"Impenetrable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impenetrable beyond the sex of women the dwellers on Olympus gave you. There is no other woman of such stubborn spirit to stand off from the husband who, after many grievous toils, came in the twentieth year home to his native land. Come then, good nurse, and make my bed, that I may lie alone. For certainly ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... mass of rock! Honeycombed everywhere with caves and passages leading into darkness impenetrable. There were pits into which we might so easily have fallen; ravines to span, sometimes with a leap, sometimes by a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... nothing: it is a poor little pool now, filled with rushes, peopled with frogs. By the side of this pool I saw her again: she looked at me. Like a madman I plunged into the water, but the reeds and the lilies entangled me in their meshes: the long grasses and water-weeds were netted into an impenetrable mass. I stood there up to my waist in water, incapable of movement, like the poor cattle of which Pliny tells, who used to mistake all this verdure for dry land, and so drifted out into the middle of the lake. She looked at me, laughed a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... the thrush cradle we found no signs of disturbance about it, and we heard no lamentations. But we did hear from every impenetrable tangle in the woods, the baby-cries of young thrushes; and we ventured to hope that no hawk or owl or squirrel, or other foe in feathers or in fur, had carried off the nestlings ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... of their troops or the abilities of their generals, but they did underrate the difficulties in conquering a population scattered over a vast extent of territory. They did not take into consideration the protecting power of nature, the impenetrable forests to be traversed, the mighty rivers to be crossed, the mountains to be climbed, and the coasts to be controlled. Nor did they comprehend the universal spirit of resistance in a vast country, and the power of sudden ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... that that was daily, and little by little, pressing down her eyelids and deepening the quivering lines of her impenetrable face. She had a certain solitary grandeur, the pathos attaching to the last of a race, of a type; the air of waiting for the deluge, of listening for an inevitable sound—the sound of ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... closer, and were now eagerly reaching out their cruel arms towards the boys from all sides. Beneath them the supports of the building tottered, and in another moment it must fall. Down the slope the shining rails of the track disappeared in an impenetrable cloud of smoke, and Derrick could not see whether his signal to the switch-tender had been obeyed ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... breeding bird in the swamps and islands of the Gulf coast and north to South Carolina and southern Illinois. The nests are placed in the mangroves in some of the most impenetrable swamps and are composed of twigs and lined with leaves or moss. They lay three or four chalky bluish white eggs. Size 2.30 x 1.40. Data.—Bird Is., Lake Kissimee, Florida, April 5, 1898. Three eggs. Nest made of weeds and ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... withering was the gale at that altitude even at mid-day, that a precipitate retreat was made to avoid freezing. The faces of the climbers showed plainly the punishment received. Three days later Dr. Church attempted to rescue the record just as the storm was passing. He made his way in an impenetrable fog to 10,000 feet, when the snow and ice-crystals deposited by the storm in a state of unstable equilibrium on crust and trees were hurled by a sudden gale high into the air in a blinding blizzard. During his retreat he wandered into the wildest part of ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... lightning, in a sudden spleen Unfolded, dashes from the blinding eyes The visive spirits dazzled and bedimm'd; So, round about me, fulminating streams Of living radiance play'd, and left me swath'd And veil'd in dense impenetrable blaze. Such weal is in the love, that stills this heav'n; For its own flame ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... confused, and looking around me, I became aware that some strange accident had occurred. In every direction I saw such traces of havoc as I had witnessed more than once when a Confederate force holding an impenetrable woodland had been shelled at random for some hours with the largest guns that the enemy could bring into the field. Trees were torn and broken, branches scattered in all directions, fragments of stone, earth, and coral rock flung all around. Particularly I remember that a piece of metal ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... thousand! ten thousand! a million of them! close by us! far off! on the right hand and on the left! here! there! everywhere! until above, around us, all through the woods, all along the shore, all over the lake is a solid roar, impenetrable to any other sound, surging and swaying, rolling and swelling as if all the voices in the world were concentrated in one ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... committees have made no report whatever, either favorable or unfavorable. How much longer do you expect women to treat with respect National and State constitutions and legislative bodies that stand thus an impenetrable barrier between them and their rights as citizens of the United States?" A long colloquy ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... winter, to be sure, it would not be endurable here, especially in the mud that all the rain would make. Yesterday we turned out at about five, hunted, in burning heat, up-hill and down, through bush and fen, until eleven, and found absolutely nothing; walking in bogs and impenetrable juniper thickets, on large stones and timbers, is very fatiguing. Then we slept in a hay-shed until two o'clock, drank lots of milk, and hunted again until sunset, bringing down twenty-five grouse ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... but filled the caves of ocean, and spread the pathless wilderness with a rich variety of existence, the specific purposes of which the researches of man have hitherto failed to discover? Shall we dare to say that the impenetrable forest, or the untenanted island, was made in vain? or that the grass grows, in the valley, the shrub sprouts on the inaccessible height, or the flower expands its beauties and diffuses its fragrance over the desert uselessly, because we have not discovered the reasons of their formation? Who, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... take us from, rather than towards the centre of this Continent. On the other hand, by crossing to the westward, I should have to encounter a country which I knew to be all but destitute of water, and to consist, for a very great distance, of barren sandy ridges and low lands, covered by an almost impenetrable scrub, at a season, too, when but little rain could be expected, and the heat would, in all probability, be intense; still, of the two, the latter appeared to me the least objectionable, as we should at least be ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... and fours. The automatic spoke again, this time farther to the north, drawing more shots from the angry pursuers; but I knew that among trees so thick and in darkness so impenetrable Smilax and Echochee ran little chance of being hit. At the prairie, made vaguely lighter by a hazy, half grown moon, we crouched in the ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... solitude is apparent. To the south of the Ohio lay the "Dark and Bloody Ground" of Kentucky; "Dark," because of its vast and almost impenetrable forests; "Bloody," because of the constant savage warfare waged within its limits by roving bands of Miamis, Shawnees, Cherokees, and other tribes who resorted thither in pursuit of game. Says Humphrey Marshall, ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... is the patient, nurse?' braced my faltering nerves in a moment, and enabled me to answer him without embarrassment. He had his grave professional air, and looked hard and impenetrable. I had reason afterwards to think that this sternness of manner was assumed for my benefit, for once, when I was preparing some lint for him, I looked up inadvertently and saw that he was watching me with an expression that was ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... on the island seems brown and starved. It consists of a few stunted trees; several patches of brush, close set and almost impenetrable; large tufts of sour and wiry grass, and abundance of low saltish plants, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... the two figures standing motionless there,—shimmered down into awe-struck shadow: who heeded it? The old clock ticked away furiously, as if rejoicing that weary days were over for the pet and darling of the house: nothing else broke the silence. Without, the deep night paused, gray, impenetrable. Did it hope that far angel-voices would break its breathless hush, as once on the fields of Judea, to usher in Christmas morn? A hush, in air, and earth, and sky, of waiting hope, of a promised joy. Down there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... a beaten track, and stumbled no more over the various obstacles that rendered my former progress so uncertain. My guide moved with excessive caution, as it seemed to me, frequently pausing to peer forward into the almost impenetrable darkness, and sniffing the night air suspiciously as if hoping thus to locate any lurking foes when his keen eyes failed in the attempt. So dark was it that I had almost to tread upon his heels in order to follow him, as not the slightest ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... to obtain a view of the country below, Captain Clarke followed the course of the brook, and with much fatigue, and after walking three miles, ascended the first spur of the mountains. The whole lower country he found covered with almost impenetrable thickets of small pine, with which is mixed a species of plant resembling arrow-wood, twelve or fifteen feet high, with thorny stems, almost interwoven with each other, and scattered among the fern and fallen timber: there is ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... now line the roads where so recently the hare cantered along the dusty cattle-trail; and villages lie brightly green with a wealth of foliage where the roaring wings of myriads of quail shook the air above impenetrable ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... actors came from curiosity to see how they would acquit themselves; while other classes of people came because they were eager to see well-known notabilities in unwonted situations. When ladies, hitherto only beheld in frigid, impenetrable positions behind their coachmen in Markton High Street, were about to reveal their hidden traits, home attitudes, intimate smiles, nods, and perhaps kisses, to the public eye, it was a throwing open of fascinating social secrets not ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... dwelt on the features of the squatter, when unexcited. Occasionally a gust of wind would fan the embers; and, as a brighter light shot upwards, the little solitary tent was seen as it were suspended in the gloom of the upper air. All beyond was enveloped, as usual at that hour, in an impenetrable body ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of comical taking of the whole subject somehow was expressed under these words, and set the whole family a- laughing, All but Rufus; he was impenetrable. He sat finishing his breakfast without a word, but with a certain significant air of the lip and eyebrow, and dilating nostril, which said ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... of his words, nor did they have any effect upon me. I seemed to be encased in an impenetrable armour. Sorrow I did feel for him, but fear entered not ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... hand, the fact that you, the third party, are a journalist, and could at a moment's notice give publicity to the whole thing, will be an additional safeguard. I have him as in a vice. And now put on your most formal manners and look as if you were impenetrable as the rock and unbending as cast iron, for ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... huts which form the aboriginal settlement. The choice of the site for the settlement was influenced by the character of the country. Although but a short distance by sea from the port, it is isolated by its background of hard and inhospitable hills patched with almost impenetrable jungle. Few consigned there ever leave of their own motive, however earnest the longing may be. The home-sick realise that escape is difficult and, if successful, futile, for are not the police everywhere, and strong and compelling? Why undertake the unknown perils ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... circumstances have drawn an impenetrable mystery around all else connected with the Hutters. They lived, erred, died, and are forgotten. None connected have felt sufficient interest in the disgraced and disgracing to withdraw the veil, and a century is ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... very rapidly, but equally fast rose the waters around them. Four days the reeds grew thus, at the end of the fourth day meeting at the sky. This seemed an impenetrable barrier for a time, but Locust had taken with him his bow of darkness and sacred arrows. With these he made a hole in the sky and passed on into the ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... nesxangxebla. Imp diableto. Impair difekti. Impart komuniki, sciigi. Impartial senpartia. Impartiality senpartieco. Impatience malpacienco. Impatient malpacienca. Impassive kvietega, stoika. Impeach kulpigi, denunci. Impediment baro. Impel antauxen pusxi. Impend minaci. Impenetrable nepenetrebla. Imperative ordona. Imperfect neperfekta. Imperfection difektajxo. Imperial imperia. Imperishable nepereema. Impermeable nepenetrebla. Impersonal nepersona. Impertinent malrespekta. Imperturbable stoika. Impetuous ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... was no mistaking the lady with the thick, impenetrable veil, nor her companion, whose heavy dark face was distinctly visible through the thin Indian gauze. Behind them walked the hideous negro, swinging his light cane jauntily, but beginning to cast angry ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... were so wrapped in gloom as to present the aspect of solid pyramidal masses, all the details of leaves and blossoms being buried in an embracing darkness, while the trees had lost all form, and seemed like masses of overhanging cloud. It was a place and time to excite the imagination; for in the impenetrable cavities of endless gloom there was room for the most riotous fancies to play at will. I walked and walked, and the echoes of my footsteps on the ungravelled and mossy path suggested a double feeling. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... which has been the object of this reconnoissance is, as may already be understood, of very difficult access from the settled parts of the State of Maine. It is also, at best, almost impenetrable except by the water courses. It furnishes no supplies except fish and small game, nor can these be obtained by a surveying party which can not be strong enough to allow for hunters and fishermen as a constituent part. The third detachment alone derived any important ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... to posterity will appear marvelous and unaccountable. On the twenty-fourth of August, about an hour before daybreak, there arose from the Adriatic near Ancona, a whirlwind, which crossing from east to west, again reached the sea near Pisa, accompanied by thick clouds, and the most intense and impenetrable darkness, covering a breadth of about two miles in the direction of its course. Under some natural or supernatural influence, this vast and overcharged volume of condensed vapor burst; its fragments contended with indescribable ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... and stalking through the night, towered a great mountain, cloud-wreathed, and gashed with vast ravines. The moon was shining on it between two chasing clouds, and the light and shade of the great spectacle, its illumined slopes, and impenetrable abysses, were at once ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I receive the assurance that he is preparing to deal a heavy blow anent this; but the King's character is impenetrable. Time alone will show. ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... upon an eastern ocean, and this piece of information constituted the first important leap of geographical knowledge to the eastward since the days of Ptolemy, who supposed that beyond the "Seres and Sinae" lay an unknown land of vast extent, "full of reedy and impenetrable swamps."[327] The information gathered by Rubruquis and Friar John indicated that there was an end to the continent of Asia; that, not as a matter of vague speculation, but of positive knowledge, Asia was bounded on the east, just as Europe was bounded ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... in highly controlled or authoritarian societies. Similarly, the exploration and use of high technology in space, together with the advent of sophisticated highly accurate ballistic and cruise missiles, means borders between states are not as important for strategic and impenetrable defenses in depth as they used to be. The rapid advancements in telecommunications technology, combined with the exploration and use of space vehicles to saturate a world hungry for information, means that leaders can no longer shield their people from the outside world. Thus ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... in the saddle for two hours or more, facing the biting wind, and peering through the storm of sleet, snow, or rain, which unmercifully pelts us in its fury. But it were well for us if this was our worst enemy, and we consider ourselves happy if the guerilla does not creep through bushes impenetrable to the sight, to inflict his mortal blows. The two hours expire, relief comes, and the vedette returns to spend his four, six, or eight hours off post, as best ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... was windless and the white steam drifted straight up and as it rose, it spread out in an impenetrable fog. Cloaked in this vapor, the two adventurers scrambled up some thirty-five feet to the first deck. The steam was thick inside the rail. Covered by the noisy shriek of the exhaust, they jumped inside the promenade without being heard or seen, and a ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... 9, as a brand of disgrace; 10, as a token of a woman's marriage, or, sometimes, 11, of her marriageable condition; 12, identification of the person, not as a tribesman, but as an individual; 13, to charm the other sex magically; 14, to inspire fear in the enemy; 15, to magically render the skin impenetrable to weakness; 16, to bring good fortune, and, 17, as the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the constant fatigue, night-work, &c., must greatly predispose them to disease of any kind, while the great additional number always required on those occasions, precludes the supposition of the majority so employed being seasoned hospital attendants, having constitutions impenetrable to contagion. Those questions are now well understood as to yellow fever, about which so much misconception had once existed. The proofs by disinterested authors (by which I mean those unconnected with quarantine ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... how far it is given to woman to penetrate the mysteries of human nature, for she is gifted, it seems to me, with a dissimulation in which she wraps herself, as with an impenetrable veil of outward innocence, and ignorance, from our less acute perception ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... while, remained dignified and impenetrable; he turned about and looked up in the air, without expressing an opinion. Coupeau winked at him in vain; he affected not to wish to take advantage of his great influence over the landlord. He ended, however, by making a slight ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... jaws showed a fearful array of sharp teeth, the eyes were fiercely glowing, the long neck was covered with a coarse, shaggy mane, while the top of the body, which was out of the water, was incased in an impenetrable cuirass of bone. Such a monster as this seemed unassailable, especially by men who had no missile weapons, and whose eyes were so dim and weak. I therefore expected that the galley would turn and fly from the attack, for the monster itself seemed as ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... and the two champions stood confronting each other, neither very eager to renew the combat. But on foot, Muza, daring and rash as he was, could not but recognise his disadvantage against the enormous strength and impenetrable armour of the Christian. He drew back, whistled to his barb, that, piercing the ranks of the horsemen, was by his side on the instant, remounted, and was in the midst of the foe, almost ere the slower Spaniard was conscious of ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... miles of arid deserts, irredeemable swamps, frozen tundra, and impenetrable forests, the agricultural and mineral resources of Siberia are almost ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... pause with reverential awe when I contemplate the ponderous tomes in different languages, with which they have endeavored to solve this question, so important to the happiness of society, but so involved in clouds of impenetrable obscurity. Historian after historian has engaged in the endless circle of hypothetical argument, and, after leading us a weary chase through octavos, quartos, and folios, has let us out at the end of his work just as wise as we were at the beginning. It was ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... The processes of Washington's understanding are entirely hidden from us. What came from it, in counsel or in action, was the life and glory of his country; what went on within it, is shrouded in impenetrable concealment. Such elevation in degree, of wisdom, amounts almost to a change of kind, in nature, and detaches his intelligence from the sympathy of ours. We cannot see him as he was, because we are not like him. The tones of the mighty bell were heard with the certainty ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... Rhinoceros, whatever its species, seeks the densest covert, and its hide is almost impenetrable, it is a difficult animal to bag. Its peltry being of about the same consistency and thickness as the vulcanized India Rubber used in cushioning billiard tables, balls often rebound from it without producing a score. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... enchantment. The rivers now flowed out of, and not into the Mississippi, and Xavier called them bayous, and often it took much skill and foresight on his part not to be shot into the lane they made in the dark forest of an evening. And the forest,—it seemed an impenetrable mystery, a strange tangle of fantastic growths: the live-oak (chene vert), its wide-spreading limbs hung funereally with Spanish moss and twined in the mistletoe's death embrace; the dark cypress swamp with the conelike knees above the yellow ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fire; and the commandant had had the sagacity to draw up three lines of his men, with their bayonets fixed, from one side of the vessel to the other, abreast of the gangways, forming a barrier, behind which the crew of the French had retreated, and which was impenetrable to the gallant crew of the Aspasia, who were only ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "Petite Jeanne." For seamanship is like music—it is independent of language or race. There is only one right way and one wrong way at sea, all the world over. The dinghy was only towing behind while the fog continued to be impenetrable. At any moment the Captain might give the order ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... from the Indus to the Mahanadi in Madras, a distance of 2,300 miles; and it was guarded by nearly 12,000 men and petty officers, at an annual cost of L162,000. It would have stretched from London to Constantinople. . . . It consisted principally of an immense impenetrable hedge of thorny trees and bushes . . . A similar line, 280 miles in length, was maintained in the north-eastern part of the Bombay Presidency from Dohud to the Runn of Cutch.' In 1878 the salt duties were revised, and the necessary arrangements with the native ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Depressed by the impenetrable wall of mystery along which he was groping, he returned to the living-room, raised one of the windows and unbolted the front door to make sure of an exit in case these strange, foolish Talbots should unexpectedly return. The shades were up ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... testified unanimously that they had seen the tenor assist the soprano over this stile, and that then the couple had disappeared to the right through the plantation of young larches, and they had followed them along a path of enormous length with impenetrable arboriculture on either hand, without seeing any more of them, and expected to find them on arriving. The tenor and soprano gave close particulars of their return along this self-same path. All the evidence went to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... bottom of the ancient shaft, with the impenetrable gloom of the prehistoric workings crowding him close, Peveril had found a few minutes in which to reflect upon the strange happenings of the past half-hour. "Darrell's Folly" was the Copper Princess, the mine in which he owned a half-interest—the one for which he had searched ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... bestowal and in conjunction with the vaguely indeterminate lumps of matter that associate with man. As if in fifty centuries of man-herding they had made but one step out of the terrible isolation of brute species, an isolation impenetrable except by fear to every other brute, but now admitting the fact without knowledge, of the God of the Salt. Accustomed to receiving this miracle on open bowlders, when the craving is strong upon them, they seek such as these to run about, vociferating, as if they ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... what his vicar had passing in his mind, replied immediately to his thought: "And you, Brother Elias, you do much greater injury to the Order by your vanity, and by the prudence of the flesh, with which you are filled. The judgments of God are impenetrable; He knows you as you are, and nevertheless, He chose that you should be Superior of the Order; and it is His desire that I leave it in your hands. Alas! I fear that the people, and he who governs them, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... rose almost perpendicularly, and supported the immense parasol of foliage, the branches of which were so crossed and intertwined and entangled, as if by the hand of a basket-maker, that they formed an impenetrable shade. The third arm, on the contrary, stretched right out in a horizontal position above the roaring waters, into which the lower leaves dipped. There was no want of room in the interior of this gigantic tree, for there were ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... seemed clear. Though at first from my window I could make out nothing. I was feeling more than a trifle dazed,—there was a singing in my ears,—the sudden darkness was impenetrable. Then I became conscious that the guard was opening the door of his compartment. He stood on the step for a moment, seeming to hesitate. Then, with a lamp in his hand, he descended on to ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... very little is known of Emily Bronte,' she writes, 'that every little detail awakens an interest. Her extreme reserve seemed impenetrable, yet she was intensely lovable; she invited confidence in her moral power. Few people have the gift of looking and smiling as she could look and smile. One of her rare expressive looks was something to remember through life, there was such ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... of mud and rushes rise upon a low island in the marshes; and all communication with neighbouring tribes and with the town in which they sell the product of their rice-fields, is carried on by boats. The brakes are more impenetrable than the thickest underwood, but the natives have cut alleys through them, along which they impel their large flat-bottomed teradas with poles.[23] Sometimes a sudden rise of the river will raise the level of these generally stagnant waters ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... dale, we seemed in the darkness to be penetrating miles into the country; until, at last, passing, as well as we could see from the gloom, which was almost impenetrable, through a narrow glen between steep peaks, we suddenly turned a corner of a projecting rock, and found ourselves on an elevated plateau on the top of the mountains, where a strange scene awaited us. A number of ruddy watch-fires were burning with red and smoky light, and around ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... complete and complex commercial and social organizations. It has every variety of climate from the tropical humidity along the southern coast to the frigid cold of the mountains; peaks of ice, reefs of coral, impenetrable jungles and bleak, treeless plains. One portion of its territory records the greatest rainfall of any spot on earth; another, of several hundred thousand square miles, is seldom watered with a drop of rain and is entirely dependent for moisture upon the melting snows of the mountains. ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... security were the dugouts of the Somme hills compared to the protection that could be provided here! When the first series of bursts announced the storm you could not descend a flight of steps to a cavern whose roof was impenetrable even by five-hundred-pound shells. Little houses of sandbags with corrugated tin roofs, in some instances level with the earth, which any direct hit could "do in" were the best that generous army resources could permit. High explosive shells must turn such breastworks into rags ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... an impenetrable scrub of forest oak (casuarina) through which no passage appearing near, we were compelled, hot as the day was, to cut our way with axes where the trees were smallest and least numerous. We thus cleared our course for a mile and a ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... he remarked, as he leaned back, "there is nothing so impenetrable in the world as a club of good standing. It beats combination safes hollow. It would have taken all Scotland Yard to have dragged this letter from ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... compassion, but simply because she deemed it humiliating to allow one who bore her name to be placed in a doubtful and friendless position. All Madeleine's gentleness, cheerfulness, diligence to please, had failed to melt her aunt's impenetrable heart and make it expand to yield her a sacred place; the countess had misinterpreted her highest virtues,—grossly insulted her by attributing shameful motives to her most disinterested conduct, and destroyed all the merit of her own benefactions by reminding the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... began a scientific search; snatching a few hours sleep whenever the opportunity offered. But though the wings of his beaters touched the border line of the Ochori on the right and the Isisi on the left, and though he passed through places which hitherto had been regarded as impenetrable on account of divers devils, yet he found no trace of the cunning kidnapper, who, if the truth be told, had broken through the lines in the night, dragging an unwilling and exasperated member of the British Government at the end of a ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... timidity and confidence, resulting from the peculiar situation of the editor; who, though trembling for their success from a consciousness of their imperfections, yet fears not being involved in their disgrace, while happily wrapped up in a mantle of impenetrable obscurity. ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... pervade our minds, and the world would be full of enchantments, necromancy, and cunning craftiness. Blessed be God for the silence of the dead! We are glad that our weak and foolish hearts, so prone to love the creature more than the Creator, are broken off, by the impenetrable veil of death, from all connection with the departed. The salutary influences of death on survivors would be greatly lessened, if our connection and communication with them were continued. God is our chief good, not ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... storm-tossed waters close over him, and knew he had struck. In the moment he knew—oblivion, deep, ebon and impenetrable, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... turned noiselessly, and Olivier entered. His look fell on his son's face, which betrayed only apparent surprise at his unexpected return. He then glanced at Lucretia's, which was, as usual, cold and impenetrable. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... towers of Stirling the Bannockburn protected his front; morasses only to be crossed by narrow paths impeded the English advance. Edward Bruce commanded the right wing; Randolph the centre; Douglas and the Steward the left; Bruce the reserve, the Islesmen. His strength lay in his spearmen's "dark impenetrable wood"; his archers were ill-trained; of horse he had but a handful under Keith, the Marischal. But the heavy English cavalry could not break the squares of spears; Keith cut up the archers of England; the main body could not deploy, and the slow, relentless advance of ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... the day. We anxiously watched what we could see at the right, and noted the effect of the fire of the heavy guns of Benjamin's battery. We could see nothing distinctly that occurred beyond the Dunker Church, for the East and West Woods with farm-houses and orchards between made an impenetrable screen. A column of smoke stood over the burning Mumma house, marking ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... only of affairs in this life but in the ordering of all the future existences that man has conceived—is Public Opinion. Public opinion is the decree of human nature determined in impenetrable secrecy, enforced with ceremonious and bewildering circumlocution. It is thus double-natured. The organized public opinion that we see, hear, feel and obey is the costumed officialism of human nature, through ages ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... the bay-window, showed much more animation. At certain hours of the day convalescents passed in review before the window on their way to an airing. This spectacle was the still more depressing from a singular lack of sociability that appeared to prevail among them. Each man was encompassed by the impenetrable atmosphere of his own peculiar suffering. They did not talk or walk together. From the window I have seen half a dozen sunning themselves against a wall within a few feet of each other, to all appearance utterly oblivious of the fact. Had they but quarrelled or fought,—anything would ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... came a troop of Turkish, Tartar, and European servants, all in livery; and these were followed by a golden chariot, with closely-drawn blinds, the interior being impenetrable to the most curious gaze. Four Tartars in long white fur mantles rode on either side of the chariot, ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... the Queen's eyes, as she raised them towards Edith at this burst of enthusiasm, that gave for a moment, to a face otherwise so dissimilar, the likeness to her father; something, in that large pupil, of the impenetrable unrevealing depth of a nature close and secret in self-control. And a more acute observer than Edith might long have been perplexed and haunted with that look, wondering if, indeed, under the divine and spiritual composure, lurked the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... detail stood out in her memory, distinct as in the light of day. And simultaneously with that, a search-light had flashed upon the hidden places of her own soul, and she had had a vision which she knew that no veil of reserve, impenetrable though it might be, could annul. The night had fallen upon the Salute and wrapped it from sight, but was it ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... and tumbling across the face of the sky, and in and out of these swirling masses the high moon played hide-and-seek and the stars showed like pin-points. Such street lights as we have being extinguished at midnight, the tree-shaded sidewalks were in impenetrable shadow, the gardens that edged them were debatable ground, full of grotesque silhouettes, backgrounded by black bulks of silent houses all profoundly asleep. As for us, we also were shadows, whose feet were soundless on the ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... rattled The broken window-pane, And the dying taper wavered In the rude blast yet again— For one brief instant wavered, Then paled its sickly light, And the shuddering wretch was shrouded In impenetrable night. ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... the Secret Service felt himself entangled in a network of intrigues which seemed impossible to unravel. He seemed to be surrounded by an impenetrable mystery. ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... dark-eyed girl she had brought to him on New Year's Eve, the very night he had learned of his own daughter's tragedy—had he ever thought of them since? How had that poor girl fared? He had been too impatient of her impenetrable mood. What did he know of the hearts of others, when he did not even know his own, could not rule his feelings of anger and revolt, had not guided his own daughter into the waters of safety! And Leila! Had he not been too censorious in thought? How powerful, how strange was this instinct ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... miraculous power proceeded from an evil spirit and not from heavenly grace; we should believe rather that our hopes have been disappointed because of our ingratitude and our blasphemy, or by some just and impenetrable judgment of God. We beseech him to turn away his anger from us and vouchsafe unto us ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Joe knew that Sally was on the lakeward side of this small island, and that there were impenetrable rocks between her and the mainland. But Haney sat crosslegged where he could watch the mainland, and he hadn't moved in a long while. If someone did intend to commit murder from a distance, Haney was offering a chance for a very fine ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... have crushed the territories of the rebels like straws, and I have struck them with the plagues of the four elements. I have opened innumerable deep and very extensive forests, I have levelled their inequalities. I have traversed winding and thick valleys, which were impenetrable, like a needle, and I passed in digging tanks dug ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... the shining backs and shoulders of the negroes who hacked out the way for them to go. And again they would come suddenly upon a precipice, and drink in the soft cool breath of the ocean, and look down thousands of feet upon the impenetrable green under which they had been crawling, out to where it met the sparkling surface of the Caribbean Sea. It was three days of unceasing activity while the sun shone, and of anxious questionings around the camp-fire when the darkness ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... reckoned upon meeting with more than the ordinary crew of a merchant ship. The soldiers discharged their arquebuses, and then with pike and sword opposed an impenetrable barrier to the assailants, while the sailors from behind ladled over the boiling pitch and water through intervals purposely left in the line of the defenders. The conflict lasted but a few minutes. ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... water springs rise through the morass. Here it generally constructs its nest, "one of which," says an observer, "we had the good fortune to discover. It was built in the bottom of a tuft of grass in the midst of an almost impenetrable quagmire, and was composed altogether of old wet grass and rushes. The eggs had been flooded out of the nest by the extraordinary rise of the tide in a violent northwest storm, and lay scattered about the drift weed. The usual number of eggs is from six to ten. They are of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... invisible castle together. Up and up, and then down a little, and then up, and then along a strip of level ground, and then up again. The wind, a wind unknown in the happy valley, blows keen and strong; the rain-mist gets impenetrable; a dreary little cairn of stones appears. The landlord adds one to the heap, first walking all round the cairn as if he were about to perform an incantation, then dropping the stone on to the top of the heap with the gesture of a magician ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... did he open them now. 'Not with a shilling,' he contented himself with replying; and there stole, as he said it, a sort of smile over his face, that flickered there conspicuously for the least moment of time, and then faded and left behind the old impenetrable mask of years, cunning, and fatigue. There could be no mistake: my uncle enjoyed the situation as he had enjoyed few things in the last quarter of a century. The fires of life scarce survived in that frail body; but hatred, like some ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is for no-poets to comment on the greatest of poets! To make Othello say that he, who had killed his wife, was like Herod who killed Mariamne!—O, how many beauties, in this one line, were impenetrable to the ever thought-swarming, but idealess, Warburton! Othello wishes to excuse himself on the score of ignorance, and yet not to excuse himself,—to excuse himself by accusing. This struggle of feeling is finely conveyed in the word "base," which ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Marquise reached the window side by side, and they were in time to hear a dull splash in the waters fifty feet below them. There was a cloud over the little sickle of moon, and to their eyes, fresh from the blaze of candle-light, the darkness was impenetrable. ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... bore a part was at the farthest western point, where the remnants of four or five companies, half buried in the gloom of the impenetrable wood, on a line stretching along the whole crest of the hill, held these troops at bay. We lay or crouched behind leafy coverts, crawling from place to place as our range was reached by the enemy, shooting from the shield of tree-trunks or of tangled clumps of small firs, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... expected my husband to be agreeable to the casual guest under his roof. Through it all, I must confess, Susie was wonderful. She made no effort to ignore Duncan, as his ignoring of her only too plainly merited. She remained, not only poised and imperturbable, but impersonal and impenetrable. She found herself, I think, driven just a tiny bit closer to Gershom, who still shows a placid exterior to Duncan's ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, "Who made God?" He, at the same time, took care that I should be acquainted with what had been thought by mankind on these impenetrable problems. I have mentioned at how early an age he made me a reader of ecclesiastical history; and he taught me to take the strongest interest in the Reformation, as the great and decisive contest against priestly tyranny for ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... environment and the false standards by which she is surrounded, would like to meet and perhaps eventually marry some young man who is more worth while than the "pet cats" of her acquaintance, she is practically powerless to do so. She is cut off by the impenetrable artificial barrier of her own exclusiveness. She may hear of such young men—young fellows of ambition, of adventurous spirit, of genius, who have already achieved something in the world, but they are outside the wall of money and she is inside it, and there is no way for them to get in or for her ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... the scattered thoughts which had been pressing confusedly upon her brain. "Look away from the roses" indeed she could not, for the same range of vision took in the sea and them,—and the same range of thought. These might stand for an emblem of the present; that, of the future,—grave, far-off, impenetrable;—and passing as it were the roses of time Fleda fixed upon that image of eternity; and weighing the one against the other, felt, never in her life more keenly, how wild it would be to forget in smelling the roses her preparations for that distant voyage that must be made from the shores where ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... his brain, rising in an intolerable crescendo, blotting out other sensory perception. He fought to regain control of his fading senses, but the castle court blurred and he felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. He started sliding down an endless, dark chute, ending in impenetrable blackness. ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... hitherto published on that subject."[3112] Anterior to his treatise on "Man," the relationships between moral and physics were incomprehensible. "Descartes, Helvetius, Hailer, Lecat, Hume, Voltaire, Bonnet, held this to be an impenetrable secret, 'an enigma.'" He has solved the problem, he has fixed the seat of the soul, he has determined the medium through which the soul communicates with the body.[3113]—In the higher sciences, those treating of nature generally, or ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... satisfactory, and a few hard words were said of Mr. Dundas, his reserve to the world being taken for the same thing as indifference to his daughter, and resented as an offence. But for the third time in his life Sebastian was found capable of maintaining this impenetrable reserve. Pepita's true status in her own country—madame's suspicious debts and those damaging letters from London—Leam's hiding-place: he had had strength enough to keep his own counsel about the first two unbroken, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Richie's house. It was so deep with mud now that sometimes she had to walk outside the wheel-ruts into the wiry beach-grass. The road toiled among the dunes; on the shore on her right she could hear the creaming lap of the waves; but rain was driving in from the sea in an impenetrable curtain, and only when in some turn of the wind it lifted and shifted could she catch a glimpse of the scarf of foam lying on the sands, or see the gray heave of an endless expanse that might be water or might be sky ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... deceives no spectators,—a ghost that can be measured by the eye, and his human dimensions made out at leisure. The sight of a well-lighted house, and a well-dressed audience, shall arm the most nervous child against any apprehensions: as Tom Brown says of the impenetrable skin of Achilles with his impenetrable armour over it, 'Bully Dawson would have fought the devil ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... An impenetrable fog descended the mountain, and the rain deepened into a torrent. Moored in the bay were two war-steamers, with screw propellers; but they had all their sails unfurled, and swung uneasily to and fro. We, who were ignorant of their character, frequently paused ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... had been bathed in impenetrable fog. Throughout there had been an accompanying drizzle; and in the distance the wind had moaned a storm-menace. To the darkness of the day was added the sombreness of falling night as the three began the ascent of the Murk Muir Pass. By the time they emerged into the Devil's ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... elephant guns—which had, at length, come up—opening fire into the pine-wood forest. As the fire slackened, a reconnaissance of the hill was made by General Roberts and his staff; but the result showed that the mountain was so covered with pines, and brushwood, that it formed an almost impenetrable barrier to the advance of troops—for the growth was so thick that it was impossible to say in which direction any movement should be made. The experience gained, in the last six hours of hard fighting, had shown how difficult it was to keep ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... off through the dusk, without farewell or salutation steadily as their own steers. And there are a few millions of them—unhandy men to cross in their ways, set, silent, indirect in speech, and as impenetrable as that other Eastern fanner who is the bedrock of another land. They do not appear in the city papers, they are not much heard in the streets, and they tell very little in ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... west; it belonged to a steamer that they had seen come to her moorings in the afternoon. There were no other vessels showing lights. The rest was black with a blackness sentient of vague forms—an impenetrable wall of darkness that seemed to stand between them ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... daring horseman, a good lance, and a stout bowman, as of his military science. Cavalry was the favourite portion of the army in his day, and he shared in the general contempt felt for infantry. The horsemen were sheathed in complete steel; and their helmets, breast-plates and shields, were impenetrable even to the shafts of the Persians, who drew their bow-strings to the right ear, and threw discredit on the prowess of the Homeric archers.[13] The Roman officers, as must always be the case where cavalry is the principal arm, were remarkable for personal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... branch out from the sides of the volcanic chain of Auvergne were once, no doubt, filled with impenetrable forests: gloomy wildernesses, thick as those of American wilds, where scarcely the light of the sun could penetrate, and tenanted only by the wolf, the bear, the boar, and the stag. Now these forests have disappeared from the eastern and western skirts of the chain, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... The impenetrable veil between us and eternity permits no lifting of its folds; there is no parting of its greyness, save for a passage, but perhaps, in "that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns" Anne Coleman and her lover have met once more, and the long life of faithfulness ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... of presentation, with the most impenetrable gravity, as if he really believed that Oscar and his daughter now met each other for ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... Belford to Lovelace.— Reproaches him that he has not kept his honour with him. Inveighs against, and severely censures him for his light behaviour at Smith's. Belton's terrors and despondency. Mowbray's impenetrable behaviour. ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... was absolutely no means of escape from his prison. Daylight revealed a most unpleasant prospect. The barred window through which he peered was fifty or sixty feet from the ground, which was covered with jagged boulders. On all sides was the dark, impenetrable forest which marks the hills along the Hudson. After a few minutes' speculation he decided that he was confined in an upper chamber of the pump house connected with the estate. Investigation showed him that the bars in the windows had been ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... so far south, there might be no limit to their further progress. But, as had happened so many times before, their hopes were disappointed. From Ross Island, as far to the eastward as the eye could see, there extended a lofty, impenetrable wall of ice. To sail through it was as impossible as sailing through the cliffs of Dover, Ross says in his description. All they could do was to try to get round it. And then began the first examination ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... manner hinted, drawing the door gently to after him. He did not do this until he saw that the interior was veiled in impenetrable gloom. ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... for fourteen years, and still the mystery which surrounded his character formed as impenetrable a veil as ever. The popular nickname of Re Tentenna (King Waverer) seemed, in a sense, accepted by him when he said to the Duke d'Aumale in 1843: 'I am between the dagger of the Carbonari and the chocolate ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... he could now discern house and tower. They seemed incredibly far off and yet incredibly large. He stood where he was for a while, looking around. What to other eyes would have been impenetrable darkness, was to him no more than deep twilight. The gravel path being painful to his bare feet, he walked upon the greensward, where, moreover, his footfall made no sound. So light was his tread that ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... northwest, some of half-British blood, crowned the opposite hill, drawn up in front of their entrenchments, as if they scorned any other defence than that supplied by their living valour. They had borrowed their tactics from the Danes: deep and strong on all sides, they seemed to oppose an impenetrable wall to the foe; they had their shields to oppose to darts or arrows, their axes for the footmen, their spears to form a hedge of ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... had the same air of desolation and neglect, with the solitary exception of the massive and impenetrable fencing, which presented as unbroken and formidable an obstacle as ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on those grey material walls, they seemed as if a light glowed behind them, and again and again the mystic fragrance of incense was blown to her nostrils from across the verge of that world which is not so much impenetrable as ineffable, and to her ears came the dream of a chant that spoke of hidden choirs about all her ways. She struggled against these impressions, refusing her assent to the testimony of them, since all the pressure of credited opinion for three hundred years has been directed ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... you come upon them unexpectedly in your drives through the woods— bits of fenced-in forest, the old gates dropping off their hinges, the paths green from long disuse, the unchecked trees casting black, impenetrable shadows across the poor, meek, pathetic graves. I try sometimes, pushing aside the weeds, to decipher the legend on the almost speechless headstones; but the voice has been choked out of them by years of wind, and frost, and snow, and a few stray letters are ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... with forked stings at the end! The teeth of the Gorgons were terribly long tusks; their hands were made of brass; and their bodies were all over scales, which, if not iron, were something as hard and impenetrable. They had wings, too, and exceedingly splendid ones, I can assure you; for every feather in them was pure, bright, glittering, burnished gold, and they looked very dazzlingly, no doubt, when the Gorgons were flying about ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... the Yellowknife seemed to be no longer a river, but a narrow lake, and the third day the rowers came into the Nine Lake country at noon, and until another dusk the bateau threaded its way through twisting channels and impenetrable forests, and beached at last at the edge of a great open where the timber had been cut. There was more excitement here, but it was too dark for David to understand the meaning of it. There were many voices; dogs barked. Then voices were at his door, a key ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... so or not, it is certain that the train presented an impenetrable front even to our imagination, and we left it to go its way without the slightest effort to board. We remounted the fame-worn steps of Porter's Station, and began exploring North Cambridge for some means of transportation overland to Concord, for we were that far on the road by ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... "terrible blow," and the means by which it was to be effected; but the former would scarcely have been a Cecil had he not also read his royal master. His Majesty must have the matter so communicated to him that he should be able to believe that his own supernatural sagacity had solved a mystery impenetrable to the commonplace brains of the Lords of the Council. It might be reasonably anticipated that such a warning should be no mystery to the son of Lord Darnley—that his thoughts would fly rapidly to that house in the Kirk o' Field, where his own father had received his ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... forward as in the Siva Temple at Vellore. They appeared to spring from the pillars into the gloom urged by invisible riders, the effect barbarously rich and strange—motion arrested, struck dumb in a violent gesture, and behind them impenetrable darkness. I could not see the end of this hall—for the moon did not reach it, but looking up I beheld the walls fretted in great panels into the utmost splendour of sculpture, encircling the stories of the Gods amid a twining and under-weaving ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... into the woods in the condition of Falstaff, "heinously unprovided." Coming from the unbounded luxury of the plantations, he found himself entering "the most horrid and impenetrable forests, where no kind of refreshment was to be had,"—he being provisioned only with salt pork and pease. After a wail of sorrow for this inhuman neglect, he bursts into a gush of gratitude for the private generosity which relieved his wants at the last moment by the following ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... another; and when sorrows came over them, in dreary impartiality, they could feel reverently and deeply for each other. When Southey lost his idolized boy, Herbert, and had to watch over his insane wife, always his dearest friend, and all the dearer for her helpless and patient suffering under an impenetrable gloom,—when Wordsworth was bereaved of the daughter who made the brightness of his life in his old age,—and when Wilson was shaken to the centre by the loss of his wife, and mourned alone in the damp shades of Elleray, where he would allow not a twig to be cut from the trees ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... line of the breakers, indicating the great barrier-reef which surrounds the isle with an almost impenetrable belt; a few channels only lead from the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... hands clasped behind him, and begin his leisurely stories of olden times,—of those fabulous times—when the oats and barley were sold not by measures but by huge sacks, at two or three kopeks the sack; when in all directions, even close to the town, stretched impenetrable forests, untouched steppes. "And now," wailed the old man, who was already over eighty years of age:—"they have felled and ploughed up everything until there is no place to drive through." Anton, also, related many things concerning his mistress Glafira Petrovna: how sagacious and economical ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... icebergs play a very prominent part in the author's delineations both with the pencil and the pen. The actual fact, however, is that icebergs occur in far greater numbers in the seas which are yearly accessible than in those in which the advance of the Polar travellers' vessel is hindered by impenetrable masses of ice. If we may borrow a term from the geography of plants to indicate the distribution of icebergs, they may be said to be more boreal than polar forms of ice. All the fishers on the coast of Newfoundland, and most of the captains on the steamers between New York and ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... deported, and the capital and the whole of the river in the hands of the British, the bands of armed soldiery, unaccustomed to conditions other than those of anarchy, rapine and murder, took advantage of the impenetrable cover of their jungles to continue a desultory armed resistance. Reinforcements had to be poured into the country, and it was in this phase of the campaign, lasting several years, that the most difficult and most arduous work ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Italics are ours. Our reason for doubting Stewart's familiarity with the "Theodicee," and with Leibnitz in general, is derived in part from these phrases. We do not believe that any sincere student of Leibnitz has found him dark and impenetrable. Be it a merit or a fault, this predicate is inapplicable. Never was metaphysician more explicit and more intelligible. Had he been disposed to mysticize and to shroud himself in "impenetrable darkness," he would have found it difficult to indulge that propensity in French. Thanks to the strict ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret, he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... colossal dimensions, without ever growing very high. Its rounded masses of compact foliage are so wide-spreading that a single tree in the distance may give the impression of several grouped together; and its shade is dense, and impenetrable to the sun. A striking contrast to the sycamore is presented by the date-palm. Its round and slender stem rises uninterruptedly to a height of thirteen to sixteen yards; its head is crowned with a cluster of flexible leaves arranged in two or three tiers, but so scanty, so pitilessly slit, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the outside of the door; for, after its first appearance, it entered the room no more. He was never surprised, this man; he never seemed to wonder at the extraordinary things he found in the box, but took them out with a face expressive of a steady purpose and impenetrable character, and put them on the table. He was a kind man; gentle in his manners, and much interested in what they ate and drank. He was a learned man, and knew the flavour of John Westlock's private sauces, which he softly and feelingly described, as he ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... "A man impenetrable to kindness might be able to resist your letter. I am not that man. Your great heart ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... smart pace, for fully ten minutes, trying not to think, but feeling painfully conscious that my courage was ebbing fast. Then I paused for breath. Ugh! how foul the air smelt! I told myself that it was worse even than the impenetrable darkness—and that was bad enough. I recalled to mind how I had gone through tunnels—this very one among others—in a comfortable lighted carriage, and had drawn up the window, sharply and suddenly, to keep out ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... was determined to see the hermit, and question him face to face, not through a wall. She found that by making a circuit she could get above the cave, and look down without being seen by the solitary. But when she came to do it, she found an impenetrable mass of brambles. After tearing her clothes, and her hands and feet, so that she was soon covered with blood, the resolute, patient girl took out her scissors and steadily snipped and cut till she made a narrow path through the enemy. But so slow was the work that she had to leave it half ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... those impenetrable women; she can make herself what she pleases to be: playful, childlike, distractingly innocent; or reflective, serious, and profound enough to excite anxiety. She came to Madame d'Espard's dinner with the intention of being ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... her knees in bitter grief, the desolation of earth was spread like an impenetrable pall over his whole future. Suddenly he looked up, full of a strange, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... she seemed much more sweet and genial than before. It was as though she felt that she could afford to stoop now that her loftiness was realized—that her position was recognized and secure. If her inherent dignity made an impenetrable nimbus round her, this was against others; she herself was not bound by it, or to be bound. So marked was this, so entirely and sweetly womanly did she appear, that I caught myself wondering in flashes of thought, which came as sharp periods of doubting judgment between spells ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... had not begun to reach its full splendor when one quick flash of lightning succeeded another, followed by a rolling artillery of thunder, the precursors of heavy down-pouring rain. In five minutes the storm had extinguished every bright emblem, and plunged the illuminated mountains into impenetrable blackness. The weather, grimly triumphant, drove lads and lasses drenched to their homes. So ended the festival, but in the morning, in dry clothes, every one had the pleasure of imagining how beautiful the spectacle would have been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... of Discaria toumatoo, the Wild Irishman of the settlers, formed with the gigantic Aciphylla Colensoi, the Spaniard or Bayonet-grass, an often impenetrable thicket." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... then, in front of me, and some one had fallen in. The poor wretch was doomed to drown in that horrid and impenetrable darkness. I shuddered at the thought of that fate, and moved faster under the whip of impulse. The next moment I brought sharply up against a stone post by which ships were warped in and fastened. Below was the water, and now I could hear the sound of splashing, ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson |
