"Impregnability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and wrote from many hundred miles' distance, must have misapprehended the state of the case. Whether an invasion of Sikkim was either advisable or called for, was a matter in which I had no concern: nor do I offer an opinion as to the impregnability of the country if it were defended by natives otherwise a match for a British force, and having the advantage of position. I was not consulted with reference to any difference of opinion between the civil and military powers, such as seems to have called for the expression of Sir ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... exclamations as he made his way out of the quiet labyrinth of the Temple; and yet there was no position of worldly power so coveted in Bold's ambition as that held by the man of whom he was thinking. It was the impregnability of the place which made Bold so angry with the possessor of it, and it was the same quality which ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... had raised a rampart of 1,100 yards in length, and this they had armed with ninety guns, while a battery of forty-two guns protected its flank. Kulangsu was also fortified, and the Chinese had placed in all 500 guns in position. They believed in the impregnability of Amoy, and it was allowed that no inconsiderable skill as well as great expense had been devoted to the strengthening of the place. When the English fleet arrived off the port the Chinese sent a flag of truce to demand what it wanted, and they were informed ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... companion, who now, with the wrath of the Pythian Apollo, assumes his bow and arrows; plants himself in the remotest corner of the room, and prepares his fatal shafts. The bow-string twangs, flights of arrows are in the air, but the Dutch impregnability of the Bergen-op-Zooms at the base receives the few which reach the mark, and they recoil without mischief done. Again the baffled archer collects his arrows, and again he takes his station. An arrow issues forth, and takes ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Andely or Les Andelys on the Seine, the 14th July, 1197, in the neighbourhood of that fortress which Richard had erected, and of which he was so proud—the Chateau Gaillard or "Saucy Castle," as he jestingly called it. The reputation which the castle enjoyed for impregnability under Richard, was lost under his ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... little older, living at Rosenheim, I.W., there was surely the future defender of Mafeking in the little chap in brown Holland on the sands of Bonchurch digging scientific trenches with wooden spade, and demonstrating to his governess the impregnability of his sand fortress. With his sister and brother, little Ste was once out with this governess on a country ramble near Tunbridge Wells, when the governess discovered that she had walked farther than she intended and was in strange ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... slowly to her feet. The absolute serenity of his manner bespoke an impregnability of purpose before which the words died away on her lips. She realized that she might as well plead with ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... consternation, and immediately steps were taken to place the colony in the best posture for defence, reliance being had on the impregnability of the islands, instead of delivering up the plunder, especially as Captain Wentworth held a commission from the Governor and Council, ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... long been hovering about the twin forts at the mouth of the river; and daily telegrams of the progress of the bombardment and of their impregnability had schooled the country into the belief that the city was perfectly secure. Day after day the wires repeated the same story of thousands of shell and nobody hurt, until inquiry ceased to be even anxious; and the people were ready to despise this impotent attempt upon the most important point ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... South Carolina in 1830[324]. How then are we to explain the profound change of sentiment indicated by the leading papers of the South just before the war? The Richmond Enquirer, September 6, 1855, asserts: "Every moment's additional reflection but convinces us of the absolute impregnability of the Southern position on this subject. Facts, which can not be questioned, come thronging in support of the true doctrine—that slavery is the best condition of the black race in this country, and that the true philanthropists should rather desire ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... combination with others. The reply made to me once by a publisher of some eminence upon this question, was the best fitted to lower Mr. Taylor's investigation with a stranger to the long history of the dispute. 'I feel,' he said, 'the impregnability of the case made out by Mr. Taylor. But the misfortune is, that I have seen so many previous impregnable cases made out for other claimants.' Ay, that would be unfortunate. But the misfortune for this repartee was, that I, for ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... outgoing activities, has developed live bases of trade, maritime growth, and culture, while the inert, somnolent interior has drowsed away its long eventless existence. The rugged, inaccessible heart of little Sardinia repeats the story of central Arabia in its aloofness, its impregnability, backwardness, and in the purity of its race. Its accessible coast, forming a convenient way-station on the maritime crossroads of the western Mediterranean, has received a succession of conquerors and an intermittent influx of every ethnic strain ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Margherita (1571). The French built Fort Imperiale on Monte Sergio and the battery on Lacroma. The cliff-like masses of stone are stern and forbidding, and one thinks the citizens must have been glad to escape from them on to the wooded slopes of Monte Sergio (bare and stony now), though their apparent impregnability must have been comforting in those days; when the strong hand often ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson |
