"Adamantine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you will, Gabriel Tar, or Gibraltar, that infinitesimal scrap of territory over which the Union Jack floats, is supremely unpalatable and insolently insulting to the Spaniard. It is a bitter pill to swallow, an adamantine nut to crack. I suppose he is welcome to take it—when he can; but he knows better than to try. It is the gate of the Mediterranean. Logically, it is an injustice that a stranger should sit in the porter's lodge and swing the key at his girdle; but it is as well that the porter ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... hardened into the Fighting Wolf, fierce and implacable, unloving and unlovable. To accomplish the change was like a reflux of being, and this when the plasticity of youth was no longer his; when the fibre of him had become tough and knotty; when the warp and the woof of him had made of him an adamantine texture, harsh and unyielding; when the face of his spirit had become iron and all his instincts and axioms had crystallised into set rules, ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... they would have looked at a bright little bed, of the last new pattern, worthy of a child's delicious sleep; and they would only have discovered that the room was three hundred years old when they had drawn aside the window curtains, and had revealed the adamantine solidity of the outer walls. Or, if they had been allowed to pursue their investigations a little further, and had found their way next into Mrs. Linley's sitting room, here again a transformation scene would have revealed more modern luxury, presented in the perfection which implies ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... metaphysical in their nature. The Vajrasan, Diamond Throne or Thunderbolt seat, was the name applied to the most sacred part of the great temple reared by Asoka on the site of the bodhi tree, under which Gautama received enlightenment. "The adamantine truths of Buddha struck like a thunderbolt upon the superstitious of his age." "The word vagra has the two senses of hardness and utility. In the former sense it is understood to be compared to the secret truth which is always in existence and not to be broken. In the latter sense it ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... look on variously shaped and variously coloured "serpentine" rocks; it is granite, and granite alone, that appears everywhere—granite, less lofty and less eccentric in form than the "serpentine" cliffs and crags; but presenting an appearance of adamantine solidity and strength, a mighty breadth of outline and an unbroken vastness of extent, nobly adapted to the purpose of protecting the shores of Cornwall, where they are most exposed to the fury of the Atlantic waves. In these wild districts, the sea rolls and roars in fiercer agitation, and ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... surface than from the sapphire surface. The image of the light filament, as seen from the diamond, is much keener than as seen from the sapphire. The same disparity would exist between the diamond and almost any other stone. Zircon comes nearest to having adamantine luster of any of the other gems. The green garnet that is called "olivine" in the trade also approaches diamond in luster, hence the name "demantoid," or diamond like, sometimes ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... difficulty, that it was in the table before it was felt, and continues after the feeling is over. The one implies no kind of extension, nor parts, nor cohesion; the other implies all these. Both, indeed, admit of degrees, and the feeling, beyond a certain degree, is a species of pain; but adamantine hardness does not ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... work at once to build the depot; the snow here was excellent for this purpose — as hard as glass. In a short time an immense erection of adamantine blocks of snow rose into the air, containing provisions for five men for six days and for eighteen dogs for five days. A number of small articles were ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... individual merit is more conspicuously distinguished according to the respective abilities of the parties. The laurels that grow within these precincts are to be gathered with no vulgar hands; they resist the unhallowed grasp, like the golden branch with which the hero of the AEneid threw open the adamantine gates that ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... o'er the fortress of Corinthian birth Which by its towers alone without a guard Was safe against a siege. No hand of man In ancient days built up her lofty wall, No hammer rang upon her massive stones: Not all the works of war, nor Time himself Shall undermine her. Nature's hand has raised Her adamantine rocks and hedged her in With bulwarks girded by the foamy main: And but for one short bridge of narrow earth Dyrrhachium were an island. Steep and fierce, Dreaded of sailors, are the cliffs that bear Her walls; ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... man was such, that he not only employed women as executioners, but refused to permit her a priest or monk, thus forcing her to die unshriven, and refusing her the benefit of any penitence that may have lurked in her adamantine heart." ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... undaunted salesman, who had come prepared for adamantine obstacles in his path. "If more book buyers would see that such rascals get what's coming to them, the rest of us salesmen, who represent square publishers squarely, would not have to prove so often that we ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... to her own visitors—nobody ever dreamed that the thing was permanent, and nobody could break down that adamantine wall of Christian virtue she suffered behind, not owning ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... does. Symptoms of too great interest bore one. I enjoy more the men who are impervious to me. Now there's my father. He comes nearer understanding me than anybody else, but he's quite adamantine to my wiles." ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... is there a place of refuge for a woman's broken heart? Instinctively Wanda went back to the boat, and rowed far out upon the troubled waters. The afternoon's storm had been but the warning of a wilder one yet to come; the heavy skies shut down on all sides, adamantine and inexorable as the fate enshrouding her; from the mute mysterious woods came the sighing of the wind, sinking now into deep moaning, then rising into a shrill anguish, that was answered by the sobbing of the waves upon the beach. All nature seemed stirred to the heart at the hopeless ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... rebellion by the overthrow of the Southern armies, and re-establish the Government throughout all our wide domain upon the broad and eternal foundations of freedom, truth, and justice, then neither domestic traitors nor foreign despots will ever dash against its adamantine base. There it will stand, and stand forever, the mighty continental breakwater between the continents of Asia and of Europe, against which the breakers of internal faction, and the waves of despotic power would dash in vain. To that home of the oppressed, to that asylum of genuine and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... given a choice between hanging and a whirl day and night through the Karoo, would almost favour the suspension of the constitution! But apart from physical inconvenience, the idea of forsaking their homes and husbands was too ridiculous. The notion of living in tents on potted beef and adamantine biscuits was shuddered at. The whole project was voted a wild-cat scheme (and Mr. Rhodes agreed). After the spartan bravery they had displayed for two months, the ladies regarded this new and wanton strain on their loyalty as inhuman. Their protest was loud and dignified; ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... forget their responsibility to the Most High. Wuczicz, dressed in the coarse frieze jacket and boots of a Servian peasant, heard, with a reverential inclination of the head, the discourse of the prelate, but nought relaxed one muscle of that adamantine visage: the finer but more luminous features of Petronevich were under the control of a less powerful will. At certain passages his intelligent eye was moistened with tears. Two deacons then prayed successively for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... buttress themselves against the eventual facts. Naturally, the minor speculators throughout the city—those who had expected to make a fortune out of this crash—raged and complained, but, being faced by an adamantine exchange directorate, a subservient press, and the alliance between the big bankers and the heavy quadrumvirate, there was nothing to be done. The respective bank presidents talked solemnly of "a mere ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... when he is seized with an irresistible desire to go forth in the world and by his prowess dazzle all mankind for the purpose of attracting one pair of eyes. The same occurs to the lady, and she determines to make all men fall at her feet by way of illustrating to one adamantine heart that he was a dullard to have passed over her charms. And this young lady of the rose and lily complexion, and knight of the bright-hued locks and herculean muscles, being young—sufficiently young to be downcast by imaginary ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... by rumour, and but boast we know,) Oh! say what heroes, fir'd by thirst of fame, Or urg'd by wrongs, to Troy's destruction came! To count them all demands a thousand tongues, A throat of brass and adamantine lungs. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... would lie down and join your moans with mine. Let this poor wretch but pass, who war doth wage With heaven, the elements, the powers divine! I beg for pity or for death. No more! But open, ope Hell's adamantine door! ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... as he undoubtedly was, had not the adamantine hardness of character which enabled his admiral to risk all on the hazards of the moment; or possibly the Grand Turk was deficient in that clearness of strategical instinct which never in any circumstances forgoes ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... leather armchair by the open window. His suit was a vehement brown with visible checks, beautifully matched in shade by the ends of four cigars that his vest pocket poorly concealed. Light tan were his shoes, gray his socks, sky-blue his apparent linen, snowy and high and adamantine his collar, against which a black butterfly had alighted and spread his wings. Sammy's face—least important—was round and pleasant and pinkish, and in his eyes you saw no ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... his and their persistent, inevitable and inexorable hangers-on and supplicants. I do not perceive the alleged failure of his health or powers, and I do not believe it; but assuredly, it were no marvel if such really were the case. It must be an adamantine constitution and temper that could long bear with impunity the daily contact with a Lincoln, a Seward, a Halleck, and others less noted, indeed, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... than this. The fortresses, Rossberg and Sarnen, are the country's dread; For from behind their adamantine walls The foe, like eagle from his eyrie swoops, And, safe himself, spreads havoc o'er the land. With my own eyes I wish'd to weigh its strength, So went to Sarnen, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... with all sorts and conditions of men and women, from the peasants of Annandale to the best intellectual society of London. He was always, or almost always, the first man in the company, not elated, nor over-awed," standing on the adamantine basis of his manhood, casting aside all props and shoars." From snobbishness, the corroding vice of English society, he was, though he once jocularly charged himself with it, entirely free. He judged individuals on their merits with an eye as piercing and as pitiless ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... vivid one: to me he was iron; Tausig, steel; Rubinstein, gold. This metallic classification is not intended to praise gold at the expense of steel, or iron to the detriment of gold. It is merely my way of describing the adamantine qualities of Liszt and Tausig—two magnetic mountains of the kind told of in Sinbad, the Sailor, to which was attracted whatever came within their radius. And Rubinstein—what a man, what an artist, what a heart! As Joseffy once ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... turned his back. Every word of this Mrs. Dove heard Colonel Mar tell my Lady—and then they fell to rating the poor youth, and trying to force out who this secret flame may be; but his is of the same stuff as his mother, adamantine and impervious. And now the Colonel keeps him on hard duty continually, and they watch him day and night to find out what places he haunts. But bless me, Mrs. Hunter, is the church clock striking? We must be gone, or my good man will ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his soul from its awful doom. The infinite majesty of God's will, the law of the universe, had been insulted by disobedience. The only just retribution was the suffering of an endless death. The adamantine sanctities of God's government made forgiveness impossible. Thus all men were lost, to be the prey of blackness, and fire, and the undying worm, through the remediless ages of eternity. Just then God had pity on the souls he had made, and himself came to the rescue. In the person of Christ, he ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... heard of him, Juba had dwelt in the mountainous tract over which the two Christians were now passing; roaming to and fro, or beating himself in idle fury against the adamantine rocks, and fighting with the stern necessity of the elements. How he was sustained can hardly be guessed, unless the impulse, which led him on the first accession of his fearful malady, to fly upon the beasts of the desert, served him here also. Roots too and fruits were ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... he was adamantine and reliable and stern, for he had not the slightest idea that those men on the distant hill ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... a true, genuine feeling of love, was bound in adamantine chains to her sister. Time and fortune, that shatter all human institutions and prove human feelings, consolidated the union of their hearts and their destinies. A stranger on stronger proof of the influence of sisterly affection could not be adduced; it dragged the beautiful, blushing Aloysia from ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... deep sigh which should have spoken volumes to her adamantine heart, Courage gathered all the mugs together by their handles, and reluctantly marched out ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... witnesses that the widow cried out in her agony, "Well, sir, well; the day of reckoning will come;" and that the murderer replied, "To man I can answer for what I have done; and as for God, I will take him into mine own hand." Yet it was rumoured that even on his seared conscience and adamantine heart the dying ejaculations of his victim made an impression which ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the rock," Saint Bernard said, "Grave it on brass with adamantine pen! 'Tis God himself becomes apparent, when God's wisdom and God's goodness ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... species of beauty which never fades—the beauty of a loving look. Ah! the brow of snow and the peach-bloom cheek may snare the heart of man for a time, but the loving look alone can forge that adamantine chain that time, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... favourite weapon of the king of the celestials—the dreadful thunderbolt. And inspiring the Gandiva with mantras, I, aiming at the locality of the crags, shot sharpened iron shafts of the touch of the thunder-bolt. And sent by the thunder, those adamantine arrows entered into all those illusions and into the midst of those Nivata-Kavachas. And slaughtered by the vehemence of the thunder, those Danavas resembling cliffs, fell to the earth together in masses. And entering amongst those Danavas that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Perkins called personally upon that lady, and laid before her the question of Johnnie's health, she was adamantine in her refusal. Even the sight of a two-dollar bill could not sway her, offered, as Mr. Perkins explained, not in the hope of bribing her to do anything that was forbidden, but as pay in case Johnnie proved to be any ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... me apply it. When a murder is in the paulo-post-futurum tense, and a rumor of it comes to our ears, by all means let us treat it morally. But suppose it over and done, and that you can say of it,[Greek: Tetelesai], or (in that adamantine molossus of Medea) [Greek: eirzasai]; suppose the poor murdered man to be out of his pain, and the rascal that did it off like a shot, nobody knows whither; suppose, lastly, that we have done our best, by putting out our legs to trip up the fellow in his flight, but ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... She was vaguely alarmed at his uncompromising adherence to the position he had assumed. She had never failed yet to work her will with men—young and old—by a pretty persistence, a steady flattery, a subtle pleading manner. But Sir John had met all her wiles with his adamantine smile. He would not openly declare himself an enemy—which she argued to herself would have been much nicer of him. He was merely a friend of her aunt's, and from that contemplative position he never stepped down. She could not quite make out what he was "driving at," as ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... wheel, draw homeward him I love. E'en as I melt, not uninspired, the wax, May Mindian Delphis melt this hour with love: And, swiftly as this brazen wheel whirls round, May Aphrodite whirl him to my door. Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love. Next burn the husks. Hell's adamantine floor And aught that else stands firm can Artemis move. Thestylis, the hounds bay up and down the town: The goddess stands i' the crossroads: sound the gongs. Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love. Hushed are the voices of the winds and seas; But O ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... good now. But they would be much worse if any thirty or forty advocates for this gun or that gun could make a motion in Parliament, beat the department, and get their ships or their guns adopted. The "Black Breech Ordnance Company" and the "Adamantine Ship Company" would soon find representatives in Parliament, if forty or fifty members would get the national custom for their rubbish. But this result is now prevented by the Parliamentary head of the department. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... impelled by their own passions, to love and hate, and plot and scheme of their own accord. There was unalloyed pleasure in the composition of that first story, and the knowledge that it was to be actually printed and published, and not to be declined with thanks by adamantine magazine editors, like a certain short story which I had lately written, and which contained the germ of "Lady Audley's Secret." Indeed, at this period of my life, the postman's knock had become associated in my mind with the sharp sound of a rejected MS. dropping through the open letter-box ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... temptations and assaults of the evil spirits that he encountered, and many the hardships that he endured through the lack of herbs that he needed for meat, because the desert, being dry, yielded even these in but scant supply. But, being kindled by love of her Master, this adamantine and indomitable soul bore these annoyances more easily than other men bear their pleasures. Wherefore he failed not of the succour that is from above, but, many as were the sorrows and toils Chat he endured, ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... ordered in those stormy hours His adamantine chains for one and all, Brute "Force" and soulless "Strength" the only Power On ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... have been madness—madness in which the separate entities of good and bad each had, in its turn, a perfect and distinct existence? He chose to think that this was the case. Who, within his inner consciousness, does not feel that same ferine, savage man struggling against the stern, adamantine bonds of morality and decorum? Were those bonds burst asunder, as it was with this man, might not the wild beast rush forth, as it had rushed forth in him, to rend and to tear? Such were the questions that Mainwaring asked ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... race, 'Mid thine own Paradise portrayed so fair, Ere Sin or Sorrow scathed it: such the air That characters thy youth. Shall time efface These lineaments as crowding cares assail! It is the lot of fall'n humanity. What boots it! armed in adamantine mail, The unconquerable mind, and genius high, Right onward hold their way through weal and woe, Or whether life's brief lot be high ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... drunk with blood to vomit crime;[nz] And fatal have her Saturnalia been[oa] To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime; Because the deadly days which we have seen, And vile Ambition, that built up between Man and his hopes an adamantine wall, And the base pageant[477] last upon the scene, Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall Which nips Life's tree, and dooms Man's worst—his ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... the celestial Sirens' harmony That sit upon the nine enfolded spheres And sing to those that hold the vital shears And turn the adamantine spindle round Of which the fate of gods and men is wound. Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie To lull the daughters of Necessity, And keep unsteady Nature to her law, And the low world in measured motion draw ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of money failed to move their adamantine hearts. Nothing would do but that she must ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... stretched tensely against the corners of the trunk, he warded off as best he could the shocks of the skilled baggage-breakers along the route. Again and again, an unexpected twist would bang his throbbing head against the adamantine sides, and with a wince, a sharp, in-drawn breath, he would hold himself "together" for one ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... her, felt as one does who has been reading a fairy-tale and is called to the family meal. All the things he had meant to say, that had seemed so eloquent, now seemed foolish. He awoke her hastily in case his courage should fail before that most adamantine thing—an unsympathetic atmosphere. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... the blows; For, placing still some book betwixt, The darts were in the cover fix'd, Or, often blunted and recoil'd, On Plutarch's Moral struck, were spoil'd. The Queen of Wisdom could foresee, But not prevent, the Fates' decree: And human caution tries in vain To break that adamantine chain. Vanessa, though by Pallas taught, By Love invulnerable thought, Searching in books for wisdom's aid, Was, in the very search, betray'd. Cupid, though all his darts were lost, Yet still resolved to spare no ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... friend? What did he know, except that the man had been at the anarchist breakfast and had told him a ridiculous tale? How improbable it was that there should be another friend there beside Gogol! Was this man's silence a sensational way of declaring war? Was this adamantine stare after all only the awful sneer of some threefold traitor, who had turned for the last time? He stood and strained his ears in this heartless silence. He almost fancied he could hear dynamiters come to capture him shifting softly ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... one of rocks and treeless ridges, spewed from some vast volcanic forge of ages past. It was all a hard, gray, adamantine world, unlovely and severe—a huge old gold furnace, minus heat or fire, lying neglected in a universe of mountains that might have been a workshop in the ancient days when Titans wrought their arts upon ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... help others. "A sensitive, firm, wide-ranging, unresting spirit, he looks out mournfully over the throngs of men that fill the world, all of them totally depraved, all of them caught, from farthest eternity, in the adamantine meshes of God's decrees; the most of them also being doomed in advance by those decrees to an endless existence of ineffable torment; and upon this situation of affairs the excellent Michael Wigglesworth proposes to make poetry." His "Day of Doom," a horribly realistic description of every terror ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... have made up your mind," cried the lady hysterically, who knew from a twelve years' experience that John Temple's made-up mind was like an adamantine wall to all her ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... power, Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky, With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal power, Who durst defy th' Omnipotent ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... of a heath near a pool of standing water; and being come within a bow shot of it the monster espied him, and set up a dreadful roaring, enough to fill any heart with terror. Guy nothing daunted bent his bow of steel; but his arrow rebounded as from an adamantine wall, when the dreadful beast rushed at him like the wind. Guy observing this, lifted up his battle axe and smote her such a blow as made her recoil. Enraged yet more, she again rushed at him, and clapping her horns upon ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various
... yoke than the Saviour kindly laid upon him, and has enslaved himself with a thousand superstitious observances which to us appear absurd; but his sincerity should awaken in us an affectionate interest in his behalf, not engender the bitter hatred which at present forms an adamantine barrier between us. If the Protestant would give up a little of his bigotry, and the Catholic a part of his superstition, and they would consent to meet each other half way, as brothers of one common ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... associations of sentiment and imagination which, if there must be an aristocracy, lend it an artistic consistency. But here, where everybody says that all men are equal, and everybody is afraid they will be; where there are no adamantine barriers of birth and caste; people are anxiously exclusive. And though the forms of aristocracy flourish more gorgeously in their native soil, the genuine virus can be found in New York almost as readily as ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... sky so inconceivably remote that the world-sick soul must have despaired of ever reaching so far, or of climbing its steel-blue walls. The stars were large, keen, and brilliant, but cold and steadfast. They did not dance nor twinkle in their adamantine setting. The furnace fire painted the faces of the men an Indian red, glanced on brightly colored blanket and serape, but was eventually caught and absorbed in the waiting shadows of the black mountain, scarcely twenty feet from the furnace door. ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... flashing light, Its vast and azure dome; And on the verge of that obscure abyss 225 Where crystal battlements o'erhang the gulf Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuse Their lustre through its adamantine gates. ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... on at Lubeck, the same as it does everywhere else. The year turned and the months flew by. Winter gave place to spring, when the adamantine chains with which the ice-king had bound the rivers and waters of the north were loosed asunder by the mighty power of the exultant sun; the snow melted away from the earth, which decked itself in green to rejoice at its freedom, smiling in satisfaction with flowers; while the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to Dawson, when he recounted to me the details of his surprising interview with the War Committee, "tact is hardly your strong suit. You could not have asked more plainly to be kicked out. The flabbier a Cabinet is, the more convinced are its members of adamantine resolution." ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... evidence which sustains the faith of thousands, who never read and cannot understand the learned books of Christian apologists, who want, perhaps, words to explain the ground of their belief, but whose faith is of adamantine firmness, who hold the gospel with a conviction more intimate and unwavering than ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... a multifarious man, and every glinting passion of his soul found rapid and eloquent expression in words that beam and burn with eternal light. The stream of time washes away the fabrics of other poets, but leaves the adamantine structure of Shakspere ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... Nor sprightly folly wantons in his air; Nor dull serenity becalms his eyes. Such had I trusted once, as soon as seen, But cautious age suspects the flatt'ring form, And only credits what experience tells. Has silence press'd her seal upon his lips? Does adamantine faith invest his heart? Will he not bend beneath a tyrant's frown? Will he not melt before ambition's fire? Will he not soften in a friend's embrace? Or flow dissolving in a ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... a rare man, indeed, who could withstand such charms, to say nothing of the alluring and appealing ways that must go with them. If he only might try them—just to test his own fine power of resistance and adamantine will! He shot a quick glance of suppressed irritation at Harleston—and Madeline Spencer saw it and smiled, turning the smile ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... echo, and the slow, solemn boom of a brazen-tongued bell struck midnight. Then Theos, raising his eyes, saw that all further progress was impeded by a great wall of solid rock that glistened at every point with flashes of pale and dark violet light—a wall composed entirely of adamantine spar, crusted thick with the rough growth of oriental amethyst. It rose sheer up from the ground to an altitude of about a hundred feet, and apparently closed in and completed ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... d'Alagna, a beautiful chaste statue of ice who loved him; whereas I crave the warm-blooded thing that is mine for the taking, but no more loves me than she loves the policeman who salutes her on his beat. I cannot take her. Something stronger than my passion opposes an adamantine barrier. I love her with my soul as well as with my body, and my soul cries out for the soul that the Almighty forgot when ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... polite musical circles even to-day. It is only in the modified, "corrected" and indubitably castrated versions of Rimsky-Korsakoff that "Boris" and "Khovanchtchina" maintain themselves upon the stage. This iron, this granite and adamantine music, this grim, poignant, emphatic expression will not fit into the old conceptions. The old ones speak vaguely of "musical realism," "naturalism," seeking to find a pigeon-hole for this great ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... mere provincialism of this dwindling sphere of ours, but a fact and a law supreme, holding sway beyond the uttermost star, valid in infinity and eternity, at this hour, the sovereign law of life for whatsoever or whomsoever lives and knows, the adamantine foundation upon which all law, civilisation, religion ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... moved forwards again. It was now near enough for us to see clearly, and the moonlight still held. My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the gasp of Arthur, as we recognized the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... honourable title. There is an honest love, I confess, which is natural, laqueus occultus captivans corda hominum, ut a mulieribus non possint separari, "a secret snare to captivate the hearts of men," as [4712]Christopher Fonseca proves, a strong allurement, of a most attractive, occult, adamantine property, and powerful virtue, and no man living can avoid it. [4713]Et qui vim non sensit amoris, aut lapis est, aut bellua. He is not a man but a block, a very stone, aut [4714]Numen, aut Nebuchadnezzar, he hath a gourd ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... praise. Great Pompey; Great, while Fortune did him raise, Nowe vailes the glory of his vanting plumes And to the ground casts of his high hang'd lookes. You gentle Heauens. O execute your wrath On vile mortality, that hath scornd your powers. You night borne Sisters to whose haires are ty'd In Adamantine Chaines both Gods and Men Winde on your webbe of mischiefe and of plagues, And if, O starres you haue an influence: 30 That may confounde this high erected heape Downe powre it; Vomit out your worst of ills Let Rome, ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... such As charged to meet her. All the long shaft dripped With steaming blood. Swift were her feet as wind As down she swooped. Her aweless spirit failed For weariness nor fainted, but her might Was adamantine. The impending Doom, Which roused unto the terrible strife not yet Achilles, clothed her still with glory; still Aloof the dread Power stood, and still would shed Splendour of triumph o'er the death-ordained ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... could reform Russia? Who could reform a volcano? There are frightful energies beneath that adamantine surface—energies which have been confined by a rude, imperfectly organized system of force; a chain-work of abuses roughly welded together as occasion required. It is a system created by emergencies,—improvised, not grown,—in which to remove a single abuse endangers the whole. ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... to appease great Zeus in Olympos, Though she with words very many and wiles close-woven entreat him. But I will tell thee this more, and will clench it with steel adamantine: Then when all else shall be taken, whatever the boundary 128 of Kecrops Holdeth within, and the dark ravines of divinest Kithairon, A bulwark of wood at the last Zeus grants to the Trito-born goddess Sole to remain unwasted, which thee and thy children shall profit. Stay thou not there ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... which had not a stick of sound oak timber in them,—nothing, indeed, but pitch-pine and cypress. Oak, pine, and cypress would fall into the same category, when contrasted with the imperishable iron. Some new agency of steel must be invented to cope with the adamantine iron. And it becomes our Government, both for the armament of our ships and for defence against iron steamers, to adopt at the earliest moment every improvement ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... manliest part: flashes of meteoric, mesmeric eloquence, fitfully flecking the embossed page, as one tier or set of ideas, in rhetoric orchestration, symphonizes with or eclipses another. Connection, an element of robust mesmeric cohesion with this prized author being the adamantine hyphen, the articulating link, which compacts the roll. John Henry Shorthouse, the templar, the confessor of music, was, and concurrently, the apologist of philosophic light. Engaged to a powerful mechanism ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... ago, before Bessie and I had ever met, I had fluttered around Fanny Meyrick for a season, attracted by her bright brown eyes and the gypsy flush on her cheek. But there were other moths fluttering around that adamantine candle too; and I was not long in discovering that the brown eyes were bright for each and all, and that the gypsy flush was never stirred by feeling or by thought. It was merely a fixed ensign of health and ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell
... make us victors over the world and ourselves. If we can grasp Him by our faith and keep ourselves near Him, then union with Him as of the Vine and the branches, which will result inevitably in suffering here, will result as inevitably in joy hereafter. For He will never relax the adamantine grasp of His strong hand until He raises us to Himself, and 'if so be that we suffer with Him we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... thee that youthful freshness? Fetters thee that lovely mien? That glance so full of truth and goodness, With an adamantine chain? Vain the hardy wish to tear me From those meshes that ensnare me; For the moment I would flee, Straight my path leads ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... red-cowled head, and the weak-eyed mole plies his dark work; but thy soaring is even unto heaven. Or let me add (for my appetite for similes is truly canine at this moment), that as the Italian nobles their new-fashioned doors, so thou dost make the adamantine gate of Democracy turn on its golden hinges ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on my forehead, my obstinacy was adamantine. I reflected for some time, and then answered as if I had discovered a new ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... taken at my definition, unless traceable to adamantine conviction,—that ugliness, however indefinable, envy, however natural, and cowardice, however commercially profitable, are nevertheless eternally disgraceful; contrary, that is to say, to the grace of our Lord Christ, ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... God, MacIan, I think we have come to the right place!" And MacIan answered, with an adamantine stupidity: ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... a great man!" cried Barker, rising also. "You've knocked me sensible again. I am ashamed to say it, but I was getting romantic. Of course, what you say is adamantine sense. Fighting, being physical, must be mathematical. We were beaten because we were neither mathematical nor physical nor anything else—because we deserved to be beaten. Hold all the approaches, and with our force we must have him. When shall we ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... man who for thirty years had marshalled all his immense pride to suffer this woman, the jolly man who had laughed through thick and thin! Samuel remembered when they were married. And he remembered when, years after their marriage, she was still as pretty, artificial, coquettish, and adamantine in her caprices as a young harlot with a fool at her feet. Time and the slow wrath of God ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... fierce horizon, farther yet Than vision's wing could bear my gaze, I knew Hell's desolate kingdoms stretched their iron wastes, Hell's burning mountains waved their brands of flame, Hell's lava rivers plunged in fury down Their adamantine beds. ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... those years he has lived a good life, devoted to study, instruction, and works of benevolence. He has been a teacher of the young, a helper of the poor, and he has gained respect, affection, and honourable repute. He is safe in the security of silence and in the calm self-poise of his adamantine will. His awful secret sleeps in his bosom and is at rest forever. He has suffered much and he still suffers; yet, lulled into a false security by the uneventful lapse of years and by that drifting, desolate, apathetic recklessness which is sequent on the subsiding storm of passionate ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... feet, upon that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenghi; that strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, "Ah! Stali," [Footnote: Appendix I, "The Gondolier's Cry."] struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... 30, 1784, Mrs. Siddons, about whom all the world has been talking, exposed her beautiful, adamantine, soft and lovely person for the first time, at the Smock Alley Theatre, in the bewitching, tearful, and all melting character of Isabella. From the repeated panegyrics in the impartial London newspapers, we were taught to expect the sight of a heavenly ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... before you enter here On this sacred Ring must swear, [Puts it on his Finger, holds his Hand. By the Figure which is round, Your Passion constant and profound; By the Adamantine Stone, To be fixt to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... Southern type, which, like the signs of the Scotch Covenanter or of the old English Puritan, are as unlikely to die out as the Canada thistle, where they who sow the wind are content to reap the whirlwind. In their steadfast pertinacity, whether right or wrong, in their adamantine logic, as unyielding as death, and calm, serious energy of action, and in a part of their transcendental theories, they were alike; and alike, too, in their tried honesty. The great Nullifier and the great Reformer were both Titanic, in the vastness and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... Sunday in Sorrento, under the blue sky. These peasants, who are fooled by the mountebank and attracted by the piles of adamantine gingerbread, do not forget to crowd the church of the saint at vespers, and kneel there in humble faith, while the choir sings the Agnus Dei, and the priests drone the service. Are they so different, then, from other people? They have an idea ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... founded his character. His reputation had grown out of an adamantine adherence to it. Looking at him now she felt the strength of him, his intense devotion to his ideals; the earnestness ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... request of the District Attorney, Drake was to be taken "dead or alive," but according to an adamantine principle of the Force, he must be taken not only alive, but unscathed if that were humanly possible. This meant that he must not be given an opportunity to run and so render shooting necessary. If, however, he should break away, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... good deal, especially in French literature. He had formed his mind by Helvetius, whose system he deemed irrefutable, and in whom alone he had faith. Armed with the principles of his great master, he believed he could pass through existence in adamantine armour, and always gave you in the business of life the idea of a man who was conscious you were trying to take him in, and rather respected you for it, but the working of whose cold, unkind, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the ridiculous "litter of mice" that has thus far been yielded by the Safeguarding of Industries Act, is the crowning proof at once of the insincerity and ineptitude of tariffism where it has a free hand, and of the adamantine strength of the Free Trade case. If any further illustration were needed, it is supplied by the other tariffist procedure in regard to the promise made five years ago to Canada that she, with the other Dominions, should have a relative preference in our ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... the spirit's inner keep, Scanning Death's lone, illimitable deep, Spread outward to the far immortal shore! While the vault sleeps, from the upheaving deck, Thou see'st the adamantine reefs that wreck, And Life's low shoals, where lusting ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... ancient days, "before the Hudson poured its waters from the lakes, the Highlands formed one vast prison, within whose rocky bosom the omnipotent Manitou confined the rebellious spirits who repined at his control. Here, bound in adamantine chains, or jammed in rifted pines, or crushed by ponderous rocks, they groaned for many an age. At length the conquering Hudson, in its career toward the ocean, burst open their prison-house, rolling its tide triumphantly ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... volcanic dust, winding in and out among cinder-cones, brick-red, old rose, and purplish black of colour. Above us, higher and higher, towered the crater-walls, while we journeyed on across innumerable lava-flows, turning and twisting a devious way among the adamantine billows of a petrified sea. Saw-toothed waves of lava vexed the surface of this weird ocean, while on either hand arose jagged crests and spiracles of fantastic shape. Our way led on past a bottomless pit and along and over the main stream of the ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... we can now breathe easily, for we know that no Deus ex machina meddles with those serene and mighty forces whose adamantine grasp encloses all the phenomena of nature and ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... set, Did seem to say how vain to knock At thy heart's door, for all within Was hard, as adamantine rock. ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... history we have got rid of religion as a serious scourge, and by the simple process of reducing it to a petty nuisance. For men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. The more stupid the man, the larger his stock of adamantine assurances, the heavier his load of faith. When Copernicus proved that the earth revolved around the sun, he did not simply prove that the earth revolved around the sun, he also proved that the so-called revelation of God, as contained in the Old Testament, was ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... doubt as to the sanctity of the established order of things—that fetish which has ruled Pan-Americans for two centuries, and which is based upon a blind faith in the infallibility of the prescience of the long-dead framers of the articles of Pan-American federation—and ending in an adamantine determination to defend my honor and my life to the last ditch against the blind and senseless regulation which assumed the synonymity of misfortune ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... aunt of Chrysostom. To Amprucla the bishop wrote two letters still extant.[11] They are filled with words of consolation for the religious persecution she has undergone. In one of them he says: "Greatly did we sympathize with your manliness, your steadfast and adamantine understanding, your freedom of speech and boldness." "Manliness of soul" seems to have held a high place in the bishop's favorite qualities. In another place, writing to the same deaconess, he praises "your steadfast soul, ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... its full disk three times as broad as that of the sun at setting. Now in the dusk it was a great silver lamp hanging over Nardos, the Beautiful, the City Built on the Water. The light glimmered over the tall white towers, over the white ten-mile-long adamantine bridge running from Nardos to the shore, and lit up the beach where we were standing, with a brightness that ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... that it does not pay for the individual to assert himself against the dictates of the caste, or for the lower castes to rise in rebellion against their lot. They discovered that they were merely butting their heads against an adamantine rock. So they have lost every ambition and hope; and he who would lift them up must first remove that leaden despair which rests upon them like ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... a little at the top,—the water surged in and out with a thunderous, muffled sough and moan, like a Titan under the earth, pinned down eternally in pain. It was awfully impressive,—so impressive that I reflected neither upon it nor on myself. With this immitigable, adamantine wildness about me, and that abysmal, booming stifle of plaint, to which all the air trembled, sounding from below, I became another being, and the very universe was no longer itself; past and future were not, and I was a dumb atomy creeping over the bare peaks of existence, while out of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... dark grew soon the heavens— For each gun, From its adamantine lips, Spread a death-shade round the ships, Like a hurricane eclipse Of ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... than in rutile. There are also important differences between the physical characters of anatase and rutile; the former is not quite so hard (H 5 1/2-6) or dense (sp. gr. 3.9); it is optically negative, rutile being positive; and its lustre is even more strongly adamantine or metallic-adamantine than that of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... she would have cracked like a nutshell against those adamantine walls. But to get into the harbour it was the only way, and as the skipper said afterwards, when I remonstrated on his apparent foolhardiness, "Needs ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... can urge against it. His throne can no more be shaken by the puny attacks of men or devils than the everlasting mountains can be disturbed by the storm-blasts which howl around them. What more, then, is needed, than to shut up the wicked in a prison-house, through whose adamantine walls the accusing cry can never pierce, and whose doors are for ever barred by the holy decree of the Almighty? Ah! were it so, even this thought might possibly gratify pride and enmity, could a condemned, though not ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... boron inflames instantly in fluorine, with projection of brilliant sparks and liberation of dense fumes of boron trifluoride, BF{3}. The adamantine modification behaves similarly if powdered. When the experiment is performed in the fluorspar tube, the gaseous fluoride may be collected over mercury. The gas fumes strongly in the air, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... smiling to herself, happily putting things away and humming an air. Queed watched her in annoyed silence. His adamantine gravity inspired her with an irresistible impulse to levity; so the law of averages ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... truth of Mr Whittlestaff, he was a man very open to such shafts of ridicule. The "robur et aes triplex" which fortified his heart went only to the doing of a good and unselfish action, and did not extend to providing him with that adamantine shield which virtue should of itself supply. He was as pervious to these stings as a man might be who had not strength to act in opposition to them. He could screw himself up to the doing of a great deed for the benefit of another, and could as he was doing so deplore ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... Sueante, and either Stenon, fought; In vain my arm a transient succour brought: Almighty Fate on all our labours frown'd, Athwart each scheme the thread of error wound, Our efforts with an unseen chain controll'd, Perplex'd the prudent, and dismay'd the bold. Fate urges on—Her adamantine shield Protects our destined Conqueror in the field; To his own seas by War and Famine driven, Furious he mounts, nor heeds the frowns of heaven: Fresh hosts appear, unnumber'd standards rise, From town to town his gather'd vengeance flies, His banner each ambitious ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... charming—a perfect sylph! It was now about eleven months since I had first become acquainted with the bewitching creature; and, from the very first day, I had been her vassal, her slave, bound by chains as adamantine as those of Armida. She had just left the French boarding-school at St John's. That, by the by, is one of the means by which our mushroom aristocracy pushes itself upwards. A couple of pretty daughters, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... shelter of our castle,' he said. And the Duchess replied by an angry outburst, a hailstorm of reproaches, before which Eberhard Ludwig remained silent, cold, rigidly self-contained. The Duchess paused; it was like beating one's hand against some adamantine barrier. She had the sensation that all she said, felt, suffered, passed unnoticed; the man before her was waiting for information, that was all. It was intolerable, and the hopelessness of any pleading came ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... this lonely island, as he believed it to be, he could see stupendous ridges of reddish earth rise in countless numbers and always running back toward the centre, with here and there green pastures of grass, but he looked in vain for a break in the adamantine barrier which ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... supporting me by the superfluity of my pantaloons, he propelled me from the rear, counselling me to press my feet vigorously upon the paddles. But it all proved as the labour of Sisyphus, for the seat was of sadly insufficient dimensions and adamantine hardihood, and whenever the bicycle-man released his hold, I ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... was oppressive instead of tonic; and resentment came over her as she scrutinized her friend's satirical face, which seemed to typify all the women who progressed successfully through life, as if their natures, victoriously adamantine, had bestowed upon them this brilliant hardness of complexion, this sophisticated, frosty, conquering glance. Lucky women, who were so emphatically of the same essence as the phenomena round them, who accepted life with the simplicity of natural creatures, who never saw, beneath the pageantry ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... gracious Prince," replied the fawning wizard, "this night, if you dare loose yourself from love, and come unattended to my apartment, I will undertake to shew you all the future fortune you are to run, the hazards, dangers, and escapes that attend your mighty race of life; I will lay the adamantine Book before you, where all the destinies of princes are hieroglyphick'd. I will shew you more, if hell can furnish objects, and you dare stand untrembling at the terror of them." "Enough," replied Cesario, "name me the hour." "Betwixt twelve and one," ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... Deville's adamantine boron burns in the same manner, but with more difficulty, becoming fluoride or boron. The small quantity of carbon and aluminum which it contains impedes the combination. Arsenic and antimony in powder combine with this gaseous body with incandescence. Sulphur takes fire in it, and iodine combines ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 • Various
... heaven. He, wandering here, In mournful terms, with sad and heavy cheer, 440 Complain'd to Cupid: Cupid, for his sake, To be reveng'd on Jove did undertake; And those on whom heaven, earth, and hell relies, I mean the adamantine Destinies, He wounds with love, and forc'd them equally To dote upon deceitful Mercury. They offer'd him the deadly fatal knife That shears the slender threads[23] of human life; At his fair-feather'd feet the engines ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... altered: in spite of one's disgusts, the dull work, to the last item of it, has daily to be done. Which proved infinitely beneficial to the Crown-Prince, after all. Hereby, to his Athenian-French elegancies, and airy promptitudes and brilliancies, there shall lie as basis an adamantine Spartanism and Stoicism; very rare, but very indispensable, for such a superstructure. Well exemplified, through after life, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the night. It was one of those nights of the torrents of tears which wash away all save the adamantine within us, if there be ought of that besides the breathing structure. The reason why she wept with so delirious a persistency was, that her nature felt the necessity for draining her of her self-pitifulness, knowing that it nourished the love whereby she was tormented. They do not weep thus who ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to battle. Looking overhead, there seems a field-day in heaven; great bodies of artillery in motion, forming themselves into solid phalanx, and giving more and more dreadful notes of preparation. Volleys tell when divisions join, and the light that announces them is as if the adamantine arch were riven, disclosing dread splendors unspeakable Most grand, most beautiful storm! New music—that of the delicious rain, and in such abundance that it washes away the very memory of the parched and burning day. No wild commotion, ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... twinkling stars, {when} the people repaired to the sacred field of Mavors, and ranged themselves on the hills. In the midst of the assembly sat the king himself, arrayed in purple, and distinguished by a sceptre of ivory. Behold! the brazen-footed bulls breathe forth flames[14] from their adamantine nostrils; and the grass touched by the vapors is on fire. And as the forges filled {with fire} are wont to roar, or when flints[15] dissolved in an earthen furnace receive intense heat by the sprinkling of flowing water; so do their breasts ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the adamantine youth, "what is the name of the house with a big gate, about a half ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... for the rights of man? Not one of them has, as yet, come down to hell in glory; a proof that these people have no distinguished heads among them. Those are to my mind who wish to clear up every thing, who fight with the adamantine shield of individuality, against which all prejudices, earthly or heavenly, are shivered. Show me such a man who is willing to become great on earth at the expense of his soul, and I ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... or five times more, and passed between rocks, and broken land, through a very uncultivated and romantic vale, we began to ascend the Pyrenees upon a noble road, indeed! hewn upon the sides of those adamantine hills, of a considerable width, and an easy ascent, quite up to the high Fortress of Bellegarde, which stands upon the pinnacle of the highest hill, and which ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... dreamed, even in visions. A few comfit-makers made "Lemon Pil Candy, Angelica Candy, Candy'd Eryngo Root & Carroway Comfits;" and a few sweetmeats came to port in foreign vessels, "Sugar'd Corrinder Seeds," "Glaz'd Almonds," and strings of rock-candy. Whole jars of the latter adamantine, crystalline, saccharine delight graced the shelves of many a colonial cupboard. And I suppose favored Salem children, the happy sons and daughters of opulent epicurean Salem shipowners, had even in colonial days Black Jacks and Salem Gibraltars. The first-named dainties, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... reascends the throne. An unskillful workman repairs the compass, or malice or stupidity disarranges it, the ship mistakes her course, the waves swallow a Caesar, and a new chapter is written in the history of a world. What we call accident is but the adamantine chain of indissoluble connection between all created things. The locust, hatched in the Arabian sands, the small worm that destroys the cotton-boll, one making famine in the Orient, the other closing the mills and starving ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... can not avoid recurring to the loaded tables and delicious morsels of other days, and are likely at such times to put hard crackers and glory on one side, the good things of home and peace on the other and owing probably to the unsubstantial quality of glory, and the adamantine quality of the crackers, arrive at conclusions not at all favorable ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... dark eyes gleamed with an avaricious light at sight of the roll of yellow banknotes which Smith flung carelessly upon the bar, but he had earned his living by his wits too long to betray eagerness. He masked the adamantine hardness of his grasping nature beneath an air ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... then, should we ever doubt that God ponders and numbers in his heart the afflictions of his people, and that he measures our tears and inscribes them on adamantine tablets? And this inscription the enemies of the Church shall never be able to erase by any device whatever except by repentance. Manasseh was a terrible tyrant and a most inhuman persecutor of the godly. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... quenchless head; Poets, making earth aware Of its wealth in good and fair; And the benders to their intent, Of metal and of element; Of flame the enlightener, beauteous, And steam, that bursteth his iron house; And adamantine giants blind, That, without master, ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... true," replied the crying maid, "That Sita followed Rama to the woods, And that she of the Pandus also shared With them their toils—if ever woman's charms Had power to move the adamantine heart Of man, then let thy Rati go with thee To share with thee thy joys and woes as well. If thou shouldst go alone, remember then, Dear lord, the sin rests solely on thy head That a young maiden has been left alone To mourn for ever for her husband on The seas—and ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... leave no stone unturned, I waited until Mr. Spenlow came in, and then described what had passed; giving him to understand that I was not hopeless of his being able to soften the adamantine jorkins, if he ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... my own way." He told Emerson so, whereupon they went and dined together. The independence of the poet probably impressed Emerson more than his yielding would have done, for had not he preached the adamantine doctrine of self-trust? "To believe your own thought," he says, "to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... to those who know that a priceless spirit is near them, which might be one with theirs through all eternity, like twin stars in one common atmosphere, for ever giving and receiving wisdom and might, beauty and bliss, and yet are barred from their bliss by some invisible adamantine wall, against which they must beat themselves to death, like butterflies against the window-pane, gazing, and longing, and unable to guess why they ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... immediate simplification of houses. It was odd to observe how, once a man became infected, his former interests and anxieties fell away from him like an old garment. In Harley Street an attitude of stubborn disbelief continued amongst those still mortal. There is something magnificent in that adamantine spirit which refuses to recognize the new, even though it moves with ever-increasing distinctness before the very eyes of the deniers. I was not surprised. I was familiar ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... Whedbee and I were ready to return to Antwerp it was a different matter. The German authorities, though scrupulously polite, were adamantine in their refusal to permit us to pass through the German lines. And we held no cards, as did Van Hee, with which to play diplomatic poker. So we were compelled to bluff. Telling the German commander that we would call on him again, we climbed into the car and quietly ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... might of England flushed To anticipate the scene; And her van the fleeter rushed O'er the deadly space between. "Hearts of oak!" our captains cried; when each gun From its adamantine lips Spread a death-shade round the ships. Like the hurricane eclipse ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... but more repugnance on their faces, and asked several prisoners if they were well and contented. The men looked with the shrewdness of their class into their visitors' faces and measured them; saw there, first a feeble understanding, secondly an adamantine prejudice; saw that in those eyes they were wild beasts and Hawes an angel, and answered to please Hawes, whose eye was fixed on them all this time and in whose ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... faith, and left its mark in gloom upon the characters of the people and the tenor of their laws. The Ironside quality of their creed showed itself in the cruelties with which they visited the Indians; the severity of their tenets was felt by all who could not readily adapt themselves to the adamantine ethics of men of the type of Endicott and Mather. There was not wanting, too, a spirit of lawlessness in the English America, curiously in contrast with the law-abiding character of the Non-conformist colonizations. Along the seaboard ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... Homer, and prefers, it may be, the work of some Apollonius of his own discovering, we only laugh. There may be doubts about the third and fourth rank; but the first and the second are hardly open to discussion. The gates which lead to the Elysian fields may slowly wheel back on their adamantine hinges to admit now and then some new and chosen modern. But the company of the masters of those who know, and in especial degree of the great poets, is a roll long closed and complete, and they who are of it hold ever ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... heroes, and the stormy glories of the sixteenth century rose on awakened Europe. But Spain was the citadel of darkness,—a monastic cell, an inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce. She was the bulwark of the Church, against whose adamantine front the wrath of innovation beat in vain. In every country of Europe the party of freedom and reform was the national party, the party of reaction and absolutism was the Spanish party, leaning on Spain, looking to her for help. Above ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various |
