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More "Impregnable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be inane in her patter and have little more than conventional grace and charm, I have been waited on by girls who added real mental celerity, wit and a power of skilful mimicry to that elusive and seductive quality that accounts for the impregnable position of their class. At one dinner impersonations in both the comic and the tragic vein were given by a girl of unmistakable genius. Frequently a plain, elderly geisha will display unsuspected mimetic ability. Alas, behind the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... only poked two servants, Charlotte and Mary. Others had not been to my taste. With one I tried it on and failed, and when randy now could not help thinking of the couple in the house. I tried it on with Harriet, but she so snubbed me, that I set her down as an impregnable virgin. Then I turned my eyes to Brown, though it seemed absurd to think of such a fat middle-aged woman; but I one day chanced to see that she had a very fat pair of calves, and I knew she must have a big arse; and as fat legs ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... direction, formed in battle array, and charged over open fields and rising ground toward the two hundred and fifty great guns which had been dragged for weeks through the swamps in the hope of just such an opportunity. The attempt of Lee to carry this impregnable position lost the Confederates as many brave men as all the other six days of unremitting warfare. McClellan held his own till night; Lee withdrew to the neighboring thickets, surprised at the resolute strength of an opponent who had avoided battle at ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... king, Keeps death his court: and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp! Allowing him a breath, a little scene To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit— As if this flesh, which walls about our life, Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus, Comes at the last, and, with a little pin, Bores through his castle wall, and—farewell king! Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood With solemn reverence; throw away respect, Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty, For you have ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... 30th of May Beauregard evacuated Corinth and drew back to Tupelo; Halleck did not follow; and so 35,000 Confederates were now set free to strengthen Vicksburg. Thus defended and supported Vicksburg was obviously impregnable to any attack by the combined forces of Farragut and Williams. On the 28th of June, Van Dorn arrived and took command ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... kind offer. I confess, moreover, that my mind is too restless, and my heart too deeply grieved, to enjoy the peace and quiet of country life. I must remain in the noise and turmoil of the world, and see what will become of poor Prussia. I intend going to Kolberg; the fortress is strong and impregnable; it will be an insurmountable bulwark against the enemy, and I have several intimate friends at the fortress. I will stay with them till I ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... of London, York, Winchester, and other principal towns. Having lost all his strong holds, he consulted his magicians as to how he was to secure himself from this terrible foe. They advised him to build an impregnable tower, and pointed out the situation where it was to be erected. But so unfortunately did their advice succeed, that all the work that his engineers did in the building one day, the earth swallowed, so that no vestige was to be found on the next. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... particular champion. Thus the general effect necessarily was as of men each securely intrenched in his own fastness, and, though they might make sallies for a little engagement in the open, each could retreat to a position of impregnable security, which could be assaulted only by long ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... was said about his school hurt him more than what was said about his church. In regard to his church he was impregnable. Not even the Bishop could touch him,—or even annoy him much. But this "penny-a-liner," as the Doctor indignantly called him, had attacked him in his tenderest point. After declaring that he did ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... stability of the republic; here, while political conventions representing millions of people meet and produce radical platforms, nobody is apprehensive of revolution or trouble. The constitution is a bulwark against sudden change; its wisdom is believed to be guarded by impregnable security against caprice ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... be setting in, and the infant cause of it here setting up a cry, Susan escaped under pretext of putting Humfrey to bed in the next room, and carried off both the little ones. The conversation then fell upon the voyage, and the captain described the impregnable aspect of the castle of Dumbarton, which was held for Queen Mary by her faithful partisan, Lord Flemyng. On this, Cuthbert Langston asked whether he had heard any tidings of the imprisoned Queen, and he answered that it was reported at Leith that ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... transported up the precipitous kopje to a height of no less than two hundred feet, which a careful examination of the rocks on the hill proves must mostly have been quarried from granite about twelve miles distant. And all this in spite of the fact that Nature alone had made the hill already impregnable, it being inaccessible on three sides and very difficult of ascent on the fourth. It is one of Rhodesia's mysteries, and one also of its fascinations; those mysteries and fascinations which so far have effectually baffled all efforts to find the clue and read the closed book. Who was it came for ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... a Work-place.—We have passed laws now, forbidding "home industries" because so many "sweated trades" find their last and often impregnable fortress in the crowded rooms of the tenement living-places. This may be necessary and may be well to do, but the fact remains that something inhered in the old domestic training of children and youth in useful work ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... Christ, their church state cannot; but upon the sand. Hence then it follows that only true believers are built on Christ, and so they are the only persons that Christ wishes to have built up into holy temples; because the churches that Christ builds shall be built upon himself, that they may stand impregnable against all opposition: and therefore they should only be composed of such as are united to him by faith, and have chosen him for their only rock and foundation, and not of such ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... the supreme aim of a court of justice, and to its faithful ministers the defence of innocence is even more imperative than the conviction of guilt. The law is a Gibraltar, fortified and armed by the consummate wisdom of successive civilizations, as an impregnable refuge for innocence; and here, within its protecting bulwarks, as in the house of a friend, you are called on to plead your defence. You have heard the charges of the prosecution; listened to the testimony of the witnesses; and having taken your cause ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... The only impregnable citadel of virtue is religion; for there is no bulwark of mere morality which some temptation may not overtop, or undermine and destroy.—SIR ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... are so violent! You think the power of the Church is a decaying one, and that our Lord has ceased to supply its ministers with the Spirit of Grace and the powers of healing? But this is where you are mistaken! The Church—the Roman Church—remains as it always was and always will be; impregnable!—the source of inspiration, the seat of miracle, the only clue and road to everlasting life! And as for its power—" here he closed his hand and dropped it on the table with a silent force which was strangely expressive, "its power is immeasurable! It reaches out in every direction—it grasps—it ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... schemes which many do not scruple to impute to him. Whether credited or not by Zenobia, I cannot tell. But were they, I believe she would but smile at the poor lack-brain who entertains them. Intrenched as she is in the impregnable fortress of her people's heart, she might well despise the intrigues of a bolder and worthier spirit than Antiochus. For him she can spare ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... American Fur Company's Factory, a short distance below the mouth of the River St Peters. Fort Snelling is about a mile from the factory, and is situated on a steep promontory, in a commanding position; it is built of stone, and may be considered as impregnable to any attempt which the Indians might make, provided that it has a sufficient garrison. Behind it is a splendid prairie, running ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... on the east bank of the Scheldt, about fifteen miles from Dutch territorial waters, at a hairpin-turn in the river. The defences of the city were modern, extensive, and generally believed, even by military experts, to be little short of impregnable. In fact, Antwerp was almost universally considered one of the three or four strongest fortified positions in Europe. In order to capture the city it would be necessary for an enemy to break through four distinct lines of defence, any one of which, it was believed, was strong enough to oppose successfully ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... succeed in picking the patent lock. Many tried, and all failed, until Hobbs succeeded, after sixteen days' manipulation of it with various elaborate instruments. But the difficulty with which the lock was picked showed that, for all ordinary purposes, it might be pronounced impregnable. ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... vault-like door, leading to the subterranean steel chambers where Herzog eventually counted on storing some hundreds of thousands of tons of liquid oxygen—the reserve-chambers, impregnable to lightning, fire, frost or storm, to man's attacks or nature's—the chambers blasted from the living rock, deep as the Falls themselves, vacuum-lined, wondrous achievement of the highest engineering skill ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... crime, to leave his master's service, and to commit with him a robbery on their private account before he left. The house fixed on was the one above alluded to in Mark Lane. The premises had before been surveyed, and deemed impregnable; that is to say, was considered too well guarded to be robbed without detection. They, however, got possession of the plate in the following manner:—The boy was a favourite with the cook of the house, and she would have no other to sweep her kitchen-chimney; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... energy of breeding fever merely, yet to him it appeared that of refreshment, of renewed and abounding health. He was conscious, too, of a will outside himself, acting upon his will—a will self-secure, impregnable, working with triumphant daring towards a single end. It certainly was unmaimed—in its present manifestation in any case. It told, and with assurance, of completion, of attainment. Yielding himself to it, with something of the recklessness a man yields ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... injured that he was now in Guy's Hospital without hope of recovery. The bank robbers had apparently used a most up-to-date oxyacetylene plant for cutting steel, and from the strong-room in the basement—believed to be impregnable and which could only be opened by a time-clock, and, moreover, could be flooded at will—they had cut out the door as butter could be cut with a hot knife. From the safe they had abstracted negotiable bonds with English, French and Italian notes to the value of over eighty thousand ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... have just learned that you are preparing to despatch a party of your Palikars against our common enemy, Kursheed. I desire to inform you that this my fortress is impregnable, and that I can hold out against him for several years. The only service I require of your courage is that you should reduce Arta, and take alive Ismail Pacho Bey, my former servant, the mortal enemy of my family, and the author of the evils and frightful calamities which have so long oppressed ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... rooted ever to be uprooted; reason will ever remain powerless to harm it. Very seldom, if ever, has a man committed suicide for purely intellectual reasons. It nearly always takes the form of a sudden paroxysm of mind. The will to live is an almost unassailable fortress, and it will remain impregnable everlastingly." ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... that there was no ousting him. Wallenstein followed suit and for eleven weeks the enemies eyed one another from their "lagers," neither willing to risk an attack. In the end Gustav Adolf tried, but even his Finns could not take the impregnable heights the enemy held. At last he went away with colors flying and bands playing, right under the enemy's walls, in the hope of tempting him out. But he ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... than one mile off the shore of Vera Cruz, stands the grim old fortress of San Juan d'Ulloa, a most conspicuous object with its blackened and crumbling walls. It has often been declared to be impregnable, and yet, curious to say, it has never been attacked by a foe without being compelled to surrender. Here Cortez landed on Mexican soil, April 21, 1519. He disembarked on a Friday, a day which the Romish church has set apart for the adoration of the cross; he therefore called ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... date or signature or paper that was to impress her with an individuality, or with the depth of a passion. Isabelle lived for this, went from one adventure to another with the naive confidence of a woman whose husband smiles upon her playing, and whose position is impregnable. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... social barriers could not be impregnable. In a world divided by poverty and opulence into all their intermediate grades, wealth must inevitably be pre-eminent. It represents refined and luxurious environments, and, if mind be there, intellectual ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... a prisoner to break down the walls of his prison or cell. The prisoner would only break his head, and the madman would only get himself put into a "strait-waistcoat." The German rebel is confronted by the impregnable structure of a solid and efficient Government, a Government based on the prestige of the past, and surrounded by the glamour of triumphant victories achieved ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... fine moonlight night and he saw the earthworks stretching for a long distance, thorough and impregnable to anything except a great army. Beyond that was a silver band which was the Potomac, and beyond the river were the clustered roofs which were Washington. But he turned his eyes back to the earthworks, and he tried to fasten firmly in his mind their number and location. This, too, would be important ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... pillars of it go up like the brawny trunks of heroes: the sweet human flesh of men and women is moulded about its bulwarks, strong, impregnable: the faces of little children laugh out from every corner-stone: the terrible spans and arches of it are the joined hands of comrades; and up in the heights and spaces there are inscribed the numberless musings of all the dreamers of the world. It is yet building—building ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy
... Mexico on the east were found to be impregnable. The high ridge of El Penon, manned by nearly the whole of Santa Anna's army, blocked the passage between the lakes, and deep morasses added to the difficulties of approach. To the south, however, on the far side of Lake Chalco, lay a more ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... on the site of Jericho, once the royal capital of Canaan, and historic chiefly from the fact that Joshua led the Israelites up to its walls, reported to be impregnable, but which "fell down at the blast of the trumpet." Great piles have been unearthed here which it is thought formed a part of the original masonry. One excavator believes he has unearthed the ruins of the house of Rahab, ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... she took my arm, and we entered the woods. It was a summer afternoon. The sun had outflanked the thick clouds of leaves that rendered the woods impregnable from overhead, and was now shining in, a little sideways, with that slumberous light belonging to summer afternoons, in which everything, mind and all, seems half ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... interview between the mother and son now takes place, which ends by the imprisonment of the latter; why is not explained at the moment; nor, indeed, till the next scene, when it is quite apparent; for if one sees an impregnable castle, rigidly guarded by supernumeraries, with an impassable river, bristling with chevaux-de-frise it is impossible to get over, and a moat that it would be death to cross, a prison-escape may be surely calculated upon. In the present instance, this formulary ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... was settled in his castle, the freebooter devoted all his energies to rendering it still more impregnable by strengthening the walls and breaking the cliffs into more horrid precipices. In this work he was assisted by his numerous friends and followers; for Musso rapidly became, like ancient Rome, an asylum for the ruffians and outlaws of neighbouring provinces. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... struck out, and that night at midnight Sprague's Brigade of the Fourth Division of the Sixteenth Corps had gained the Gap. The enemy appeared the next morning. This opened the way through Snake Creek Gap, planting us in the rear of Johnston's Army, and forcing him to abandon his impregnable position ...
— The Battle of Atlanta - and Other Campaigns, Addresses, Etc. • Grenville M. Dodge
... up by saying that Lord Byron generally established on an impregnable rock, guarded by unbending principles, those great virtues to which principles are essential; but that, after making these treasures secure—for treasures they are to the man of honor and worth—once having placed them beyond the reach of sensibility and sentiment, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... necessarily have followed from another; that is, that it must have had an antecedent cause. And we could never lay down a rule derived even from the greatest number of observations. Hence we must trust entirely to blind chance, abolishing all reason, and such a surrender establishes scepticism in an impregnable citadel. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the spectacle for a couple of hours or so, the visitor would still find nothing to say, save: "Lord of Heaven, but what a prospect!" Then who is the dweller in, the proprietor of, this manor—a manor to which, as to an impregnable fortress, entrance cannot be gained from the side where we have been standing, but only from the other approach, where a few scattered oaks offer hospitable welcome to the visitor, and then, spreading above him their ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... him. He was thrilled with hope and desire. Perhaps Leonard would at last give him impregnable reasons for believing. With what a passion he would himself renounce all the world ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... seem so absorbed in the one reform. My opinions on other matters I give for what they are worth—for discussion, for acceptance or rejection. My opinions on equitable representation I hold absolutely, subject to criticism of methods but impregnable ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... knew, Are the Alps weaker than Thermopylae? Their passes more alluring to the view Of an invader? is it they, or ye, That to each host the mountain-gate unbar, And leave the march in peace, the passage free? 120 Why, Nature's self detains the Victor's car, And makes your land impregnable, if earth Could be so; but alone she will not war, Yet aids the warrior worthy of his birth In a soil where the mothers bring forth men: Not so with those whose souls are little worth; For them no ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... Shaw, 309 U.S. 495 (1940). Here it was said that the reasons for sovereign immunity "partake somewhat of dignity and decorum, somewhat of practical administration, somewhat of the political desirability of an impregnable legal citadel where government, as distinct from its functionaries may operate undisturbed by the demands of litigants," ibid. 500-501. The Court went on to hold that when the United States took possession ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... asked him? Count Herbert paced up and down the long room, reviewing with clouded brow the events of the past few hours, beginning with the glorious freedom of the open hillside in the early dawn and ending with these impregnable stone walls that now environed him. He was a man slow to anger, but resentment once aroused, burned in his heart with a steady fervour that was unquenchable. He stopped at last in his aimless pacing, raised his clinched fist toward the timbered ceiling, and cursed the Countess ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... battle of Tsushima the territorial object was completely isolated by sea, and the position of Japan in Korea was rendered as impregnable as that of Wellington at Torres Vedras. All that remained was to proceed to the third stage and demonstrate to Russia that the acceptance of the situation that had been set up was more to her advantage than ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... soldiers were stationed on guard. The soldiers, attempting no opposition, withdrew unmolested. A huge tri-color flag, unfurled from the roof, announced with the peal of the tocsin that that important post, almost an impregnable citadel in the hands of determined men, had fallen into the possession of the people. The tidings swept the streets like a flood, giving a new impulse to the universal enthusiasm. A few moments after ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... would be a wise man if he did! He only knows that these are members of the 'notorious gang,' which, according to the newspaper Police- office reports of this last past September, 'have so long infested' the awful solitudes of the Waterloo Road, and out of which almost impregnable fastnesses the Police have at length dragged Two, to the unspeakable admiration ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Kennedy turned off the acetylene and oxygen. The last bolt had been severed. A gentle push of the hand, and he swung the once impregnable door on its delicately poised hinges as easily as if he had merely said, "Open Sesame." The robbers' cave ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... fleet, numerically superior to that of Japan, divided? The answer is found in that fatal word: prestige. Pavloff in Korea had requested the presence of the two doomed ships, to keep the Japanese in awe. Admiral Stark lay under the guns of impregnable Port Arthur, trusting to the prestige, when the illusion vanished. There was still the Vladivostok squadron; it made an effort to induce Togo to leave Port Arthur by making a raid upon the north coast of Japan, but in vain. Beyond ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... is an impregnable place of refuge. Then I have the sea, and a vessel to pass over into England, where I have ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... comes over a vigorous and wilful child. Suddenly it seems to have grown up, to have begun to weigh its powers and consider its possible deficiencies. There was a time when American confidence and self-satisfaction seemed impregnable; at the slightest qualm of doubt America took to violent rhetoric as a drunkard resorts to drink. Now the indictment I have drawn up harshly, bluntly and unflatteringly in Sec. 4 would receive the endorsement of American after American. The falling birth-rate of ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... it—something that was in league with it, and kept telling her that things were not all right with her; that she ought not to be afraid, yet had good reason for being afraid; that she knew of no essential safety. There must be some refuge, some impregnable hiding-place, for the thing was a necessity, and she ought to know of it! There must be a human condition of never being afraid, of knowing nothing to be afraid of! She wondered whether, if she were quite good, went to church twice every Sunday, and read her bible ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... Fort Regent occupy the precipitous hill that overhangs the harbour, and completely command Elizabeth Castle, and indeed the whole bay. They are of great strength, and immense masses of rock have been blown away from the cliff in order to render it impregnable. The barracks are bomb-proof, and scooped in the ramparts; and the parade ground, which in shape exactly resembles a coffin, forms the nucleus of the fortifications. This fortress had been completed since the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... of the capacity and efficiency of the chief of the staff of the great army. Such an operation as that of Yorktown, anywhere else, would be considered as the highest disgrace; here, glorifications of strategy. McClellan's bulletins from Yorktown describe the rebel fortifications as being almost impregnable. Of course impregnable! ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... out and walked on to the bridge. In the brilliant sunshine spires were glistening against the pearly background of the hills; the town had a clean, joyous air. Swithin glanced at the Citadel and thought, 'Looks a strong place! Shouldn't wonder if it were impregnable!' And this for some occult reason gave him pleasure. It occurred to him suddenly to go and look for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... were Arians. And the Goths had a narrow miss of empire. The victories of Theodosius were won by Gothic strength. It was the Goths who scattered the mutineers of Britain, and triumphantly scaled the impregnable walls of Aquileia; [Sidenote: 388.] the Goths who won the hardest battle of the century, and saw the Franks themselves go down before them on the Frigidus. [Sidenote: 394.] The Goths of Alaric plundered Rome itself; the Goths of Gainas entered Constantinople, ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... long since by the Marechal de la Meilleraie, began to batter a breach, but slowly, because the artillerymen felt that they had been directed to attack two impregnable points; and because, with their experience, and above all with the common sense and quick perception of French soldiers, any one of them could at once have indicated the point against which the attack ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... it can't be that you have captivated Joshua!" she exclaimed, in a tone that implied the carrying of a stronghold hitherto thought impregnable. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the only serious disaster that the English suffered throughout the siege. The fire ships of the French had been ill-managed, and failed to do any damage as they were sent down against the fleet. Montcalm, sure of his impregnable position, refused to be drawn from his intrenchments and to offer battle to Wolfe. He knew that delay was everything to him, for the autumn was drawing near. In a few weeks storm and frost would drive the Englishmen ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... provide the necessary military fortifications for the protection of the islands, but I can not too strongly emphasize the need of appropriations for these purposes of such an amount as will within the shortest possible time make those islands practically impregnable. It is useless to develop the industrial conditions of the islands and establish there bases of supply for our naval and merchant fleets unless we insure, as far as human ingenuity can, their ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... an old election campaigner. He was a tall, lean man, with bright penetrating eyes, and a delightful suspicion of an Irish brogue, a man with hands horny from the plough and a brain that belongs only to the rulers of men. He represented a political party that had its stronghold in Glenoro and its impregnable fortress in the Oa; so he took his place upon the platform ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... suggestion of Sir Morgan Walladmor however, who had taken no part in the examination, but apparently took the liveliest interest in the whole of what passed, the prisoner was freed from his irons—as unnecessary in a prison of such impregnable strength, and unjust before the full establishment of his guilt. This act of considerate attention to his personal ease together with a pile of books[2] sent by the worthy baronet, restored Bertram to some degree of spirits: and such were the luxurious accommodations granted him in all ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... is, and it may be hoped will remain indefinitely, among the positions of which it has been said that they are neutralized by political circumstances. Curacao possesses a fine harbor, which may be made impregnable, and it lies unavoidably near the route of any vessel bound to the Isthmus and passing eastward of Jamaica. Such conditions constitute undeniable military importance; but Holland is a small state, unlikely to join again in a general war. There is, indeed, a floating ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... examination. Had God permitted the king to exclude the Filipinas from his monarchy, and leave them exposed to the power of whomsoever should seize them first, the Malucans would have so strengthened the condition of their affairs that it would have been impregnable. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... miles. The only approaches were by causeways; and these Santa Anna had taken prodigious pains to guard. The national road to Vera Cruz—which Scott must have taken had he marched on the north side of the lakes—was commanded by a fort mounting fifty-one guns on an impregnable hill called El Penon. Should he turn the southern side of the lakes, a field of lava, deemed almost impassable for troops, interposed a primary obstacle; and fortified positions at San Antonio, San Angel, and Churubusco, with an intrenched camp at Contreras, were likewise to be surmounted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... ladder, climbed out on to the roof with his big stick. He looked about him. The examination was satisfactory. The trapdoor appeared to be the only means of access to the roof, and between this roof and that of the next building there was a broad gulf. The position was practically impregnable. Only one thing could undo him, and that was, if the enemy should mount to the next roof and shoot from there. And even then he would have cover in the shape of the chimney. It was a pity that the trap opened downward, for he had no means of securing it and was obliged to allow it to ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the Giant god of love fight for ye? Will his fierce war-like bow kill a Cock-sparrow? Bring out the Lady, she can quel this mutiny: And with her powerfull looks strike awe into them: She can destroy, and build again the City, Your Goddesses have mighty gifts: shew 'em her fair brests, The impregnable Bulworks of proud Love, and let 'em Begin their battery there: she will laugh at 'em; They are not above a hundred thousand, Sir. A mist, a mist, that when her Eyes break out, Her powerfull radiant eyes, and shake their flashes, Will ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... matters were referred to a Bulgarian, he smiled, and said: "We shall obtain the protection of England or France; that will be enough. Bulgaria is impregnable against enemies. Let any nation try and take Bulgaria and her mountains, see what it would cost in human lives. But these wars, what is the use of them: does anyone ever gain anything ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... extremity stands Fort Popham, named after the first English explorer who visited the coast. It was erected some years ago, but has never been completed, and, as proven, the government saved money by neglecting it. Imposing and impregnable as it might have been then, it would now offer but a feeble resistance to the onslaught of modern naval warfare. Numerous pyramids of cannon balls are scattered about within the enclosure, and many old-fashioned guns have been rusting away in peace for the past ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... himself to a refuge more impregnable to Bernard than even Mr. Froggatt's bedroom, namely the office, which suited his sociable nature, and where he was always welcome. He found employment there, too, in cutting out extracts from newspapers, labelling library books, and packing parcels, and sometimes ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... knowledge that he could not break down his enemy's guard. Surprise, chagrin, amusement, or something like it, seemed blended in his look. He could not make out how he was caught and checked in every effort, meeting, it seemed, a barrier of iron impregnable in rest. His quick brain grasped the lesson in an instant. If his skill were not the greater, the victory would not be his, for his endurance was the less. He was younger, and his frame was not so closely knit; pleasure had taken its tithe from him; perhaps a good cause goes ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... policy impregnated Russia with a strong anti-British feeling, and it was said that her activity in running up earthworks and apparently impregnable fortifications was in anticipation of Disraeli declaring war and ordering the fleet to bombard the Crimean ports; hence, too, in addition to the strong fortifications, torpedo mines were laid for miles along the seaboard, and every possible means and opportunity were taken to make it widely ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... himself against the ancient door. But here he stopped. The mighty bars upon the other side were proof even against such muscles as his. It needed but a moment's effort to convince him of the futility of endeavoring to force that impregnable barrier. There was but one other way, and that led back through the long tunnels to the bowlder a mile beyond the city's walls, and then back across the open as he had come to the ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... our treatment of this topic, to be able to adduce such high, classical authority concerning the sacred and inviolable character of all private correspondence. In our humble view, not only is the seal of a letter a lock more impregnable to the hand of honor than the strongest bank safe which the expert Mr. Hobbs might vainly have tried to open; but even when that seal has already been rightfully broken and the contents of the letter exposed, those contents are to the eye of delicacy ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... to be the ruler of life, not a slave, To meet life as a powerful conqueror, No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms, To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving my interior soul impregnable, And nothing exterior shall ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... latter. I had a real respect for the character of many of the advocates of each party, but that did not give cogency to their arguments; and I thought, on the contrary, that the Apostolical form of doctrine was essential and imperative, and its grounds of evidence impregnable. Owing to this supreme confidence, it came to pass at that time, that there was a double aspect in my bearing towards others, which it is necessary for me to enlarge upon. My behaviour had a mixture in it both of fierceness and of sport; and on this account, I dare say, it gave offence to many; ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... tour of inspection through the Eski Lines of trenches held by the 6th and 7th Manchesters of the 42nd Division. These Eski Lines were first held about the 7th or 8th May and have since been worked up, mainly by the energy of de Lisle, into fortifications, humanly speaking, impregnable. General Douglas, Commander of the Division, came round with me. He reminds me greatly of his brother, the late Chief of the Imperial General Staff; excellent at detail; a conscientious, very hard worker. When I had seen my Manchester friends ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... ruins from the road is by upwards of a hundred rough hardwood steps, and the castle must have been a well-nigh impregnable stronghold in former times, protected as it was on three sides by the water of the loch and by a moat on the fourth, the position of the drawbridge ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... and at the foot of the mountains that border Wambe's territory. Also I heard a very ill report of that worthy himself, who lived in a kraal upon the side of the mountain, which was so strongly fortified as to be practically impregnable. It was said that he was the most cruel chief in this part of Africa, and that he had murdered in cold blood an entire party of English gentlemen, who, some seven years before, had gone into his country to hunt elephants. They took an old friend of ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... power during most of the war period and in 1815 their position was seemingly impregnable. During the years covered by the ministry of Lord Liverpool (1812-1827), however, their hold was gradually relaxed. They sought to secure for themselves the support of the masses and talked much of the aristocratic exclusiveness of the Whigs, yet they made ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... chieftains moved forward to the night's fray. Bayard was to attack on the main road in front, but not until Kilpatrick had commenced operations on their right flank by a detour through a neglected and narrow wood-path. As the Heights were considered well nigh impregnable, it was necessary to resort to some stratagem, for which ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... The shortest among them was, of course, taller than he. But to Pete any woman was "little one," no matter what her stature, as any woman was "pure as the driven snow" until she proved the contrary. This impregnable simplicity explained much of the disaster of ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... dominions in the world, in bringing men from darkness to light, while themselves are divided and disordered? Peace is, to Christians, as great rivers are to some cities, which, besides other benefits and commodities, are natural fortifications, by reason whereof those places are made impregnable; but when, by the subtilty of an adversary or the folly of the citizens, these waters come to be divided into little petty rivulets, how soon are they assailed and taken! Thus it fares with churches; when once the devil, or their own folly divides ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... dust, and I simpered with my countenance lyke a porredge pot on the fire when it first begins to seeth. The sobrietie of the circumstance is, that after he had courted me and all, and giuen me the earnest pennie of impietie, some sixe crownes at the least for an antipast to iniquitie, I fained an impregnable excuse to be gone, and neuer came at him after. Yet left I not here, but committed a little more scutcherie. A companie of coystrell clarkes (who were in band with sathan, and not of anie souldiers collar nor his hatband) pincht a number of good mindes to Godward of theyr prouant. They would not ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... call me, and I didn't make him call twice. The ravine, as the light became greater, showed itself almost impregnable against an equal force of skirmishers. Just where an angle in the western edge presented a flank of wall toward the north, Willis and his gang had cut away the earth into a shelf some three feet beneath the top. Ten sand-bags filled with earth surmounted the ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... naval warfare, come to be an important element in the harbor defences of the Lakes. We have the testimony of Captain Ericsson himself, whose Monitor vessels have already done so much for the country, as to this availability. He writes,—"An impregnable war-vessel, twenty-five feet wide and two hundred feet long, with a shot-proof turret, carrying a gun of fifteen inch calibre, with a ball of four hundred and fifty pounds, and capable of destroying any hostile ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... three clever young Californians, I kept about me, as aides-de-camp. We advanced to the pass, and found the enemy encamped on the plain below. We made our dispositions; our artillery was well posted behind breastworks, in almost an impregnable position, a few miles below the pass, where we had already defeated the governor of Senora. We found ourselves in presence of an enemy inferior in number, but well disciplined, and the owners of four field-pieces heavier than ours. They amounted to about 950, 300 of which were cavalry, and ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... bulk of the Confederate forces, Early's division was ahead at Hamilton's Crossing, intrenched in an almost impregnable position. On Wednesday, April 29, the rest of Jackson's corps was moved up from below, where Doubleday's and Morrow's demonstrations had ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... ancient legend that, a long time before, when a certain Males was king of Lydia, one of his wives had a son in the form of a lion, whom they called Leon, and an oracle declared that if this Leon were carried around the walls of the city, it would be rendered impregnable, and should never be taken. They carried Leon, therefore, around, so far as the regular walls extended. When they came to this precipice of rocks, they returned, considering that this part of the city was impregnable without any such ceremony. A spur or eminence from the mountain of Tmolus, which ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... My dear Sir, think of this! Wolfe, as I am convinced, has fallen a sacrifice to his rash blame of you. If I understand any thing in the world, his letter that came on Sunday said this: "Qu'ebec is impregnable; it is flinging away the lives of brave men to attempt it. I am in the situation of Conway at Rochefort; but having blamed him, I must do what I now see he was in the right to see was wrong and yet what he would have done; and as I am commander-, which he was not, I have the melancholy ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... reputation throughout the earth; she desires to be called good as well as great; to be regarded not only as powerful, but also as beneficent. She is creating an army; she is forging cannon, and preparing to build impregnable ships of war. But all these will fail to satisfy her pride, unless she can cleanse herself from that corruption by which her political democracy has debased itself. A politician should be a man worthy of all honor, in that he ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... were staggering. The mere thought of them made his heart leap. The only obstacle, of course, lay in those glaciers, and he began to wonder if they could not be made to open. Why not? No one knew positively that they were impregnable, for no one knew anything certainly about them. Until the contrary had been proven there was at least a possibility that they were less formidable than rumor had ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... chin. "This place is not impregnable by any means," he remarked. "The first thing we must do is to secure the buildings on ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... mariner has ever sailed, so far remote are they. I have made rivers to flow where I would have them, in the places where they were needed; thus did I render fertile the barren soil by watering it with my rivers. I raised up impregnable fortresses, and cut roadways through the solid rock with the pick. I opened a way for the wheels of my chariots in places to which even the feet of wild beasts had never penetrated. And, amidst all these labours, I yet found time ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... with some form of ladder, they would be unable to mount to the deck. The bobstay having been removed, the gangways fortified, all this, with the commanding position the defenders would occupy, rendered the brig a thoroughly strong little fort, almost impregnable so long as the enemy did not think of enlisting fire in their service ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... when the face appeared on his screen, he said: "Hello, Sidney. Look, I have a very interesting case out here that I'd like to talk to you about. Do you happen to have a telepath who's strong enough to take a meshing with an insane mind? If my suspicions are correct, I'll need a man with an impregnable sense of identity, because he's going to get into the weirdest situation I've ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... The carpenter was sent on shore to carry out the Governor's instructions, and he built the house on an island in the Bay of Islands on a site selected by Mr. Symons, who afterwards stated that the island was a very small one, but he believed that the house would be impregnable, and able to withstand the attacks of any force that the country at that time could bring against it.* (* This house was one of the first, if not the very first house, to be built in New Zealand. We do not hear ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... with the surpassing beauty of a distressed damsel, in faded pink silk, and dirty white muslin, whom he held in cruel captivity by way of gaining her affections; and who wept and wrung her hands and flourished a ragged pocket handkerchief from the top of an impregnable tower, of the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... a prohibitionist, was arrested in Arizona recently, charged with selling liquor in violation of the Prohibition law. But Pat had an impregnable defense. His counsel, in ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse potentate unless the townsmen gave their consent thereto.' Now, what would the military engineers of Chatham and Paris and Berlin, who are now at their wits' end, not give for a secret like that! A wall impregnable and insurmountable and not to be sapped or mined from the outside: a wall that could only suffer hurt from the inside! And then that wonderful wall was pierced from within with five magnificently ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... which the Jesuits built on Isle St Joseph was in the nature of a strong fort. Its walls were of stone and cement, fourteen feet high and loopholed. At each corner there was a protecting bastion, and the entire structure was surrounded by a deep moat. It was practically impregnable against Indian attack, for it could not be undermined, set on fire, or taken by assault. A handful of men could hold it ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... history of his times, he had watched the power of Douglas grow and the fame of Douglas spread until it seemed that Douglas's voice was always speaking and Douglas's hand was everywhere. Patiently working out the right and wrong of the fateful question Douglas dealt with so boldly, he came into the impregnable position of such as hated slavery and yet forbore to violate its sanctuary. Suddenly, with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, Douglas himself had opened a path for him. He went back into politics, and took a leading part ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... thou weet who is yon man by thy side?" "Not I," she replied, "who may he be?" Quoth the Patrician, "This is of towns the highwayman! This is he who rideth in the horseman's van! This is Sharrkan, son of King Omar bin al-Nu'uman! This is he that forceth fortalice and penetrateth every impregnable place! The news of him reached King Hardub, thy father, by report of the ancient dame Zat al- Dawahi; and thy sire, our sovereign, hath made sure that thou hast rendered good service to the army of the Greeks by taking captive ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... endowments of the school; and, as we presumed, the regulations for the treatment of the scholars. The oldest boy had never seen its inside. Attempts, dictated by insatiable curiosity, had often been made to open it; but it was deemed impregnable. It was guarded by three immense locks, and each key was in the possession of different persons. The wood appeared to be nearly half a foot thick, and every corner was plaited with iron. All eyes were instinctively ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... fire; the rapid evolutions of his cavalry completed the dismay and disorder; the Syrian crowds fell back on each other; many thousands were stifled or slaughtered in the entrance of the great street; the Mongols entered with the fugitives; and after a short defence the impregnable citadel of Aleppo was surrendered by cowardice or treachery. Among the suppliants and captives, Timur distinguished the doctors of the law, whom he invited to the dangerous honor of a personal conference. The Mongol Prince was a zealous Mussulman; but his Persian schools had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Spaniards, infuriated by their terrible reverse, would be more than likely to seek an early revenge, Jack and Carlos were kept very busy during the ensuing fortnight in so far improving the defences of the estate as to render it practically impregnable. The remains of the wrecked stone bridge were removed, and a timber drawbridge was built in its place; entrenchments were dug commanding the approach to it and to the one or two other spots where it was thought that ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... fight, but perhaps not harder than he had expected. He had known that she would not listen to reason,—that she would not even attempt to understand it. And he had learned before this how impregnable was that will of fanaticism in which she would entrench herself,—how improbable it was that she would capitulate under the force of any argument. But he thought it possible that he might move his father to assert himself. He was well aware that, in the midst of that apparent lethargy, ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... last year was, of course, the successful breach on June 6, 1944, of the German "impregnable" seawall of Europe and the victorious sweep of the Allied forces through France and Belgium and Luxembourg—almost ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... had been well respected in its day, though not of mighty bulwarks or impregnable position. Standing on a knoll, between the ramp of high land and the slope of shore, it would still have been conspicuous to traveller and to voyager but for the tall trees around it. These hid the moat, and the relics of the drawbridge, the groined archway, and cloven tower ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... of the Humber. This tract he resolved entirely to depopulate, influenced by revenge, and by distrust of the inhabitants, and partly with a view of opposing an hideous desert of sixty miles in extent as an impregnable barrier against all attempts of the Scots in favor of his disaffected subjects. The execution of this barbarous project was attended with all the havoc and desolation that it seemed to threaten. One hundred thousand are said to have perished by cold, penury, and disease. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... who had won some successes early in the war, but who had protested his unfitness for a great command, and who was soon to prove it. He led the army after Lee, found him entrenched on the heights back of Fredericksburg, and hurled division after division against an impregnable position, until twelve thousand men lay dead and wounded on the field. Burnside, half-crazed with anguish at his fatal mistake, offered his resignation, which was at ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... Paul. Rome has ever discouraged family worship, and taught men to pray in churches. Why? To increase the power of the Church and the priesthood. A country covered with households in which family worship is kept is like a country covered with fortresses;—it is impregnable. Every house is a citadel, and every family is a little army. Or mark yonder female who kneels before the perforated brazen lattice of yonder confessional-box. She is whispering her sins into the ear ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... by the Babylonian army. The legend which placed the pillar of salt into which Lot's wife was changed at the southern extremity of the Dead Sea was of late origin, probably not earlier than the days when Herod built his fortress of Machaerus on the impregnable cliffs of Moab, and the name of Gebel Usdum, given by the modern Arabs to one of the mountain-summits to the south of the sea proves nothing as to the site of the city of Sodom. Names in the east are readily transferred from one locality to another, and a mountain is not the ...
— Patriarchal Palestine • Archibald Henry Sayce
... chattles, nor his life; Break these decrees, for damage you must pay; These you must reverence, and the rest—you may." Law was design'd to keep a state in peace; To punish robbery, that wrong might cease; To be impregnable: a constant fort, To which the weak and injured might resort: But these perverted minds its force employ, Not to protect mankind, but to annoy; And long as ammunition can be found, Its lightning flashes and its ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... a place where either could be passed by infantry or wagons. The little ferries which had been made in a few eddies of the rivers were destroyed in the first campaign, and the post at the Gauley became nearly impregnable in front, and could only be turned ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Schlegel, 'Nature was in its origin naught else than a beautiful image, a pure emanation, a wonderful creation, a sport of omnipotent love.' And Schiller, whom an impregnable aristocracy of soul shut out from the ranks of humorists, who rode in his coupee, three feet above the level of the common stream of humanity, and never drifted with its tide, yet, with clear-eyed insight into the passions he ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... destruction. While he was well intrenched in a strong position, and therefore safe, the British had the command of the Hudson, and ships-of-war could ascend the river unmolested as far as West Point, which was still held by the Americans and was impregnable. Outside of New York the British did not possess a strong fortress in the country, at least in the interior, except on Lake Champlain,—not one in New England. West Point, therefore, was a great eyesore to the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... started from here," he said, after a long and meditative silence. On the other hill, two hundred yards across a sombre precipice, I saw a line of high blackened stakes, showing here and there ruinously—the remnants of Sherif Ali's impregnable camp. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... morning we were steaming slowly towards what looked like a quite impregnable face of rock, with bare cliffs standing straight out of the water, which, luckily for us, was comparatively smooth. As we coasted to try and find a landing-place the sun was rising behind the island, which reaches ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... insufferable cold, blistering heat, and the hazards of unknown rivers to cross through banks of perilous quicksands; stupendous distances to travel, and all the time an alert, wily, and masterful foe lurking in any one of ten thousand impregnable coverts—this is a hint of the scout's life. These brave and tireless scouts led not to ambush but to the advantage of our men at arms. Estimate the bravery, the sagacity, the perseverance, the power of endurance displayed by these Indian scouts, ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... submerged, —surely a man who could command such violent forces would be lord of the nations, and no human ingenuity could resist his crushing force. The hidden treasures and gems reposing in the body of the earth would all be made manifest to him. No lock nor fortress, though impregnable, would be able to save any one against the will of the necromancer. He would have himself carried through the air from East to West and through all the opposite sides of the universe. But why should I enlarge further upon this? What is there that could not be done by such a craftsman? Almost ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... the combatants. Constantius had declared his intention of deciding the quarrel in the fields of Cibalis, a name that would animate his troops by the remembrance of the victory, which, on the same auspicious ground, had been obtained by the arms of his father Constantine. Yet by the impregnable fortifications with which the emperor encompassed his camp, he appeared to decline, rather than to invite, a general engagement. It was the object of Magnentius to tempt or to compel his adversary to relinquish this advantageous position; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... we made our way was well-nigh impregnable; it seemed to me that for age upon age its undergrowth had run riot, untrimmed, unchecked, until at last it had become a matted growth of interwoven, strangely twisted boughs and tendrils. It was only by turning in first one, then ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... every Tradesman. These Possessions in Fame are dearer than Life to these Characters of Men, or rather are the Life of those Characters. Glory, while the Hero pursues great and noble Enterprizes, is impregnable; and all the Assailants of his Renown do but shew their Pain and Impatience of its Brightness, without throwing the least Shade upon it. If the Foundation of an high Name be Virtue and Service, all that is offered against it is but Rumour, which is too short-liv'd to stand ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... like to impute the lowest motives may say if they will, that Daniel and the later Isaiah found it politic to worship the rising sun, and flatter the Persian conquerors: and that Cyrus and Darius in turn were glad to see Jerusalem rebuilt, as an impregnable frontier fortress between them and Egypt. Be it so; I, who wish to talk of things noble, pure, lovely and of good report, would rather point you once more to the magnificent poetry of the later Isaiah which commences at the 40th chapter of the Book ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... I asked, were they promised in the Treaty of Berlin? Turkey restored to strength, reformed, and, if reformed, made secure for a distant future; Greece contented; Russian influence excluded; and the Balkans fortified as "an impregnable frontier" for Turkey. Very different were the realities. Turkey had been partitioned; Greece had not been satisfied; surrender of Turkish territory to Greece, though it was the one form of surrender which might really have strengthened Turkey, had been opposed ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... Cathbarr's tower was an old ruin at the end of a long and narrow headland—indeed, at high tide most of the headland would be covered, for it was low and yet beyond shot of the cliffs. Except from the water, it was almost impregnable; cannon might have reached it from shore, but two axmen could have held the narrow ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... of the general defenses, vetoed most of his suggestions. The vast sums of money which the Russian central government appropriated for the fortification of Port Arthur, honestly used, would have made the place completely impregnable. It is not too much to say—and this will be borne out by any trained observer and student of the conditions then existing in and around Port Arthur—that sixty per cent. of the money for defense ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... stone, "petros," a loose stone, and one of many, whereas he then said that his church should be founded upon "petra," the living, immovable rock of truth, thus corroborating Saint Augustine, but confuting other supposedly impregnable authority for the superiority and infallibility of the Church, it was ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... St. Gundolph, and were only separated by party-walls from the vaults in which the dead lay buried—were popularly supposed to be filled with hogsheads of sovereigns, bars of bullion built up in stacks like so much firewood, and impregnable iron safes crammed to overflowing with bank bills and railway shares, government securities, family jewels, and a hundred other trifles of that kind, every one of which was worth a ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... yonder hills is a walled city, belonging to Bala Khan, a Pathan who sometimes styles himself as a rajah. He has a body of fierce fighting men; and he lives unmolested for two reasons: looting would not be worth while and his position is isolated and almost impregnable. Now, if I am right, we shall find shelter there, for he was an old friend of my father's and I might call him a friend of mine, since I sell sheep for ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... has often been asked about Moro Castle. Much has been said about its "impregnable" character, but modern military science will not recognize any such theory. A thousand chances are liable to happen, any one of which might give the place into the hands of an invading force. Has it ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... movements! It seemed to her as if strength poured into her in electric streams, from every gentle touch and movement of the sleeping, confiding child. Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Hindu Kush is in the great spurs it thrusts out southwards to flank the glens which feed the Gilgit and Chitral rivers. Tirach Mir towers above Chitral to a height of 25,426 feet. From Tibet to the Dorah pass the northern frontier of India is impregnable. It is pierced by one or two difficult trade routes strewn with the bones of pack animals, but no large army has ever marched across it for the invasion of India. West of the Dorah pass the general level of the Hindu Kush is a good deal lower ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... treason, real or supposed. The present Henry, third of that name, once lived there with his fair queen, and beautified it in every way, specially adorning the chapel, but also strengthening the defences, until men thought the castle impregnable. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... not impregnable, nothing could be. It was the last word in defence system and it had taken something like two years ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... "That's what I expected as a first question. No, I carried very little insurance. You see, I thought the safe, one of those new chrome steel affairs, was about impregnable. I never lost a moment's sleep over it; didn't think it possible for anyone to get into it. For, as you see, it is completely wired by the Hale Electric Protection—that wooden framework about it. No one could touch that when it was ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... Earl of Clare's regiment, which, with Lee and Dorrington's battalions, was stationed with the force in Oberglau in the centre of our position. It seemed to us, and to our generals, that our position was almost impregnable. It lay along a ridge, at the foot of which was a rivulet and deep swampy ground. On the right of the position was the village of Blenheim, held by twenty-seven battalions of good French infantry, twelve squadrons, and twenty-four pieces of cannon. ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... wall so impregnable or so vulgar, but a summer's grass will attempt it. It will try to persuade the yellow brick, to win the purple slate, to reconcile stucco. Outside the authority of the suburbs it has put a luminous touch everywhere. The thatch ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... swamp and forest, battling with Lee's victorious troops. But there was no further disaster. Under the most adverse and dispiriting circumstances the Army of the Potomac fairly held their own until {15} they reached the impregnable position of Malvern Hill. There McClellan turned at bay and repulsed with heavy slaughter the disjointed attacks of the Army of Northern Virginia. He had withdrawn his army intact and had effected a change of base, unknown to the Confederate General ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... turned back again. The Boers, too, have more than once threatened to destroy him, for it is unpleasant to them to have so intelligent a witness in their midst, but they have never dared to try. The place is really impregnable to Basutus and Boers; Zulus might carry it, with their grand steady rush, but it would be at a terrible sacrifice of life. In fact, Dr. Merensky has been forced, by the pressure of circumstances, to teach his men the use of a rifle, as well as the truths of Christianity; ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... on reading, "declares that the Dardanelles are impregnable and that the city is perfectly quiet, but the Sultan and half of his harem have moved ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... Countrey.] He hath no Artificial Forts or Castles, but Nature hath supplied the want of them. For his whole Countrey of Cande Uda, standing upon such high Hills, and those so difficult to pass, is all an Impregnable Fort: and so is more especially Digligy-neur his present Palace. These Places have been already described at large; and therefore I omit speaking any further ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... child you are, Rafael!... Is that what you call a friendly good-bye?... How little you know me, silly! You force matters, you do, I see. Well just understand, I'm impregnable, unless I choose to be otherwise. Why, men have died without being able to kiss so much as the tip of my fingers. It's time you were going, Rafael. We'll still be friends, of course.... But in case we are to see each other again, don't forget ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... yourself." The earl drew back, and his hardy countenance grew a shade paler. The prelate resumed: "You have carried Edward from his camp, and severed him from his troops; you have placed him in the midst of your own followers; you have led him, chafing and resentful all the way, to this impregnable keep; and you now pause, amazed by the grandeur of your captive,—a man who leads to his home a tiger, a spider who has entangled ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... force was the revolution which was taking place in the art of war. The introduction of gunpowder ruined feudalism. The mounted and heavily-armed knight gave way to the meaner footman. Fortresses which had been impregnable against the attacks of the Middle Ages crumbled before the new artillery. Although gunpowder had been in use as early as Crecy, it was not till the accession of the House of Lancaster that it was really brought ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... was, from the excellent state of it's ancient fortresses, the different batteries recently constructed, and the numerous well-disciplined troops by which they were manned, considered as absolutely impregnable. ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... through a perpendicular jungle or crawling over jagged and sunbaked rock, the only way to ascend the hill is from the south-western side, from the upper portion of which still frown the outworks and bastioned walls which once rendered the fortress impregnable. The road from the town of Junnar is in tolerable repair and leads you across a stream, past the ruined mud walls of an old fortified enclosure, and past the camping-ground of the Twelve Wells, until you reach a group of trees overshadowing ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... works and it was kept filled with water. It was dry when we visited and has been so for many years, as a moat would be but as slight obstructure in modern warfare. But it made the city well nigh impregnable in the mediaeval days before gunpowder was invented and when most fighting was of the hand to hand kind. We entered the city through an arched gate and crossed the moat on a bridge which could be drawn up in case of attack. At present the gate is always kept lowered, but it could be drawn ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... been no impregnable steel barrier between them, it is hard to say which would have triumphed in the end, the ponderous weight and fury of Last Bull, or the ripping prongs and swift wrath of the moose. The buffalo charged down the knoll at a thundering gallop; but just before reaching the fence he ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... deficient in data for accurate forecasts. The erroneous military conception which colored much of his thought, the propositions for ex-centric movements in an enemy's rear, by bodies comparatively small, out of supporting distance from the rest of the army, and resting upon no impregnable base, contributed greatly to the faulty anticipations entertained and expressed by him from time to time. When applied to operations directed by the consummate and highly trained genius of Bonaparte, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... beyond our range and then bring the fight back by some other means. Shooting fast I heard Doloria give several quick gasps of excitement as I knocked up the ash dust close to them, and although, their number was not reduced we gained a feeling of greater security to find the fort more impregnable than I had prophesied. ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... battery upon a tour of inspection, during which the latter pointed out what he had done, and was still doing, to strengthen the defences of the place; and the young captain was greatly gratified to see that a few hours' more work would render the place practically impregnable to assault, and that all that they then need fear was a protracted siege, which, however, did not ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... mystery—that such can know A life impregnable to woe! O paradox that God alone In secret proveth to ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... condescend even to parley with a thought derogatory to its object; was lifted above all consciousness of the possibility of any other course. This is a sort of organic integrity of affection, which is to those who receive it a tower of strength, that is impregnable to all assault except that of death itself. It is a rare type of love, the best the world knows; but the men and the women whose hearts are capable of it are often thought not to be of a loving nature. The cheaper and less lasting types of love are ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... explanation of the misrepresentation, and of his strong grounds for assuming his rights, with his persuasion that his wife would readily join the English church—a consideration that he knew would greatly smooth the way for her. Indeed, his own position was impregnable: nobody could blame him for taking his own wife to himself, and he was so sure of her charms, that he troubled himself very little about the impression she might make on his kindred. If they loved her, it was all right; if not, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no mariner has ever sailed, so far remote are they. I have made rivers to flow where I would have them, in the places where they were needed; thus did I render fertile the barren soil by watering it with my rivers. I raised up impregnable fortresses, and cut roadways through the solid rock with the pick. I opened a way for the wheels of my chariots in places to which even the feet of wild beasts had never penetrated. And, amidst all these labours, I yet found time for my pleasures and for the society of my friends." ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... me. He was born before the days of historic doubt. He tells a true story. To allege an authority is with him to prove a fact, and to cite all writers who repeat the original source is to render truth impregnable. Rarely does he show any symptom of the modern malady of incredulity. Scripta littera is reason enough, unless the fair fame of his city chances to be at stake. He was really learned, and I do wrong to seem to diminish his authority. He was ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... partriches; 45 Venting their quintessence as men read Hebrew— Let me but hawlk at him, and like the other, He shall confesse all, and you then may hang him. Shew me a lawyer that turnes sacred law (The equall rendrer of each man his owne, 50 The scourge of rapine and extortion, The sanctuary and impregnable defence Of retir'd learning and besieged vertue) Into a Harpy, that eates all but's owne, Into the damned sinnes it punisheth, 55 Into the synagogue of theeves and atheists; Blood into gold, and justice into lust:— Let me but hawlk at him, as at the rest, ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... election campaigner. He was a tall, lean man, with bright penetrating eyes, and a delightful suspicion of an Irish brogue, a man with hands horny from the plough and a brain that belongs only to the rulers of men. He represented a political party that had its stronghold in Glenoro and its impregnable fortress in the Oa; so he took his place upon the platform amid uproarious ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... comers. Doing his duty as sheriff of the Duchy, Sir John Arundell was killed in attacking them, and they resisted till a pardon was granted them. In those days almost the only danger in such a spot was the risk of famine; apart from that the place was practically impregnable. Yet during the religious rebellion of 1549 it twice yielded to attack, being taken for the King during the absence of its governor, Arundell of Lanherne, and retaken by the Cornish; in both cases we must suspect that the defence was half-hearted ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... that to attempt to storm the heights unsupported by adequate gun-fire was merely to make a useless sacrifice of whole brigades of sorely needed men; one or two officers, indeed, ventured to express their conviction that the heights were impregnable. ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... and to a citizen of a threatened country a disquieting one. Nine high-sided battle-ships of ten-gun type—nine floating forts, each one, unopposed, able to reduce to smoking ruin a city out of sight of its gunners; each one impregnable to the shell fire of any fortification in the world, and to the impact of the heaviest torpedo yet constructed—they came silently along in line-ahead formation, like Indians on a trail. There were no compromises in this fleet. Like the intermediate batteries ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... clearly in their own affairs. They say that faint heart never won fair lady; and it is amazing to me how fair ladies are won, so faint are often men's hearts! Were it not for the kindness of their nature, that seeing the weakness of our courage they will occasionally descend from their impregnable fortresses, and themselves aid us in effecting their own defeat, too often would they escape unconquered if not unscathed, and free of body if ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... Assyria in north Syria and Cappadocia. King Sharduris was unable to protect his frontier or hamper the progress of the advancing army, which penetrated to his capital. Dhuspas was soon captured, but Sharduris took refuge in his rocky citadel which he and his predecessors had laboured to render impregnable. There he was able to defy the might of Assyria, for the fortress could be approached on the western side alone by a narrow path between high walls and towers, so that only a small force could find room to ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the regicide himself, was more formidable to him than all his other foes united. Warring there, we should have led our arms to the capital of Wrong. Defeated, we could not fail (proper precautions taken) of a sure retreat. Stationary, and only supporting the royalists, an impenetrable barrier, an impregnable rampart, would have been formed between the enemy and his naval power. We are probably the only nation who have declined to act against an enemy, when it might have been done in his own country; and who having an armed, a ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... and kept telling her that things were not all right with her; that she ought not to be afraid, yet had good reason for being afraid; that she knew of no essential safety. There must be some refuge, some impregnable hiding-place, for the thing was a necessity, and she ought to know of it! There must be a human condition of never being afraid, of knowing nothing to be afraid of! She wondered whether, if she were quite good, went to church twice every Sunday, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... more imposing of its kind than this great Norman Castle remains in England. Having a base of seventy feet square, and consisting of walls twelve feet thick and one hundred and twenty feet high, it still seems what in fact it was, almost impregnable by any arms but those of the modern world. Its great weakness lay always in the matter of provision, but it was perfectly supplied with water, by means of a well sixty feet under ground, in which stood always ten feet of water. From this well a stone pipe or tunnel, two feet nine ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... Montfort's successor as Earl of Leicester, and in 1267 also Earl of Lancaster, a new earldom, deriving its name from the youngest of the shires.[1] Reduced to the Staffordshire estate of Chartley, the house of Ferrars fell back into the minor baronage. Kenilworth was still unconquered. Its walls were impregnable except to famine, and before his flight to Axholme young Simon had procured provisions adequate for a long resistance. The garrison harried the neighbourhood with such energy that the whole levies of the realm ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... being secure within their own territory, at length compel the recognition of their independence. They certainly presented to the North a most formidable front, a line of defenses which was indeed impregnable to any means of assault which the Government at first possessed. No army could be moved into Tennessee by land alone, because the line of communication with a Northern base could not be held secure, and a defeat far from the Ohio would be the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... appearance of being intended as a strong box rather than a traveling receptacle. It was ribbed by four heavy bands of copper, and the corners and edges were reinforced with the same metal. The lock itself seemed to be impregnable to one without a key. Conniston's name was heavily engraved on a copper tablet just ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... alwayes to be the true port and sure refuge of all afflicted persons. For since that God willeth it, nature permitteth it, and my heauie fortune consenteth to it, I will receiue it with righte good will, knowinge that the graue is none other but a strong rampier and impregnable cartel, wherein we close our selues against the assaults of life, and the furious stormes of fortune. It is farre better (as appeareth manifestly by me) with eyes shut to waite in graue, than no longer to experimente life (the eyes beinge open) liuing with so many troubles vpon earth. But ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... for the idea that the blockhouse would be impregnable with such a garrison at once crossed her mind. "O Pathfinder! what has ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... know how hopeless your quest has been. You have found Miss Guggenslocker, but she is held behind a wall so strong and impregnable that you cannot reach her with the question you came to ask. You have come to that wall, and now you must turn back. I have ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... I got Bob to show me the spot, which I found, on personal inspection, to be fully as impregnable as he had declared it to be; and I also ascertained, as he had done, that it was quite impossible to get round the mountain ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... to her merits, and she had many; the cause of my gallant French friend was perfectly safe in my hands. I never had much vanity in these matters, and even if I had, the impression already made by another had made me impregnable, for the time, to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... crumbling island of Heligoland for some millions of square miles of undeveloped territory hitherto held by Germany. While Heligoland was being protected by massive concrete walls and armed by huge guns to form a practically impregnable bulwark to the North Sea coast of Germany, England was by peaceful methods developing her new African acquisition. Germany could then afford to wait until the favourable opportunity and by force of arms seize and hold the territory that was once hers ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... the frightful truth. Hippolytus can feel, but not for me! Aricia has his heart, his plighted troth. Ye gods, when, deaf to all my sighs and tears, He arm'd his eye with scorn, his brow with threats, I deem'd his heart, impregnable to love, Was fortified 'gainst all my sex alike. And yet another has prevail'd to tame His pride, another has secured his favour. Perhaps he has a heart easily melted; I am the only one he cannot bear! And shall I charge myself with ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... fulfilling these purposes and succeeded in all. The Greeks let him alone, often even aided him; in every city he bribed partisans who spoke in his favor. "No fortress is impregnable," said he, "if only one can introduce within it a mule laden with gold." And by these means he took one after another all the ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... into two parties and, in divergent directions, disappeared from view. After this the trappers were not again disturbed by the Indians. Indeed they feared no molestation. No Indian band would think of attacking a fortress which a thousand warriors had declared impregnable. ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... more easy than for such a one as he to make acquaintance with a young lady in Paradise Row. But now, when he came to look at it, he found that Marion Fay was environed with fortifications and a chevaux-de-frise of difficulties which were apparently impregnable. He could not call at No. 17, and simply ask for Miss Fay. To do so he must be a proficient in that impudence, the lack of which created so many difficulties for him. He thought of finding out the Quaker chapel in the City, and there sitting ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... into the ever-open maw of the Casino, or in the drawing-room games of the bon-ton in Paris or Petersburg. One brave youth, an officer in the Prussian Guards, had, in his infatuation for the Countess, and impregnable, as he thought, against bankruptcy by reason of his great fortune, tried to satisfy her cravings for splendor of entourage and her infatuation for gambling. The result was that one day the crack of a pistol-shot was heard in the Countess' chamber, and the servants rushing ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Quinton Edge sat secure and at his ease. A cold misgiving suddenly struck at Constans's heart. How could he hope to make way alone against a host? How could he think to reach an enemy protected by these impregnable walls? For such a task he would need to wield the thunderbolts of the gods, and he had only his useless pistol and his long bow. He sighed and let his head droop for a moment, then felt ashamed of his weakness and straightened up again. The way was ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... could not crawl into the crack of a rock to escape from his pursuers. But the venomous population of Rattlesnake Ledge had a Gibraltar for their fortress that might have defied the siege-train dragged to the walls of Sebastopol. In its deep embrasures and its impregnable easemates they reared their families, they met in love or wrath, they twined together in family knots, they hissed defiance in hostile clans, they fed, slept, hibernated, and in due time died in peace. Many a foray had the towns-people made, and many a stuffed skin was shown ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Regent occupy the precipitous hill that overhangs the harbour, and completely command Elizabeth Castle, and indeed the whole bay. They are of great strength, and immense masses of rock have been blown away from the cliff in order to render it impregnable. The barracks are bomb-proof, and scooped in the ramparts; and the parade ground, which in shape exactly resembles a coffin, forms the nucleus of the fortifications. This fortress had been completed since the peace, and we found the 12th regiment of the line garrisoning ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... Unfortunately, the people who need them aren't up on them. Try it. Plant yourself, penniless, in the middle of State Street on a busy day, dive into the howling, scrambling, pushing maelstrom that hurls itself against the mountainous and impregnable form of the crossing policeman, and see what you'll get out of it, provided ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... reach the goal. In other words, young ladies, that is termed being a coquette. Men, who are very silly in most things, are particularly so in confounding, under the term of coquetry, a woman's pride, and love of changing her sentiments as she does her dress. I, for instance, am proud; that is to say, impregnable. I treat my admirers harshly, but without any pretention to retain them. Men call me a coquette, because they are vain enough to think I care for them. Other women—Montalais, for instance—have allowed themselves ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... three sides of a parallelogram, the open portion of the court in the centre, facing the cliff. A strong picket served to make a defence against bullets on that side; while the dead walls of solid logs were quite impregnable against any assault known in forest warfare, but that of fire. All the windows opened on the court; while the single outer door was picketed, and otherwise protected by the coverings of plank. I was glad to see by the extent of this rude structure, which was a hundred feet long by fifty in depth, ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... three-class system of voting that makes Prussia, and the Prussian cities as well, impregnable against any assault from the democratically inclined. In addition to this system, the old electoral divisions of forty years ago remain unchanged, and consequently the agricultural east of Prussia, including east and west Prussia, Brandenburg, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... argued, he would certainly have written, if it were only a line of reassurance, for there his isolation was impregnable. Only the fact that he had stayed on in London could account for the need of this second arm of silence, as well as of solitude, to enforce his complete withdrawal ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... him thoughtful; but where there was no tirade, no declamation, no loud emphasis, no vague speculation, a style of writing quite unknown to the islanders and contrary to their genius. When they returned of an evening to their huge and impregnable castles, in perfect security and in good humour, they liked to hear recited stories in prose, some of which are still extant and will never be read without pleasure: the story of Floire and Blanchefleur, for instance, or perhaps, also that of Aucassin, who preferred "his gentle love" ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... intermitted its wrath only to increase its strength; soon the sounding squadrons of the air returned to their attack, and renewed their ravages with redoubled fury; and the stately dome rocked amidst the wheeling clouds. The impregnable clouds tottered on its basis, and threatened to overwhelm those whom it was intended to protect, the vessel was almost rent in pieces, and scarcely secure; where then was a place of safety? Sleep affrighted flew, diversion was ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... without any protection against the day, when the fire will consume these perishable materials. That others, however are building safely and securely, with divinely appointed materials, on the Rock of Ages and the unchanging, impregnable Word of God. That the indwelling Spirit, commonly called the Comforter, is the occupant, strength and life of their temple; and their conscientious observance of the Sabbath, is to them the pledge of Divine favor and the visible sign of their ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... the factor as John Ivrey, a young man of fine presence, Alfred de Courtenay walked beside McElroy up the gentle slope of the river bank, entered the great eastern gate of the post, not without an appreciative glance at its massive strength and at the well-nigh impregnable thickness of the stockade, the well-placed surveillance of the towering bastions, and thus up the way between the cabins to the door of ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... of the staff of the great army. Such an operation as that of Yorktown, anywhere else, would be considered as the highest disgrace; here, glorifications of strategy. McClellan's bulletins from Yorktown describe the rebel fortifications as being almost impregnable. Of course ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... invaders was brief. When sore pressed in a pitched battle on the plateau above St. Peter's Port, the inhabitants would retreat behind the buttresses of Castle Cornet, when, as in the invasion by Charles V. of France, the fortress proving impregnable, the besiegers would collect their ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... before the endless war began and Germany became isolated from the rest of the world. The mines were captured by the World in the year 2020, and were profitably operated for a couple of decades. Meanwhile the German lines were forced many miles to the rear before the impregnable barrier of the Ray had halted the ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... viper like Casorans satisfied me in every way. Evidently the place was not taken; impregnable, ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... sides of which open out in lattice windows through which, if your eye wanders, you see the rounded Swabian hills densely clad in beech and pine. On the summit of one of the nearest of these hills stands the grim fortress of Hohen-Urach, an impregnable stronghold of mediaeval days turned prison in the eighteenth century. The Golden Hall is decorated, as its name portends, with gilded devices on the wall, with stately golden pilasters and formal green-painted trees, whose ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... position which, if attacked in front with musketry alone, might be called impregnable. But would Abercromby so attack it? He had several alternatives. He might attempt the flank and rear of his enemy by way of the low grounds on the right and left of the plateau, a movement which the precautions of Montcalm ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... not to conquer, must not fall like a bomb against another bomb of instantaneous moral explosions, but against the strong walls of an impregnable fortress strongly built up, stone by stone, beginning at that distant day when the foundations were first laid. Persistent work, clarity of ideas, the habit of sifting conflicting motives in the consciousness, even in the minutest ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... patch on the distant hills—Spello, "mountain built with quiet citadel," quiet enough now. There was always a Baglione at Spello with his eyes set on chance comers from Foligno and Rome. Seen from thence, Augusta Perusia hangs like a storm cloud over her cliffs, impregnable but by strategy, as wicked and beautiful as ever her former masters, the Seven Deadly Sins, grandsons of Fortebraccio. The place is like its history, of course, having, in fact, grown up with it: you might say it ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... Silverbridge she had heard much about him, and had wondered how he had gained possession of such a girl as Emily Wharton. And now, as she looked about, her wonder was increased. She knew enough of such people as the Whartons and the Fletchers to be aware that as a class they are more impregnable, more closely guarded by their feelings and prejudices against strangers than any other. None keep their daughters to themselves with greater care, or are less willing to see their rules of life changed or abolished. ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... well in the Dominion field. Among the election occurrences which they regarded as specially providential was the defeat of Tarte in Beauharnois. If he had been elected it might have been necessary for Laurier to do something for him, but now that he had fallen upon the glacis of the impregnable fortress he had elected to assail, who were they to repine over the doings of fate? "The Moor has done his work; the Moor can go!" Moreover, had he not been for long an inveterate Bleu? Had he not actually been the organizer of Bleu victory when ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... should live—good seamen are welcome everywhere. He spoke Italian like a Tuscan, and Spanish like a Castilian; he would have been free, and happy with Mercedes and his father, whereas he was now confined in the Chateau d'If, that impregnable fortress, ignorant of the future destiny of his father and Mercedes; and all this because he had trusted to Villefort's promise. The thought was maddening, and Dantes threw himself furiously down on his straw. The next morning at the same ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Colenso at 5.30 a.m. with the 73rd Field Battery for Ladysmith. We were much interested on the Grobler's Hill road to see the Boer trenches and shelters, which were simply marvellous and made the place impregnable. The trenches were blasted out of solid rocks, some 6 feet, and some 6 to 8 feet thick, of solid rock and boulder; these were all sandbagged, fitted with shelters with burrowed-out holes, and were extended for a front of half ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... have brought them hither from all parts of the world. I was at first induced to join with those who derived them from the Hebrews. It seemed impossible for me to doubt that, by so doing, I should be building on an impregnable foundation." He then proceeds to prove their Asiatic origin by many ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... our Lord has ceased to supply its ministers with the Spirit of Grace and the powers of healing? But this is where you are mistaken! The Church—the Roman Church—remains as it always was and always will be; impregnable!—the source of inspiration, the seat of miracle, the only clue and road to everlasting life! And as for its power—" here he closed his hand and dropped it on the table with a silent force which was strangely expressive, "its power is immeasurable! It reaches ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... wave of hair from the forehead, was repeated in grotesque exaggeration on the wall at her back. The iron will in her lent a certain metallic hardness to her features, and her shadow resembled in outline the head on some ancient coin that had lain buried for centuries. Intrenched behind an impregnable self-esteem, she had never conceded a point, never admitted a failure, never accepted a compromise. "It ain't no wonder that a new comer thinks he can knock you down an' set on you for shootin' a few birds," she ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... clearly defined defensive plan with utilization of one of the most inaccessible sites in the vicinity, producing altogether a combination that would seem to have been impregnable by any of the ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... the other on a dale; a wonderful place and to any purpose convenient. On one side it is quite inaccessible; a road gives right through the town, and as the mountain rises high with a ravine below, the town is impregnable. ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... further ravages, Arcadius had no alternative but to appoint Alaric master-general or duke of Illyricum. This obliged Stilicho to retire. Raised upon the shield, and thus made king by his followers, Alaric led them to the conquest of Italy. Honorius fled for refuge from Milan to the impregnable fortress of Ravenna. Stilicho came to his relief, and defeated the Visigoths at Pollentia (402). But Honorius copied the example of Arcadius, made Alaric a general, and gave him the commission to conquer Illyricum for the Western Empire. After his defeat, he ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... found this hyperborean veteran ensconced in a fort which crested the whole of a rocky promontory. It mounted one hundred guns, large and small, and was impregnable to Indian attack, unaided by artillery. Here the old governor lorded it over sixty Russians, who formed the corps of the trading establishment, besides an indefinite number of Indian hunters of the Kodiak tribe, who were continually coming and going, or lounging and loitering ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... our fort with considerable satisfaction. One side we might consider impregnable; the second, that along the edge of the ravine, was not likely to be attacked, and we had a sufficient force of rifles to defend the other two against a whole horde of savages ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... also those who occupy a strong city mock the besiegers (and say): What trouble these men are now taking for nothing; our wall is secure, we have food for a very long time, and all other resources. These are the things which make a city strong and impregnable; but nothing else than his opinions makes a man's soul impregnable. For what wall is so strong, or what body is so hard, or what possession is so safe, or what honor (rank, character) so free from assault (as a man's opinions)? All (other) things everywhere are perishable, easily ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... persecuting malice raged, yet the gospel shone with resplendent brightness; and, firm as an impregnable rock, withstood the attacks of its boisterous enemies with success. Turtullian, who lived in this age, informs us, that if the christians had collectively withdrawn themselves from the Roman territories, the empire would ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... chief characteristic. But this very fact that it pervades—that it is as conspicuous in the Tentation and in Saint Julien l'Hospitalier as in Madame Bovary and the Education—at once throws up a formidable, I think an impregnable, line of defence against those who would claim him for "Realism" of the other kind—the cult of the ugly, because, being ugly, it is more real than the beautiful. He has no fear of ugliness, but he cultivates the ugly because it is the real, not the real because it is the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Plato and Christ created angles by running vertical lines through the ecclesiastical and hypocritical conventionalities of their day. The new angles and curves thus produced by the bold philosophy of the humble Nazarene have confronted with impregnable firmness during the intervening ages the ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... orange light flared upon the panel, and Seaton gasped as he swung his visiplate upon his defenses, which he had supposed impregnable. His outer screen was already down, although its mighty copper generator was exerting its utmost power. Black areas had already appeared and were spreading rapidly, where there should have been only incandescent radiance; and the inner screen was ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... amazed eyes from the dread spectacle of the roads that he journeyed. Then he was taken by Loker, and found by very sure experience that every point of the prophecy was fulfilled upon him. So he assailed Handwan, king of the Hellespont, who was entrenched behind an impregnable defence of wall in his city Duna, and withstood him not in the field, but with battlements. Its summit defying all approach by a besieger, he ordered that the divers kinds of birds who were wont to nest in ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... position for a city!" Geoffrey said at last. "Standing on this rocky tongue of land jutting out at the entrance to this splendid bay it ought to be impregnable, since it can only be attacked on the side facing that sandy isthmus. What a number of ships are lying up the bay, and what a busy scene it is with the boats passing and repassing! Though they must be two miles away I fancy I can hear the ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... means Of Service, Courtship, Presents, that might win her To be at his devotion: but in vain; Her Maiden Fort, impregnable held out, Until he promis'd Marriage; and before These Witnesses a solemn Contract pass'd To ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... power in America. Here the French colonies reached out their arms to the mother country. Here began that great chain of fortresses, which ran up the valleys of navigable rivers, and connected with the great fortress of Quebec the almost impregnable outpost of Ticonderoga, and the posts of Montreal Island. From these the chain of military occupation extended itself towards the south, through the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi, until they were connected with the flourishing colony ...
— The Lily and the Cross - A Tale of Acadia • James De Mille
... day which said that that nearly impregnable structure, of the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, as they call it, reached to the level of the first floor, were mistaken. The fact is, that it did not exceed an average height of six or seven feet. It was built in such a manner that the combatants ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... night's fray. Bayard was to attack on the main road in front, but not until Kilpatrick had commenced operations on their right flank by a detour through a neglected and narrow wood-path. As the Heights were considered well nigh impregnable, it was necessary to resort to some stratagem, for which ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... Krondrachinko, the commander of the general defenses, vetoed most of his suggestions. The vast sums of money which the Russian central government appropriated for the fortification of Port Arthur, honestly used, would have made the place completely impregnable. It is not too much to say—and this will be borne out by any trained observer and student of the conditions then existing in and around Port Arthur—that sixty per cent. of the money for ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... different points of it, the facility this gave us of attacking him, on the same day, on all his points, from the extremity of the lakes to the neighborhood of Quebec, and the perfect indifference with which this last place, impregnable as it is, might be left in the hands of the enemy to fall of itself; whether, I say, he could see and prepare vigorously for all this, or merely wrapped himself in the cloak of cold defence, I am uninformed. I clearly ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... with one heave till the five-foot spears were pointed out, and then sprang to climb. Nothing but pikes and blazing brands in a dozen ruthless hands could hold him back. The keepers watched him night and day till a stronger cage was made, impregnable with steel above ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Normandy. I make no doubt, that, whenever built, the sea almost washed its base: for it is known to have occupied the whole of what is called the Valley of Arques, running as far as Bouteilles. Its position, in reference to the art of war, must have been almost impregnable. Other hypotheses assign its origin to the ninth or tenth century. Whenever built, its history has been fertile in sieges. In 1144, it was commanded by a Flemish Monk, who preferred the spear to the crosier, but who perished by an arrow in the contest. Of its history, up to the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... position was much stronger when she left him than it was when he opened his office door to her. She now knew, said Pratt, with what a strong and resourceful man she had to deal: she would respect him, and have a better idea of him, now that she was aware of his impregnable position. ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... adjectives and adverbs do not vary in degree?— Absolutely, brave, cloudless, cold, conclusively, continually, entirely, essentially, extreme, faultless, French, fundamental, golden, happy, impregnable, inaudible, incessant, incredible, indispensable, insatiate, inseparable, intangible, intolerable, invariable, long, masterly, round, sharp, square, sufficient, unanimous, unbearable, unbounded, ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... object with him, therefore, in accordance with his reputation, was to devise some plot, by which not only to destroy the inequality of chances between the party assailing and that defending a post now almost impregnable, but to draw the latter entirely out of their defences. Still, it was deemed but courteous, or prudent at least, to see what could be done in the way of negotiation; and their leader, with a white handkerchief attached ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... destiny. We are now, as you know, on the bosom of a vast lake. Water of an unknown depth is beneath us. Overhead is a vaulted dome of great height, probably the hollowed interior of a mountain; on all sides are massive and perpendicular walls of rock, impregnable and insurmountable. ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... city, proud and harsh; but impregnable because it was built upon a high rock. The host of the Visigoths had besieged it for months in vain. Then came a fugitive from the city, at midnight, to the tent of Alaric, the Chief of ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life Were brass impregnable; and humored thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin Bores through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... political boss of the city at that time, apparently entrenched, with an organization that seemed impregnable. I knew him as a big, bullnecked fellow, taciturn to the point of surliness, owing his influence to his ability to "deliver the goods" in the shape of graft of all sorts, the archenemy of Carton, a type of politician who ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... war was not excepted from the quick and thorough transformation that all earthly and spiritual things were undergoing. Gunpowder, long invented, was being applied. Armour, that, since the beginning, had saved both man and horse, had now lost the half of its virtue. The walls of fortresses, impregnable for a thousand years, became as matchwood ramparts. The mounted man-at-arms was found with wonder to be no match for the lightly-armoured but nimble foot-man. The Swiss were seen to hold their own with ease against the knighthood of Austria and Burgundy. ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... confident of victory when he should again take the field, and in the meantime he felt himself quite secure in one or other of his strong places, which had recently undergone extensive repairs and seemed to be impregnable. In this anticipation he was deceived, for he had not reckoned with the new and more potent weapons of attack which were replacing the battering-ram and other mediaeval besieging appliances. Franz retired to his strong castle of ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... everything to the extreme pretensions of naturalists, the question comes up again whole and entire? When by dint of confusions and sophisms such theorists imagine that they have extinguished the intelligence which radiates from nature, that intelligence again confronts them in man, and there, as in an impregnable fortress, sets all attacks at defiance. Mark then where lies the real problem. Whether the eternal God formed the body of the first man directly from the dust of the earth; or whether, in the slow series of ages, He formed the body of the first man of the ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... said on all sides that Nidderdale was doing very well for himself. The absolute money was not perhaps so great as had been at first asked; but then, at that time, Melmotte was not the strong rock, the impregnable tower of commerce, the very navel of the commercial enterprise of the world,—as all men now regarded him. Nidderdale's father, and Nidderdale himself, were, in the present condition of things, content with a very much less stringent bargain than that which they had endeavoured ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... his return, and the face from the portrait beamed out a glad welcome. There are tears in the bachelor's eyes as they meet the blue orbs so fondly fastened upon him, for his thoughts are upon the gentle and confiding embrace that was once his. Woe unto you, Mrs. Kinalden! If there were a single impregnable spot in the good man's bosom, that tear would never have found ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... a city of the ancient inhabitants, populous, wonderful and impregnable, from the character of its position, situated in this valley (of Chimaltenango), on an elevated and cool site. It lies eight leagues in a straight line from New Guatemala. Around this ancient and dismantled town, ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... castle of Hesdin also, sent thither MM. le Duc de Bouillon, le Duc Horace, le Marquis de Villars, and a number of captains, and about eighteen hundred soldiers: and during the siege of Therouenne, these Seigneurs fortified the castle of Hesdin, so that it seemed to be impregnable. The King sent me to the Seigneurs, to help them with my art, if they should come to have ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... attack, for which Grant has been much criticised, on the strongly intrenched rebel lines at Cold Harbor. If he could have dislodged Lee here he could have compelled him to retreat into the immediate fortifications of Richmond. But Lee's position was impregnable: the assault failed. In less than an hour Grant lost 13,000 men killed, wounded, and missing, ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... the vast region of Berar. The Guicowar, which is, being interpreted, the Herdsman, founded that dynasty which still reigns in Guzerat. The houses of Scindia and Holkar waxed great in Malwa. One adventurous captain made his nest on the impregnable rock of Gooti. Another became the lord of the thousand villages which are scattered among the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... has never had to display so much skill and so many ruses de guerre; he has never had to use more tremendous efforts to reduce and storm an impregnable citadel, as the confessor who wants to reduce and storm the citadel of self-respect and honesty which God Himself has built around the soul and the heart of ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... faces, set and lean, every man watching the forest. But after the lightning, the night, heavy with clouds, swept down again, and it seemed to Henry that it was darker than ever. He longed for the dawn. With the daylight disclosing the enemy, and helping their own aim, their log fortress would be impregnable. Elsewhere the battle seemed to be dying. The shots came in irregular clusters, and the war whoop was heard only at intervals. Directly in front of them the silence was absolute and Henry's rapid mind divined the reason for all these things. Girty and Timmendiquas were ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Asia, which originally belonged to the Persian monarch, places were to be found—such as the little state of Temnos, or Aegae, and others, capable of administering their affairs, unsubjected to the king of Persia. "But," he added, "if you want a strong impregnable position, I cannot conceive what better you can find than Sestos. Why, it would need a combined naval and military force to invest that port." By these and such like arguments he rescued them from the ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... curves held sound and firm. She beat against it with fierce little fists; she leaped against it with all her trifling weight. It did not yield an inch. Was there iron in all that delicacy? Or was that old wood impregnable in ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the acts of such obscure and almost forgotten men as these. For, through them, Napoleon was now teaching the world that a fortified place might be made stronger than any had hitherto suspected. That he should turn round and teach, on the other hand, that a city usually considered impregnable could be taken without great loss of life, was only characteristic of his splendid genius, which, like a towering tree, grew and grew until ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... character, good habits, and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of the ill luck that fools are dreaming of. There is no luck, for all practical purposes, to him who is not striving, and whose senses are not all eagerly attent. What are called accidental discoveries are ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... two renowned capitals, which are almost wholly of water, make them the admiration and terror of all mankind—that of Europe dominating the old world, and that of America the new. For of the former it would appear that her riches are infinite, her position impregnable, her government most wise, the abundance of her products inexhaustible; in a word, she is herself, as a whole, and in all her parts, entirely worthy of that fame for greatness and majesty which has penetrated to all the regions of the world: the justice of the praise bestowed on Venice is, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... attack upon that proud Jericho (more impregnable because of the obstinacy of its inhabitants, than by the wall of its inaccessible mountains) by ordering that it be assaulted at the same time by several parts by different soldiers of so holy a militia with the bugles of the divine word. One began the conquest ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... constantly giving way. The elements incessantly lay siege to these fortresses and take advantage of every flaw or unguarded point, so that what stands has been seven times, yea, seventy times seven times tested, and hence gives the impression of impregnable strength. The angles and curves, the terraces and foundations, seem to be the work of some master engineer, with only here and ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... her choice of standing silent, of pushing passed Peter, or of speaking. If she had done the first, or the second, her position was absolutely impregnable. But a woman's instinct is to seek defence or attack in words rather than actions. So she said: "You had no right, and you were very rude." She did ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... saving the hay—even Liddy had left the house for the purpose of lending a hand—Bathsheba resolved to hive the bees herself, if possible. She had dressed the hive with herbs and honey, fetched a ladder, brush, and crook, made herself impregnable with armour of leather gloves, straw hat, and large gauze veil—once green but now faded to snuff colour—and ascended a dozen rungs of the ladder. At once she heard, not ten yards off, a voice that was beginning to have a strange ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... deaths of Captain Bacon and Lieutenant Henry and the N.C.O.'s and men killed in action at Colenso on Friday last, desires to place on record his high appreciation of the admirable spirit displayed by all ranks in unflinching pressing forward under a very heavy fire to the attack of a practically impregnable position. ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... rebellion, he could starve his people into submission, or lay waste the land in time of foreign invasion. I have seen in an impregnable position the traces of an ancient fort, evidently erected to defend the pass to the main water-course from ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Fields, so lately rich with waving grain, were blasted into subsidences and cavities, bisected by crumbled trenches before which the wreckage of barbed-wire entanglements—a fortnight since forming barriers so impregnable as to resemble from a distance walls of red rust—lay snarled and tied into a million knots by ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... more dear to the Mormon rulers. They do not care for all the sentiment or law against this one fruit of the tree, if the tree itself is left to stand. The tree—the prolific cause of so many and so great evils in Utah, the greatest curse of the territory, the strength of Mormonism, and its impregnable wall of defence against Christianity and civilization, is that arbitrary, despotic, and absolute hierarchy ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Credit, which must be supported by every Tradesman. These Possessions in Fame are dearer than Life to these Characters of Men, or rather are the Life of those Characters. Glory, while the Hero pursues great and noble Enterprizes, is impregnable; and all the Assailants of his Renown do but shew their Pain and Impatience of its Brightness, without throwing the least Shade upon it. If the Foundation of an high Name be Virtue and Service, all that is offered against it is but ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... for that, and so do you; besides, it is far more perilous to venture out into the open, as you are about to do, than to remain here, where, united together as we are in a phalanx of stout, able-bodied men, in an almost impregnable position, we could resist any formidable attack in force. No, no, my boy; you may tell that to the marines. But do inform me, Wilton, what is your real motive in wishing to go yourself? I consent certainly to your going, as you press the ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... Not a whisper was heard or a light seen. After long weeks of grumbling under the steady control of Regular officers, the Volunteers are learning what discipline means. The Cemetery was passed, the gorge of Bell's Spruit, the series of impregnable defences built by the Liverpools and Devons along the Helpmakaar road. At the end of those low hills the Devons were found drawn up in support, or to cover retreat. General Hunter then took command of the whole movement, and the march went on. Three-quarters of a mile ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... fortified place, and was regarded as impregnable by the Spaniards; and it was from this port that they directed their attacks upon Chili from the south, just as they did on the north from Callao. To reach it he therefore had to sail south from the Guayaquil along the coast of Peru ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... were to be the treatment of George, of George who was certainly in some respects a favourite, what hope could Sir Lionel have for himself? But it was not so much his brother's words which led him to fear that his brother's money-bags were impregnable to him as his brother's voice and his brother's eye. That eye was never off him, and Sir Lionel did begin to wish ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... faith, but also of political fears. It was wrought both as the organ of the national interest and as the bulwark of certain individual and local rights. The Federalists sought to surround private property, freedom of contract, and personal liberty with an impregnable legal fortress; and they were forced by their opponents to amend the original draft of the Constitution in order to include a still more stringent bill of individual and state rights. Now I am far from pretending that these ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... which will, in the course of a few years, extend in an unbroken line along the whole coast from end to end. The building of these massive sea-walls is a work of great labour and expense, for what seems to be an impregnable embankment, perhaps 30 feet high and 90 feet broad, solid and strong enough to resist the most violent breakers, will be undermined and fall to pieces in a few hours, if not made in the proper way. A digue, no matter how thick, which rests ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... to induce a blood-clot? 'Beautiful.' Evil-smelling recesses walled up with painted wood. Birthplaces of mice. Impregnable hot-beds of vermin. And who ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... frontier, once the kingdom of Mercia, was now called the March of Wales, where the Norman knights began to effect settlements, by the right of the strongest, setting up their impregnable castles, round which the utmost efforts of the Welsh were lost. Martin de Tours was one of the first, and his glittering host of mail-clad men so overawed the inhabitants of Whitchurch that they readily submitted, and he quietly established himself ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... better than either of these or all combined. The study of arithmetic may prove a highly profitable means, never the end to be gained. This statement will be boldly challenged by the traditional teacher, but it is so strongly intrenched in logic and sound pedagogy that it is impregnable. The goal might, possibly, be reached without the aid of arithmetic, but, if a knowledge of this subject will facilitate the process, then, of course, it becomes of value and should be used. Let us assume, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... comment on that. He had brought up the disagreeable topic—one which would have been heart-breaking to any other mother he had ever known—in the hope of arousing some real feeling in her. And he had failed. Her self-control was impregnable. There was about her an atmosphere that was, in a sense, terrifying, something out of ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... authority is a fine thing; but to have the on-looking world consent to it is a finer. The tower episode solidified my power, and made it impregnable. If any were perchance disposed to be jealous and critical before that, they experienced a change of heart, now. There was not any one in the kingdom who would have considered it good judgment to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of "Winston's father"; let Winston go over to the same place and explain his father away. If he obtained a hearing in the Ulster Hall in the company of Redmond, Devlin, and Pirrie the legend of Ulster as an impregnable loyalist stronghold would be wiped out, and Randolph's rant could be made to appear a foolish joke in comparison with the more mature and discriminating ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... battery, as they passed, with terrible execution, showing a courage equal to that of his heroic adversary. Conde, judging from what he now saw, believed the position in the hands of Turenne to be impregnable; and it being too late to execute any other manoeuvres with success during that day, he continued to cannonade the royalist army till the evening, without any other attempt to ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... he had occasion to mention Mr. Addington was a study in scornful expression. He himself had once memorialised the Prime Minister for a couple of nineteen-pounders which, with the two on the Old Fort, would have made our harbour impregnable. "Addington! It's hard on you, I know," he went on sympathetically, "to keep a discovery like this to yourself. But we ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... vast solidity of the masonry. Each tower is about 200 feet high, and the walls which enclose them are double, and enormously thick, being constructed of immense blocks of stone; but since the invention of gunpowder they are no longer considered impregnable. This edifice, after being first used as a barrack for the janissaries, was converted into a prison, in which, contrary to the law of nations and every principle of justice, the minister of any power against whom the Sultan happened to declare war, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... pleasures of imagination. Not that I don't like to draw and paint. But my ambition in painting is and always has been bounded by the visible. And, although that does not prevent me from appreciation—from understanding and admiring your work, for example—it sets an impregnable limit to any ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... launched a great offensive while the British were active in Flanders and by August 23 had broken through the whole Austrian line, capturing the town of Selo, which was the pivot of the Austrian defense, and considered impregnable, and inflicting upon the enemy, in this eleventh battle of the Isonzo, the greatest losses he had sustained since the capture of Goritz. More than 13,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners were captured during the battle, with thirty guns, and all counter-attacks were ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... and in no way even comparable to the cities of the northwest of India, Trichinopoli was a far more important city than any they had hitherto seen. They ascended the lofty rock, and visited the fort on its summit, which looked as if, in the hands of a resolute garrison, it should be impregnable to attack. ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... Gakdul was naturally strong, and with the aid of art was made perfectly impregnable, forming a place to fall back upon in case of need. The camels, it has been explained, utterly declined all friendly advances, but the affections of the company Kavanagh belonged to were not on ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... a day or two later, and after that nothing happened. Equator Lodge was an impregnable fortress, and the only member of the garrison he saw in a fortnight ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... thinking the scheme practical, "if ten thousand men could be landed at Boston."[127] If it is true that councils of war do not fight, the result was natural; but the situation was a very difficult one. The British had made Charlestown practically impregnable against anything except surprise, by a powerful redoubt on Bunker Hill. As for Boston itself, it was fortified at all prominent points, and was very strongly garrisoned by veteran troops. The Neck could not be forced, and to cross in boats over the Back Bay ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... treaty of Amiens, that both England and France should evacuate Egypt, and that England should surrender Malta to its ancient rulers. Malta, impregnable in its fortifications, commanded the Mediterranean, and was the key of Egypt. Napoleon had therefore, while he professed a willingness to relinquish all claim to the island himself, insisted upon it, as an essential point, that England should do ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... melancholy emotion, ever heedless of his posture or gait, and casting his unvalued drapery negligently about him. They have been compared by an illustration from another art: "The sublime and daring AEschylus resembles some strong and impregnable castle situated on a rock, whose martial grandeur awes the beholder—its battlements defended by heroes, and its gates proudly hung with trophies." Sophocles appears with splendid dignity, like some ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... cut by this river, it divides, and in Scythia is named Taurus also. Such then is the great range, 55 almost the mightiest of mountain chains, rearing aloft its summits and by its natural conformation supplying men with impregnable strongholds. Here and there it divides where the ridge breaks apart and leaves a deep gap, thus forming now the Caspian Gates, and again the Armenian or the Cilician, or of whatever name the place may be. Yet they are barely passable for a wagon, for both sides are sharp and steep as well as very ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... her uninjured. She had scarcely started a plank. Then the animal trapper set us all to work rebuilding his camp, animal cages, and stockade. We were three solid months repairing the damage done by the savages; but then Tugg had a camp that would be impregnable to the wild men from up ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... woman more or less retains her social position and is not forced to make an avocation of selling herself because henceforth no other career is possible to her. When Cook came to New Zealand his men found that the women were not impregnable, "but the terms and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among us," and according "to their notions the agreement was as innocent." The consent of the woman's friends was necessary, and when the preliminaries were settled it was also necessary ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... surrender of London, York, Winchester, and other principal towns. Having lost all his strong holds, he consulted his magicians as to how he was to secure himself from this terrible foe. They advised him to build an impregnable tower, and pointed out the situation where it was to be erected. But so unfortunately did their advice succeed, that all the work that his engineers did in the building one day, the earth swallowed, so that no vestige was ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... perhaps, another reference to "our age," left her, and next attacked Celeste Fishblate, having long ago discovered Nattie to be impregnable to the process known as "pumping," a fact that had augmented her ever-increasing ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... she might be impregnable, but the old fellow affirmed that no woman was this; that no fortress was too strong to be carried; that it all depended on the assailant and the vehemence of the assault; and if one did not succeed, another ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... strove, Where every silent tree possessed A spirit prisoned in its breast, Which the first stroke of coming strife Would startle into hideous life; So dense, so still, the Austrians stood, A living wall, a human wood! Impregnable their front appears, All horrent with projected spears, Whose polished points before them shine, From flank to flank, one brilliant line, Bright as the breakers' splendors run Along ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... little doubt that other than the miraculous considerations assigned to them by tradition influenced the monks and the congregation of S. Cuthbert in their final choice of a resting-place for the bones of their beloved saint. The almost impregnable position of the rocky promontory upon which both Cathedral and Castle stand suggests a careful selection on their part, with a view to the prevention of attack and consequent further disturbance of their sacred relics. What the first fortification was is ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Durham - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • J. E. Bygate
... a city of half a million they were as far apart as if he were still at Lone Moose and she God only knew where. That powerful roadster, the sort of clothes she wore, the general air of well-being which he had begun to recognize as a characteristic of people whose social and financial position is impregnable—these things served to intensify the gulf between them which their radical differences of outlook had originally opened. No, Sophie Carr's presence in San Francisco could not possibly make any difference to him. He repeated this emphatically—with ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... command of Captain Popham; who attacked and routed a body of plundering Mahrattas, captured by assault the strong fort of Lahar, and not only carried by surprise the fortress of Gwalior, regarded by the natives as impregnable, but took it without the loss ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... was remodelling the Corn-Laws, and creating a new source of direct revenue, he also undertook another task—a herculean task, one utterly hopeless, and beyond the reach or even conception of any but a Minister conscious of occupying an impregnable position in the confidence of the country: we allude to his reconstruction of our entire commercial system, as represented by his new Tariff. What courage was requisite to grapple with this giant difficulty! What practical skill; what ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... necessary for the democracies of to-morrow; for he had not been able to probe things, and only carried a first impression away with him. But how keen it was, and how ill it boded for his dreams! A gate of bronze! Yes, a hard, impregnable gate, so completely shutting the Vatican off from the rest of the world that nothing new had entered the palace for three hundred years. Behind that portal the old centuries, as far as the sixteenth, remained immutable. Time seemed to have stayed its course ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... unsympathetic observer an intense vexatiousness in the exhibition of such pertinacity. To a soldier accustomed at a glance to estimate powers of attack and defence, this repeated puny assailing of a, fortress that required years of siege was in addition ridiculous. Mr. Romfrey appeared impregnable, and Beauchamp mad. 'He's foaming again!' said the colonel, and was only ultra-pictorial. 'Before breakfast!' was a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... principles were impregnable. He mustn't doubt that. She would rather seek a moist death in the waves than.... and so forth. Although she made this solemn proclamation over the dessert, the consequence of it all was an intimate visit to Niebeldingk's dwelling which came to a bitter sweet ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... owner loudly and bitterly complained. At last the Government gave Evelyn L150 as an indemnification. Czar Peter's favorite amusement was to ride in a wheel barrow through what its owner had once called the "impregnable hedge of holly." Evelyn was passionately fond of gardening. "The life and felicity of an excellent gardener," he observes, "is preferable to all other diversions." His faith in the art of Landscape-gardening ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... and that their occupation might be wrecked by a single ill-considered treaty, dated from St James's or the Court of France. He thought that the islands should be seized as a general rendezvous for folk of that way of life. With a little trouble the harbour could be made impregnable. The land was good, and suited for the growing of maize or tobacco—the two products most in demand among them. The islands were near the Main, being only thirty-five leagues from the Chagres River, the ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... been a great fortress. In the old days it must have been impregnable. Much of it was still standing in its ancient strength. John saw that the walls were many feet thick, and that in the older parts the windows were mere slits through which a human body could ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... friends of his, and fellow-townsmen, Gaditanians, Isturitz and Alcala Galiano; both of them had been egregious liberals in their day, and indeed principal members of those cortes which, on the Angouleme invasion, had hurried Ferdinand from Madrid to Cadiz, and kept him prisoner there until that impregnable town thought proper to surrender, and both of them had been subsequently refugees in England, where they had spent ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... the writers of every sacred book but scheming priests. You may make it gross to sense that the Creator has never held direct communication with the creature, and you have but stripped religion of its tattered vestments—have not laid the weight of your hand upon the impregnable citadel, the universal Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man. You have never yet talked to the real question. You reject religion because Moses and Mahomet, Luther and Calvin entertained crude ideas of the plans and attributes ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... impregnable steel barrier between them, it is hard to say which would have triumphed in the end, the ponderous weight and fury of Last Bull, or the ripping prongs and swift wrath of the moose. The buffalo charged down the knoll at a thundering gallop; but just before reaching the fence he checked himself ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... coat, sword, epaulette-belt, cocked hat, feathers, and all. But he was not destined to leap into Emily's. She had enclosed it within too strong a line of circumvallation. After a three months' siege, it was impregnable. So Henry, who really loved his cousin, thinking it folly to endanger his peace and waste his time any longer, called for his horse one morning, shook Emily warmly by the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... practicality, for while the ceilings were high and open, and the walls wide, they were rendered homely by their plain surfaces and the absence of small triflings, conditions that were necessitated because of its identity: an impregnable fortress containing a highly organized and self-sufficient governmental society, each citizen having a particular duty for the common good, and each kept from an unfarcical personal identity by the means of a ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... reasoning failed to convince Gabriella, it was sufficiently forcible to justify her in her own judgment, and with an easier conscience, she settled comfortably behind the impregnable defences of the maternal instinct. After all, she had only done what she believed to be best for her boy. She had not been selfish, she had not even been thoughtless, she had been merely ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... master. "In the language of the range, 'come alive,' Mr. Boyle," she told him. "Say how-de-do and be nice about it, or I'll see that your coffee is muddy and your bread burned and your steak absolutely impregnable; because I'm here to stay, mind you. Mama Joy and I have possession of your kitchen, and so ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... great instrument of terror with which the kings of France had, for centuries, held all restless spirits in subjection. Now, the whole population of Paris seemed to be rolling like an inundation toward this apparently impregnable fortress, resolved to batter down its execrated walls. "To the Bastile! to the Bastile!" was the cry which resounded along the banks of the Seine, and through every street of the insurgent metropolis; and men, women, and boys poured on and poured on, an interminable host, choking every ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... conscious, in the matters for which we get the praise, that we have not regretted them, and are not ashamed at them, and would not rather have said and done differently. For our own inward judgement, testifying the contrary and not admitting the praise, is above passion, and impregnable and proof against the flatterer. But I know not how it is that most people in misfortune cannot bear exhortation, but are captivated more by condolence and sympathy, and when they have done something wrong and acted amiss, he that by censure and blame implants ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... would divide the force in two, and one side would defend a fort of blocks and books while the other assaulted. In these games Sam always insisted in having the plumed colonel on his side. Once when Sam's colonel had succeeded in capturing a particularly impregnable fortress on top of an unabridged dictionary his father ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... do so. Where the original deed may be, I don't know even now. It may be among some of my father's papers, which are stored in New York. But the record of the transfers I found in Ostable; and that is sufficient. My claim may not be quite as impregnable as I gave my late client to understand, but it will be hard to upset. I am the only possible claimant and I have transferred my claim to Mrs. Barnes. The land belongs to her now; she ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... commonplace; it made me powerless. I had it on my lips to cry out, 'He is in there alone, working himself up to the point of suicide!' But I could not utter it. I could no more say it than I could have smitten her in the face. She was impregnable behind; that barrier of manners which she upheld so skillfully. She continued to look at me for some seconds and to smile—so gently, so mildly. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... second illustration of the way in which changing conditions are altering political questions, let the reader take his atlas and consider the case of that impregnable fastness, that great naval station, that Key to the Mediterranean, Gibraltar. British boys are brought up on Gibraltar and the Gibraltar idea. To the British imagination Gibraltar is almost as sacred a national symbol as the lions ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... my Church; and though the rains of affliction may descend, and the floods of danger may come, and the winds of temptation may blow, and beat upon this house, it shall remain immoveable, [358:1] because it rests upon an impregnable foundation." But a different interpretation was already gaining wide currency; for though Peter had been led to deny Christ with oaths and imprecations, the rapid growth and preponderating wealth of the Roman bishopric, of which the apostle was supposed to be the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... an overjoyed gasp found herself in her mother's arms. She pressed closer while the three laughed, and when the other two ceased she still mirthfully clung in that impregnable sanctuary. Suddenly she hearkened, tossed her curls, and stood very straight. Two male voices ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... simply a question as to the size of the score. When at last the game was over, they had run up thirty-two points, and the ball had never once been within twenty yards of their own goal. The criticisms on the game in the Sunday papers had dwelt upon the impregnable defense and slashing attack of the "Blues." On the same Saturday the "Greys" and "Maroons" had also met redoubtable antagonists, and although they won, the scores were small and the playing by no means impressive. The general consensus was that on the form already shown, the "dope" favored the ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... Castle, and the clachan, with a few outlying farm-houses, comprised the whole of the Cairnforth; and the little peninsula, surrounded on three sides by water, and on the fourth by hills, was sufficiently impregnable and isolated to cause existence to flow on there very quietly, in what townspeople call ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... still stronger, but it was garrisoned by Marshal Boufflers, one of the ablest officers in the French service, with fifteen thousand choice troops, and every requisite for a vigorous defence. On the other hand, Vendome, at the head of an hundred thousand men, lay in an impregnable camp between Ghent and Bruges, ready to interrupt or raise the siege; and his position there extremely hampered Marlborough in bringing forward the requisite equipage for so great an undertaking, as it interrupted the whole water navigation of the country, by which it could best ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... That is an impregnable place of refuge. Then, I have the sea, and a vessel to pass over into England, where I have ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... generations, whose fate is placed in their hands. This we conceive to be the boldest paralogism that ever was offered to the world, or palmed upon willing credulity. Against whatever other scheme of reform this objection might be valid, the one it was brought expressly to overturn was impregnable against it, invulnerable to its slightest graze. Say that the Utopian reasoners are visionaries, unfounded; that the state of virtue and knowledge they suppose, in which reason shall have become all-in-all, can never take place, that it is inconsistent with ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... they had won from the Germans nearly twenty-four square miles of territory. Considering the extent to which every fraction of a mile was fortified and defended, and the thoroughness of the German preparations to make the district impregnable, the Allied gains were important. As a British officer said at the time, it was like digging badgers out of holes—with the proviso that every badger had machine guns and rifles at the hole's mouth, while ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... corridors of the impregnable fortress of Famagosta, a crowd of humble pilgrims from the Troodos knelt, breathlessly fingering their rosaries, while the monks of the Holy House upon the Mountain moved among the scattered groups, holding each one his Cross of Thorns, ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... have rejoiced when he invented this diabolical rod, with its equilibrium, its oscillations, its cycloid, and other tormenting accessories. And yet, I suppose, before my days of studentship are over, I shall be called upon to attack some such impregnable fortresses of mathematics, when I hope to be declared equal to some twentieth wrangler, if I escape the misfortune of sharing a ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... that his Anglicanism lasted much longer and that his Roman sympathies began to stir much earlier. This only shows the enormous difficulties of measuring accurately the steps of a transition state. The mind, in such a strain of buffeting, is never in one stay. The old seems impregnable, yet it has been undermined; the new is indignantly and honestly repelled, and yet leaves behind it its never-to-be-forgotten and unaccountable spell. The story, as he tells it, goes on, how, in the full swing and confidence of his Anglicanism, and ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... determined not to believe in the Bible, find the historical evidences of its genuineness, authority, and inspiration, impregnable against the assaults of criticism, they turn their attention to some other mode of attack, and of late years have selected their weapons from the physical sciences. The argument thus raised is, that the Bible can not be the Word of God, because it asserts facts contrary ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... harrowing experiences that, constant companions of my days and nights as they have been, have acquired all the peculiarities of those chronic and incurable ailments, to which the grave alone can bring release. For, if to the Jews themselves the "Pale," the "norm," etc., were a fatal and impregnable fact, which deformed their entire life, they were also for me, a Russian, something in the nature of a hump on my back, a stationary and ugly growth, arising no one knows when or under what circumstances. Wherever ...
— The Shield • Various
... richest and most aristocratic among them, the Sicilian baron Don Fabrizio di Moncada, the hope of gaining her hand. "Conquer the fortress! When it yields—you can hold it," were his last words; but the citadel remained impregnable, though the besieger could bring into the field as allies a knightly, aristocratic bearing, an unsullied character, a handsome, manly figure, winning ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... face as a man might search the walls of an apparently impregnable fortress for some vulnerable spot. "Ah, I see," he said, after a moment. "You must have believed Madelina to be still alive when Dacre married. What was the ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... about 1230. The armored truck was parked outside, looking sleek and impregnable, and four massive roboguards stood watch, one by each wheel. There were three human policemen too, but they were strictly for effect; in case of any trouble, the roboguards were expected to handle the ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... as one who had hopelessly lost his all, but was plotting as one who would save his all. The task of the knight of old upon whom was the burden of rescuing some lovely maiden from imprisonment in a seemingly impregnable fortress, was but child's play compared to the task before Earl, who must scale the walls of the castle of despair and batter down doors that laughed at the feebleness of steel if he would claim ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... perfectly in conformity with reason, to say that one and one make two. No doubt seems possible on that point. Well, this elementary truth, the most undeniable in the eyes of all men which can be produced, does not, despite the assurances which seem to uphold it, constitute an impregnable axiom; for there are cases when one and one do not make two! Certainly such a proposition seems scarcely reasonable, for its admission would entail the reversal of what are called the sound notions of logic! ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Jim's patter had come from Paul's stories of the old Romans, and now he was applying it with gusto to the wild scene lost in the vast green wilderness. But he was sure that the Indians would not return to a headlong charge. The little fortress in stone was practically impregnable to frontal attack and they would resort instead ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the secret cell not unfrequently wins the victory. If he is sure that he has left behind him no proof of his having committed the crime; if he has no guilty antecedents to be afraid of, he can—impregnable in a defense of absolute denial—brave all the attacks ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... the city by assault, though often debated in the council of the king, had been always rejected. In the first place, La Rochelle appeared impregnable. Then the cardinal, whatever he said, very well knew that the horror of bloodshed in this encounter, in which Frenchman would combat against Frenchman, was a retrograde movement of sixty years impressed upon his policy; and the cardinal was at that period what we now call a ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... by ordinary means from the prison was quite hopeless. There was no guard to overpower, the walls were exceedingly thick, and the door impregnable. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... much about him, and had wondered how he had gained possession of such a girl as Emily Wharton. And now, as she looked about, her wonder was increased. She knew enough of such people as the Whartons and the Fletchers to be aware that as a class they are more impregnable, more closely guarded by their feelings and prejudices against strangers than any other. None keep their daughters to themselves with greater care, or are less willing to see their rules of life changed or abolished. And yet this man, half foreigner half Jew,—and as ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... to grow." And what is it that makes the covenant of God with man thus sure? sure not only in itself, but (as the apostle speaks) to all the seed. Is it not this, because it hath a strong foundation, a double, impregnable foundation? First, His own free grace. Second, The blood of Christ; which is therefore also called, the blood of the covenant. Because of all this, this all, which hath an infinity in it, the Lord God hath made ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... shortest among them was, of course, taller than he. But to Pete any woman was "little one," no matter what her stature, as any woman was "pure as the driven snow" until she proved the contrary. This impregnable simplicity explained much of the disaster of his ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... no less than two hundred feet, which a careful examination of the rocks on the hill proves must mostly have been quarried from granite about twelve miles distant. And all this in spite of the fact that Nature alone had made the hill already impregnable, it being inaccessible on three sides and very difficult of ascent on the fourth. It is one of Rhodesia's mysteries, and one also of its fascinations; those mysteries and fascinations which so far have effectually baffled all efforts to find the clue and read the closed book. Who was it came for ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... ever. Incapable of effecting any thing under that form she had learned to detest, I laid it aside. I assumed a form most prepossessing and most amiable in her eyes. Surely if her breast had not been as cold as the snow that clothes the summit of Snowdon; if her virtue had not been impregnable as the groves of Mona, a stratagem, omnipotent and impenetrable as this, must have succeeded. She beheld the figure of him she loved, and this was calculated in a moment of distress to draw forth all her softness. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... capital had fallen. It is a single hill, and very high; and the top of it appears like a large mount formed by art, being defended by a double line of fortifications and several towers, which in a rude state of warfare might be pronounced almost impregnable. At the foot of an eminence towards the north there are the remains of a magnificent church as well as of other buildings. On a slope a little farther west there is a cistern connected with a pond, which appears to have had an island in it, and ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... Mammon "—in view of all these things, I cannot think it is anything worse than a locally-seated and curable ignorance which makes men eager to subvert a human equality, self-evident as human variety, and impregnable as any mathematical axiom. And this special brand of ignorance is even more rampant amongst those educated asses who can read Kikero in the original than amongst uneducated asses who know not the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Earl paid no attention to this; and as he was engaged with other nobles in a conspiracy to dethrone William, the monarch brought his army into Northumbria, besieged and took the fortress at Newcastle, went on to Tynemouth, and then to Bamborough Castle, to which the Earl had escaped. This castle was impregnable, but the Earl was decoyed from it, and after going again to Tynemouth, he was wounded and taken prisoner. But William coveted the Castle of Bamborough, which was still held by the wife of the Earl. He, Mowbray, was taken to an eminence in front of the castle, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... flag-ship alone, to capture by a coup de main the numerous forts and garrison of Valdivia, a fortress previously deemed impregnable, and thus to counteract the disappointment which would ensue in Chili from our want of success before Callao. The enterprise was a desperate one; nevertheless, I was not about to do anything desperate, having resolved that, unless fully satisfied as to its practicability, I would ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... small devil-duke of a Chamillo hovered over the imperial free city of Strasburg. Entering by key-holes and doors ajar, he stole into the presence of the principal magistrates, and shortly after the impregnable capital of Alsace opened its gates at a show ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Louise had given place to a feeling almost akin to a desire for revenge. He would show her that he could conquer her pride. He would show the world that he could humble Norman Wentworth. His position appeared to him impregnable. At the head of a great business, the leader of the gayest set in the city, and the handsomest and coolest man in town—he was bound to win. So he bided his time, and went on paying Mrs. Wentworth little attentions that he felt must win her in ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... come all those starving peasants may well have stood before the high impregnable walls in the broad daylight of despair. Even their nightmares during the night, of unearthly necromancers looking down at them from the battlements and with signs and spells paralysing all their potential toils, ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... built on piles of wood, or stockaded islands,—that Herodotus describes in lake Prasias, five or six centuries before the Christian era, constituting dwellings there which were then impregnable to all the military resources of a Persian army,—that Hippocrates tells us were also the types of habitation employed in his day by the Phasians, who sailed to them in single-tree canoes,—that in the same form of houses erected ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... expediency, with two defensible sides to it; they must go deeper, to the radical question of Right and Wrong, or they surrender the chief advantage of their position. What Spinoza says of laws is equally true of party-platforms,—that those are strong which appeal to reason, but those are impregnable which compel the assent both of reason and the common affections ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... an extensive fortification; though, as the travellers approached it, they perceived that, in many instances, art had only availed itself of the natural advantages of the position, and that the towers and turrets were carved out of the living rock which formed the impregnable bulwarks and escarpments. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Lord Hutchinson of Egypt) had assembled upon this point a respectable force; some say upwards of 4000, others not more than 1100. The disgraceful result is well known: the French, marching all night over mountain roads, and through one pass which was thought impregnable, if it had been occupied by a battalion instead of a captain's guard, surprised Castlebar on the morning of the 27th. Surprised, I say, for no word short of that can express the circumstances of the case. About two o'clock in the morning, a courier had brought intelligence of the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... on The Times. But I had no intention of leaving him, for we were members of a defensive alliance, though he knew nothing about it; two or three men I knew walked through the room and left me alone; I was, I thought, in an almost impregnable position and I closed my eyes, but before I had passed from the stage of wondering whether I should snore if I went to sleep, I felt a touch on my arm, and found Learoyd standing ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... by spiteful gusts. Wycherley could find no color anywhere save in this glowing, tiny and exquisite woman; and everywhere was a gigantic peace, vexed only when high overhead a sea-fowl jeered at these modish persons, as he flapped toward an impregnable nest. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... this vantage could have rendered either street or barricade untenable, or as support to a barricade in the Place du Pantheon have made such a barricade impregnable to exposed troops. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... Earl of Leicester, and in 1267 also Earl of Lancaster, a new earldom, deriving its name from the youngest of the shires.[1] Reduced to the Staffordshire estate of Chartley, the house of Ferrars fell back into the minor baronage. Kenilworth was still unconquered. Its walls were impregnable except to famine, and before his flight to Axholme young Simon had procured provisions adequate for a long resistance. The garrison harried the neighbourhood with such energy that the whole levies of the realm were assembled to subdue it. After a fruitless assault, the royalists ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... the War has only just begun—began, in fact, on the first of July, 1916; when the British Army, equipped at last, after stupendous exertions, for a grand and prolonged offensive, went over the parapet, shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers of France, and captured the hitherto impregnable chain of fortresses which crowned the ridge overlooking the Somme Valley, with results now set down in the pages ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... Evangelical saints from whom I first learned that, in the supreme work of salvation, no human being and no created thing can interpose between the soul and the Creator. Happy is the man whose religious life has been built on the impregnable ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... by the Russians, they withdrew within the walls of the large fortress which is called "The Green Hill." They numbered about 45,000 in all—men, women and children—and they believed that the fortress was impregnable. The Russian general, Skobeleff, had a mine carried under the wall. Inside the fortress the Turkomans heard the soldiers working underground with picks and crowbars, but did not understand what was intended. They supposed ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... holy water; and the ceremony was concluded with a prayer, that, under the guardian care of the apostles and the angelic host, both the old and the new Rome might ever be preserved pure, prosperous, and impregnable. [90] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... involves the fatal labyrinth for Minos; builds an impregnable fortress for the Agrigentines; adorns healing baths among the wild parsley fields of Selinus; buttresses the precipices of Eryx, under the temple of Aphrodite; and for her temple itself—finishes in exquisiteness the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... to this outburst the impregnable wall of a calm and meditative silence. She looked angrily into his quiet eyes, which met hers with unflinching kindness. The contrast between their faces ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... conditions social barriers could not be impregnable. In a world divided by poverty and opulence into all their intermediate grades, wealth must inevitably be pre-eminent. It represents refined and luxurious environments, and, if mind be there, intellectual pre-eminence also. Where wealth alone governs ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... Johnny Burgoyne was prevented from obtaining by me. It commands the Hudson River and opens the way to upper New York and Canada. It is the most strategic position in America, stored with immense quantities of ammunition and believed to be impregnable. Without doubt it is the most critical point in ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... pier, and my conclusion was, that the English Ministry were mad when they attempted any thing against Boulogne. The harbour appeared to me impregnable. I must confess, however, that the French appeared to me equally mad, in expecting any thing from their flotilla. Three English frigates would sink the whole force at Boulogne in the open sea. The French ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... converts were Arians. And the Goths had a narrow miss of empire. The victories of Theodosius were won by Gothic strength. It was the Goths who scattered the mutineers of Britain, and triumphantly scaled the impregnable walls of Aquileia; [Sidenote: 388.] the Goths who won the hardest battle of the century, and saw the Franks themselves go down before them on the Frigidus. [Sidenote: 394.] The Goths of Alaric plundered Rome itself; the Goths of Gainas entered Constantinople, ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... Harrington gave way to a momentary panic in respect to Cipriani de Lloseta—when she was not feeling very well, perhaps. Her situation seemed to be somewhat that of a commander holding an impregnable position against a cunning foe. For every position of such a nature is impenetrable only so long as it can meet and defy each new engine of warfare that is brought against it. And one day the ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... The warehouse—impregnable lair of the Smell, from which it leered smug defiance at the sea-sweet atmosphere of the lower city—occupied a walled-in arch of the Brooklyn Bridge, fronting on Frankfort Street, in that part of Town ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... and like the other, He shall confesse all, and you then may hang him. Shew me a lawyer that turnes sacred law (The equall rendrer of each man his owne, 50 The scourge of rapine and extortion, The sanctuary and impregnable defence Of retir'd learning and besieged vertue) Into a Harpy, that eates all but's owne, Into the damned sinnes it punisheth, 55 Into the synagogue of theeves and atheists; Blood into gold, and justice into lust:— Let me but hawlk at him, as at the rest, He shall confesse all, and you ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... soever wanted to be repaired or adorned he magnificently repaired and adorned them]. He also took care of the foundations of the cloisters in the temple, and repaired the walls that were fallen down, and built very great towers, and such as were almost impregnable; and if any thing else in his kingdom had been neglected, he took great care of it. He also made an expedition against the Ammonites, and overcame them in battle, and ordered them to pay tribute, a hundred talents, and ten thousand cori of wheat, and as many of barley, every year, and so augmented ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... I could not prevail for you, gad, I pretended to be in love myself; but all in vain, she would not hear a word upon that subject. Then I writ a letter to her; I don't know what effects that will have, but I'll be sure to tell you when I do, though by this light I believe her virtue is impregnable. ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... full of haughtiness is thy speech, as beseems a lackey of the gods. Young in years, ye are young in power;[77] and ye fancy forsooth that ye dwell in a citadel impregnable against sorrow. Have I not known two monarchs[78] dethroned from it? And the third that now is ruler I shall also see expelled most foully and most quickly. Seem I to thee in aught to be dismayed at, and to crouch beneath the new gods? Widely, ay altogether, ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... of fact, the one perhaps knew as much of the other as it is expedient that age should know of youth. "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell." Of all earthly consolations this is the greatest, that the mind is its own place. The mind is an impregnable fortress which can be held against all comers, the mind is a sanctuary open day or night to the pursued, the mind is a flowery pleasance where shade refreshes even in summer droughts. To some trusted friend we try to give the clue ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... precipitous bluff which overhangs Tumbling Run on the south side, a heavy line of earthworks had been constructed when Early retreated to this point in August, and these were now being strengthened so as to make them almost impregnable; in fact, so secure did Early consider himself that, for convenience, his ammunition chests were taken from the caissons and placed behind the breastworks. Wharton, now in command of Breckenridge's division—its late commander having gone to southwest Virginia—held the right of this line, with ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... a ruined city on its summit wherein the spirits dwelt; and if you laughed, they gravely shook their heads, told you to look yourself to see the castles and the walls, and warned you against a rash approach, lest the infuriate demons from their impregnable heights should hurl down ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Christ created angles by running vertical lines through the ecclesiastical and hypocritical conventionalities of their day. The new angles and curves thus produced by the bold philosophy of the humble Nazarene have confronted with impregnable firmness during the intervening ages the sophistry of ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... not yet advanced a step with our Princess Natalie," said Stephano, shrugging his shoulders; "that, it seems, is an impregnable fortress!" ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... of the true democratic and social Republic, wherein neither caste, color, sex, nor age stands prescribed. It is a moral-suasion temperance society on the teetotal basis. It is a moral-power Anti-slavery society, radical and without compromise. It is a peace society on the only impregnable foundation, that of Christian non-resistance. It is a sound theoretical and practical Woman's Rights Association." Among other Suffragists, Abby Kelly Foster was resident at Hopedale. Another community, at Northampton, was sometimes ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... lost thousands of our best men, and hundreds of our ablest officers in futile attempts to drive our enemy from impregnable positions; yet, notwithstanding all our losses, and our hitherto unsuccessful assaults, our men rushed against the strong defenses at Coal Harbor with as much resolution and fortitude as though they had met ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... expect him to cause a thing to be what it is, and not what it is, at one and the same time. Thus, although sin exists, we vindicate the character of God, on the ground that it is an inherent impossibility to exclude all evil from a moral universe. This is the high, impregnable ground of ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... the Council persisted in retaining the custom. A few priests had attempted resistance, but numberless apostasies and half an insurrection had followed on their action, and now the position had come to be regarded as impregnable. ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... it—but Don Nicholas de Ovando kept more. While we waited in the antechamber I saw, out of window and the tail of my eye, files of soldiery go by. Ovando would not have riot and disturbance if twenty Admirals hung in the offing! He kept us waiting. He would be cool and distant and impregnable behind the royal word. Juan Lepe saw plainly that that lavish and magnanimous person aboard the Consolacion would not meet here his twin. The Adelantado must still, I thought, sail the Margarita. And yet, looking at all things, that exchange of ships should have ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... of the world. The mines were captured by the World in the year 2020, and were profitably operated for a couple of decades. Meanwhile the German lines were forced many miles to the rear before the impregnable barrier of the Ray had halted the ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... others; now the way being paved and opened by his own workmanship, and so handled, that none durst appear to stand in the place; at last, and with much ado, he obtained his own ends, and therewith his fatal destruction, leaving the Queen and the court, where he stood impregnable and firm in her grace, to men that long had fought and waited their times to give him a trip, and could never find any opportunity, but this of his absence, and of his own creation; and those are true observations ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... jungle, and he came to bay on a rocky part of the river, where the velocity of the torrent swept every dog past him and rendered his position secure. The whole pack was there with the exception of Tiptoe; we looked for him among the baying hounds in vain. For about twenty minutes the buck kept his impregnable position, when in a foolish moment he forsook it, and dashing along the torrent, he took to deep water. The whole pack was after him; once Merriman got a hold, but was immediately beaten off. Valiant, who was behaving nobly, and made repeated attempts to seize, ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... cities, and began to fly to the rock which is in their land." Then it was that Alexander's difficulties began. Nor need we wonder, when the historian gravely asserts that "so stupendous is the rock in this land... that it was found impregnable even by Heracles, the son of Zeus." Thus history repeats itself, and the people of Bajaur their tactics. There was, however, no doubt as to the ability of the brigades to take and burn any village they might select. At the same time it was certain that they would ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... passed along the eastern border of the campus and glanced up at St. George's Hall, it no longer appeared the impregnable fortress of privilege he had once thought it. Yet, in reality, the towers of the college had never looked more formidable. Rising magnificently at the crest of a bleak expanse of snow, the embrasured battlements, silhouetted against the sunset ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... to move out of its orbit. Very slowly at first, but faster and faster. They continued to blast, with all their prodigious might and in carefully-computed order, until the desired orbit was attained—an orbit which terminated in a vertical line through the center of the Stretts' supposedly impregnable retreat. ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... monarchy at home, and the development of the various industries of the nation, since in these industries are both power and wealth. Commerce was encouraged, and she girt her island around with those "wooden walls" which have proved England's impregnable defence against every subsequent combination of tyrants and conquerors. The East India Company was formed, and the fisheries of Newfoundland established. It was under Elizabeth's auspices that Frobisher penetrated to the Polar Sea, that ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Maid and d'Alencon rode from St. Denis to the gates of Paris, to observe the best places for an attack. And still Charles dallied and delayed, still the main army did not come up. Thus the delay of the king gave the English time to make Paris almost impregnable and to frighten the people who, had Charles marched straight from Reims, would have yielded as Reims did. D'Alencon kept going to Senlis urging Charles to come up with the main army. He went on September ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... he shall see two islands lying just off the west coast at that point, controlled by La Rochelle, yet affording to any foreign allies whom the Huguenots might admit there facilities for stinging France during centuries. The position of the Huguenots seemed impregnable. The city was well fortressed,—garrisoned by the bravest of men,—mistress of a noble harbor open at all times to supplies from foreign ports,—and in that harbor rode a fleet, belonging to the city, greater than the navy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... apostolic zeal guided by the wisdom of the serpent. He was ever ready to comment on events, but before opening his mind fully to a stranger on the subject next to his heart, he usually felt his way, and only when he had grounds for believing that the fortress was not impregnable did he open his batteries. Even among the initiated, few would suspect the role played by this young proselytizer within one of the strongholds of the Conference, so naturally and unobtrusively was the work done. I may add that luckily he ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
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