"Unobtainable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are not wanting for those who can read them in French, but they are to be found mainly in large and often inaccessible books, like M. Doutte's "En Tribu," the Marquis de Segonzac's remarkable explorations in the Atlas, or Foucauld's classic (but unobtainable) "Reconnaissance au Maroc", and few, if any, ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... to see if their men were within reach to come and row and enable him to make an effort to obtain some of the green, bulbous-looking stems and flowers of the lovely parasite which had taken his attention. But they were as unobtainable as if they were a hundred miles away, for it would have taken them days to cut a way to opposite where the boat was now being held against the swift stream, and even when they had reached the spot it would have been impossible ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... its mystery and glory. I addressed the sun, desiring the sole equivalent of his light and brilliance, his endurance, and unwearied race. I turned to the blue heaven over, gazing into its depth, inhaling its exquisite color and sweetness. The rich blue of the unobtainable flower of the sky drew my soul toward it, and there it rested, for pure color is the rest of the heart. By all these I prayed. I felt an emotion of the soul beyond all definition; prayer is a puny thing to it." He prayed by the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... reason recoils; visionary; inconceivable &c. (improbable) 473; prodigious &c. (wonderful) 870; unimaginable, inimaginable[obs3]; unthinkable. impracticable unachievable; unfeasible, infeasible; insuperable; unsurmountable[obs3], insurmountable; unattainable, unobtainable; out of reach, out of the question; not to be had, not to be thought of; beyond control; desperate &c. (hopeless) 859; incompatible &c. 24; inaccessible, uncomeatable[obs3], impassable, impervious, innavigable[obs3], inextricable; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... see exactly how he could make use of them without arousing the household. He thought of various devices, such as a muffled hammer, or a crowbar to wrench the door from its hinges, but these were discarded in turn as impracticable, from the fact that they were unobtainable. He looked about him among the shrubbery, but there was nothing to aid him; and, indeed, how could he expect to find tools where there were no servants to use them? He got up and walked down the path, absorbed in reverie, ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... directly on these gnarly leaves, a practice called foliar feeding. It helped greatly because, I reasoned, most fertility is located in the topsoil, and when it gets dry the plants draw on subsoil moisture, so surface nutrients, though still present in the dry soil, become unobtainable. That being so, I reasoned that some of these species might do even better if they had just a little fertilized water. So I improvised a simple drip system and metered out 4 or 5 gallons of liquid fertilizer ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... the crew set about to make the event one long to be remembered in the Northland. Flowers were unobtainable, but a frame in the form of a giant horseshoe was constructed and covered over ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... pictures, rich hangings, tapestries, rugs, not so much in the desire to impress the world with his wealth as to satisfy the craving for beauty, the longing to possess that which is exquisite, and fine, and almost unobtainable. You have seen how a woman, long denied luxuries, feeds her starved senses on soft silken things, on laces and gleaming jewels, for pure sensuous delight in their feel ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... not they who had fired upon us. They were too close to us to make any mistake in that way, for during the heaviest fighting they had their guns within 1,600 yards of the front line, and where cover was unobtainable either for gun or man. Needless to say they suffered very heavily both in personnel and material, for the enemy aircraft soon found them, and they were hammered and gassed mercilessly. Their forward observation officers maintained a liaison with the H.Q. ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... similar. The difference in their physical structure makes them of mutual assistance, those with the long arms being able to take the shellfish of the shallow waters, while those with the long legs take the surface fish from the deeper localities; thus the two gather a harvest otherwise unobtainable. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... "Anti-Monopolists" had considered him with favor on account of his opinions and decisions regarding the operation and control of railroads. Just after the adoption of the platform a telegram from the judge announced that he would accept a unanimous nomination. Since unanimity was unobtainable, however, his name was withdrawn later in ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... placed in the hands of Mr. Ward (Working Men's College) some photographs from the etchings made by Turner for the Liber; the original etchings being now unobtainable, except by fortunate accident. I have selected the subjects carefully from my own collection of the etchings; and though some of the more subtle qualities of line are lost in the photographs, the student will find ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... look only at the dark side of the picture. It is true enough that in some districts food is scarce, but there are none in which it is absolutely unobtainable. The districts threatened by famine must be abandoned—that is the way to deal with ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... his whole physical and nervous system disorganized by the deglutition of strange fruits and condiments, and by witnessing heartrending family farewells, an unexpected whisky and soda, when such a restorative had seemed as unobtainable as the very moon which was beginning to appear, was welcome indeed. The station-master was at once the master of the situation, and the hitherto taciturn Englishman, his thirst assuaged and his limbs at rest, became ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... real suffering in Paris, and the privations and inconveniences were borne uncomplainingly, and even cheerfully. Beef had become almost unobtainable, but it was agreed that horse-flesh was not a bad substitute; cats and dogs were fast disappearing from the streets, and their flesh, prepared in a variety of ways, took the place on the cards of the restaurants of hares and game, and ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... be considered as an adulterant, except in the same sense as fillings, like whiting, litharge or barytes, the use of which in rubber compounds often gives to the product desirable qualities that are unobtainable by the use of "pure gum." It lacks some of the qualities of good native rubber, and yet it is rubber, and fills its proper place as acceptably as any raw material of manufacture. Rubber shoes made of new gum entirely would be too elastic, and for that reason would draw the feet, besides being ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... system, and in possession of a snug little, recently-acquired competence that rendered it unnecessary for me to follow the sea as a profession, I— Charles Conyers, R.N., aged twenty-seven—was, by the fiat of my medical adviser, about to seek, on the broad ocean, that life-giving tonic which is unobtainable elsewhere, and which was all that I now needed to entirely reinvigorate my constitution and complete my ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... character of a principle of attraction, if it be considered in the light of something attainable; and thus hope tends thereto, for it denotes a kind of approach. But in so far as it is considered as unobtainable, it has the character of a principle of repulsion, because, as stated in Ethic. iii, 3, "when men come to an impossibility they disperse." And this is how despair stands in regard to this object, wherefore it implies a movement of withdrawal: and ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas |
