the leafless condition of deciduous trees, ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... neighboring attorney having performed the necessary duty—something, I believe, relative to the will of the dying lady. We will speak further together by and by. In the meantime," continued Dr. Curteis, with a perceptible tremor in his voice, "it will do neither of us any harm to witness the closing scene of the life of Mary Rawdon, whom you and I twenty years ago worshipped as one of the gentlest and most beautiful of beings with which the Creator ever graced his universe. It ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... Some feeble sounds—quite perceptible, however—were heard. They seemed to be cries of distress. They were twice repeated. They seemed like cries for help. Then all became ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... lasted until luncheon was served. Giovanni put in an appearance, and Derby was pressed to stay. As di Valdo and the American met, there was a barely perceptible coldness under the Italian's good manners, while Derby's greeting showed a momentary curiosity. Two more sharply contrasted beings could hardly have been brought together. But gradually Giovanni also became interested in the mining plans, and, as the reason for the American's ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... without any perceptible result, or they absorb it like a passion. To one class of readers he appears sublime, to another (and we fear the largest) ridiculous. He has probably realised Milton's wish,—"and fit audience found, though few:" but we suspect he is ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... "Given the hardly perceptible wearing of water and time, a canyon a mile deep, and many hundreds of miles long, has resulted from the flowing of a stream. Given glacial 'abrasion' and time enough, then valleys of rounded section and firths and lake-basins ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... will have to be replaced the first few years and is something not to be worried about. Dr. G. A. Zimmerman said, "Why worry about the blight? The wild ones have always had it to a small extent. Spread is so slow it isn't perceptible, damage being almost nil, so let's ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... any two pieces of wood, so as to join close and fair together; the plank is said to fay to the timbers, when it lies so close to them that there shall be no perceptible space between them. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... four gifts, clarity alone is a quality of the very person in himself; whereas the other three are not perceptible, save in some action or movement, or in some passion. Christ, then, did show in Himself certain indications of those three gifts—of agility, for instance, when He walked on the waves of the sea; of subtlety, when ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... remarked elsewhere, I like the Strand. It is a very human place. But I own that the Strand lacks dignity and beauty, and that amongst its varied odours the odour of sanctity is scarce perceptible. ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... in later years tended to restrain the Executive Department from the personal use of the patronage of the Government, did not at that time exert a perceptible influence in this direction. The maxim originating with William L. Marcy, but frequently attributed to President Jackson, that "to the victor belong the spoils," was then held in full honor; and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... that the rabbit breathes air into its lungs, which is returned to the atmosphere with a lessened amount of oxygen, and the addition of a perceptible amount of carbon dioxide. The rabbit also throws off, or excretes, a fluid, the urine, which consists of water with a certain partially oxydised substance containing nitrogen, and called urea, and other less important salts. The organs within the body, by which the urine is separated, are called ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... saw whole ranks mowed down, as the white smoke arose for a moment hiding the prospect from view. When the veil of battle blew aside, he saw such a scene of horror as he had never before witnessed. At first a lane was perceptible extending through the densest portion of the assaulting mass, marking the path traversed by the shot; but as the distance from the gun increased, and the grape scattered, this clearly defined line gave place to ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... was an error in me, and which became very perceptible, was a pleasure which I had, not in jesting with, but in playing with my best feelings, and in regarding the understanding as the most important thing in the world. The rector had completely mistaken my undisguisedly candid and sensitive character; my excitable feelings were made ridiculous, ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... they wouldn't was more and more perceptible from day to day. They continued to "chivey," as Morgan called it, and in due time became aware of a variety of reasons for proceeding to Venice. They mentioned a great many of them—they were always strikingly frank and had the brightest friendly chatter, at the late foreign breakfast in ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... the arms may be warm except the hands; the feet, ankles and legs may be cold. There is generally more or less cyanosis, although the face may be pale. The finger nails often show venous stasis. In these cases the blood pressure is subnormal, the pulse may be hardly perceptible, and there is none of the tension of the body from fear. The patient may be fearful, but lie is completely collapsed. Such an attack may occur suddenly in a heart that is perfectly compensating, or it may ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... in Aragon is perceptible in the familiarity displayed by its writers with public affairs, and in the freedom with which they have discussed the organization, and general economy of its government. The creation of the office of national chronicler, under Charles V., gave wider scope to the development of historic talent. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... the invalids would soon be well. However that might be, with the same pale Hue sky overhead, we kept running steadily to the westward. Forever advancing, we seemed always in the same place, and every day was the former lived over again. We saw no ships, expected to see none. No sign of life was perceptible but the porpoises and other fish sporting under the bows like pups ashore. But, at intervals, the gray albatross, peculiar to these seas, came flapping his immense wings over us, and then skimmed away silently as if from a plague-ship. Or flights of the tropic bird, known among seamen as the ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... passage of gas through the intestines may be mistaken for quickening long before the movements of the child are really perceptible; but those who have once experienced quickening will not be deceived. Whenever women who have borne children are in doubt the sensation is almost surely not quickening. Furthermore, in any doubtful case, the motion should be observed ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... rash ardour. At the destruction of Magdeburg, his hands were deeply steeped in blood; war rendered savage and ferocious his disposition, which had been cultivated by youthful studies and various travels. On his forehead, two red streaks, like swords, were perceptible, with which nature had marked him at his very birth. Even in his later years, these became visible, as often as his blood was stirred by passion; and superstition easily persuaded itself, that the future ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... still more narrow, and there is a continual ascent, tho' it is so gentle as scarcely to be perceptible. Every spot of ground in this valley, which will admit of cultivation, is put to profit by the industry of the inhabitants. Here one sees beans, indian corn, and even wines; for the heat is very great indeed in summer and autumn, owing to the ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... deserve violent deaths," replied the duchess; and with a perceptible frown she added: "And are you aware that Madame de Brissac, of whom you speak so lightly, ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... and trod on a carpet of studiously modest pretensions, exhibiting pious emblems beyond reproach in color and design. The Retreat had its own artesian well; not a person in the house drank impurity in his water. A faint perfume of incense was perceptible in the corridors. The soothing and mysterious silence of the place was intensified rather than disturbed by soft footsteps, and gentle opening and closing of doors. Animal life was not even represented by a cat in the kitchen. And yet, pervaded by some inscrutable influence, the house was not dull. ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... and brought it down smartly on the object. When it hit, he almost dropped the spade. He had been gripping the handle rigidly, braced for a recoil. But the spade struck that unyielding surface and stayed. There was no perceptible ...
— The Leech • Phillips Barbee
... earlier, and all would agree that even if there are symptoms that life still lingered in the body down to this time, its mental and physical energies had long failed, and that the change from lethargy to death was hardly perceptible when it came. Thus even on the most cautious reckoning, there is an interval of thirteen centuries between the close of Greek history and our own times, and the great age of Greek history—the time when Ancient Greek society was in its prime, when it was ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... was going on. Remorse made her quite beside herself. She had a vision. She sat at night out in a freshly ploughed field. Round about her sat great birds with mighty wings and pointed beaks. They were gray, scarcely perceptible against the gray ground, but they held watch over her. They were passing sentence upon her. Suddenly they flew up and sank down over her head. She saw their sharp claws, their pointed beaks, their beating wings coming nearer and nearer. ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... every part of the church a movement was perceptible, slight at first, but by degrees becoming more decided. Young girls arose, and sat down, and rose again; and then the pews opened, and several came tottering out, their hands clasped, their heads hanging ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various
... wing-cases squeak, and is enchanted with its own music, which it commences or terminates suddenly "according to the alternations of sun and shade." Each insect has its rhythm, strident or barely perceptible; the music of the thickets and fallows caressed by the sun, rising and falling ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... a case in which the ankle bone has first become painful, perhaps without any perceptible cause, or it may be as the result of an injury to the part. It then swells and becomes inflamed. At this stage two or three fomentations (see) well applied may very likely cure it entirely. But if neglected, or leeched, ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... anxiety, as I have already shown, but was never a nuisance. She brought to headquarters an aroma of English spring, a clean fragrance that refreshed the heat-jaded Commissioner and her brother, but which had no perceptible ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... figure were filling out, her cheeks and lips were regaining their lovely natural colour, as Amelius had seen in his dream. But her eyes, in repose, still resumed their vacantly patient look; and her manner, with a perceptible increase of composure and confidence, had not lost its quaint childish charm. Her growth from girl to woman was a growth of fine gradations, guided by the unerring deliberation ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... roof level of the northern room was the top roof, it may be stated that there is no trace of an opening in the walls above that level, except on the western side. There was a narrow opening in the western corner, but so well filled that it is hardly perceptible. Doubtless it formed a niche or ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... deportment over a crushed spirit and ruined hopes is beyond the physical strength of most men;—but there have been men so strong. Melmotte very nearly accomplished it. It was only to the eyes of such a one as Herr Croll that the failure was perceptible. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... from persons all over the house. The congressman arose and went up to Belton and congratulated him upon his triumph over oratory, and lamented his defeat by prejudice. This action caused a perceptible ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... situated in her nose, just because she happened to pass by a perfumery store; but what a nose her ladyship's nose must be, since it is endowed with more wonderful faculties than her eyes, which possess such miraculous powers as to enable her to see things in France perceptible by no other mortal optics! But to proceed with our dismal story. Her ladyship's olfactory nerves, as we have already mentioned, having made her aware of the proximity of a perfumer's shop, she was induced to go into it by the desire of procuring something which ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... having a very perceptible effect upon the snow, even when the black rocks began to peep up through the surface, and great patches of moss could be seen completely bare. The great bugbear of sledge travelling is stony ground, or a hidden rock beneath a thin layer of snow that cuts through and sweeps the ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... various titles—Sir Jee admitted that—but a title was a title, and therefore all titles were practically equal. The Duke of Norfolk was one titled individual, and Sir Jee was another. The fine difference between them might be perceptible to the titled, and might properly be recognised by the titled when the titled were among themselves, but for the untitled such a difference ought not to exist ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... and concertos thus became the fashion at Appledore, and classical music was in good demand. Its refining and quieting influence on the little community was quite perceptible. It produced a change like the transition from flamboyant Gothic architecture to the pure Grecian style. At first only a few came to hear it: then the parlor was filled. The piazza became crowded, and finally gentlemen were obliged to find places ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... windward by having the amiable and timid Charles E. Dudley succeed him in the United States Senate. Dudley had the weakness of many cultured, charming men, who are without personal ambition or executive force. He was incapable of taking part in debate, or of exerting any perceptible influence upon legislation in the committee-room. Nevertheless, he was sincere in his friendships; and the opinion obtained that if Van Buren had desired for any reason to return to the Senate, Dudley would have gracefully retired in ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... was struck,' wrote Lord Elgin in one of his despatches, 'by the thoroughly European appearance of the place; the foreign settlement, with its goodly array of foreign vessels, occupying the foreground of the picture; the junks and native town lying up the river, and dimly perceptible among the shadows of the background; spacious houses, always well, and often sumptuously, furnished; Europeans, ladies and gentlemen, strolling along the quays; English policemen habited as the London police; and a climate ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... resent his tone of mastery. In spite of the many faults and errors that she discerned in him, it always seemed to her that a warmer and finer nature lay below the outside trappings of roughness and coldness than was generally perceptible. And when this better nature came to the front, it brought with it a remembrance of the tie of kinship, and Janetta's heart softened to him ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... this gallery was scarcely perceptible, and its sections very unequal. Sometimes we passed a series of arches succeeding each other like the majestic arcades of a gothic cathedral. Here the architects of the middle ages might have found studies ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... hanging in the middle of the water-closet on a tape from her corset, fastened to the lamphook. Her body, already motionless after an unprolonged agony, was slowly swinging in the air, and describing scarcely perceptible turns to the right and left around its vertical axis. Her face was bluishly-purple, and the tip of the tongue was thrust out between clenched and bared teeth. The lamp which had been taken off was also here, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... alone in his apartments. He had just put down a volume of some favourite classic author, and he was resting his hand firmly clenched upon the book. Ever since Harley's return to England, there had been a perceptible change in the expression of his countenance, even in the very bearing and attitudes of his elastic youthful figure. But this change had been more marked since that last interview with Helen which has been recorded. There was a compressed, resolute firmness in the lips, a decided ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his comrades, snuffing the air, in which the scent from the palace kitchen was now very perceptible. "We would not turn back, though we were certain that the king of the Laestrygons, as big as a mountain, would sit at the head of the table, and huge Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclops, ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... the 'Jerusalem that is above'? How many moments do you remember of consecration and service, of devotion to your God and your fellows? Oh! what a miserable, low-lying stretch of God- forgetting monotony our lives look when we are looking back at them in the mass. One film of mist is scarcely perceptible, but when you get a mile of it you can tell what it is—oppressive darkness. One drop of muddy water does not show its pollution, but when you have a pitcherful of it you can see how thick it is. And so a day or an hour looked back upon ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... measure for the activities of the mind. These reflections winged by in a scarcely perceptible interval of it. They have taken me some time to write out here, but they crowded past while the big Oriental was speaking—in ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... of granite being thrown him, fully seven inches in diameter, and not less than fourteen pounds' weight, he took it in one hand, when, extending his arms in a line, he rolled it backwards and forwards from wrist to wrist, across his shoulders, by some scarcely perceptible exercise of muscular power. This done, grasping it in both hands, he threw it up to the height of twenty feet or more, and watching as it came down till it was close to his head, he bent forward and ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... his heart, and found a little warmth about it, but no perceptible pulse. I ordered them to take off his sheet and put on blankets, but not to touch him till I came back with a learned physician. The wife embraced me, all trembling, and promised obedience. I got a fiacre and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... at by taxi-drivers, who naturally took us for two simple Oriental visitors, and just before that impassable barrier the arm of a London policeman was lowered and the stream moved on a faint breath of perfume became perceptible to me. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... of that stormy period. The rights of conscience were maintained, in defiance of the rack and the stake. They were stubbornly asserted in regard to the smallest matters. Lines of separation, so fine as hardly to be perceptible, were defended to the last. The Catholic was not more irreconcilably opposed to the Protestant, than the Lutheran to the Quaker, or the Puritan to the Baptist. Men who differed merely about the meaning of a single passage of Scripture thought each other unfit to sit at the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... not very pretty; she was slightly awry, Kala said; but this was not perceptible except to her female friends. Kala allowed that she was clever. It never occurred to her that her talents might make her dangerous. She came like fresh air into a close, confined puppet show; and fresh air is always pleasant. After a time the ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... find the enemy. Surely if they did not oppose the passage they would blow up the bridge. Tiny patrols—beetles on a green baize carpet—scoured the plain, and before we reached the crease—scarcely perceptible at a mile's distance, in which the Little Tugela flows—word was brought that no Dutchmen were anywhere to be seen. Captain Gough, it appeared, with one man had ridden over the bridge in safety; more than that, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... justice to state that her gratitude for the King's liberality was well-nigh exaggerated, while no change was perceptible in her manners and bearing. She had, naturally, a grand, dignified air, which was in strange contrast to the grotesque buffoonery of her poet-husband. Now she is exactly in her proper place, representing to perfection the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... about 200 miles to the point at which the bottom is now covered by 1700 fathoms of sea-water. Then would come the central plain, more than a thousand miles wide, the inequalities of the surface of which would be hardly perceptible, though the depth of water upon it now varies from 10,000 to 15,000 feet; and there are places in which Mont Blanc might be sunk without showing its peak above water. Beyond this, the ascent on the American side commences, and gradually ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... from the margin of which several pigeons rose up, clattering their wings. They are fond of the neighbourhood of water, and are sure to be there some time during the day. The path went upwards, but the ascent was scarcely perceptible through hazel bushes, which became farther apart and thinner as the elevation increased, and the soil was less rich. Some hawthorn bushes succeeded, and from among these he stepped out into the open park. Nothing ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... arm of his valet presently, wearing that look of extra neatness which invalids have, who have just been shaved and combed, and made ready by their attendants to receive company. He was voluble: though there was a perceptible change in his voice: he talked chiefly of matters which had occurred forty years ago, and especially of Clive's own father, when he was a boy, in a manner which interested the young man and Ethel. "He threw me down in a chaise—sad chap—always ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... one particular ticket or party. Was it any the less the unalienable right of these men to enjoy their liberty to vote as they saw fit, or as they deemed for the best interests of the country? Certainly not. Neither is it just that women should be denied the right to vote because it would make no perceptible difference to a ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... in poetry the story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole. For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... flush spreading over her face. She was unprepared for the question. No one had ever asked it directly of her since they had come to Manitou. Whatever speculation there had been, she had never been obliged to tell any one of what race she was. She spoke English with no perceptible accent, as she spoke Spanish, Italian, French, Hungarian and Greek; and there was nothing in her speech marking her as different from the ordinary Western woman. Certainly she would have been considered pure English among the polyglot ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... become dry and hard, sometimes carbolic or acetic acid is used effectively with the chlorine. The application of any alkali or acid to the clean polished surface of a check will, of course, destroy the finish and leave a perceptible stain, but the work of covering up these traces is quite as simple as removing the ink in the ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... vulgar licentiousness, all his superficial good nature, all his essential selfishness and cynicism. Clarendon himself would have been surprised had he known how much of that contempt he had unconsciously revealed, by an occasional phrase, or a half-perceptible stroke of sarcasm. The effect of the letter was plain enough, and it conveyed a covert defiance from the fallen Minister, both to his faithless master and to his triumphant foes. "Withdraw your charges, and I shall free you of my presence, conscious ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Neither would I lie to him and affirm that there really is such a person; let him delight in the portrait, he will soon desire to find the original. From desire to belief the transition is easy; it is a matter of a little skilful description, which under more perceptible features will give to this imaginary object an air of greater reality. I would go so far as to give her a name; I would say, smiling. Let us call your future mistress Sophy; Sophy is a name of good omen; if it is not the name of the lady of your choice at least she will be worthy of ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... have but one generation in a year, others have two or more, while some require more than one year for the complete development and transformation. Some species deposit their eggs in the bark or wood of trees soon after they are felled or before any perceptible change from the normal living tissue has taken place; other species are attracted only to dead bark and dead wood of trees which have been felled or girdled for several months; others are attracted to dry and seasoned wood; while ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... anything else so forlorn and depressing as it is now, all dusky and dim, even the very lights having passed into shadows, and the shadows into utter blackness; so that it needs a sunshiny day, under the bright Italian heavens, to make the designs perceptible at all. As we sat in the chapel there were clouds flitting across the sky; when the clouds came the pictures vanished; when the sunshine broke forth the figures sadly glimmered into something like visibility,—the Almighty moving in chaos,—the noble ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... didn't want to miss. You can know, how popular and attractive and altogether charming she was when I tell you that she was like her mother at her age; and all New York knows how hard it was even for Jimmy Blair—and there have been very few Jimmy Blairs, you know—to make any perceptible progress amid the choking masses of his ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... his God. In despair they consented. A procession was formed and the priests said Masses and prayers. The result was dramatic. Almost immediately a sudden refreshing rain deluged the ground; the crops were saved and the medicine-men humiliated. Still, no perceptible religious progress was made. Though children came to the residence to be instructed by the black-robes, they were attracted more by the 'beads, raisins, and prunes' which they received as inducements to come back than by the lessons in Christian truth. ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... out the word larvae, a faint sense of the ridiculous seemed to take hold of the Scarabee, and for the first and only time during my acquaintance with him a slight attempt at a smile showed itself on his features. It was barely perceptible and gone almost as soon as seen, yet I am pleased to put it on record that on one occasion at least in his ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... colonies completed, for connecting these disjoined members, and forming one consolidated whole, capable of moving, and acting in concert. This gradual change, unobserved in its commencement, had now become too perceptible to be longer overlooked; and, henceforward, the efforts of the colonies, were in a great measure combined, and directed to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... phase of movement lasting only that excessively short space of time, or, if we please, a succession of such phases by using a succession of sparks. Thus, a rifle bullet is readily photographed while in flight with scarcely perceptible distortion. A wheel revolving many hundred times a second can thus be photographed, and appears to be stationary. Dr. Schillings has applied this method to the photography of wild animals by night in the forests ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... and less danger of open water, which was the only thing now to be feared. The hope of reaching the shore was now strong within me. That shore, I could perceive, must be some distance below Quebec; but how far I could not tell. I could see the dark outline of the land, but Quebec was now no longer perceptible through the ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... patent fact with regard to the structure of this solar mantle possessed of a glory so indescribable. It is perfectly plain that it is not composed of any continuous solid material. It has a granular character which is sometimes perceptible when viewed through a powerful telescope, but which can be seen more frequently and studied more satisfactorily on a photographic plate. These granules have an obvious resemblance to clouds; and clouds, indeed, we may call them. There is, however, a very ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... prayer—about to announce his readiness to summon the enemy of mankind and conclude the awful compact—when suddenly there passed before his eyes the image of the guardian angel whom he had seen in his vision, dim and transparent as the thinnest vapor, yet still perceptible and with an expression of countenance profoundly mournful. The apparition vanished in a moment; but its evanescent presence was fraught with salvation. Tearing himself wildly and abruptly from Nisida's embrace, Wagner exclaimed in a tone indicative of the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... elsewhere, and it is just life in the open air which is most beneficial to invalids. It is this natural warmth which tells on the temperature of the nights. The sudden change at sunset which is the terror of the Riviera is far less perceptible at Capri; indeed the average night temperature is but two degrees lower than that of the day. The air too is singularly pure and invigorating, for the village and its hotels stand some four or five hundred feet above the sea, and there are some fairly level and accessible walks along ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... several of our popular airs, which we, without doubt, have taken from the Spanish. In the dancing, I was much disappointed. The women stood upright, with their hands down by their sides, their eyes fixed upon the ground before them, and slided about without any perceptible means of motion; for their feet were invisible, the hem of their dresses forming a perfect circle about them, reaching to the ground. They looked as grave as though they were going through some religious ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... scarcely perceptible at first, but little by little they increased their pace, till they were fairly flying over the ground. Not one whit did the girls in the sleigh object; the faster the better for them. The sleighs behind did their best to keep up, but no such horses were in the ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... the tall tobacco-jar that supported his library, he refilled his pouch with cool deliberation, stretched himself out upon the deck-lounge, and smoked pipe after pipe, till the portion of the drug contained in each accumulated to a perceptible dose. Then the great Dream Compeller took pity upon him, deadening thought, feeling, consciousness itself, till the pipe fell from ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... brushing sound, along the low stone wall of the garden, was barely perceptible to a listening ear. The wall was topped by railings, and the gate had sheets of iron fastened to it. In a twinkling, the ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... with a gladness that was only too perceptible. Every gentleman emitted a sigh of relief, and half started, as if to take the delinquent by ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... although with other escorts, was entirely puzzled. She could see nothing whatever to account for the warning which she had received, and which she had passed on, as was her duty, to the Baron de Grost. She failed, also, to understand the faint but perceptible enlightenment to which Peter himself had admittedly attained after that first evening. Take that important conversation, for instance, between the French military attach, and the English general. Without a doubt it was of interest, and especially ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Raleigh's success as a courtier was unclouded from 1582 to 1586, and these years are the most peaceful and uneventful in the record of his career. He took a confidential place by the Queen's side, but so unobtrusively that in these earliest years, at least, his presence leaves no perceptible mark on the political history of the country. Great in so many fields, eminent as a soldier, as a navigator, as a poet, as a courtier, there was a limit even to Raleigh's versatility, and he was not a statesman. It was political ambition ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... 'Thanase got well, and began to have a perceptible down on his cheek and upper lip, to ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... could he see behind the scenes, are without foundation! the tremendous Hotham Negotiation, all ablaze at that Charlottenburg Dinner, is sunk low enough into the smoking state, threatening to go out altogether. Smoke there may still be, perceptible vestiges of smoke; which indeed, for a long time, fitfully continued: but, at the time while Nosti, quaking in every joint of him, writes these terrors, Hotham perceives that his errand is vain; that ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... caused a stout tarpaulin to be lashed over the engine-room hatch, thus preventing any more water from passing down into the hold there in any perceptible quantity; still, the carrying away of the bulwarks and chain-plates had strained the ship very much on the port side, and when the carpenter sounded the well at eight bells the ship was found to be leaking fast, having already a depth of ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... of the daily attendance will show a very perceptible increase of receipts at the gates in consequence of the effort made about this time to call the attractions of the exposition to the attention of the people. Unhappily the exploitation work thus commenced was practically one year behind time. Undoubtedly the paid attendance at the exposition could ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... air and under cover, so that no odor was perceptible in the room. Ventilating pipes conveyed the steam from cooking food out of doors. Vegetables and fruits appeared to acquire a richer flavor when thus cooked. The seasoning was done by exact weight and measure, and there was no stirring or tasting. A glass tube, ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... no word in answer, but she made a slight, barely perceptible movement towards the man whose ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... aimless scattering crystals, which had come fluttering about as if uncertain about reaching earth at all, had given place to a dense, swift, driving storm. Without much wind perceptible yet, the snowfall came with a steady straight drift which spoke of an impelling force somewhere, might it be only the weight of the cloud reservoirs from which it came. It came in a way that could no longer be ignored. The crystals struck Diana's face and hands with the force ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... double intrigue was by no means embarrassing, did not neglect the affairs of her dear Albina: she had found time before breakfast, as she met Miss Hunter getting out of her carriage, to make herself sure that her notes of explanation had been understood; and she now, by a multitude of scarcely perceptible inuendoes, and seemingly suppressed looks of pity, contrived to carry on the representation she had made to her son of this damsel's helpless and lovelorn state. Indeed, the young lady appeared as much in love as could have been ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... races, their views, aims, habits and manners, their religious creeds and forms of worship,—gaining experience how various yet how alike men are, how low-minded, how bad, how opposed, yet how confident in their opinions; all this exerts a perceptible influence upon the mind, which it is impossible to mistake, be it good or be it bad, and is ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... investigated the subject of nebular distribution by the simple and effectual method of graphic delineation or "charting," and succeeded in showing that while a much greater uniformity of scattering prevails in the southern than in the northern heavens, a condensation is nevertheless perceptible about the constellations Pisces and Cetus, roughly corresponding to the "nebular region" in Virgo by its vicinity (within 20 deg. or 30 deg.) to the opposite pole of the Milky Way. He concluded "that the nebulous system is distinct from the sidereal, though ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... horses were soon contentedly munching their oats, and yet their stamping feet and switching tails indicated that even for the brute creation there is ever some alloy. Graham, however, thought that fortune had at last given him one perfect day. There was no perceptible cloud. The present was so eminently satisfactory that it banished the past, or, if remembered, it served as a foil. The future promised a chance for happiness that seemed immeasurable, although the horizon of his brief existence was so near; for he felt that with her as ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... they went, Abellino marching between two of them. Frequent were the looks of suspicion which he cast around him; but no ill design was perceptible in the banditti. They guided him onwards, till they reached a canal, loosened a gondola, placed themselves in it, and rowed till they had gained the most remote quarter of Venice. They landed, threaded several by-streets, and at length knocked at the door of a house of inviting ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... British Channel, where the multitude of vessels, and the flags of all nations, presented an enlivening picture, and we finally cleared it on the 5th of March. Favored by a brisk north wind, we soon reached Madeira and came in sight of Teneriffe, the peak being just perceptible on the skirt of the horizon. Easterly breezes soon brought us to the island of Fogo, which, having passed on the 35th day of our voyage, we received the usual marine baptism, and participated in all the ceremonies observed on crossing the equator. We soon reached the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... vertical and horizontal lines, was curved in every line, with the exception of the gable,—pillars, architrave, entablature, frieze, and cornice, together with the basement—all arched upwards, though so slightly as not to be perceptible, and these curved lines gave to it a peculiar grace which cannot be ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... in the natural world, such is fame in the intellectual; both requiring an atmosphere in order to become perceptible. Hence the fame of Michael Angelo is, to some minds, a nonentity; even as the sun itself would ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... labors was very humble. But Nicholas Rubinstein, who himself taught for nine hours daily, soon came to appreciate the conscientious work of his subordinate, clearly perceptible in the excellently trained classes who came up to him for their monthly competition. And this satisfaction was soon substantially expressed. Upon the formal opening of the new building of the Conservatoire ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... stove-pipe. We now tried the crucial test of passing the etheric current through the sciatic nerve of a frog just killed. Previous to trying, we tested its sensibility by the current from a single Bunsen cell. We put in resistance up to 500,000 ohms, and the twitching was still perceptible. We tried the induced current from our induction coil having one cell on primary,, the spark jumping about one-fiftieth of an inch, the terminal of the secondary connected to the frog and it straightened out with violence. We arranged frog's legs to pass etheric force ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... a hot and sulphurous vapour still passed over them when the wind blew it in their direction. Continuing down the hillside, I heard a crackling as of stones being split by heat, and presently saw little tongues of flame shooting up from the crevices in the soil almost at my feet, but scarcely perceptible in the brilliant sunshine. From these and other vents, however, came intermittent puffs, or continuous fillets of smoke, and the air was almost overpoweringly hot and sulphurous. To wander by night among these jets of fire must be very stimulating to the imagination, for then the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... me competent to direct them. A good fire, warm blankets, hot water in bottles, were all at my disposal. I showed the women myself how to ply the work of revival. They persevered, and I persevered; and still there she lay, in her perfect beauty of form, without a sign of life perceptible; there she lay, to all outward ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... masterly contract—for Mr. Wintermuth—and its acceptance by Mr. Schroeder only showed that his experience with American business was very limited or that the waters had sapped his vitality to a degree more than was perceptible. It allowed the Guardian to do almost everything it pleased, restricted it not at all, never protested any action however unexpected, waived every possible right and privilege, paid a liberal commission and a share of the profits besides—in short, it ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... eccentricity of the World's orbit, gave it just enough libration to expose only sixty-three per cent to the rays, leaving the remaining thirty-seven per cent in twilight or darkness. Or suppose the orbit were so nearly circular that there were no perceptible libration at all; one side would burn eternally, and the other side would freeze, since there would be no seasonal winds blowing first east, then west, bringing the warmth of the Blue ...
— The Asses of Balaam • Gordon Randall Garrett
... time to time to look at Henri, and appeared to follow the old woman regretfully, seeming to be at once her mistress and her slave; she could break her with blows, but could not dismiss her. All that was perceptible. The two friends reached the gate. Two men in livery let down the step of a tasteful coupe emblazoned with armorial bearings. The girl with the golden eyes was the first to enter it, took her seat at ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... and we made a circuit of the ship, passing from astern right forward, without the hull showing any damage; and though Mr Brymer touched her just about opposite to where the principal body of smoke arose, there was no perceptible heat to be felt. Then as we pressed on under the bowsprit, I looked up at the bob-stay and the rigging about that spritsail where I had climbed; and we began to go back on the other side, to find the ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... robust habit continued to manifest itself during a greater part of the season, but as maturity approached, the variation was less and less marked, until at last the others had caught up, and there was no perceptible difference." No change in time of maturity or ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... with this dwelling I have provided for thee?" inquired the Jinnee, glancing around the stately hall with perceptible complacency. ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... poet's mind and productions by the Byronian spirit, to which we alluded a few pages back, may be traced, in very perceptible degree, in the next poem which he gave to the public, "The Fountain of Bakhtchisarai," a work in which is reflected, as vividly as it is in the storied waters of the fount from which it takes its name, all the wealth, the profuse and abounding ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... halves of the Graeco-Roman world, were felt to some extent in both divisions of the Empire and not merely in the one in which they were principally fought out; and in the condemnation of heresy, each half of the Church assisted the other. Though already marked lines of cleavage are clearly perceptible, and in the West the dominating personality of Augustine forwarded the development of the characteristic theology of the West, setting aside the Greek influences exerted through Hilary, Ambrose, Rufinus, and Jerome, and adding much that was never appreciated ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... consolation to know that no Pope, or Nero, or Bonaparte, however great their power, can ever think such a scheme sufficiently within the bounds of possibility for them to dream of attempting it; otherwise the will would not be wanting. The evil which you anticipate is already perceptible in its effects. Well would it be if men were as moderate in their desire of wealth, as those who enter the ranks of literature, and lay claim to distinction there, are in their desire of knowledge! A slender capital suffices to begin with, upon the strength of which they claim credit, ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... farther, some of these specific differences may entirely disappear, the organs or parts which should exhibit them being not yet developed. And when we come to the primitive germs, so minute as to be visible only through the microscope, no outward distinction, perhaps, is any longer perceptible, and the radical difference of their internal organization is indicated only by the fact, to be verified by subsequent observation, that the two are invariably developed into perfectly distinct animals, belonging ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... is scarcely perceptible, his pulse is very weak, his appetite entirely gone," replied Basilio in a low voice with a sad smile. "He sweats profusely in the ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... rich assemblage of examples, of the "influence of perceptible objects in reviving former thoughts and former feelings," is collected in Dr. Brown's Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... my clothes," he said, looking at Alexander with a scarcely perceptible smile. "We are nearly the same height, and I am almost as thin ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... thoroughly into the subject, but to give you a rough idea of my will-o'-the-wisp theory—can you not imagine a sort of shadow, or echo of ourselves, lingering about the scenes we have frequented on this earth, which under certain very rare conditions—the state of the atmosphere among others—may be perceptible to those still 'clothed upon' with this present body? To attempt a simile, I might suggest the perfume that lingers when the flowers are thrown away, the smoke that gradually dissolves after the lamp is extinguished! This is very, very loosely ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... never be able, through the number of suffrages at its disposal, to alarm the jealous susceptibility of the whites; the latter, in fact, will be continually recruited by European immigration, and the day will come when the few negroes of the United States will be scarcely perceptible in the ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... only 80 feet long, reaching to the end of the present stalls. Eastward it terminated in an apse. Its width can be judged from traces of the original roof, still perceptible in the west wall of the present choir. In accordance with a frequent arrangement, the ritual choir extended westward of the crossing, and included the two eastern bays of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Carlisle - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. King Eley
... metrical grounds, it should be placed after, rather than before, King Oedipus. Even the English reader, taking the plays as they are grouped in this volume, may be aware of a gradual change of manner, not unlike what is perceptible in passing from Richard II to Macbeth, and from Macbeth to The Winter's Tale or Cymbeline. For although the supposed date of the Antigone was long subsequent to the poet's first tragic victory, the forty years over which the seven plays are ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... work. Though the works of God are not mute but eloquent witnesses, and present to our vision the will of God, a still greater comfort is vouchsafed when God links to the works the Word, which is not manifest to the eye but perceptible to the ear and intelligible to the heart through the promptings of the Holy Spirit. So far God had given proof by his work that he was appeased, that the God of wrath had turned into a God of mercy, who turns back the waters and dries up the earth. Such comfort he now amplifies by his Word ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... manners, or her figure, that she has been made to wait so long for the callboy. The curtain rises. A fair-haired girl of medium height, light of frame, with a face in whose sad beauty is blended the least perceptible trace of womanly resolution. She has borne the heaviest sorrow; for when she followed her father to the grave she buried the last object of her love. The long, inexcusable silence of Greenleaf had been explained ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... injured his hand, and I had finished my work and was mounting the grubby wire ladder, when a fireman passed me with averted face. I hardly glanced at him, and certainly did not pause the least fraction of a second; but to the half-glance succeeded a shock. The nerves, I suppose, took a perceptible instant of time to convey the recognition to the brain; but, despite the grime on his face and the change in his appearance, I could not be mistaken. It ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... decided pause. Dropping the check and coloring deeply, Cecil moves back a step or two. She betrays a little indignation in her glance,—a very little, but quite perceptible. Stafford ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... moon was shining down as it only does shine between the tropics, the sky clear and cloudless, the mild breeze, just enough to fill our sails, pushing us gently through the water, the sea as glassy as a mountain-lake, and motionless, save the long, slight swell, scarcely perceptible to those who for long weeks have been tossed by the tempestuous waves of the stormy Atlantic. The sails of a distant ship were seen, far away to the north, making the lovely scene less solitary; the only sounds heard were the rippling at the bows, the low sough of the zephyr through ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the slightest perceptible hauteur in her tone, and the slightest perceptible drawing in from her previous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... about the same proportion to the rest of human nature that we in this hall bear to the rest of America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Polynesia. Reason is one of the very feeblest of nature's forces, if you take it at only one spot and moment. It is only in the very long run that its effects become perceptible. Reason assumes to settle things by weighing them against each other without prejudice, partiality or excitement; but what affairs in the concrete are settled by is, and always will be, just prejudices, partialities, cupidities and excitements. Appealing ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... perceptible movement of expectation, a lighting up of faces as he arose, and a shadow of anxiety swept over Multnomah's impassive features. For this man's eloquence was wonderful, and his soft magnetic tones could sway the passions of his hearers to his will with a power that seemed more than ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... went with the rhythm of faultless mechanism. There was no murmur, no perceptible vibration at the heart of the machine. You could not put your finger on it and say that it was Gertrude. Yet you knew it. Time itself and the awful punctuality of things were in Gertrude's hand. You would have known it even if, every ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... is slight use a comma if it is more perceptible use a semicolon if it is very sharp ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... little variation from the strict Madonna fashion. The eyes are large, and blue. The lips rather full. A snood or fillet of blue ribbon confined her luxuriant hair. In form she was rather above the usual height of women, and slender as became her age; though with a perceptible tendency towards greater fullness with ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... executants to indicate the character of the new movement with an appropriate modification of tempo—i.e., to take the notes which immediately succeed the Adagio for a link, and so unobtrusively to connect them with the following that a change in the movement is hardly perceptible, and moreover so to manage the ritardando, that the crescendo, which comes after it, will introduce the master's quick tempo, in such wise that the molto vivace now appears as the rhythmical consequence of the increase of tone during the crescendo. But the modifications here ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... steps, then the door softly closed. But the fact scarcely made a perceptible difference in the sound ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... purity, the manners of the people, are the most difficult obstacles for a rival nation to overcome. Prosperity, which is founded upon that basis, is of all others the most secure. There are sometimes customs and habits that favour industry, the operation of which is not perceptible to those who wish to imitate and rival ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... either tropical or English heat. It is intensely hot in the sun, but always cool in the shade. I never heard of an instance of sun-stroke from exposure to the mid-day sun, for there always was a light air—often scarcely perceptible until you were well out in the open,—to temper the fierce vertical rays. It sometimes happened that I found myself obliged, either for business or pleasure, to take a long ride in the middle of a summer's day, and my invariable reflection ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... totally unlike those of other birds. So quickly do they dart backwards and forwards, that the eye can hardly follow them. Even when poising themselves before a flower, with such inconceivable rapidity do their wings move, that even then their bright colours are scarcely perceptible; and anon they shoot off to sip the nectar from another cup. Unlike the systematic way in which bees proceed, they seem to delight in darting, now in one direction, now in the other; now for a moment they perch on a spray, probing, as they sit, the flowers ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... first door in the long dark passage in which the eye loses itself when looking from the middle of the vaulted gateway. This ill-omened room is lighted by a funnel, barred by a formidable grating, and hardly perceptible on going into the Conciergerie yard, for it has been pierced in the narrow space between the office window close to the railing of the gateway, and the place where the office clerk sits—a den like a cupboard contrived by the architect at the end ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... sounded emphasized as though she were striving to convey a double meaning, and the second in which husband and wife looked at each other was to the puzzled witness a painful eternity. With a strong perceptible effort, Travers turned away. ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... rise in wages; but the province was at no time self-supporting in this respect. A large number of scutors or labourers from Dalmatia cross the frontier in the spring, and hire themselves out during the summer months. The decrease in the number of these was, I am told, very perceptible during the Italian war, in consequence of the demand ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... a blue serpent half uncoiled. At last they reached a clump of three willows. Two had their roots in the stream; the third was set a little backward. Their trunks, rotten and crumbling with age, were crowned with the bright foliage of youth. The shadow they cast was so slight as scarcely to be perceptible upon the sunlit bank. Yet here the water, which, both above and below, was so unruffled, showed a transient quiver, a rippling of its surface, as though it were surprised to find even this light ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... Professor, "the glacier des Bossons, like all the other glaciers, seems to remain immovable, though in reality it flows— ever flows—downward; but its motion is so slow, that it is not perceptible to the naked eye. Similarly, the hour-hand of a watch is to appearance motionless. Do you want proof? Mark it just now; look again in quarter of an hour, and you see that it has moved. You are convinced. It is ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... noted above; and on the latter alternative it cannot be shown that meditation gives rise to eagerness with regard to the latter kind of knowledge. Moreover, as meditation presupposes plurality comprising an object of meditation, a meditating subject and so on, it really cannot in any perceptible way be helpful towards the origination of the comprehension of the sense of texts, the object of which is the oneness of a Brahman free from all plurality: he, therefore, who maintains that Nescience comes to an end through the mere comprehension of the meaning of texts really implies that the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... there was no perceptible difference in their positions; then gradually the Mego Pups pulled away and took the ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... the supper, and the boxes of cigars and cigarettes, an atmosphere of solemnity was distinctly perceptible. It was as if each one of these officers, hardened to human suffering by a lifetime of discipline and active service, to say nothing of the years of horror through which they had just passed, could not but feel that in the last ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... clearly marked as on the night it was first enacted. The long range of cone-shaped mountains, darkly silhouetted against the silvery sky, and seemingly hushed in gaping expectancy; the shining, scaly surface of some far-off tarn or river, perceptible only at intervals, owing to the thick clusters of gently nodding pines; the white-washed walls of cottages, glistening amid the dark green denseness of the thickly leaved box trees, and the light, feathery foliage of the golden laburnum; the undulating meadows, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... fury it is truly demoniac. With his bristles rigid, the snarling lips drawn back, disclosing the formidable fangs, the body crouching for his spring, and the lithe tail puffed up and swollen, and lashing restlessly from side to side, each muscle tense and strung, and an undulating movement perceptible like the motions of a huge snake, a crouching tiger at bay is a sight that strikes a certain chill to the heart of the onlooker. When he bounds forward, with a roar that reverberates among the mazy labyrinths of the interminable jungle, he tests the steadiest nerve ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis |
