"Invisibility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is called Adrune; the fox, Blue-foot, or the Racer of the Woods; the wolf, Gray-foot, or Gold-foot; the bear the Old Man, or Grandfather. The cap of a gnome confers invisibility, and causes one to behold invisible things. Every toad that is baptized must be clad in red or black velvet, a bell on its neck, a bell on its feet. The godfather holds its head, the godmother its hinder parts. 'Tis the demon Sidragasum ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... tarn-kap, I reasoned, with my eyes on the cruel bird, was only a symbol after all, something physical to make real that invisibility which we cannot readily conceive. But suddenly—could my wish have been felt?—the hawk gave a hoarse croak of fright, dropped his prey, and, springing heavily into the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... that an incident occurred of a more picturesque character than is usual in modern warfare. The invisibility of combatants and guns, and the absorption of the individual in the mass, have robbed the battle-field of those episodes which adorned, if they did not justify it. On this occasion, a Boer gun, cut off ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with infidels, to render it fertile for the true believers, and to be their slaves upon their arrival, which did occur some time after the occurrences which I now relate; it was not the custom for the females of Souffra to lead the life of invisibility, permitted only to those who administer to the delights of the followers of the Koran; and although it was with exceeding modesty of demeanour, still did they on great occasions expose their charms to the public gaze, for which error, no doubt if they ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... credence in the Nara epoch, and indeed all through the annals of early Japan there runs a well-marked thread of superstition which owed something of its obtrusiveness to intercourse with Korea and China, whence came professors of the arts of invisibility and magic. A thunder deity making his occasional abode in lofty trees is gravely spoken of in the context of a campaign, and if at one moment a river is inhabited by a semi-human monster, at another a fish formed like a child is caught in the sea. There is, of course, an ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... there preaching for three months his Law for the benefit of his mother.(3) Buddha had gone up to this heaven by his supernatural power,(4) without letting his disciples know; but seven days before the completion (of the three months) he laid aside his invisibility,(4) and Anuruddha,(5) with his heavenly eyes,(5) saw the World-honoured one, and immediately said to the honoured one, the great Mugalan, "Do you go and salute the World-honoured one." Mugalan ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... to think, the invisibility of the thing was not so incredible. The mounted creatures he had seen in the hold were evidence that the flier had visited some unknown planet, where weird life reigned. It was not beyond reason that such a planet should be inhabited by beings ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... The chat's secret of invisibility was thus plainly revealed. It is not in his protective coloring, for though his back is modest of hue, his breast is conspicuously showy; nor is it in his size, for he is almost as large as an oriole; it is in his manners. ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... in time," said Robert lightly, to ease his feelings, "because I'm getting a lot of practice, and it seems that I'll have a lot more. Perhaps I need this rest, but, so far as my feelings are concerned, I wish the wolves would come on and make a final rush. Their silence and invisibility are pretty hard ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the leopard and the giraffe have all a cryptic effect which at a very short distance renders the creatures invisible amid their natural surroundings. Nor is it necessary in order to attain this invisibility that the colouring should be really dull and plain. It all depends upon the habitat. Mr. Wallace has described "a South American goatsucker which rests in the bright sunshine on little bare rocky islets in the upper Rio Negro where its unusually light ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... eyes toward me see me to glance through me to the building behind. I wonder if this is at all a common experience, or whether I was unduly sensitive that day, unduly wrought up? I began to feel like one clad in garments of invisibility. I could see, but was not seen. I could feel, but was not felt. In the country there are few who would not stop to speak to me, or at least appraise me with their eyes; but here I was a wraith, a ghost—not a palpable human ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... encounters were nearly as numerous as they would have been in daylight; but Letty went on her way as if, instead of the old gray rag, she wore the magic cloak of invisibility. So it was during the whole of the long half mile between Fifty-ninth Street and Forty-second Street. In spite of the fact that she was the only unescorted woman she saw, no invitation "to go to the bad" was proffered her. "There's quite a trick to it," Steptoe had said, in the afternoon; ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... as she headed in towards the Mole with her faithful ferry-boats at her heels, there was scarcely a glimmer of light to be seen shorewards. Ahead of her, as she drove through the water, rolled the smoke-screen, her cloak of invisibility, wrapped about her by the small craft. This was a device of Wing-Commander Brock, R.N.A.S., "without which," acknowledges the Admiral in Command, "the operation could not have been conducted." The ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... her into invisibility and walked out the back door of the Temple-on-the-Green. The door was open and two Temple Myrmidons, wearing the golden grape-clusters of Dionysus on their shoulder patches, stood outside the door. Neither of them ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... alleys of antdom, without ever holding any communication of any sort with its hosts and neighbours. In neither case has Sir John Lubbock ever seen an ant take the slightest notice of the presence of these strange fellow-lodgers. 'One might almost imagine,' he says, 'that they had the cap of invisibility.' Yet it is quite clear that the ants deliberately sanction the residence of the weevils and woodlice in their nests, for any unauthorised intruder would immediately be ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... reach of Lee. But by what means, Pope might well have asked, had a whole army corps, with its batteries and waggons, passed through the cordon which he had planned to throw around it, and passed through as if gifted with the secret of invisibility? ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... legends in which a hat conferring invisibility, or a glove, figures; but the stolen article is usually, as in most of the instances cited above, a cup or a drinking-horn. Many such articles are still preserved in various parts of Northern Europe. ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... concealed plant. When he had descended he and his men escorted McMurdo to headquarters. Darkness had fallen, and a keen blizzard was blowing so that the streets were nearly deserted; but a few loiterers followed the group, and emboldened by invisibility ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fast in my hand, and shall keep it safely for you, until you please to tell me where to find these Nymphs. The Nymphs, I mean, who keep the enchanted wallet, the flying slippers, and the what is it?—the helmet of invisibility." ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stealthy movement. The pretty cowrie, lemon-coloured and grey and brown, throws over its shining shoulders a shawl of the hue of the rock on which it crawls about, grey or brown or tawny, with white specks and dots which make for invisibility—a thin filmy shawl of exquisite sensitiveness. Touch it ever so lightly, and the helpless creature, discerning that its disguise has been penetrated, withdraws it, folding it into its shell, and closes its door against ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... blackness. But none of these imagined figures could cause the horror which he felt. He drove away the whole pack of them with a silent cry, a motionless dismissing wave of his hands. But there might be other beings round us, condemned to eternal invisibility lest the sight of them should drive men mad. We cannot see them, he thought. As a rule, we have no sensation of these gaunt neighbours, no suspicion of their approach, of their companionship. We do not hear their footsteps. We are utterly unconscious of them. Yet may there not be physical ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... believing myself unperceived, I noticed under the large oak in the roadside the figure of a young man who, by the imperfect light, appeared to be of Spanish extraction. But I evidently miscalculated my own invisibility; for he moved rapidly forward as I came to the window, and in a series of the most extraordinary pantomimic gestures saluted me. Beyond my experience of a few Greek plays in earlier days, I confess I am not an adept in the understanding of gesticulation; but it struck me that the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... leaped with flying feet. It seemed that they would never tire, but the trained warriors behind them were no less enduring. Once, twice, thrice they caught sight of them, and when a longer period of invisibility passed they knew, nevertheless, that they were still there. Now Long Jim suddenly wavered, but gathered himself together in an instant and continued his long leaps. Henry glanced at him and saw a patch of red on the sleeve of his ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... like sheaves of dazzling silver arrows; and over the water, and softly riding down the glen, came soft, filmy clouds of mist, so fine and delicate that they constantly faded into invisibility; while every now and then there were passing glimpses of colour appearing and disappearing over the rushing torrent, as if there had been a rainbow somewhere up above—one which had broken up, and these were its fragments being ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... Pentecost, which had a transient element in it, but in essence was permanent. The rushing mighty wind and the cloven tongues of fire, and the strange speech in many languages, were all equally transient. The rushing wind swept on, and the house was no more filled with it. The tongues flickered into invisibility and disappeared from the heads. The hubbub of many languages was quickly silent. But that which these things but symbolised is permanent; and we are not to think of Pentecost as if it were a sudden gush from ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... themselves with streaks of light and tremulous spots, different colored clouds passing over their epidermis with every thrill. The cuttlefish and ink fish, upon perceiving that they are pursued, enwrap themselves in a cloud of invisibility, just as did the enchanters of old in the books of chivalry, darkening the water with the ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... shell. On this occasion the hunter had used so much expedition, that he had accomplished his object, and nearly reached his home, before our tiny hero could overtake him. He nimbly drew his shell and cut off another beaver's tail. In all these pranks, he availed himself of his power of invisibility, and thus escaped observation. When the man saw that the trick had been so often repeated, his anger was greater than ever. He gave vent to his feelings in words. He looked carefully around to see whether he could discover any tracks. But he could find none. His unknown ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... fully on the sands of the shore. He sat up stiffly, staring out to sea. A storm was raging, and the sea was an angry waste. No ship showed on the waters; the mad, tumbled sky above it was either empty of planes or they had climbed to invisibility above the clouds that raced and churned ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... to his own loophole, to weary our eyes upon invisibility. Is some frightful and dismal storm about to break? But that night it did not. At the end of my long wait, with the first streaks of day, there was even ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... ended, the infuriated Sultan gave orders to behead the Shaykh, who also plunged his head into the tub; but the Wizard divined the ill-intent by "Mukashafah" (thought-reading); and by "Al-Ghayb 'an al-Absar" (invisibility) levanted to Damascus. The reader will do well to compare the older account with the "First Vizir's Story" (p. 17) in Mr. Gibb's "History of the Forty Vizirs," etc. As this scholar remarks, the Mi'raj, with all its wealth of wild fable, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... have been swift to advantage himself of Lanyard's tumble. If he had not vanished into thin air, or gone to earth in some untenanted stateroom thereabouts, he found in the close blackness of that narrow passage a cloak of positive invisibility ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... crowding closer. At any moment they might touch Mabel, and then anything might happen simply anything. Gerald took hold of his hair with both hands, as his way was when he was anxious or discouraged. Mabel, in invisibility, wrung her hands, as people are said to do in books that is, she clasped them and ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... died from the eyes; they grew blue, wondrous; the veil of invisibility slipped down from the neck, the shoulders, half revealing the gleaming breasts. And weird, weird beyond all telling was that exquisite head and bust floating there in air—and beautiful, sinisterly beautiful beyond all ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... one effect, it revealed me to my schoolfellows as an existence. From that time forth I lay no longer under the stigma of invisibility; I had produced my material shape and had thrown my shadow for a moment into a legend. But, in other respects, things went on ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... RESIDENCE.—The residence of the late Laureate is in the neighbourhood between freshwater Gate and Alum Bay, secluded by trees almost to invisibility. The front is covered with greenery, a fine magnolia growing round and over the front door. From under the lateral branches of a fine spreading cedar tree the Poet could look into Freshwater Bay and ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various
... I argued that the launch must be no great way off, in spite of its invisibility. I then put myself in the place of Small, and looked at it as a man of his capacity would. He would probably consider that to send back the launch or to keep it at a wharf would make pursuit easy if the police did happen to get on his ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... But a greater peculiarity was the resemblance this lady bore to a faded daguerrotype. If looked at one way, she was perfectly discernible; if looked at another, she went out in a sort of blur. Notwithstanding this comparative invisibility, she exhaled a delicate perfume of sweet lavender, very pleasing to the nostrils of the Misses Boggs, who stood looking at her in ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... Dream, or Vision, such as other Prophets had, is contrary to that distinction which God made between Moses, and other Prophets, Numb. 12. 6,7,8. To say God spake or appeared as he is in his own nature, is to deny his Infinitenesse, Invisibility, Incomprehensibility. To say he spake by Inspiration, or Infusion of the Holy Spirit, as the Holy Spirit signifieth the Deity, is to make Moses equall with Christ, in whom onely the Godhead (as St. Paul speaketh Col. 2.9.) dwelleth bodily. And lastly, to say he spake by the Holy Spirit, as it signifieth ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... as actually as upon that path to the gate, were drawing away, dissolving, as tenuous, as intangible, as those morning sunlit mists shifting and rising from before the massive blue ranges of the Great Smoky Mountains, and dallying with the distances into invisibility. ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of invisibility will be easily grasped by the reader if we take the example of the rainbow. The phenomenon of the rainbow, then, teaches us that what we know to be white light, or daylight, is composed of rays of various colors. ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... and it looks bright, and the thicker the smoke the brighter it looks; the blackness is simply the utter absence of smoke; there is nothing at all for the light to illuminate, accordingly we have the blankness of sheer invisibility. Here is a flame burning under the beam, and, to show what real smoke looks like, I will burn also this spirit lamp filled with turpentine instead of alcohol. Why the convention currents were free from dust was unknown; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... other celestial bodies, may be small; it is, indeed, as we shall afterwards see, almost infinitesimal. But in the economy of our earth the moon has played, and still plays, a part second only in importance to that of the sun himself. The moon is so close to us that her brilliant rays pale to invisibility countless orbs of a size and an intrinsic splendour incomparably greater than her own. The moon also occupies an exceptional position in the history of astronomy; for the law of gravitation, the greatest discovery that science has yet witnessed, was chiefly accomplished ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... a trance? What is their causing cattle to run mad and perish? What is their entering their names in a book, their coming together from all parts at the sound of a trumpet, their appearing sometimes clothed with light and fire upon them, then covering themselves and their instruments with invisibility? Are not all these but a blasphemous imitation of certain things recorded about our Saviour, or his prophets, or the saints ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... attention," said Ayrault, "in the way you said we might, because we longed so to see you." "Yes," added Bearwarden and Cortlandt, "we felt we MUST see you again." "I am always at your service," replied the spirit, "and will answer your questions. With regard to my visibility and invisibility"—he continued, with a smile, "for I will not wait for you to ask the explanation of what is in your minds—it is very simple. A man's soul can never die; a manifestation of the soul is the spirit; this has entity, consciousness, and will, and these also live forever. As in the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... will be cut and bleeding,—but what better does a thief deserve? If any see you, at the least they will take you for a madman; there will be trouble. But have no fear; bear a bold heart. None shall see you while I stalk at your side. I will cover you with the cloak of invisibility,—so that you may come in safety to the house of the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... by the cataclysm that gave birth to the planets, which Dr. Ku Sui had wrenched from the asteroidal belt between Mars and Jupiter and built into a world of his own, swinging it through space as he willed, and cloaking it with invisibility to baffle those who marveled at how he came and went, unseen, on his various errands. This was the mighty rock fortress in which lay the key-stone of his mounting power. This his lonely, unsuspected home, come for a while ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... all, if Mr. Gilmour tells us that he has met any unknown race in Mongolia, say, people with the power of making themselves invisible, for Tyndall will believe him, and Huxley account for them, and the Illustrated London News publish their portraits—in the stage of invisibility. We do not say the book is admirable, or perfect, or anything else superlative; but we do say, and this with sure confidence, that no one who begins it will leave it till the narrative ends, or doubt for an instant, whether he knows Defoe or not, that he ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... in my customary glider position, horizontal and face downward, and the invisibility of all the machinery gave an extraordinary effect of independent levitation. Only by looking up, as it were, and turning my head back could I see the flat aeroplane bottom of the balloon and the rapid successive passages, swish, swish, swish of ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Solomon advanced straightway into the presence-chamber. Ashmedai sat at that moment on the throne, but as soon as he saw Solomon enter, he took fright and raising his wings, flew away, shrieking back into invisibility. In spite of this, Solomon continued in great fear of him; and this explains that which is written (Song of Songs, iii. 7, 8), "Behold the bed which is Solomon's; threescore valiant men are about it, of the valiant of Israel; they all hold swords, ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... three gifts—the first will give Unbounded riches while you live; The second health where'er you be; The third, invisibility." ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... radical objection, because in such a case the whole statement would he gratuitous and conjectural. If it were allowable to suppose such an agency, it might be equally so to refuse admitting it; every one may be amused or not with a pure fiction, an imaginary creation. But do not plead, that the invisibility of diabolical agency is any proof or any presumption of its reality; but simply that it is no objection, that it has no power to neutralize the evidence produced, and that unbelievers have no authority, on this account, to treat the subject with that ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... of the dead mother. She appeared as if standing in front of a tansu, or chest of drawers, that still contained her ornaments and her wearing-apparel. Her head and shoulders could be very distinctly seen; but from the waist downwards the figure thinned into invisibility;—it was like an imperfect reflection of her, and transparent as a ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... fern-seed. A very common superstition, which still survives, is that the seeds of the fern have power to confer invisibility. ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... a sudden steadying effect. Your brain clears. The things that loomed so large, the "Flandria," and the English Field Ambulance and its miseries, and the terrifying recklessness of its Commandant, are reduced suddenly to invisibility. You can see nothing but the second Waterloo. You forget that you have ever been a prisoner in an Hotel-Hospital. You understand the mystic fascination of the road under your windows, going south-east ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... and the best atmospheric conditions to be glimpsed at all. Viewed under moderate amplification, the majority of rills resemble deep canal-like channels with roughly parallel sides, displaying occasionally local irregularities, and fining off to invisibility at one or both ends. But, if critically scrutinised in the best observing weather with high powers, the apparent evenness of their edges entirely disappears, and we find that the latter exhibit indentations, projections, and little flexures, like the banks of an ordinary ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... the sentry, expecting every moment to hear a challenge ring out. To my genuine astonishment, nothing of the kind occurred. The sentry did not pay the slightest attention to me, but went on pacing to and fro as though I had been wearing a cap of invisibility. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... their interest was centred on one side of the boat, they crowded each other a little. They removed their headgear and permitted only their crowns to show a few inches above the rail as they peered over. They held themselves ready at the same time to duck into complete invisibility. ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... jeopardy. No one had cause to suspect him. No one had seen him enter the Jeffrey grounds that fatal evening. There had been noised abroad no intimation of his grievance against the man. He had all the calm assurance of invisibility as he came to his abode, for a fog lay thick on the surface of the river and hung over all the land. He did not issue forth again freshly dressed till the sun was out once more, dispelling the vapors and conjuring the world back to sight ...
— The Crucial Moment - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... dawn found him unshaken in his determination to make good that prophecy. If, instead of spending the whole morning in doing his duty to the insurance company, he had been able to spend an early part of it in a state of invisibility within Bullard's private office, he would have justified himself beyond ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... of man. It was a more spirited, more original, more unconquerable and bewildering way of fighting than anybody had thought of before. To be suddenly in an enemy's presence a new kind and new size of man—colossal, baffling—to turn into invisibility before him, into intangibility, into another kind of being before the enemy's eyes, so that he could not possibly tell what to do, and so that none of the things that he had thought of to do would work.... This is what Christ was doing, it seems to some of us, and it ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... indistinguishable his body by our sense of sight, must leave traces of his passage. The study from beginning to end is finely realistic; and even the theory of the albino, Griffin, and in a lesser degree his method of winning the useless gift of invisibility, are convincing enough to make us wonder whether the thing is not scientifically possible. As a pure romance set in perfectly natural surroundings, The Invisible Man is possibly the high-water mark ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... an enormous marble apartment chiefly populated by easy-chairs and tables. He sat down to a table and fiercely rang a bell which reposed thereon. Several of her menials simultaneously appeared out of invisibility, and one of them ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... window, and my memory a little cruelly restored to this vision of a day long dead, I was still of the same opinion. Oh! I should have put on my boots and my waterproof and gone down to the little wood to meet the enchanter! He would have given me the cap of invisibility, the purse of Fortunatus, and a pair of seven-league boots. He would have taught me to conquer worlds, and to leave the easy triumphs of dreamers to madmen, philosophers, and poets, He would have ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... Bran, and certain divine people of Elysium who appeared to Fionn had rings "as thick as a three-ox goad."[516] Even the Fians are giants, and the skull of one of them could contain several men. The gods have also the attribute of invisibility, and are only seen by those to whom they wish to disclose themselves, or they have the power of concealing themselves in a magic mist. When they appear to mortals it is usually in mortal guise, sometimes in the form of a particular person, but they can also ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... cloak which causes invisibility is found in Grimm's tale of the raven. See Grimm's Fairy Tales, Columbus Series, p. 30. In a Pampanga tale the possessor of a magic stone becomes invisible when squeezes it. See Bayliss, (Jour. Am. Folk-Lore, Vol. ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... agitation of her heart. So she alighted on the wall, a little distance off, and remained watching him, hardly able to breathe for emotion, in her own form[4], but surrounding herself with a veil of invisibility to escape his observation. And after a while, she drew a long breath, and murmured to herself: Ha! this is a suitor indeed, very different from all the others; and rather than a mere mortal man, he resembles ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... against any one under eighteen. Half-a-crown to seven and sixpence, according to size. These panoplies on cards are for juvenile knights-errant and very useful—shield of safety, sandals of swiftness, helmet of invisibility." ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... in silence for fully five minutes, but he often took the cigar from his mouth and looked at it thoughtfully; then he would allow his eyes to follow the curling smoke, watching it with a smile on his face as it faded into invisibility, as they ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... is so minute (one frond producing more than a million) as not to be visible to the naked eye. Hence, on the doctrine of signatures, the plant—like the ring of Gyges, found in a brazen horse—has been thought to confer invisibility. Thus Shakespeare says, Henry IV., Act II., Scene 1, "We have the receipt of Fern ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... key, set out to look for the princess. After a two-days' journey he came to a mountain. Here he descended and began to look around. Finally he saw a huge rock, in which he found a small hole. He put the key in it, and the rock flew open. With his cap of invisibility on his head, he entered. There within he saw many ladies, who were confined in separate rooms. In the very last apartment he found the princess with a giant beside her. He went near the room of the princess, and opened the door ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... piquancy of the paradox evaporates in translation. Concealment is perhaps not so much actual invisibility (see supra ss. 9) as "showing no sign" of what you mean to do, of the plans that are formed in ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... The airy invisibility of the stranger, the unwontedness of the scene, must have played havoc with the Colonel's credulity. He absorbed everything, as a dry sponge sucks up water. The ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... chief difficulties with which the naturalist has to contend while watching at night is the frequent invisibility of wild creatures among the shadows, even when the full moon is high and unclouded. The contrasts of light and shade are far more marked by night than by day; by night everything seems severely white where the moonbeams ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... have that dim black mass, hovering on the verge of invisibility, to guide him. Traveling a little west of north he might have reached the road at a nearer point. But here the traveling was bad and the danger of getting lost greater. Tom had weighed one thing against another and told Hervey ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... your favorite Mephistopheles, you wrapped the mantle of invisibility about you, and ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... said, his voice showing more anger. "One weapon or whatever you want to call it. Practical invisibility. But that's enough. An invisible man with a knife is more deadly than a dozen ordinary men with modern armament. Are you sure you know nothing of ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... termed Vice Elementals; and from the latter they acquired—possibly in exchange for some of their own vitality, for spirits of this order are said to have envied man his material body—tuition in sorcery, and such properties as second sight, invisibility, and lycanthropy. ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... is with me. I walk in the avenue, and eat all the delightful dinners without seeing the spots upon the table-cloth, and behold all the beautiful Aurelias without swearing at old Carbuncle. I am the guest who, for the small price of invisibility, drinks only the best wines, and talks only to the most agreeable people. That is something, I can tell you, for you might be asked to lead out old Mrs. Peony. My fancy slips in between you and Aurelia, sit you never so closely together. It not ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... his head up. He was close to the line of the rocket's ascent. He could see a trail of red sparks which stretched to invisibility. It was an extraordinarily thin line. The separate flecks of crimson light which comprised it were distant in space. They were so far from each other that the signal-rocket was a complete failure as a device making a streak of light ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... cracks long pencils of sunlight lay across the hay and the dim criss-cross of the rafters above. Dust motes crossed them in lazy eddies, each visible for a golden moment as it entered the glow of its brief importance, only to be blotted into invisibility as ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... research is simplified by dividing its objects into matter and mind, so as to have but two centers of thought. Many have concluded that the address of matter to our senses has made it easy to pursue knowledge respecting bodies, while the invisibility of mind presents insurmountable difficulties, but this conclusion is scarcely supported by facts. If men have erred with reference to their own intellects, they have also made many and egregious blunders concerning matter and its qualities. We think the study of ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... further consideration—one bearing on the possibility of new Law in the spiritual; the other, on the assumed invisibility or inconspicuousness of the old Laws on account of their subordination to ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... to spring up around him like magic; his prudent answers through his window to such as sought ghostly counsel; and above all, his invisibility, soon gained him a prodigious reputation, This was not diminished by the medical advice they now and then extorted from him sore against his will, by tears and entreaties; for if the patients got well they gave the holy hermit the credit, and if not they laid all the blame on the devil. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... single day of which is like unto a thousand Yugas (four billion years of the earth), and his night as much—these worlds must come and go... The Days of Brahm are succeeded by the Nights of Brahm. In these Brahmic Days all things emerge from invisibility, and become visible. And, on the coming of the Brahmic Night, all visible things again melt into invisibility. The Universe having once existed, melteth away; and lo! ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... he had asked was very quickly found. It lay in a drawer, locked away among other mementoes of the past. With a shock of disappointment, Piers saw that the old photograph had faded almost to invisibility. He just discerned the outlines of a pleasant face, the dim suggestion of womanly charm—all he would ever see of the ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... her hands in her lap, and waited for Dickie. Waiting, she looked out through the window and saw the glow fade from the snowy crest of The Hill. The evening star let itself delicately down through the sweeping shadows of the earth from some mysterious fastness of invisibility. The room was dim when Dickie's knock ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... other way. The world and all that is about us, Manchester and its hubbub, warehouses crammed with cloth, and mills full of jennies and throstles—these are the shadows; and the things that only the believing eye beholds, that are wrapped in the invisibility of their own greatness, these, and these only, are the realities. We see with the bodily eyes the shadows on the wall, as it were, but we have to turn round and see with the eyes of our minds the light that flings the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... time we were ready to start, it was as if Merlin had woven an enchantment of invisibility, not only over the castle ruins, but over the whole landscape, which was blotted out behind a white avalanche of rain. The wind howled, mingling with the boom of the sea; and altogether it was such a bewitched, Walpurgis world ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... together, as they hurried onwards in the pursuit; but when they arrived at the seashore, the mysterious man and his carpet bag were no longer visible, unless a large boat which was pulling out to sea as fast as wind and tide would permit, gave a clue to his invisibility. Every eye was now cast out for the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... hall that angled off into invisibility, and to the left of the desk was another one, going straight back past doors and two radiators until it ran into a ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... prone behind its bar, invites emetically to despair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its invisibility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit and you think you are there—roll, roar, wash!—Calais has retired miles inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a last dip and slide in its character, has Calais, to be specially commended ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... the soggy atmosphere, seeming to leave an unseen arc in the darkness above. It would terminate with a sullen thump in some spongy, water-soaked mound behind us. Then an answering missive of steel would whine away into the populated invisibility in front ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... wave, or lava sweeping down a mountain. It was not of this earth, but mysterious, ghostlike. It carried all the mystery and menace of a fog rolling toward you across the sea. The uniform aided this impression. In it each man moved under a cloak of invisibility. Only after the most numerous and severe tests at all distances, with all materials and combinations of colors that give forth no color, could this gray have been discovered. That it was selected to clothe and disguise the German when he fights is typical of the General ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... people's thoughts and detecting the presence of waters and metals; (3) thought transference, i.e. being able to transmit messages, irrespective of distance, from one brain to another without any physical medium; (4) hypnotism; (5) the power to hold converse with animals; (6) invisibility, i.e. dematerializing at will; (7) walking on, and breathing under, water; (8) inflicting all manner of diseases and torments; (9) curing all kinds of diseases; (10) converting people into beasts and minerals; (11) foretelling ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... pause. Over the low ground to the west a flight of bombers appeared, bellowing. In mass formation they rushed out above the sea. Far to the right and high up, a second formation of man-made birds appeared suddenly. It dived steeply from invisibility toward the water. Over the horizon to the left there came V's of bomber-planes, one after another, by dozens and by hundreds. More planes roared above the shattered shack. They came in columns. They came in masses. From the heavens above and over ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Sirius form real binary systems, consisting of a visible and an invisible star. There is no reason to suppose luminosity an essential quality of cosmical bodies. The visibility of countless stars is no argument against the invisibility of countless others." This grand conception led Peters to compute more accurately the orbit, and to assign the place of the invisible companion of Sirius. In 1862 Alvan G. Clark was testing a new 18-inch object-glass ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... mankind. The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility. Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense of a popular phrase) all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks were right when they ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... the number is unlimited. The reasonable conclusion appears to be that these minor planets are to be counted not by hundreds but by thousands; that more powerful telescopes will go on revealing still smaller ones; and that additions to the list will cease only when the smallness ends in invisibility. ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... 'Henceforward I will be a mouse for precaution and a ghost for invisibility. But in the meantime, for God's sake, fetch us a bottle of brandy! Your room is as damp as the bottom of a well, and these gentlemen ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a wide saw-grass marsh surrounding a small island. The island seemed covered with a dense growth of palmetto and other trees and tangled shrubbery, with a few banana plants rising among them. No sign of human habitation was visible. This invisibility of a Seminole's house from the vicinity may be taken as a marked characteristic of his home. If possible, he hides his house, placing it on an island and in a jungle. As we neared the hammock we found that approach to it was difficult. On horseback ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... there has been a reaction from this extreme view of the lifelessness of the moon. Observers tell us of clouds suddenly appearing and then melting to invisibility over volcanic craters; of evidences of an atmosphere, rare as compared with ours, yet manifest in its effects; of variations of color witnessed in certain places as the sunlight drifts over them at changing angles of incidence; of ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... them in?" flashed Lancelot. "I suppose they do exist and are occasionally seen of mortal eyes. I suppose wives and friends and mothers gaze on them with no sense of special privilege, unconscious of their invisibility to the profane ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... was invisible to all eyes but those of the child ought to have satisfied the Court and jury that she was either under the power of a delusion or practising an imposture. But, as they were predisposed to find something supernatural in the transaction, their minds seized upon the pretended invisibility of the mouse as ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Hayes, his favorite villa, scarcely moving except from his armchair to his bed, and from his bed to his armchair, and often employing his wife as his amanuensis in his most confidential correspondence. Some of his detractors whispered that his invisibility was to be ascribed quite as much to affectation as to gout. In truth his character, high and splendid as it was, wanted simplicity. With genius which did not need the aid of stage tricks, and with a spirit which should have been far above ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for at noone the short man mowght be the long mans shadowe and at night the contrary. A sweet dampe (a dislike of moist perfume). Wyld tyme on the grownd hath a sent like a Cypresse chest. Panis lapidosus grytty bread Plutoes Helmett; secrecy Invisibility Laconismus Omnem vocem mittere (from inchantmentes) Tertium caput; (of one ouercharged that hath a burden upon eyther showder and the 3rd. vpon his head). Triceps mercurius (great cunyng). Creta notare (chaulking ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... putting the inhabitants to death; but the thought in his mind brought the storm again, and his ship went down, and he was drowned. But at last the remnant of them landed, and fought a battle with the Gods, and defeated them; whereafter the Gods put a druid invisibility on themselves, and retired into the hills; and there in their fairy palaces they remain to this day; indeed they do. They went back into the inwardness of things; whence, however, they were always appearing, and ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... freed from this matter, rose into the beam, jostled aside the illuminated particles, and substituted for their light the darkness due to its own perfect transparency. Nothing could more forcibly illustrate the invisibility of the agent which renders all things visible. The beam crossed, unseen, the black chasm formed by the transparent air, while, at both sides of the gap, the thick-strewn particles shone out like a luminous solid under the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... I walked cautiously to the parapet and looked over its edge to the hunk of desert that stretched away toward Reno, out behind the motel. The third story, behind me, cut off the neon glare from the Strip and left the place in inky darkness. There was silence and invisibility ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Thoughtless" and "Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy" we are transported again to the pale company of Celadon, Alinda, Placentia, Adario, Melanthe. A framework analogous to that in Le Sage's "Le Diable Boiteux" takes the place of a plot. With a belt of invisibility and a recording tablet, Exploralibus is able to collect whatever is affecting, ludicrous, vicious, or otherwise noteworthy in the conversation, actions, and manners of society. But the shadowy nature of the observer fails to give ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... couple of steep dark gables, and yet was rendered conspicuous by the light which shone through the unglazed grating above it, he knocked sharply on the oak. After a short delay the door slid open of itself and the man entered. He showed none of a stranger's surprise at the invisibility of the porter, but after staying to shut the door, he advanced along a short passage, which was only partially closed at the further end by a high wooden screen. Coasting round this he entered a large low-roofed room, lighted in part by a dozen candles, in part by a fire which ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... after daybreak on the morning of the 11th. Astronomically, the event was recorded by the observatory at Harvard as the sudden appearance of what apparently was a new star, increasing in the short space of a few hours from invisibility to a power beyond that of the first magnitude, and then as rapidly fading again to invisibility. This star was recorded by two of the other great North American observatories, and by one in the Argentine Republic. ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... Niagara contain no more erratic currents than the strata of air which is now immediately above us, a fact hard to realize on account of its invisibility." ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... presented able reasons why the torpedo boats of to-day's type, being destitute of most, if not all, of the requisites of sea-going craft, cannot go to sea, take care of themselves, and remain there prepared to attack an enemy wherever he may be found. Invisibility to an enemy may facilitate attack, but it has to be dearly paid for in diminished safety. Further, the life that must be led in such vessels in time of war would very quickly unfit ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... loved; nor cometh this apprehension from the experiences of others. We glean spiritual harvests from our own material losses. In this consuming heat false images are effaced from the canvas of mortal mind; and thus does the material pigment beneath fade into invisibility. ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... and what the gown overlooked the walk demonstrated. The man was fat enough to make him seem short until he approached. His face and baldish dome were desert-reddened, and his eyebrows were faded to invisibility. Jorgensen. ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... stealthily and industriously to further the schemes of Mucio, to the exclusion of more urgent business. Noiseless and secret himself, and delighting in clothing so much as to glide, as it were, throughout Europe, wrapped in the mantle of invisibility, he was perpetually provoked by the noise, the bombast, and the bustle, which his less prudent confederates permitted themselves. While Philip for a long time hesitated to confide the secret of the League to Parma, whom it most imported ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... loophole in the gate of the palisade I looked, and saw the sandy neck joining the town to the main, and the deep and dark woods beyond, the fairy mantle giving invisibility to a host. Between us and that refuge dead men lay here and there, stiff and stark, with the black paint upon them, and the colored feathers of their headdresses red or blue against the sand. One warrior, shot through the back, crawled like a wounded beetle to the forest. ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... carefully, there must be ten unseen. This is partly because many animals burrow in the ground or get in underneath things and into dark corners, being what is called cryptozoic or elusive. But it is partly because many animals put on disguise or have in some way acquired a garment of invisibility. This is very common among animals, and it occurs in many forms and degrees. The reason why it is so common is because the struggle for existence is often very keen, and the reasons why the struggle ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... on the floor! His foot crushed one with a slippery squash! Nameless, hideous, noisome things grown monstrous, risen from their lurking invisibility in the drops of water! Sodden, gray-black and green-slimed monsters of the deep; palpitating masses of pulp! One lay rocking, already as large as a football with streamers of ooze hanging from it, ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... body is only the coffin of my heart, and my heart the unfortunate Echo that has grieved herself to death and invisibility. But perhaps your majesty does not believe in the power of grief, for doubtless you are unacquainted ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach |
