"Invulnerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my best," the Doctor said grimly; "but the British subaltern is pretty well impervious to snubs; he belongs to the pachydermatous family of animals; his armor of self conceit renders him invulnerable against the milder forms of raillery. However, I think you can be trusted to hold your own with him, Miss Hannay, without much assistance from the Major or myself. Your real difficulty will lie rather in your ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... Yonder the East, here the West—must they be strangers and enemies forever? His capital, he declares, shall be for their entertainment as elder and younger brother. Within its walls, which he will build strong as a mountain's base, with gates of brass invulnerable, and towers to descry the clouds below the horizon, he will collect unselfishly whatever is good and beautiful, remembering he serves Allah best who serves ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... happen to be near it I shall certainly take a close look at it," Harry said with a laugh. "I don't fancy we should see anything that our rifles and pistols would find invulnerable." ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... did as his father likewise did thirty years ago, made himself Ism (name) by repeating one of the appellations of God, like Ya Latif three thousand times every night for three years which rendered him invulnerable. He then made friends with a Jinn who taught him many more tricks—among others, that practised in England by the Davenports of slipping out of any bonds. He then deluded the people of the desert by giving himself out as El-Mahdi (he who is to come with ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... vengeance upon the intruder, they were now seen making such haste as their natural tardiness admitted of, towards the Muscogulgee. From every part of the valley heads could be seen displaying forked tongues, and all pressing towards the alarmed warrior. But he stood invulnerable to them, though he knew it not, within the charmed circle made by his protecting spirit. Their powers of fascination had been taken away by the Maiden in Green, or rather the counter-fascination, which kept him within the charmed space, was more powerful ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... not," said Charles, "were he ten times a vampyre. I cannot, however, believe that he is so invulnerable as he is represented." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... true, there is an edge in all firm belief, and with an easy metaphor we may say, the sword of faith; but in these obscurities I rather use it in the adjunct the apostle gives it, a buckler; under which I conceive a wary combatant may lie invulnerable. Since I was of understanding to know that we knew nothing, my reason hath been more pliable to the will of faith: I am now content to understand a mystery, without a rigid definition, in an easy and Platonic ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... could be conveyed to every part of the structure, a number of pumps being adapted to afford an unlimited supply. It was thus believed that these terrible machines, capable of inflicting destruction, would themselves be invulnerable. The largest carried 21 guns, and their complement of men was 36 for each gun in use, exclusive of officers and mariners ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... punishments wrought by her treacherous arrows on the modern Acteon who dares to contemplate the cruel daughter of Latona in her full beauty. The Hindus never go out in the moonlight without their turbans or pagris. Even our invulnerable Babu always wore a kind of white cap ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... self-sufficing, producing only what its own occupants could consume, and that consequently there was comparatively little external trade in farm produce. From these facts he would readily understand that the rural communities in the year 1500, numerous yet isolated, were invulnerable strongholds of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... happened to her. It is true that she was exceedingly wary, and had in her innumerable excursions gathered quite as much knowledge of the tricks of war as the most experienced scout, so that she felt almost intuitively the approach of danger. She had gradually become imbued with the idea that she was invulnerable. To-day, therefore, she moved along this dangerous trail with the greatest apparent nonchalance. Furthermore her thoughts so completely absorbed her that while ascending from the level of the Rito she unconsciously ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... rout! Let thunder break, Let lightning blast me by the way! Invulnerable Love shall shake His ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... said her companion with a laugh. "You see, he's highly eligible from our point of view, but at the same time he's apparently invulnerable. I believe," she added drily, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of the screens was dying and flecks and spots appeared so dully red, that they seemed black. The greenish beams had been striving to kill the life that was in the machines, but it was life invulnerable to these beams. Powerful radio interference vainly attempted to stem imagined control, and still these intelligent machines clung ...
— The Last Evolution • John Wood Campbell
... which consisted in the preparation of a certain herb boiled with ivy and rue over a fire of cypress-wood, and squeezed into a cup by hands that had never done harm. The juice thus obtained, if applied fresh every month, had the virtue of rendering bodies invulnerable. Isabella said she had seen the herb in the neighbourhood, as she came along, and that she would not only make the preparation forth-with, but let its effects be proved on her own person. She only stipulated, that the receiver of the gift should swear not to offend her purity ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... quay that morning before starting out, news just arrived from London, the dunes were an unexpected assurance that the earth has an integrity and purity of its own, a quality which even man cannot irreparably soil; that it maintains a pristine health and bloom invulnerable to the best our heroic and intelligent activities can accomplish, and could easily survive our extinction, and even forget it once ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... the conviction it expressed was absolute. Sweetwater recognised the tone, as one of truth, and inwardly laid down his arms. He could never like the man; there was too much iron in his fibre; but he had to acknowledge that as a foe he was invulnerable and therefore admirable to one who had the ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... of the yeoman farmer; and the doctor, the "family friend," as a sort of mocking chorus. Besides its plea for a higher regard for truth, the play also attacks the precept, preached by worldly wisdom, that we ought to harden our natures to make ourselves invulnerable; a proposition which was hateful to one of Bjornson's persistently impressionable and ingenuous nature. The fact remains, as Brandes grimly admits, that "nowadays we have only a very qualified sympathy with public characters who succumb to the persecution of the press." Brandes ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... should be the meed. He had no money and little learning, but he had a conscience and he knew that he must be true to that conscience, come to him either weal or woe. Want renders most men vulnerable, but to it, he appeared, at this early age, absolutely invulnerable. Should he and that almost omnipotent inquisitor, public opinion, ever in the future come into collision upon any principle of action, a keen student of human nature might forsee that the young recusant could never be starved into silence or ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... sha'n't have to worry about the striped mosquitoes stinging you on the shoulders; and when we others go plodding along, no helmet or terai need hide that hair of yours. Since you'll be made of my thoughts, you'll be invulnerable. You'll catch up your little train to run across a field of ferns in pursuit of some small, inquisitive wild beast. When the tribes make dances for us, they won't know that a beautiful white lady, in a golden decollete gown, ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... jeopardise that life which belongs to the other. To say, 'I shall not catch the disease, because I have no fear,' is as idle as it would be for the soldier to say, 'Because I am brave, therefore I am invulnerable.' ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... belonged here to the backs, the line it was that made such work possible. Chesney, with his six feet four and a half inches of muscle, and his two hundred and twenty-nine pounds of weight, stood like a veritable Gibraltar of strength. Beside him Rutland was scarcely less invulnerable, and Murdoch, on the other side, played like a veteran, which he was not, being only a nineteen-year-old sophomore, with but one hundred and sixty-seven pounds to keep him ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Fifth-monarchy man, a cooper and preacher to a conventicle in Swan Alley, Coleman Street, with a small following (about fifty in number) took arms on the 6th January for the avowed purpose of establishing the Millennium. He was a violent enthusiast, and persuaded his followers that they were invulnerable. After exciting much alarm in the City, and skirmishing with the Trained Bands, they marched to Caen Wood. They were driven out by a party of guards, but again entered the City, where they were overpowered by the Trained Bands. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... would not act in defence of it, because he had quarrelled with Agamemnon about a—; and then afterwards, animated by private resentment only, he went about killing people basely, I will call it, because he knew himself invulnerable; and yet, invulnerable as he was, he wore the strongest armour in the world; which I humbly apprehend to be a blunder; for a horseshoe clapped to his vulnerable heel would have been sufficient. On the other hand, with submission to the favourers of the moderns, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... of the Stoick philosophy, to make man unshaken by calamity, and unelated by success, incorruptible by pleasure, and invulnerable by pain; these are heights of wisdom which none ever attained, and to which few can aspire; but there are lower degrees of constancy necessary to common virtue; and every man, however he may distrust himself in the extremes of good ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... degree by the books you praise and recommend. And this too may be done without running the risk of making any enemies; or subjecting yourself to be called to account for your criticism, however severe. While your name is unknown, your person is invulnerable: at the same time your aim is sure, for you may take it at your leisure; and your blows fall heavier than those of any Writer whose name is given, or who is simply anonymous. There is a mysterious authority in the plural, We, which no single name, whatever ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... common-sensible, and invulnerable to superstitious influences on every point except that to which he had surrendered himself, was easily prevailed upon to stay; for he found the singular, charlatanic, mysterious lore of the man curious, and he had ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... blind. When in such tender tone, yet grave, Douglas a parting blessing gave, The tear that glistened in his eye Drowned not his purpose fixed and high. My soul, though feminine and weak, Can image his; e'en as the lake, Itself disturbed by slightest stroke. Reflects the invulnerable rock. He hears report of battle rife, He deems himself the cause of strife. I saw him redden when the theme Turned, Allan, on thine idle dream Of Malcolm Graeme in fetters bound, Which I, thou saidst, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... matter; and I was as perfectly easy as to the lawfulness of it as if I had been married to the prince and had had no other husband; so possible is it for us to roll ourselves up in wickedness, till we grow invulnerable by conscience; and that sentinel, once dozed, sleeps fast, not to be awakened while the tide of pleasure continues to flow, or till something dark and dreadful brings us to ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... the Empress Dowager towards the Boxer superstitions of 1900, and their pretentions to be able at will to call to their aid legions of spirit-soldiers, while at the same time they were themselves invulnerable to the bullets ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... the mail-sheathed Normans,) but it brought no terrors to the ancient British, who had long made it their boast that they exposed their bare bosoms and white tunics to the lances and swords of the men-at-arms, with as much confidence as if they had been born invulnerable. It was not indeed in their power to withstand the weight of the first shock, which, breaking their ranks, densely as they were arranged, carried the barbed horses into the very centre of their host, and well-nigh up to the fatal standard, to which Raymond Berenger, bound ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... heavy as the losses were, the Confederates took but one prisoner. At the third charge a tall, broad-shouldered captain, who seemed, like another son of Thetis, almost invulnerable, darted impetuously ahead of his men and reached the summit of the defence. Useless bravery! In an instant a volley point blank swept away the charging men behind him, and a gunner's sabrethrust bore him to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... cheerful acquiescence with which she accepted the decrees of Providence. It is doubtful, indeed, if her serenity, which was rooted in an heroic hopelessness, could have been shaken either by the apologies of a boarder or by the appearance of an earthquake. Her happiness was of that invulnerable sort which builds its nest not in the luxuriant gardens of the emotions, but in the bare, rock-bound places of the spirit. Courage, humour, an adherence to conviction which is wedded to an utter inability to respect any opinion except one's own; loyalty which had sprung ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... was added—if proofs were still necessary of Spanish prowess. The Netherlanders may be pardoned if their foes seemed to them supernatural, and almost invulnerable. How else could these enormous successes be accounted for? How else could thousands fall before the Spanish swords, while hardly a single Spanish corpse told of effectual resistance? At Jemmingen, Alva ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... kept in mind. By no conceivable means is it possible to give trade absolute protection. We cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. We cannot make war without losing ships. To aim at a standard of naval strength or a strategical distribution which would make our trade absolutely invulnerable is to march to economic ruin. It is to cripple our power of sustaining war to a successful issue, and to seek a position of maritime despotism which, even if it were attainable, would set every man's hand against us. All these evils ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... reason that ash wood is generally used for tool handles. It was upon ash branches that witches were enabled to ride through the air; and those who ate on St. John's eve the red buds of the tree, were rendered invulnerable to witch influence. ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... destroyed can never be replaced, as indeed she is, resembling the Kaustubha,[35] or the third eye of the Moony-crested god, of which in the three worlds there is only one. And so since he cannot do without her, she is beyond all reach, and invulnerable, doing with impunity exactly what she pleases, caring nothing whether he loves or hates her, and laughing at the very notion of being brought to book, secure in the magic circle of her own irresistible attraction, whose very power of destroying all others is her own protection, like a spell ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... Confident in our strength and resources, we had long remained comparatively sluggish, and regardless of those interesting experiments which other great maritime powers had been carefully making with a view to render ships invulnerable. We looked on quietly, observed the results, and waited for the occasion when we should be required to put forth our strength in this direction. When the war commenced, we had not a single iron-clad vessel of any description. It became necessary that the immense ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Ralas have ruled from this impregnable amphibian city. Its colossal metal dome is invulnerable to ordinary attack, and though solid and without openings it is always as light beneath the dome here as outside, since the Ralas' scientists contrived light-condensers and conductors that catch light outside and bring it in to release ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... front, and sent round a detachment to take them in the rear. The assault was accordingly soon changed into a disgraceful flight, in which those who had been the loudest in urging to this rash onset set the example. Barca Gana, who had boasted himself invulnerable, was deeply wounded through his coat of mail and four cotton tobes, and with difficulty rescued by his chiefs from five La Sala horsemen, who had vowed his death. The army returned to their quarters in disappointment ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... already seen. Wiser far be honest, even if it costs you a disagreeable quarter of an hour. Better one disagreeable quarter of an hour than months and years sitting on a bombshell which any passer-by can explode. Honesty is always one of the very few invulnerable things. No pin-pricks can pierce it—and pin-pricks are usually the bane of life. It's like laughter, in that nobody has yet been found to parry its blows successfully. Shame is a sure sign of possible defeat—and the world always ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... upon them. Through the closed doors resounded the tempestuous roar of the multitudes assembled around the Seraglio. Those within it trembled, and Halil Patrona stood there among them like an enchanter who knows that he is invulnerable, immortal. ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... wounded, although at times the bullets had fallen about us as thick as hail. We could not account for this. Many of us had been hit by the balls, but a bruise or a graze of the skin was the worst consequence that had ensued. We were in a fair way to deem ourselves invulnerable. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence; For it is as the air invulnerable, And our ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... in short, INVULNERABLE, and must be left, whether we relish it or not, in undisturbed enjoyment of his creed. Faith, says Tolstoy, is that by which men live. And faith-state and mystic state are practically ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... the Lyons Central Club, March 23, 1793). "They say that the sans-culottes will go on spilling their blood. This is only the talk of aristocrats. Can a sans-culotte be reached in that quarter? Is he not invulnerable, like the gods whom he replaces on this earth?"—Speech by David, in the Convention, on Barra and Viala: "Under so fine a government woman will bring forth without pain."—Mercier "Le Nouveau Paris," I. 13. "I heard (an ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... body of Blackfeet, which had been upon Sublette's trail for some time. Five white men and one half-breed were killed and several wounded. Seven of the Nez Percés were also killed, and six wounded. They had an old chief who was reputed to be invulnerable. In the course of the action he was hit by a spent ball, and threw up blood; but his skin was unbroken. His people were now fully convinced that he was proof against ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... was on his part most catholic in his receptivity. But there were persons whom from the first glance he disliked, and then his dislike was little short of loathing. I suspect they were such as found the heel of his all but invulnerable vanity and wounded it. Not accustomed to be hurt, it resented hurt when it came the more sorely. He was in one sense, and that not a slight one, a true man: there was no discrepancy, no unfittingness between his mental conditions and the clothing in which those conditions presented ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... unconscious, more sound, ever lived, from 1835 to '72. My greatest call (Quaker) to go around and do what I could there in those war-scenes where I had fallen, among the sick and wounded, was, that I seem'd to be so strong and well. (I consider'd myself invulnerable.) But this last attack shatter'd me completely. Quit work at Washington, and moved to Camden, New Jersey—where I have lived since, receiving many buffets and some precious caresses—and now write these lines. Since then, (1874-'91) a long stretch ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... integrity and the leaden cope of hypocritical virtue. If Edmee had not triumphantly defended me by her confession, she had at least roused the greatest interest in my favour. A man who is loved by a beautiful woman carries with him a talisman that makes him invulnerable; all feel that his life is of greater value than ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... shattered by the agitations he had gone through since the last evening, made him feel abjectly in the power of this loud invulnerable man. At that moment he snatched at a temporary repose to be won on any terms. He was rising to do what Raffles suggested, when the latter said, lifting up his finger as ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... an unexposed cut in the hills, safe from the shells that might be thrown up from the fortress, they established their camps, strongly entrenched and practically invulnerable against any attack from below. Squads of men were sent without delay into the hills and valleys to call the panic-stricken, wavering farmers into the fold. John Tullis headed the company that struck off into the ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... weary life, their bleeding footsteps strayed not, for they had a clew! The mind seemed, as it were, to become visible and external as the frame decayed, and to cover the body with something of its own invulnerable power; so that whatever should have attacked the mortal and frail part, fell upon that which, imperishable and divine, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sustainers of our youth, in which he urges his hearers to be incorruptibly true to their own private conscience. Nothing can harm the man who rests in his appointed place and character. Such a man is invulnerable; he balances the universe, balances it as much by keeping small when he is small, as by being great and spreading when he is great. "I love and honor Epaminondas," said Emerson, "but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... My invulnerable qualities were published throughout Juliers, Aix-la-Chapelle, Maestricht, and Cologne, and perhaps this belief saved my life; the priests having propagated it from their pulpits, in a country which swarms with highway robbers, and where, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... honesty on which Wamba or Launcelot Gobbo shall put the gloss for us). Nay, even those to whom Goethe and Byron are not the ideal of modern poetry may retort that Mephistopheles—that even Faust himself—is a much more "interesting" person than the sulky invulnerable son of Thetis, while Gulnare, Parisina, and others are not much worse than Dido. But these are mere details. The main purpose of the Preface is to assert in the most emphatic manner the Aristotelian (or partly Aristotelian) doctrine that "All depends on the subject," and to connect the ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... when neither the sun nor the moon shone, but an expiatory sacrifice of fruit and honey should previously have been offered to the earth. If this was carried out it had power to render the possessor invulnerable, to cure fevers, to eradicate poison, and to conciliate friendship. Notice also, that black hellebore, to be effective, was to be plucked not cut, and this with the right hand, which was then to be covered with a portion of the robe and secretly ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... own breast that I am pained By what thou griev'st at, and if I had power, My censure of their deeds would soon be known. But in misfortune I have chosen to sail With lowered canvas, rather than provoke With puny strokes invulnerable foes. I would thou didst the like: though I must own The right is on thy side, and not on mine. But if I mean to dwell at liberty, I must obey ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... in the beginning of the 12th century, is near the summit of the peak. The cavern of the dragon may be seen from the Rhine half way up the hill. "This dragon was slain by Sigfried, the hero from the Low Countries, who, having bathed himself in its blood, became invulnerable." ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... games of hide and seek, love and hate, in the clear briny depths above and beneath! If the angels ever look out of their sphere of intense spiritual realities to indulge in a laugh, methinks such a lonely tripod-sitter, cased over with his invulnerable, non-conducting cloak and hood,—shrinking, dodging, or bracing himself up on the defensive, as the crowd fans him with its rush or jostles up against him,—like the man who fancied himself a teapot, and was forever warning people not to come too near him,—might ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Secure in these invulnerable envelopments, his worship had rested content, although severed from his own death-doing weapons, of rapier, poniard, and pistols, which were placed nevertheless, at no great distance from his chair. One offensive implement, indeed, he thought it prudent to keep on the table beside his huge ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... materialism that has been the insistent note of the prevailing optimistic fiction. There is a great deal of happiness in Mr. Walpole's pages, but it is not founded on surface vulgarity of appetite. The drama of his books is not sapped by the automatic security of invulnerable heroics. Accidents happen, tragic and humorous; the life of his novels is checked in black and white, often shrouded in grey; the sun moves and stars come out; youth grows old; charm fades; girls may or may not be pretty; his ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... is," I said, "just conceivable that I have that power. I do not recollect my immersion in the Styx, but it is, I suppose, not impossible that, although I am not actually invulnerable, my sterling qualities may yet be so apparent to the bee mind that, even were I so indiscreet as to lay hands upon their hive, they would not so far forget themselves as to assail me. At the same time, ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... would I give to be invulnerable? and egad, I am almost weary of being a Man, and subject to beating: wou'd I were a Woman, a Man has but an ill time on't: if he has a mind to a Wench, the making Love is so plaguy tedious— then paying is to my Soul insupportable. But to be a Woman, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... they were not invulnerable. They had retreated to their triangle of cylinders again, in the circle about Woking. Signallers with heliographs were pushing forward upon them from all sides. Guns were in rapid transit from Windsor, Portsmouth, ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... they treat all their domestic laws and constitutions, and even what they had considered as a law of Nature. But whatever they have put their seal on, for the purposes of their ambition, and the ruin of their neighbors, this alone is invulnerable, impassible, immortal. Assuming to be masters of everything human and divine, here, and here alone, it seems, they are limited, "cooped and cabined in," and this omnipotent legislature finds itself wholly without the power of exercising its favorite attribute, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... also believe that the leader, or king of the birds of paradise is black, with red spots, and that he soars far away from the rest of the flock, which, however, never quit him, but settle where he does. The Gigantic Crane is believed by the Indians to be invulnerable, and animated by the souls of deceased Brahmins; the Africans hold it in equal veneration. Whence arises the classical fable that swans sing their own dirge just previous to death, and expire singing it? The wild swan certainly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various
... the Elements Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well Wound the loud windes, or with bemockt-at-Stabs Kill the still closing waters, as diminish One dowle that's in my plumbe: My fellow ministers Are like-invulnerable: if you could hurt, Your swords are now too massie for your strengths, And will not be vplifted: But remember (For that's my businesse to you) that you three From Millaine did supplant good Prospero, Expos'd vnto the Sea (which hath requit it) ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... is this? he bears Nothing that warrants him invulnerable: Shall I then shrink to smite him? shall my fears Be greatest at the blow that ends them all? Fears? no! 'tis justice—fair, immutable, Whose measured step, at times, advancing nigh, Appalls the majesty of kings themselves. Oh, were he dead! though ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... doctor's wrath when on her return from one of her trips she learned of the death of her faithful Karl. To her, Captain Ferragut was a species of invulnerable and victorious demon who was escaping all dangers and murdering the servants of a good cause. First von Kramer; now Karl.... As it was necessary for her to vent her wrath on somebody, she had made Freya responsible for all her misfortunes. Through her she had known the captain, and had mixed ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... then, Miss Mayton!" said I. I suppose I looked at her as if I meant what I said, for, although she inclined her head and said, "Oh, thank you," she didn't seem to turn my compliment off in her usual invulnerable style. Nothing happening in the course of conversation ever discomposed Alice Mayton for more than a hundred seconds, however, so she soon recovered her usual expression and self-command, as her ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... painters, rather prominent, encircled by hair worn in smooth, wide, flat bandeaux, separated by a faultless parting. The forehead seemed like the protecting rampart of this delicious face. Mlle. Hocquigny was adored and made much of by every one, but she remained invulnerable to all homage. She was happy in being beloved, but she would not allow any one to ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... were ascribed to Manannan—his armour and sword, the one making the wearer invulnerable, the other terrifying all who beheld it; his horse and canoe; his swine, which came to life again when killed; his magic cloak; his cup which broke when a lie was spoken; his tablecloth, which, when waved, produced food. Many of these are found everywhere in Maerchen, and there is nothing ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... bewitched with these sorcerers, that he puts his whole trust in these conjurations and charms; and so far they have imposed on him, that with an enchanted ointment, which they had prepared for him, he shall be invulnerable, though he should face the mouth of a cannon: they have, at the earnest request of Hermione, calculated his nativity, and find him born to be a king; and, that before twenty moons expire, he shall be crowned in France: and flattering his easy youth with all ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... of the spotless sky, where shone so much glory, where glistened so many swords, that the youth of the time breathed. They well knew that they were destined to the slaughter; but they believed that Murat was invulnerable, and the Emperor had been seen to cross a bridge where so many bullets whistled that they wondered if he were mortal. And even if one must die, what did it matter? Death itself was so beautiful, so noble, so illustrious, in its battle-scarred ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... on Mo Mercer's ears as if rusty nails had been thrust into them; the heretofore invulnerable Mercer's knees trembled, the sweat started to his brow, as he heard the taunting whispers of "visiting the Capitol twice" and seeing ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... that they could easily guide us; and by the additional discovery of a large flatboat we were enabled to go to work in earnest upon the removal of the treasure. These iron bars, surmounted by a dozen feet of sand, formed an invulnerable roof for the magazines and bomb-proofs of the fort, and the men enjoyed demolishing them far more than they had relished their construction. Though the day was the 24th of January, 1863, the sun was very oppressive upon the sands; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... midnight, when he was awakened by hideous howls heralding the approach of the spectre. When it appeared, the Marshal first discharged his pistol point-blank at it without effect, and then struck it with his sabre, which was shivered in his hand. The invulnerable spectre then beckoned the amazed Marshal to follow, and preceded him to a spot where the floor of the gallery suddenly yawned, and they sank together through it to sepulchral depths. Here he was surrounded by a band of desperate coiners who would forthwith ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... look very much like a pitchers' battle from that time on. Kinsey was fast becoming invulnerable, and batter after batter failed to connect with his wizard delivery. He would smile at them, and then proceed to give them something they were not expecting, so that the ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... into the House, and the thing is done. And I consider myself justified, for so high—for, I may say, so holy—an end, in using men's weaknesses to work out my purpose. Of course, if men were angels, or even immaculate—men invulnerable to bribes, we would ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was nearly the size of our present-day rhinoceros. These extinct giants carried on their backs huge domes of bony plates, that must have rivalled our much-feared tanks, of trench war fame. One would think they were invulnerable, yet the glyptodon and the chlamydothere, with many other equally well protected creatures, have long ago disappeared from the earth, but how and why nobody knows. This total disappearance of these marvellously ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... difficult for him to undertake and achieve such hardy enterprises because he wore enchanted arms, that accusation in the first place must fall on Homer ere it can reach Virgil. Achilles was as well provided with them as AEneas, though he was invulnerable without them; and Ariosto, the two Tassos (Bernardo and Torquato), even our own Spenser—in a word, all modern poets—have copied Homer, as well as Virgil; he is neither the first nor last, but in the midst of them, and therefore is safe if they ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... infest your court? It is by their means that whole towns of your empire are unpeopled, that provinces are involved in mourning and tears, your armies are in mutiny, your senate full of suspicion and alarms, and the islands are crowded with exiles. It is not for myself that I speak, my soul is invulnerable to your enmity; and it is not given to you by the Gods to become master of my body." And, having thus given utterance to the virtuous anguish of his spirit, he suddenly became invisible in the midst of a full assembly, and was immediately ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth, Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, For ever shattered and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy. Unceasing thunder and eternal foam? And who commanded (and the silence came), Here let the billows ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... strong plea for compromise is the hopelessness of gaining anything better. This was the consideration urged so vehemently against the early Abolitionists. It was said: "Slavery is wrong—that we all admit—but it is a fixed fact, invulnerable, backed up by wealth, talent, pride and political influence, and all opposition is vain. You Abolitionists are mere sentimentalists, visionaries, doctrinaires." This had great influence with the indifferent, the timid, and especially with those who vaunt themselves as "practical men," who ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... declivity, so many forces failed him! After reaching these icy regions of Europe, he was precipitated from their very summit. The North, victorious over the South in her defensive war, as she had been in the middle ages in her offensive one, now believes herself invulnerable and irresistible. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... squalid bloodthirsty Portent, inciting to the pillage of shops; of whom let the Mountain have the credit! The Mountain murmurs, ill at ease: this 'Maximum of Patriotism,' how shall they either own him or disown him? As for Marat personally, he, with his fixed-idea, remains invulnerable to such things: nay the People's-friend is very evidently rising in importance, as his befriended People rises. No shrieks now, when he goes to speak; occasional applauses rather, furtherance which breeds ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... shot leaping off her like peas. It was a perilous moment, but the Union Government had only been a day behind in perfecting the same experiment. Next day the Monitor arrived on the scene, and the famous duel between the first two ironclads ever constructed commenced. Each proved invulnerable to the other, for neither side had yet constructed pieces capable of piercing protection, but the victory was so far with the North that the hope that the Confederacy might obtain, by one bold and inventive stroke, the mastery of ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... biscuit, which no persuasion, it may be remembered, had availed to make him taste—even when devoured by the pangs of hunger. I tried in vain, however, to recall him to some remembrance of his poor mother. On that point he was invulnerable; the abstract had no charm for him or meaning. He dealt ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... education had made him a coldly calculating man, jealous of his honor, but immersed in schemes for his own aggrandizement, and superbly invulnerable to the blandishments of sentimentality; hence his amazement, when the deep and engrossing love of his life burned away that selfishness which was citadel of his affections. Because his infatuation ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... invulnerable— what would I give to be invulnerable? and egad, I am almost weary of being a Man, and subject to beating: wou'd I were a Woman, a Man has but an ill time on't: if he has a mind to a Wench, the making Love is so plaguy tedious— then paying is to my ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... help him in a war which he pretended his old enemy Ludeger was about to bring upon him. Siegfried consented, and Kriemhild, because she loved her husband very deeply, was much troubled. In her distress she confided to Hagen that Siegfried was invulnerable except in one spot, between the shoulder blades, where a lime leaf had rested and the dragon's blood had not ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... making light of the matter, declaring confidence in their own strength and skill, whatever be the upshot—at length, so assuring their sweethearts, that both believe them invincible, invulnerable. What woman who does not believe the same of him who holds ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... knew Audley's secret; he could reveal that secret to Harley. And the one soft and tender side of the statesman's nature—the sole part of him not dipped in the ninefold Styx of practical prosaic life, which renders man so invulnerable to affection—was his remorseful love for the school friend whom he ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... camp; and among these were the Earl of Salisbury, Lord Robert de Vere, the Grand Masters of the Temple and the Hospital, Bisset the English knight, and Walter Espec, still unwounded, and fighting as if he bore a charmed life, and felt invulnerable to ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... Defense's reappraisal is completed, the emphasis here will be largely on improved organization and decision-making—on cutting down the wasteful duplications and the time-lag that have handicapped our whole family of missiles. If we are to keep the peace, we need an invulnerable missile force powerful enough to deter any aggressor from even threatening an attack that he would know could not destroy enough of our force to prevent his own destruction. For as I said upon taking the oath of office: "Only when ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy
... individual who can make an accident prone of anyone who threatens his well being and survival. This boy, who, as indicated by the tests, hasn't an unkind thought for any creature on this planet, has an unconscious, reactive, invulnerable defense against persons who exhibit even the slightest hostility toward him. The energies of their own hostility are turned against them. The greater the hostility, the more accidents they have and the more serious they become. And the increase ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... for that one cry, "I want my mother!" The persistency of the child, in spite of her youth and her distress, was almost invulnerable. She came of a stiff-necked family on one side at least, and sometimes stiff-neckedness is more pronounced in a child than in an adult, in whom it may be tempered by experience and policy. "I want my mother! I want my mother!" Ellen repeated ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the grounds with my heart very high up on my bosom, not much put about at any human danger, let me add, for an encounter with an enemy of flesh and blood was a less fearsome prospect than the chance of an encounter with more invulnerable foes, who, my skin told me, haunted every heugh and howe of that still and sombre demesne of Dalness. But I set my teeth tight in my resolution, and with my dirk drawn in my hand—it was the only weapon left me—I crept ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... the right to do so. And since I cannot trust myself to enjoy the dangerous privilege of your friendship, I shall find consolation in the ambition that has engrossed me in the past, and rendered me, until the present moment, invulnerable to the charms of the ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... plunged her son in the waters of Styx to make him invulnerable. The truth of this allegory is apparent. The cruel mothers I speak of do otherwise; they plunge their children into softness, and they are preparing suffering for them, they open the way to every kind of ill, which their ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Lycidas; "one which makes the souls of those who hold it invulnerable as was the body of Achilles, and without the one weak point. It inspires even women and children with the courage of heroes, as I witnessed this day. The seventh of the Hebrew brethren was of tender years, and goodly. ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... is one who only appears on the Sunday outside his own dwelling, because on any other day he would be arrested for debt. Even on a week day he is safe if he keeps to his own house, where in Ireland, as in England, no writ can force its way. Sir —— was also invulnerable while sitting on the grand jury, where quite lately he had protracted the business to an inordinate length in order to extend his own liberty. As the boat passed close beside his castle, a handsome elderly gentleman appeared at an open window, and with hat in hand ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... he told him about what was being done in the prison, the inspector's severity, the cruelty of the convoy officer when he refused places on the carts to those who asked for them, and paid no attention to the fact that there was a woman in travail in the train. All these people were evidently invulnerable and impregnable to the simplest feelings of compassion only because they held offices. "As officials they were impermeable to the feelings of humanity, as this paved ground is impermeable to the rain." Thus thought Nekhludoff as he looked at the railway embankment paved with stones ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... done to Thorarin. At this moment he assailed them with such fury that he slew Thorbiorn upon the spot, and killed several of his attendants, although Oddo, the son of Katla, escaped free from wounds, having been dressed by his mother in an invulnerable garment. After this action, more blood being shed than usual in an Icelandic engagement, Thorarin returned to Mahfahlida, and, being questioned by his mother concerning the events of the skirmish, he answered in the improvisatory ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... Princess Mave, and Congal went to his quarters; but not to sleep or dream, for the Druid who had provoked the contest came to him bringing his golden wand, and all night long the Druid was weaving spells to charm the shield and spear and helmet of Congal, to make them invulnerable in the battle ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... Tories to power, and would have taken quick possession of the social reins had Lady Hunsdon laid them down for a moment. Politics enjoyed a rest on Nevis, but other interests loomed large in proportion, and the apparent defeat of the hitherto invulnerable leader of ton excited both joy and hope in the breast of Lady Toppington and her little court. Now did Lady Hunsdon sweep rivals aside with her flexible eyebrows, and on the evening when she was able to announce her triumph, she was besieged in her stately ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... stood blindly, half-bewilderedly. The shaded room, the sensuous fragrance of her presence, every graceful movement, the fascination of the wide, earnest eyes, all was more than beginning to intoxicate him, to shatter his chain-armour of bitterness and self-control. He, the strong, the invulnerable, the man in whom all heart and feeling was dead—what sorcery was this? He was bewitched, entranced, enthralled. His strength ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... Lord mine is "an inheritance incorruptible." It is not exposed to the gnawing tooth of time. Moth and rust can not impair the treasure. It will not grow less as I grow old. Its glories are as invulnerable as my Lord. ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... and to be of potent efficacy in matters of commerce and matrimony. The German soldiers, in the dark and superstitious ages, believed that if the figure of Mars, cast and engraved under the sign of the Scorpion, were worn about the neck, it would render them invulnerable, and insure success to their military enterprises—hence the reason why amulets were then found upon every soldier, either killed ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... slowly: if he came up to them to encourage them in their work, they all relaxed the energy which they before exerted of their own accord: when he was present they cast down their eyes, they silently cursed him as he passed by; so that his mind, invulnerable to plebeian hatred, was sometimes moved. All kind of harsh treatment being tried in vain, he no longer held any intercourse with the soldiers; he said the army was corrupted by the centurions; he sometimes gibingly called them tribunes of the people ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... to no effort on her own part that the Queen-mother was indebted for the constant society of the monarch, but rather to the attractions of one of her maids of honour; and that for the first time in his life Louis XIII evinced symptoms of a passion to which he had hitherto been supposed invulnerable. Mademoiselle de Hautefort, the object of this apparent preference, was remarkable rather for intellect than beauty; her conversational powers were considerable, her mind well cultivated, and her judgment sound. She was, moreover, totally without ambition, virtuous from ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... numerous societies in India today are making slow but sure progress in restoring the ancient values of caste, based solely on natural qualification and not on birth. Every nation on earth has its own distinctive misery-producing karma to deal with and remove; India, too, with her versatile and invulnerable spirit, shall prove herself equal ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... and, before the time for retiring arrived, again ventured to express how much what he had now heard had increased his previous desire to pass a night in that room. He did not profess to believe himself invulnerable to fears of such a kind, but was curious to convince himself of the actual existence of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... attendants, the Valkyrs, or battle maidens, were either his daughters, like Brunhild, or the offspring of mortal kings, maidens who were privileged to remain immortal and invulnerable as long as they implicitly obeyed the god and remained virgins. They and their steeds were the personification of the clouds, their glittering weapons being the lightning flashes. The ancients imagined that they swept down to earth at Valfather's command, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... to nourish can be found, they seize greedily upon the hook, which fastens itself readily in their crooked bills. All these sea birds are clothed with a coat of feathers so thick and elastic that except in one or two places they are invulnerable to a bullet. ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... head, the only part of him that seems invulnerable,' says the fond father. 'What's that?' he yells, for the boy was talking again. He listened a minute, and it was right entertaining to watch his face work as the words come along. It registered all the evil that Scotland has suffered from her oppressors since they first thought up the name ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... passionate desire to triumph over Bertha, as only wealth and predominance could triumph over her. As the wife of Rosedale—the Rosedale she felt it in her power to create—she would at least present an invulnerable front to her enemy. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... his fire until within short range. Then, slowly circling about his unwieldy foe, he fired shot after shot, which, while they did not disable her, prevented her from destroying the Union ships in the harbor. Finding the Monitor apparently invulnerable, and with her machinery giving trouble, the Merrimac at last withdrew ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... far, for anything they knew, he might have thousands behind him. He owed not a man in Barbie. The appointments of Green Shutters were as brave as ever. The selling of his horses, the dismissal of his men, might mean the completion of a fortune, not its loss. Hitherto, then, he was invulnerable—so he reasoned. It was his son's disgrace that gave the men he had trodden under foot the first weapon they could use against him. That was why it was more damnable in Gourlay's eyes than the conduct of all the prodigals ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... the efforts of his enemies. Resolved to fall with arms in his hand, he rushed on the battalions, and carried terror and death into the midst of their ranks. But his valour could only ennoble his fall. Still repulsed, still invulnerable, he relinquished the hope of meeting death or victory. In the night of the 19th of March he returned to Naples: the Queen appeared indignant at seeing him. "Madame," said he to her, "I was not able to find death." He departed immediately, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... back without punishment. They had slain several of their warriors, without receiving any injury in return. What though the Evil One, in the guise of a young Shawanoe, had charge of the little party, neither he nor they were invulnerable, and the well-aimed bullet must be more effective than the arrow of the ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... citizens off the pavement into the gutter. The solid houses of Elm Park Gardens, with their rich sun-blinds, the perfect sward, the white-frocked girls, the respectful gardeners, the red motor-buses flitting past behind the screen of bushes in the distance, even the butler in his majestic and invulnerable self-conceit—the whole systematized scene of correctness and tradition trembled as if perceived through the quivering of hot air. Gladys, reliant on the male and feeling that the male could no longer be relied on, went 'off her game,' with apologies; the experience of Miss Horton ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... was always at hand to guide and support him in the conflict, and to succor him in danger. Achilles, on the other hand, possessed a charmed life. He had been dipped by his mother Thetis, when an infant, in the river Styx, to render him invulnerable and immortal; and the immersion produced the effect intended in respect to all those parts of the body which the water laved. As, how ever, Thetis held the child by the ankles when she plunged him in, the ankles remained unaffected by the magic influence ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... a heavy and rather long chin which he shaved. His eyes were blue, a chill, naive blue. He faced Lingard untouched by travel, without a mark of weariness or exposure, with the air of having been born invulnerable. He had a full, pale face; and his complexion was perfectly colourless, yet amazingly fresh, as if he had been reared ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... existent marsh gas, accountable for dragons and serpents and other fauna of legendary history; but in certain country districts there are some animals that no amount of Board School information, nor countless Science Siftings from penny papers can ever destroy, and to this invulnerable class belongs the ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... others, have affirmed that the plumage of the condor is invulnerable to a musket-ball. This absurdity is scarcely worthy of contradiction; but it is nevertheless true that the bird has a singular tenacity of life, and that it is seldom killed by fire-arms, unless when shot in some vital part. Its plumage, particularly on the wings, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... spectacle was a grand one, and was viewed by the Rebel soldiers in both forts, who were now out of range of our guns, and lined the walls. Few audiences have ever witnessed so imposing a sight. The great ram came on for a single-handed contest with the fleet. She was believed to be invulnerable, and had powerful double engines by which she could be easily handled; while our monitors were so slow-gaited that they were unable to offer any serious obstacle to her approach. Farragut himself seemed to place his chief ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... or that so many of the enemy fell, but he points out that Marcellus gained much glory by that battle, and that the Roman people took courage after their misfortunes, thinking that it was not against an unconquerable and invulnerable foe that they were fighting, but one who could be made to suffer ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... holy code at naught with ignominy and scorn. Thus they treat all their domestic laws and constitutions, and even what they had considered as a law of nature; but whatever they have put their seal on for the purposes of their ambition, and the ruin of their neighbours, this alone is invulnerable, impassible, immortal. Assuming to be masters of everything human and divine, here, and here alone, it seems they are limited, "cooped and cabined in;" and this omnipotent legislature finds itself wholly without the power of exercising its favourite attribute, the love of peace. In other ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... the town seemed weaker for holding out, and as the prospect of reinforcements seemed to grow fainter and fainter, the opinion of Hanoverian Edinburgh concerning the clans changed mightily. Had the Highlanders been a race of giants, endowed with more than mortal prowess, and invulnerable as Achilles, they could hardly have struck more terror into the hearts of loyal and ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... practice on which he converses. He has surrounded himself with such fortifications of strength, that to attack him with a view to gain a surrender on any questions of dispute is like trying to break a rock with a bird's feather, or taking Gibraltar with a merchant ship's gun. He is invulnerable in everything. His words, like Jupiter's bolts, come down upon you in such fury that your escape is as likely as that of a gnat thrown into a caldron of flaming oil. Hercules crushing an infant in his grasp is a difficult task compared to the ease with which this giant talker grasps ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... storm had gone by, leaving them, as it were, spent. They were both by nature passionate, vehement. But the lines of their passion were opposite. Hers was the primitive, crude, violent flux of the blood, emotional and undiscriminating, but wanting to mix and mingle. His was the hard, clear, invulnerable passion of the bones, finely tempered and unchangeable. She was the flint and he the steel. But in continual striking together they only destroyed each other. The fire was a third thing, belonging to neither ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... Harvey process on the nickel steel was universally acknowledged; other countries abandoned their previous style of armor, and the United States set out to build a number of new ships that should be protected with this invulnerable armor. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 42, August 26, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... remained quite silent, like the breeder; for, as Prof. Sedgwick remarked many years ago, in reference to the poor old Dean of York, who was never weary of inveighing against geologists, a man who talks about what he does not in the least understand, is invulnerable.") ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... 32-pound and 18-pound shot and shell dropped into the sea from the iron plating of the French ships. Whatever injury was sustained was caused by the entrance of shot and splinters through the portholes. Unable to withstand the well-directed fire of their invulnerable enemy, the Russians hoisted the white flag, after having lost 45 killed and 130 wounded. The allies lost but two killed and had but forty-five wounded—all on board the armored ships. "Everything may be expected of these formidable engines of war," ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... Achilles against a stone, is changed by Neptune into the swan, a bird of the same name, he having been vulnerable by no weapon. At the banquet of the chiefs, Nestor calls to mind Caeneus, who was also invulnerable; and who having been changed from a woman into a man, on being buried under a heap of trees, was transformed into a bird. This Caeneus was one of the Lapithae, at the battle of whom with the Centaurs, Nestor was ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... up from the sand one of the spears which had been cast down when we hauled the boat ashore. With this, he went down so far as seemed safe, and prodded the creature in one of its tentacles—the weapon entering easily, at which I was surprised, for I had understood that these monsters were near to invulnerable in all parts save their eyes. At receiving this stab, the great fish appeared to feel no hurt for it showed no signs of pain, and, at that, the bo'sun was further emboldened to go nearer, so that he might deliver a more deadly wound; yet scarce had he taken two ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... careless of defence, Invulnerable in his impudence, He dares the world, and, eager of a name, He thrusts about and justles into fame. So fond of loud report that, not to miss Of being known (his last and utmost bliss), He rather would be ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... come soaring before the wind with hanging flares. Certainly they will be steerable. Moreover, when the wind admits, there will be freely-moving steerable balloons wagging little flags to their friends below. And so far as the resources of the men on the ground go, the balloons will be almost invulnerable. The mere perforation of balloons with shot does them little harm, and the possibility of hitting a balloon that is drifting about at a practically unascertainable distance and height so precisely as to blow it to pieces ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... whoever rules it, that I must always be. I, who am the chief of wizards; I, the reader of men's hearts; I, the hearer of men's thoughts! I, the lord of the air and the lightning; I, the invulnerable. If you would murder, Prince, then do the deed; do it knowing that I have your secret, and that henceforth you who rule shall be my servant. Nay, you forget that I can see in the dark; lay down that assegai, or, ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... which no man regretted more than himself upon the present occasion, but which quite settled the question. Nevertheless, he said, there WAS a gentleman present (and here he looked very hard at a tall farrier), who, having been engaged all his life in the manufacture of horseshoes, must be quite invulnerable to the power of witches, and who, he had no doubt, from his own reputation for bravery and good-nature, would readily accept the commission. The farrier politely thanked him for his good opinion, ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... queens have quarreled, and Hagen, as the faithful liegeman of Brunhild, seeks the life of Siegfried, who is invulnerable except in one spot on his back. At the end of a day's hunt in the Odenwald (across the Rhine from Worms) the thirsty Siegfried races with Gunter and Hagen to a spring. 9: The silken cross which the unsuspecting Kriemhild has sewn upon her husband's ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... still ran up the slope, screaming their defiance. A handful reached the breastworks. Drew saw one man by some strange fortune scramble to the top of that timber wall, stand balanced for a moment in triumph to take aim at a target below as if he himself were invulnerable, and then plunge, as might a diver cleaving a pool, out of ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... invulnerable to these wounds; how, then, can I, an orphan girl, receive them with indifference?" She spoke passionately, and drooped her burning face till ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... days, a handful of white men had totally destroyed their strongholds, they shook their heads, and exclaimed, "God is great!" and the Dyaks declared that the Tuan Besar (Mr. Brooke) had charmed the river to quiet the bore, [17] and that the whites were invulnerable. Although this expedition would have a great moral effect on all the more respectable and thinking natives, inasmuch as the inhabitants of the places destroyed were looked upon, from the large proportion of Malays, as more civilized than their formidable and savage neighbors, the Dyaks inhabiting ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... soon devour For want of other prey, but that he knows His end with mine involvd; and knows that I Should prove a bitter Morsel, and his bane, When ever that shall be; so Fate pronounc'd. But thou O Father, I forewarn thee, shun 810 His deadly arrow; neither vainly hope To be invulnerable in those bright Arms, Though temper'd heav'nly, for that mortal dint, Save he who reigns above, none can resist. She finish'd, and the suttle Fiend his lore Soon learnd, now milder, and thus answerd smooth. Dear Daughter, since ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the horse (Uchchaisrava), (Indra), patting me on the head with his hand, said these words, "Now even the celestials themselves cannot conquer thee,—what shall I say of imperfect mortals residing on earth? Thou hast become invulnerable in strength, irrepressible, and incomparable in fight." Then with the hair of his body standing on end, he again accosted me saying, "O hero, in fighting with weapons none is equal unto thee. And, O perpetuator of the Kuru race, thou art even watchful, and dexterous, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... guards, of approved valor and fidelity; their station was marked by honors and emoluments; and some fortunate accidents soon introduced an opinion, that as long as the guards of the labarum were engaged in the execution of their office, they were secure and invulnerable amidst the darts of the enemy. In the second civil war, Licinius felt and dreaded the power of this consecrated banner, the sight of which, in the distress of battle, animated the soldiers of Constantine with an invincible enthusiasm, and scattered terror and dismay through the ranks of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... been successful to the measure of your desire. A person interests, or piques, or tantalises you, you do your best to make him out; yet strive as you will, you cannot read the riddle of his personality. From the invulnerable fortress of his own nature he smiles contemptuously on the beleaguering armies of your curiosity and analysis. And it is not only the stranger that thus defeats you; it may be the brother brought up by the same fireside with you, the best friend whom you have known from early school ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... with this doctrine, and I now repeated, "And what else is Christianity but this constant ambition to elevate and dignify our nature?" and I was astonished, when I reflected how pure, how philosophical, and how invulnerable the essence of Christianity manifested itself, that there could come an epoch when philosophy dared to assert, "From this time forth I will stand instead of a religion like this." And in what manner—by inculcating vice? Certainly not. By teaching virtue? Why that will be to teach us to ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... Thetis,—foretold in the day of Prometheus as a man who should far outstrip his own father in glory and greatness. Years had passed since the marriage of Thetis to King Peleus, and their son Achilles was now grown to manhood, a wonder of strength indeed, and, moreover, invulnerable. For his mother, forewarned of his death in the Trojan War, had dipped him in the sacred river Styx when he was a baby, so that he could take no hurt from any weapon. From head to foot she had plunged him in, only forgetting the little heel that she held him by, and this alone could ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... days wore on his nerves. She could see that it pained him to urge the tired animals forward, to lash them up the stream banks and drive them past the springs. And only half understanding his character—fine where she was obtuse, sensitive where she was invulnerable, she felt the continued withdrawal from him, the instinctive shrinking from the man who ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner |
