"Invisible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the long-legged spiders, that seemed to dance as they walked, the bounding grasshoppers, that leap aside, the heavy, bustling beetles, and the naked worms, pink and glabrous, mottled with white, or with his hands under his head and his eyes dosed he would listen to the invisible orchestra, the roundelay of the frenzied insects circling in a sunbeam about the scented pines, the trumpeting of the mosquitoes, the organ, notes of the wasps, the brass of the wild bees humming like bells in the tops of the trees, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... in some invisible region, amid the damp, misty darkness of a September night. The men lay in their ranks, each with his feet to the front and his head rearward, each covered by his overcoat and pillowed upon his haversack, each with his loaded rifle nestled close beside him. Asleep as they were, or dropping ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... reconnaissance—nothing much to see, except a solitary moving figure here and there on the mountains, crawling like a deerstalker across ledges and stretches of bracken—a few dots on the higher slopes, visible for a moment, then again invisible, then glimpsed against some lower snow patch, and gone again beyond the range of ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... instrument, or rather organ, has ever been that which nature prescribes in all education, the personal presence of a teacher, or, in theological language, Oral Tradition. It is the living voice, the breathing form, the expressive countenance, which preaches, which catechises. Truth, a subtle, invisible, manifold spirit, is poured into the mind of the scholar by his eyes and ears, through his affections, imagination, and reason; it is poured into his mind and is sealed up there in perpetuity, by propounding and repeating it, by questioning and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... has exercised the best critics and baffled all the ingenuity and research that has been brought to bear on it. Navarrete and Ticknor both incline to the belief that Cervantes knew who he was; but I must say I think the anger he shows suggests an invisible assailant; it is like the irritation of a man stung by a mosquito in the dark. Cervantes from certain solecisms of language pronounces him to be an Aragonese, and Pellicer, an Aragonese himself, supports this view and believes him, moreover, to ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... principals, employ the public attention, instead of Mogul Pitt and Nabob Bute; the former of whom remains shut Up in Asiatic dignity at Hayes, while the other is again mounting his elephant and levying troops. What Lord Tavistock meaned of his invisible Haughtiness'S(584) invective on Mr. Neville, I do not know. He has not been in the House of Commons since the war of privilege. It must have been something he dropped ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... that there is no such thing as matter—that all is mind. They say that none of us exists, except in the imagination of his fellows, other than as an intangible, invisible mentality. ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... destroying the one and leaving the other outstanding. The action is confined within the visible spectrum, and thus a broad distinction is exhibited between the action of the sun's rays on vegetable juices and on argentine compounds, the latter being most sensibly affected by the invisible rays ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... as a rule, are content with their lot, and do not wish to appear in any form but their own. And, knowing that evil or mischievous mortals can transform them at will, the fairies take great care to remain invisible, so they can not be interfered with. Have you ever," she asked, suddenly, "seen ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... the common striving for social and spiritual progress, our common heritage as Americans, and the infinite web of national sentiment, have created a solidarity in a great people unparalleled in all human history. These invisible bonds should not and can not be shattered by differences of opinion growing out of discussion of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... with their glasses were feverishly watching the distant steamer, now hull down to the north, and almost invisible in ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... say, in the plump, each of us under his bush, and the whole of us overhung a foot or two by a brow of land bound together by the spreading beech-roots. To any one standing on the bruach we were invisible, but a step or two would bring him round to the foot of our retreat and disclose the three ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... then, suddenly stopping, scuttled back. This movement he repeated twice, after which he stood in deep thought before making another dash for the door, which, like the others, came to an abrupt end as though he had run into some invisible obstacle. And, finally, wheeling sharply, he bustled off down the street and ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... German trenches," said he. "They are five miles away. Their gun-positions are in the woods. Our own trenches are invisible ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... screamed and moaned as she saw shells tearing their way through this column, horses and men rolling over on the ground, puffs of smoke which rose revealing frightful gaps; but on flowed the dark gray torrent as if propelled by an invisible, resistless force. Vacancies made by wounds and death were closed almost instantly. In the strange, luminous twilight made by the approaching storm, the impetuous advance was wonderfully distinct in the distance, ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... steps with great care and precision. After which he sat down to recover his breath. Then he rope-walked again, doing impossible things—that is, they would have been impossible if he had not been sustained by many invisible strings, which the buffo manipulated with wonderful skill. I liked the funambolo even better than the wizard, he ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... futile to do other than theorize. My own theory, or rather one of my own theories, is that the property of transmutation, i.e., the power of assuming any animal guise, was one of the many properties—including second sight, the property of becoming invisible at will, of divining the presence of water, metals, the advent of death, and of projecting the etherical body—which were bestowed on man at the time of his creation; and that although mankind in general is no longer possessed ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... youthfulness, he, as already hence anticipating his descendants, gladly told it to my mother; rejoicing in that tumult of the senses wherein the world forgetteth Thee its Creator, and becometh enamoured of Thy creature, instead of Thyself, through the fumes of that invisible wine of its self-will, turning aside and bowing down to the very basest things. But in my mother's breast Thou hadst already begun Thy temple, and the foundation of Thy holy habitation, whereas my father was as yet but ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... much like many days in the life of the Bines and in the life of the Hightower Hotel. The scene from parlour to cafe was surveyed at intervals by a quiet-mannered person with watchful eyes, who appeared to enjoy it as one upon whom it conferred benefits. Now he washed his hands in the invisible sweet waters of satisfaction, and murmured softly to himself, "Setters and Buyers!" Perhaps the term fits the family of Bines as well as might many another coined ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... invisible to human eyes the senses of a dog may at times perceive, it can be nothing resembling our idea of a ghost. Most probably the mysterious cause of start and whine is not anything seen. There is no anatomical reason for supposing ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... don't know my own shadow. I begin to think that I am important. Footing up a mountain corrects the notion somewhat. Yonder, I believe, I see the Grisons, where Freedom sits. And there's the Monte della Disgrazia. Carlo Alberto should be on the top of it, but he is invisible. I do not see ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... advanced another step, Nanteuil suddenly sprang backwards, and his hand rested on the moulding of a wooden panel.... At the same moment, Monsieur Havard, as if hampered by some invisible obstacle, stretched his length on ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... some invisible corner in the mist, for the chant broke out anew in stronger volume, and now he was able to distinguish words ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... what was already in the mind of the person mesmerising him. I have tested the theory of clairvoyance—and I have never found the manifestations get beyond that point. The Indians don't investigate the matter in this way; the Indians look upon their boy as a Seer of things invisible to their eyes—and, I repeat, in that marvel they find the source of a new interest in the purpose that unites them. I only notice this as offering a curious view of human character, which must be quite new to you. We have nothing whatever to do with clairvoyance, or with mesmerism, or with ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... she looked at the programme, she thought of the strange complications of feeling that are surely the fruit of an extreme civilisation. She saw herself caught in a spider's web of apparently frail, yet really powerful, threads spun by an invisible spider. Her world was full of gossamer playing the part of iron, of gossamer that was compelling, that made and kept prisoners. What freedom was there for her and women like her, what reality of freedom? Even beauty, birth, money were gossamer to hold the fly. For they concentrated ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... and going through transverse passages of the "staff," the attendants, the clerks, messengers, etc. Each atom in the stream was welling over with egotistic woes, far too many for the brief moment in which he would be closeted with the great one, who held the invisible keys of relief, who penetrated this mystery of human maladjustment. It was a busy, toiling, active, subdued place, where the tinkle of the telephone bell, the hum of electric annunciators, as one member of the staff signalled to ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... bring up at no great distance from the shore. From where we lay we could see but a very little way up the river, a point of land covered with trees hiding the next reach, so that the chase might be there, though invisible to us. The captain accordingly directed the first lieutenant to pull up in the gig to ascertain if she was there; intending, if so, to carry the ship into the river whenever the sea-breeze should set in. As she was a large, well-armed vessel, with a numerous crew, he was ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... formed at "the dew point." The vapour of the lower atmosphere, at this elevation, is condensed, or rendered visible. In fog the dew point is at the surface of the earth; in summer it may be several thousands of feet above. The Cumulus cloud forms from below. The invisible vapour of the lower atmosphere is condensed, parts with its thousand degrees of latent heat, which rush upwards, forcing the vapour into the vast hemispherical heaps of snowy, glittering clouds, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... mournful howls which make travelers shudder in the darkness and solitude of the country. All eyes were focused upon him now as he rose on his front feet, as though haunted by a vision, and began to howl at something invisible, unknown, and doubtless horrible, for he was bristling all over. The gamekeeper with livid face cried: 'He scents him! He scents him! He was there when I killed him.' The two women, terrified, began to wail in ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... seeming apparitions of persons recently or long dead. In others, as in the case of haunted houses, there are noises of great variety, moving of objects, opening and shutting of doors, appearances of unknown forms, and all the phenomena which might be produced by an invisible inhabitant of the house who was able to become visible under certain circumstances. More ordinary manifestations are rapping sounds and lifting of heavy bodies, writing either with or without apparent human agency, and mental communication of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... learned from experience the futility of trying to draw on a person whose very outlines are invisible. Jessup's hands went up, too, and then dropped quickly ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... indefinite religious feelings and aspirations. There is a want of some object to fill the void in the feelings, to satisfy the undefined yearning—a need of something to adore; consequently, when there is no visible object of worship, the Invisible is adored. The time of this mental revolution is, at best, a trying period for youth; and when there is an inherited infirmity of nervous organization, the natural disturbance of the mental balance may easily pass into ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... the right. Remembering the masked battery, I suspected that had something to do with the matter, and, on following it up, I learned that the Kentucky colonel before mentioned had appealed for aid against the masked battery and invisible force of rebels, and that a regiment had been ordered to him. This regiment, filing off into the timber, had been followed by Thayer's brigade, supposing it to be advancing to the front, and thus left a single brigade to attack a superior force of the enemy in an intrenched and naturally strong ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... blow gently, the air was purified. Again we heard the signal peal of thunder, but it seemed a great way off, as if the piece was hurrying away to a more urgent quarter. The gentle shower ceased, the black clouds were torn asunder overhead; invisible hands seemed to snatch a gray veil of fleecy clouds from the face of the harvest moon, and it shone out as clear and serene as before the storm. The ditches on each side of the track were half full of water, ties were ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... or of some change in her own powers of seeing, surely there was a difference in her present outlook. Tall shapes were becoming visible—the air was no longer blank—she could see—Then suddenly she saw why. In the wall high up on her right was a window. It was small and all but invisible, being covered on the outside with vines, and on the inside with the cobwebs of a century. But some small gleams from the starlight night came through, making phantasms out of ordinary things, which unseen were horrible enough, and half seen choked ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... failed her. Her voice trembled, she turned away from him and walked down the studio, stopping here and there as if to examine a cast or a figure, invisible through the tears which welled up in her eyes. The sculptor followed close behind her, until she put her hand upon the great Oran rug which ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... cord or rope can bind bodies together, there may be an invisible cord binding souls. A magnetic man throws it over others as a hunter throws a lasso. Some men are surcharged with this influence, and have employed it for patriotism and Christianity ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... find was in the windows of the passenger trains, and in the vile vodka which the Jews drugged with thorn-apple. Sometimes there would be a glimpse of a woman's head at a carriage window, and one would stand like a statue without breathing and stare at it until the train turned into an almost invisible speck; or one would drink all one could of the loathsome vodka till one was stupefied and did not feel the passing of the long hours and days. Upon me, a native of the north, the steppe produced the effect of a deserted Tatar cemetery. In the summer the steppe with ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... "shortly afterwards visited these rooms. An hour after her departure Duson was dead. He died from drinking out of your liqueur glass, into which a few specks of that powder, invisible almost to the naked eye, had been dropped. At Dorset House Reginald Brott was waiting for her. He left shortly afterwards in a ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of fear, Alroy, quite forgetting the spectre, turned and pressed his hand over her eyes. When he again looked round the apparition was invisible. ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... been told, that a being of mighty power, who had been the cause of all that he saw around him, and of that existence of which he himself was conscious, would, by a great act of power upon the death and corruption of human creatures, raise up the essence of thought in an incorporeal, or at least invisible form, to give it a happier ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... the involuntary cry of warning that rose in his throat. Copper! His muscles tensed as her arm came up and down—a shadow almost invisible in the starlight. The leaning figure of Douglas collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been suddenly released. The torch dropped from his hand and went bouncing and winking down the wall of the pit, followed by Douglas—a ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... threw upon them, making signs for Mr. Park to do the same, which he did. The negro then informed him, that those jars belonged to some supernatural power, and were found in their present situation about two years ago, and that every traveller, as he passed them, from respect to the invisible proprietor, threw some grass upon the heap to defend them from the rain. Thus conversing, they travelled on in the most friendly manner, until they perceived the footsteps of a lion, when the negro insisted that Mr. Park should walk before. The latter refused, on which the negro, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... Doubt and uncertainty reign on every side, and we find ourselves now in a state of eager expectation, and now plunged in gloomy apprehension. Wheresoever we place our foot, the ground gives way beneath us, and if we wish to sit down and rest awhile, the chair is drawn from under us by some invisible hand. Thus are we whirled to and fro in a struggle for which we were never prepared, and in which numbers of us miserably perish. Fathers scold and threaten, while mothers weep because we have forsaken the traditions ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... whether they were intended to depict written characters or some ornament for the head. This figure was so drawn on the roof that its feet were just in front of the natural seat, whilst its head and face looked directly down on anyone who stood in the entrance of the cave, but it was totally invisible from the outside. The painting was more injured by the damp and atmosphere, and had the appearance of being much more defaced and ancient than any of the others which we have seen. There were two other paintings, one on each side of the rocks, which stood on either side of the natural ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... pastor's daughter observed the ruin of her enemies. Discreet and victorious, she remained in possession of the field. More closely than ever did she cleave to the side of her mistress, her pupil, and her friend; and in the recesses of the palace her mysterious figure was at once invisible and omnipresent. When the Queen's Ministers came in at one door, the Baroness went out by another; when they retired, she immediately returned. Nobody knew—nobody ever will know—the precise extent and the precise nature of ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... opened, and John—one of the largest of his race—was leaning against the door-pillar with his ambrosial hair powdered, his legs crossed; beautiful, silk-stockinged; in his hand his cane, gold-headed, dolichoskion. Jeames was invisible, but near at hand, waiting in the hall, with the gentleman who does not wear livery, and ready to fling down the roll of hair-cloth over which her ladyship was to step to her carriage. These things and men, the which to tell of demands time, are seen in the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... waits the co-operation of the laggard sea-breezes to sweep down and take the beleaguered city by assault. An ineffable calm sinks over the landscape. In the magical moonlight the shot-tower loses its angular outline and practical relations, and becomes a minaret from whose balcony an invisible muezzin calls the Faithful to prayer. "Prayer is better than sleep." But what is this? A shuffle of feet on the pavement, a low hum of voices, a twang of some diabolical instrument, a preliminary hem and cough. Heavens! it cannot ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... Bank is the local instrumentality of the invisible government that holds the nation in its clutch. Kaiser Uhlman has more influence than the city mayor and more power than the police force. The law has always been a little thing to him and his clique. The inscription on the shield of this bank is said to read "To hell with the Constitution; ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... atmosphere of the late autumn sunset, through the pensive stillness of the hushed woods, the distant sound of feminine voices, calling to one another, echoed from the hills, and beyond the hedges was heard the crackling of branches, snapped by invisible hands, and the rattle of nuts dropping on the earth. It was the noise made by the gatherers of beechnuts, for in the years when the beech produces abundantly, this harvest, under the sanction of the guardians of the forest, draws together the whole population of women and children, who collect ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... He stretched himself out in it, and resting his head on the metal rim, lay on his back, looking up at the moon. The sky was a midnight-blue, like warm, deep, blue water, and the moon seemed to lie on it like a water-lily, floating forward with an invisible current. One expected to see its great ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... der Staatsanleihen (1856), 71 ff. And, earlier yet, Ad. Mueller had looked upon taxes not in the light of an insurance premium, but as "the interest of the invisible and yet absolutely necessary intellectual capital of the nation." (Elemente, III, 75.) Of course, the State is much more than a species of capital; just as a Gothic cathedral is something more than a piece of masonry, but does not on that ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... plane on the surface of the head. A person incautiously bathing, or dipping water out of the river, may be suddenly seized by a crocodile who, though on the watch, is buried in the muddy water and invisible. Every year a certain number of human lives are lost in this way. Cattle and other animals coming to the river-side to drink are dragged into the water and devoured. The Poona river, swollen to a torrent in the rains, and for the rest of the year reduced to a small stream, ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... thee, that word 'how' has no business in the mouth of a child of God. When I was a boy, who had dreamed 'how' men in London might speak with men in Edinburgh through the air, invisible and unheard? That is a matter of trade now. Can thou imagine what subtle secret lines there may be between the ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... it open. They paused for a moment. She could not ask him to come in. She could not say that she hoped they would meet again; there was nothing to be said, and so without a word she went through the gate, and was soon invisible. Directly Hewet lost sight of her, he felt the old discomfort return, even more strongly than before. Their talk had been interrupted in the middle, just as he was beginning to say the things he wanted to say. After all, what had they been able to say? He ran his mind ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... separate locks. Raffles had removed them a few hours before their time, and the electric light shone on a corrugated shutter bare as the ribs of an empty carcase. Every article of value was gone from the one place which was invisible from the little window in the door; elsewhere all was as it had been left overnight. And but for a train of mangled doors behind the iron curtain, a bottle of wine and a cigar-box with which liberties had been taken, a rather black ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... voices full and sweet, In this wide hall with earth's inventions stored, And praise th' invisible universal Lord, Who lets once more in peace the nations meet, Where Science, Art, and Labor have outpour'd Their myriad horns of ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... interpenetrated with smoke and idleness and a certain dreary sodden dissipation, heated yet unexcited, reading a novel he has read half-a-dozen times before. He turns his bemused eyes to the door when his invisible visitors enter. He fancies he hears some one coming, but will not take the trouble to rise and see who is there—so, instead of that exertion, he takes up his pipe, knocks the ashes out of it upon his book, fills it with coarse tobacco, and stretches his long arm over the shoulder ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... rows of angels—to the right The hosts of Michael, Gabriel's to the left, Before, the troop of Ariel, and behind, The ranks of Raphael; all, with one accord, Chanting the glory of the Everlasting. Upon the high and holy throne there rests, Invisible, the Majesty of God. About his brows the crown of mystery Whereon the sacred letters are engraved Of the unutterable Name. He grasps A sceptre of keen fire; the universe Is compassed in His glance; at His right hand Life stands, and at His left ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... clear imagination, like a good lens, faithfully presents its objects, although in a larger form, in order that those who have no time for scientific observation, may see what the scientist desires to direct their attention to. There are creatures almost invisible to the naked eye, which, nevertheless, cause great irritation to the nerves. So, also, there are matters affecting the body corporate of these kingdoms which the public are blind to and suffer from, but which, if thoroughly exposed, ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... coach-house, now transformed into a rustic theatre. One big door was open, and seats, arranged lengthwise, faced the red table-cloths which formed the curtain. A row of lamps made very good foot-lights, and an invisible band performed a Wagner-like overture on combs, tin trumpets, drums, and pipes, with ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... inspired man—the hands of the muses have been laid upon him. He plays like one possessed by a demon, by a whole horde of demons. You can feel them in the air round about him, capering frenetically; with their invisible feet they set the pace, and the hair of the leader of the orchestra rises on end, and his eyeballs start from their sockets, as he toils to keep ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... of a Mid[-e]. The powers which he possessed in the second degree may become augmented. He is represented in No. 77 with arms extended, and with lines crossing his body and arms denoting darkness and obscurity, which signifies his ability to grasp from the invisible world the knowledge and means to accomplish extraordinary deeds. He feels more confident of prompt response and assistance from the sacred manid[-o]s and his knowledge of them becomes ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... Quite right. The Princess' room there? And the Queen's here? Thanks, good friend. [KAMKE goes out.] Baronet Hotham is preserving his incognito to the extent of becoming entirely invisible. I've smuggled myself into the country from London—by way of Hanover—as if I were a bale of prohibited merchandise. [Wipes his forehead.] The deuce take this equestrian official business, where a man needs have the manners of a dandy with the unfeeling bones of a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... interests, which have eternal significance and are imperishable values. As we travel along the Pilgrim Way it is with hearts uplifted and stimulated by the Vision of the end. We advance as seeing Him Who is invisible. We live by hope, knowing that we shall attain no enduring satisfaction until we pass through the gates into the City, and mingle with the throng of worshippers who sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb. Therefore our life is always forward-looking and optimistic: because we are ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... conductor of electricity. The higher the conducting power the more copious were the currents. He now passes from his little brass globe to the globe of the earth. He plays like a magician with the earth's magnetism. He sees the invisible lines along which its magnetic action is exerted and sweeping his wand across these lines evokes this new power. Placing a simple loop of wire round a magnetic needle he bends its upper portion to the west: the north pole of the needle immediately swerves ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... the reeds, through which the punt was pushed till it and its occupants were hidden, when, having thrust down the pole as an anchor to steady the little vessel, the line was drawn tight so as to try whether it would act, and then kept just so tense as to be invisible beneath the water, and secured to the edge of ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... then ... an awesome something. A weird wrench as if some greater power, some greater law had taken hold. A glove of force, invisible, but somehow sensed, had closed about the wire and flame. Instantly the roaring of the burner changed in tone; an odor of gas spewed out of the vents at its base. Something had cut off the flow of flame in the brass ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... would assist him in his labours. The supposition rested on a theory which ascribed to all things, whether animate or inanimate, a double or reflection which corresponded to the thing itself in every particular. It was like a shadow, except that it was invisible to mortal eyes, and did not perish with the object which ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... the room where Cowper died, and the bell which he last touched. We went to his grave, and to Mrs Unwin's, who is buried at some distance. I lamented this, "Do not live in the visible, but the invisible," said your father,—"his attainments, his tenderness, his affections, his sufferings, and his hardships, will live long after both their ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... were splendidly asserted; there was a faint wholesome odour from the fine block pavement of the roadway, white, save where the snailish water-wagon laid its long strips of steaming brown. Locusts, serenaders of the heat, invisible among the branches, rasped their interminable cadences, competing bitterly with the monotonous chattering of lawn-mowers propelled by glistening black men over the level swards beneath. And though porch and terrace were left to vacant wicker chairs and swinging-seats, and to flowers and plants ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... the season at any watering-place depresses me. If I could wear fern seed in my shoes to make me invisible, and sit on the piazza railing in a shirt-waist and a short skirt, I would love it. But both Bee and Mrs. Jimmie, with the light of heaven in their eyes, pulled out and put on their most be-yew-tiful Paris clothes, and if I do say it of my sister—well, for modesty's sake, I ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... flanks swinging steadily in the square trot. Ghostly bushes passed them; ghostly rock elevations. Far, in indeterminate distance, lay the outlines of the mountains. Always, they seemed to recede. The plain, all but invisible, the wagon trail quite so, the depths of space—these flung heavy on the soul their weight of mysticism. The woman, until now bolt upright in the buckboard seat, shrank nearer to the man. He felt against his sleeve the delicate contact of her garment and thrilled to the touch. A coyote barked sharply ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... deities known to the Pitakas but the sculptures or images[236] in Siamese temples also include Ganesa, Phra: Narai (Narayana or Vishnu) riding on the Garuda and Phra: Isuen (Siva) riding on a bull. There is a legend that the Buddha and Siva tried which could make himself invisible to the other. At last the Buddha sat on Siva's head and the god being unable to see him acknowledged his defeat. This story is told to explain a small figure which Siva bears on his head and recalls the legend found in the Pitakas[237] that the Buddha made himself invisible ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... conflict to be irrepressible, and that white and black could not and should not live together as co-ordinate ruling elements! How lightly they told the tales of blood—of the Masked Night-Riders, of the Invisible Empire of Rifle clubs and Saber clubs (all organized for peaceful purposes), of warnings and whippings and slaughter! Ah, it is wonderful! * * * Bloody as the reign of Mary, barbarous as ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... "knowing their calls, you have only to pass a May or June evening near a marsh to learn whether they inhabit it. If there, they will greet you late in the afternoon with a clear whistled ker-wee, which soon comes from dozens of invisible birds about you, and long after night has fallen, it continues like a springtime chorus of piping hylas. Now and again it is interrupted by a high-voiced, rolling whinney, which, like a call of alarm, is taken up and repeated ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... 'Night Cap', 'Spectacles', and Charles Lillie. However there were, now and then, some faint endeavours at Humour and sparks of Wit: which the Town, for want of better entertainment, was content to hunt after through a heap of impertinences; but even those are, at present, become wholly invisible and quite swallowed up in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... speak, speaking to the heart of sinful man, to enlighten and to teach him. And therefore, St. Paul says, the sinful heathen were without excuse, because, he says, 'that which may be known of God is manifest, that is plain, among them, for God hath showed it to them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.' 'But these heathens,' he says, 'did not like to retain God in their knowledge; ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... their trunks lifted above their heads to reach the higher branches, the rest of their bodies being invisible, and of course they could not ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the end of it. Two strings stretch from the tip of the cross-piece to the end of the long piece. The instrument is rested on the knee, and the gut of the bow, which is between the two strings, is drawn first across one and then the other. An invisible vocalist, in the adjoining cabin, gave us a song to the accompaniment of the violin. I should imagine that it was a sentimental song, as it sounded very doleful; it must surely have been the tune that the ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... two or three days he and Peggy tackled the serious problem of the reorganization of Denby Hall. Peggy had the large ideas of a limited though acute brain, stimulated by social ambitions. When she became mistress of Denby Hall, she intended to reverse the invisible boundary that included it in Durdlebury and excluded it from the County. It was to be County—of the fine inner Arcanum of County—and only Durdlebury by the grace of Peggy Trevor. No "durdling," as Oliver called it, for her. Denby Hall ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... successions of angry words together, you have the manual brawl; add brawls together, with the festering sorrows they leave, and they rise to riots and revolts. One reverend thing after another ceases to meet reverence: in visible material combustion, chateau after chateau mounts up; in spiritual invisible combustion, one authority after another. With noise and glare, or noisily and unnoted, a whole Old System of things is vanishing piecemeal: on the morrow thou shalt look and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... to feel faint with the heat and excitement, a thrill ran through me, for from somewhere close at hand, but invisible to me in the position I occupied, ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... choose. I turned them all over, one after another, in my mind, and then not feeling inclined to any of them I allowed my thoughts to wander. Suddenly it seemed to me that I felt the earth move and that a secret invisible force was slowly dragging me into space and becoming tangible to my senses; I saw it mount into the sky; I seemed to be on a ship; the poplar near my window resembled a mast; I arose, stretched ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... chastened Leslie had gone to sleep, his arm over Nina's unconscious shoulder, Elizabeth stood wide-eyed on the tiny balcony outside her room. From it in daylight she could see the Livingstone house. Now it was invisible, but an upper window was outlined in the light. Very shyly she kissed ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "Invisible," returned Josie, very cheerfully. "I had to invent that story, my dear, and the Recording Angel is said ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... drained their goblets and dashed them, mouth downwards, upon the brazen tables, so that the clang reverberated over Ulla. Setanta thereupon stood up while the smiths roared a welcome to their foster-son, and he said that it was not he who had gained the victory, for that someone invisible had assisted him and had charged him with a strength not his own. Then he faltered in his speech and said again that he would be a faithful hound in the service of the artificers, and sat down. The smiths at that time would ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... of taking her stand out of herself, and looking at her own life as an insignificant part of a divinely-guided whole. She read on and on in the old book, devouring eagerly the dialogues with the invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength, returning to it after she had been called away, and reading till the sun went down behind the willows. With all the hurry of an imagination that could never rest in the present, she sat in the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... a cry of horror, and sprang forward into the hall, facing round to meet her invisible enemy; but she uttered a faint sigh of relief as her arm was caught again, and she ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... When the water in a tea-kettle is boiling rapidly, what do you see between the mouth of the spout and the cloud of steam? What must have come through that clear space? Is the steam then at first visible or invisible? ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... wanting, he can sometimes trace the crevice by the hissing sound of the air streams where they issue from the ice. If he will take time to note what goes on, he can usually in an hour or two behold the first invisible crack widen until it may be half an inch across. He may see how the surface water hastens down the opening, a little river system being developed on the surface of the ice as the streams make their way to one or more points of descent. In doing ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... the hems and tucks, true to a thread, and dotted with the same fairy needle dimples (no machine-work, but all real, dainty finger-craft); the bits of ruffling peeping out from the folds, with their edges in almost invisible whip-hems; and here and there a finishing of lovely, lace-like crochet, done at odd minutes, and for "visiting work,"—there was something prettier and more precious, really, in all this than in the imported fineries which had ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... men are separated from each other by lofty stationary barriers; in democracies they are divided by a number of small and almost invisible threads, which are constantly broken or moved from place to place. Thus, whatever may be the progress of equality, in democratic nations a great number of small private communities will always be formed within the general pale ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... me change my intention: whoever attacks me, I am well armed, and can say I am as brave as any one." "But they who will attack you are not to be seen," replied the dervish; "how will you defend yourself against invisible persons?" "It is no matter," answered the prince, "all you say shall not persuade me to do anything contrary to my duty. Since you know the way, I conjure you once ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... human being, I mean a man who lets you know something about him and does not barricade himself against you. But a man who puts up the shutters in front of his virtues and faults bothers me most terribly, and I always seem to be bumping my head against something invisible whenever I see him, which is a ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... hero's sleeve, as he felt for an almost invisible moustache, scanning the piled-up, serried faces with ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... encountered him Amid the battle throng invisible, In thickest darkness shrouded all his face; He stood behind, and with extended palm Dealt on Patroclus' neck and shoulder broad A mighty buffet.' Iliad, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... supposed to possess the faculty of beholding spirits when they are invisible to mortals, and of foretelling death by lamentable howls. It is lucky to be followed by a strange dog. The Welch believe in the apparition of certain spirits under the form of hunting dogs, which they call dogs of the sky (cwn wybir, or cwn aunwy:) they indicate the death of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... action—irrespective of how little considered it may have been—is expressive of its doer's attitude, of his way of feeling and thinking. But what determines a man's way of thinking except his essential thoughts concerning the relationship between God and the world, the visible and the invisible? Every serious thinker, therefore, must recognize the importance of faith in the furtherance of science, the progress of nations and the life of the state. It is a fearful delusion that man can be immoral, ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... appointed time. And yet they present, as a whole, numerous affinities more or less close, a definite coordination in a given system of organization which has intimate relations with the mode of existence of each type, and even of each species. An invisible thread unwinds itself throughout all time, across this immense diversity, and presents to us as a definite result, a continual progress in the development of which man is the term, of which the four classes of vertebrates are intermediate forms, and the totality of ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... the moment, was a sulphurous crater, the fire-belching demons, invisible in the smoke. Through the glass Jack could see the lines clearly—or the smoke arising above them. The enemy had been pushed back nearly two miles since he had left Colonel Sherman a few rods above the stone bridge. The Union force, as marked by the veil of smoke, curved, about the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... accustomed feet the secure limestone ledges that promised safety, pausing to listen when bits of loosened stone fell behind her. Finally, catching the protruding roots of a great sycamore whose shadow had guided her, she gained the top. The moon, invisible in the vale, now greeted her as it rose superbly above a dark woodland across a wide stretch of intervening field. But there were nearer lights than those of star and moon, and their presence afforded her a ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Terrans watched that patrol of alien warriors, their attitude suggesting that they hoped to pass unseen, hurry toward the city. Then Raf slipped out of the flyer. His dark clothing in this light should render him largely invisible. ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... of June 1 the French look-outs in Gabarus Bay saw more lights than usual to the southward. Next morning Louisbourg was early astir, anxiously eager to catch the first glimpse of this great destroying armada, which for several expectant hours lay invisible and dread behind a curtain of dense fog. Then a light sea breeze came in from the Atlantic. The curtain drew back at its touch. And there, in one white, enormous crescent, all round the deep-blue offing, stood the mighty fleet, closing in ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus!" The greatest test of an earthly soldier's courage is patient endurance! The noblest trait of the spiritual soldier is the same. "Having done all to stand," "He endured, as seeing Him who is invisible!" Beware of the angry recrimination, the hasty ebullition of temper. Amid unkind insinuations—when motives are misrepresented, and reputation assailed; when good deeds are ridiculed, kind intentions coldly thwarted and repulsed, chilling reserve manifested where you expected ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... should be selected with due regard to the species of garment and the tone of the complexion. If the face be of that faint drab which your friends would designate pallid, and your enemies sallow, a coat of pea-green or snuff-brown must be scrupulously eschewed, whilst black or invisible green would, by contrast, make that appear delicate and interesting, which, by the use of the former colours, must necessarily seem ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... hour, the creations of his disordered brain assumed more and more fantastic forms. Rasmussen was always sitting on his bed, the four passengers of the Roland were always playing skat in the lower room, and the sick man went about his house conversing in whispers with all sorts of invisible men and things, unconscious for hours at a time of where he was. Sometimes he thought he was in the house in which he lived when a practising physician, at other times, in the home of his parents. As a rule, he was on the deck, or in the saloons of the Roland, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... of leaving the decks to don warmer clothing. The fog, caused by the immense berg chilling the warmer ocean currents, was now so thick that of the mighty berg itself they could perceive nothing. The knowledge that the peril was invisible did not make the minds of those on board the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of Providential agency, and ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the working class, indeed, there was often the possibility of escape into hard labour, if only that of marriage. But such escape was not possible, immediately or at all, for a large number. During the nineteenth century many had been so carefully enclosed in invisible cages, they had been so well drilled in the reticences and the duties and the subserviences that their parents silently demanded of them, that we can never know all the tragedies that took place. In exceptional cases, indeed, ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... he took a lingering, farewell look and turned to retrace his steps, whereupon the queen fairy laughed at him softly. He paused abruptly, then turned around, with care, so as not to frighten her. But of course she was invisible. Then she spoke again with the sweetest foreign ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... the uluri, etc., is to obtain a maximum of protection for the mucous membrane with a minimum of concealment. Among the Eskimo, as Nansen noted, the corresponding intercrural cord is so thin as to be often practically invisible; this may be noted, I may add, in the excellent photographs of Eskimo women given ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and Two, and Three, *etern on live,* *eternally living* That reignest ay in Three, and Two, and One, Uncircumscrib'd, and all may'st circumscrive,* *comprehend From visible and invisible fone* *foes Defend us in thy mercy ev'ry one; So make us, Jesus, *for thy mercy dign,* *worthy of thy mercy* For love of Maid and ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... honor and imagination and poetry from war, and it becomes carnage. Doubtless. And take away public spirit and invisible principles from resistance to a tax, and Hampden becomes a noisy demagogue. * * * * Carnage is terrible. Death, and human features obliterated beneath the hoof of the war horse, and reeking hospitals, and ruined commerce, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... seemed to run to the bank nearest Krestowsky Ostrow, she saw him advance slowly at first, then more quickly among the small trees and hedges. Once only he stopped and looked closely at the trunk of a tree against which he seemed to pick out something invisible, and then he continued to the bank. There he sat down on a stone and appeared to reflect, and then suddenly he cast off his jacket and trousers, picked out a certain place on the bank across from him, finished undressing and plunged into the stream. She saw ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... funnel, and the whole vessel was surrounded with a thick mist—African breath again—which, laden with damp, left everything superficially wet. The mist continued, and the darkness deepened, as we went through the Straits. The siren boomed intermittently, and Gibraltar, invisible, flashed Morse messages in long and short shafts of light on the thick, moist atmosphere. To add to the eerie effect of it all, a ship's light was hung upon the mast, and cast yellow rays ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... its track, but he emerged from it at an angle, with a quickened pace and a peculiar halting trot. Yet that trot was so well sustained that in an hour he had reached a fringe of rocks and low bushes hitherto invisible through the irregularities of the apparently level plain, into which he plunged and disappeared. The dust cloud which indicated the coach—probably owing to these same irregularities—had long since been lost ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... wore masks, and pretended to be hump-backed. Tobacco was burned to the Demon of the Pest, no less than to the scarecrows which were to frighten him. A chief climbed to the roof of a house, and shouted to the invisible monster, "If you want flesh, go to our enemies, go to the Iroquois!"—while, to add terror to persuasion, the crowd in the dwelling below yelled with all the force of their lungs, and beat furiously with sticks ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... intelligenda invisibilia niteretur; that is, "The human soul is still rational, but in such a manner that, being by the punishment of sin detained in the bonds of death, it is so far reduced that it can only endeavour to arrive at the knowledge of things invisible through ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... central laws of the movements of the heavenly bodies established the truth of that which Copernicus, first, assumed only as a hypothesis, and, at the same time, brought to light that invisible force (Newtonian attraction) which holds the universe together. The latter would have remained forever undiscovered, if Copernicus had not ventured on the experiment—contrary to the senses but still just— of looking for the observed movements not in the heavenly bodies, but ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... very early in Islam a belief that there was always in existence some individual in direct intercourse with God and having the right and duty of teaching and ruling all mankind. This individual might be visible or invisible; his right to rule continued. This is the basis of the Ism[a]'[i]lite and Sh[i]'ite positions (see MAHOMMEDAN RELIGION and MAHOMMEDAN INSTITUTIONS). The [S.][u]f[i]s applied this idea of divine right to the doctrine of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... structure of muscle. Take a small portion of a large muscle, as a strip of lean corned beef. Have it boiled until its fibers can be easily separated. Pick the bundles and fasciculi apart until the fibers are so fine as to be almost invisible to the naked eye. Continue the experiment with the help of a hand magnifying glass or ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... of form, but without loss of substance, which is taking place in the engine and in our bodies, is taking place in the world around us. The water from the ocean, the lakes, and the rivers is continually evaporating under the heat of the sun and rising in the form of vapor, or invisible steam, into the air. There it becomes cooler, and forms the clouds; and when these are cooled a little more, the vapor changes into drops of water and pours down as rain, or, if the droplets freeze, as snow or hail. The rain falls upon the leaves of the trees and the spears of the ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... Invisible le toca Y sus parpados cierra Angel piadoso, y la ilusion destierra, Y el dulce sonreir vuelve a su boca. page 174 iQue muda despedida! ?Quien muerto le creyera? iMirando esta la Patria verdadera! iEsta durmiendo el ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... doubtful shadow of a dream. In the former, these magnificent obscurities find no place: they have been shut out, as it were, like a night of storm and darkness on the other side of the window. The night is there, no doubt; but it is outside, invisible and neglected, while within, the candles are lighted, the company is gathered together, and all is warmth and brilliance. To eyes which have grown accustomed to the elemental conflicts without, the room may seem at first confined, artificial, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey |
