"Unapproachable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not common paint. We use the highest grade of lead and the purest linseed oil. Varnish also of unapproachable quality, guaranteed to stand exposure to any climate. There's nothing to equal our products ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... consequences some one is sure to become offended, and in the end dislike me. I think God never made a man with so intense a craving for the love of his fellow-men as I possess. And yet I am conscious that I cannot make myself understood by very many people. They will always say, "How cold and unapproachable he is." When in reality I love them with yearnings of heart. Now, then, I am going to Milton with all this complex thought of myself, and yet, dear chum, there is not the least doubt after all that I ought to go. I hope that in ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... age; he seemed sad and serious; his whole person presented the robust and weary aspect peculiar to military men who have retired from the service. If he had worn a decoration, Marius would have said: "He is an ex-officer." He had a kindly but unapproachable air, and he never let his glance linger on the eyes of any one. He wore blue trousers, a blue frock coat and a broad-brimmed hat, which always appeared to be new, a black cravat, a quaker shirt, that is to say, it was dazzlingly white, but of coarse ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... was aware of her besetting sin and this Lenten season was disciplining herself strictly, and no one could be more sympathetic if one were in trouble than the same Rosamond; and there was Joyce Hewson whom Judith had thought proud, but who seemed unapproachable because she was really shy and very conscious of her unusual height; and then there was Florence Newman who had seemed at the beginning of the term so unresponsive and dull. Florence and Josephine had become ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... a great deal of mystery about this peculiar outbreak of lawlessness that seemed to be directed so pointedly against the British trade. The town of Rio Medio was alluded to as one of the unapproachable towns of the earth—closed, like the capital of Prester John to the travellers, or Mecca to the infidels. Nobody I ever met in Jamaica had set eyes on the place. The impression prevailed that no stranger could ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... in the home of the summers, the seats of the happy immortals, Shrouded in knee-deep blaze, unapproachable; there ever youthful Hebe, Harmonie, and the daughter of Jove, Aphrodite Whirled in the white-linked dance, with the gold-crowned Hours ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... mathematical—and some of them, alas! mechanical—ingenuity; a few of them, Bach towering high above the rest, attained a full and truthful expression of deep feeling. Bach, for the organ alone, raised sublime architectural structures, unapproachable, to use Schumann's word, in their magnificence. But the underlying feeling was always the same throughout; it might wax or wane in intensity: its character did not change. The themes, once announced, were ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... incomparable God, and the mystery of the love, which has intertwined the personal blessings which it celebrates, with its great designs for the welfare of the people, whose unique position corresponds to the unapproachable elevation of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... popularity, was rather cold and unapproachable, and Vashti Mills was about the only other scholar with whom he seemed to be on warm terms. Many a time when the tall boy stood up before the thin teacher, helpless and dumb over some question which almost anyone in the ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... Eleazar; and we either settle the matter directly ourselves, or, if it does not lie immediately in our power, we make a report to him on the subject, without his ever setting eyes on the person. These whimsical rules, if you choose so to call them, render his solitude unapproachable; and that is ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... at the effluvia of that particular group of houses. A large lodging-house in the Rue des Boulangers is tenanted by 210 Italians, who get their living as models or itinerant musicians. Both house and tenants are declared to be unapproachable from ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... than when seen from Milan or the church-tower of Chivasso or the terrace of Novara, with a foreground of Italian cornfields and old city towers and rice-ground, golden-green beneath a Lombard sun. Half veiled by clouds, the mountains rise like visionary fortress walls of a celestial city—unapproachable, beyond the range of mortal feet. But those who know by old experience what friendly chalets, and cool meadows, and clear streams are hidden in their folds and valleys, send forth fond thoughts and messages, like carrier-pigeons, from the marble ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... not recognize the territorial claims of other nations and have made no claims themselves (but reserve the right to do so); no formal claims have been made in the sector between 90. west and 150. west, where, because of floating ice, Antarctica is unapproachable from the sea Climate: severe low temperatures vary with latitude, elevation, and distance from the ocean; East Antarctica is colder than West Antarctica because of its higher elevation; Antarctic Peninsula has the ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the chief, sent a message to that effect. The gentleman was affluent in money and in words, the latter flowing forth with great rapidity, and in an inverse ratio to his ideas. He had also a habit of approaching very near to any person with whom he was conversing, and chattering with almost unapproachable volubility. On receiving the message, Red Jacket dressed himself with the utmost care, designing, as he ever did when sober, to make the most imposing impression, and came over to ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... sympathy could be of use. She was no longer his wife, nor he her husband; she was no longer even a fellow mortal between whom and himself there might be some common ground of understanding. Absolutely alone and unapproachable, he knew that she had reached the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... read to him, put aside her helping hand, and said he would have Jonquil to assist him; she need not remain. He uttered no accusation against her and no reproach; he gave her no opportunity of softening her abrupt announcement; he just set her at a distance, as it were, and made himself unapproachable. Bessie betook herself in haste to her white parlor, to hide the blinding tears in her eyes and the mortification in her heart. "And he wonders that so few love him!" she said to herself, not without anger even in her pitiful yearning to ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... and riches placed her much too high to be approached; "but no one," said Rudy to himself, "is placed so high as to be unapproachable; one must climb and one does not fall, when one does not think of it." This knowledge he had brought from ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... more like a slum than anything she had met for months, and the Royal Analostan was proportionately attracted. The cook, when she learned that fears were entertained about the Cat staying, said: "Shure, she'd 'tind to thot; wanst a Cat licks her futs, shure she's at home." So she deftly caught the unapproachable royalty in her apron, and committed the horrible sacrilege of greasing the soles of her feet with pot-grease. Of course Kitty resented it—she resented everything in the place; but on being set down she began to dress her paws ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... for fear. Their safety required a Governor who could be controlled or hoodwinked by them. But they well knew that this man was unapproachable, that neither bribes nor threats would avail to win him over. Besides, Loris felt that by remaining the leader of the Nihilist Club he would come in conflict with his father. The elder Drentell was not merely the civil Governor of Kief—he was also one of the Generals ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... our common humanity. No caste or acquired pride or unapproachable intellectualism cut him off from the people. His simple humanness made him one with us all. And his humanity was singularly comprehensive. It led him, for instance, to investigate the subject of suffering in animals. He noticed that all good men and women ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... completed by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in hints ending in deep sighs. The woods were unmoved, like a mask—heavy, like the closed door of a prison—they looked with their air of hidden knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence. The Russian was explaining to me that it was only lately that Mr. Kurtz had come down to the river, bringing along with him all the fighting men of that lake tribe. He had been absent for several months—getting ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... the—ha, ha!—the stoep garrisoned by Her Majesty's Imperial Forces. Certainly.... Without doubt. We respect the Mother-Superior highly. A most gifted, most estimable person in every way, if rather stern and reserved.... Unapproachable, my wife calls her. But Miss Mildare, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... side of the painting I had a limited sympathy. My visions were of shipwreck and famine; of death or captivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow and tears, upon some gray and desolate rock, in an ocean unapproachable and unknown. Such visions or desires—for they amounted to desires—are common, I have since been assured, to the whole numerous race of the melancholy among men—at the time of which I speak I regarded them only as prophetic glimpses of a destiny which I felt myself in a measure bound to fulfil. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... which may be pretty confidently set down as a certainty: and that is, that this celebrated little phrase-book will never die while the English language lasts. Its delicious unconscious ridiculousness, and its enchanting naivete, as are supreme and unapproachable, in their way, as are Shakespeare's sublimities. Whatsoever is perfect in its kind, in literature, is imperishable: nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect, it must and will stand alone: its ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in passing, that in this country we are not sufficiently instructed in the Art of Good Manners. We are rather gruff, and sometimes unapproachable. Manners do not make the man, as the proverb alleges; but manners make the man much more agreeable. A man may be noble in his heart, true in his dealings, virtuous in his conduct, and yet unmannerly. Suavity of disposition and gentleness of manners give the finish ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... of Shaftesbury and the eloquence of Rousseau. Shakespeare hardly found those who would collect his tragedies; Milton was read from godliness; Virgil was antiquated and rustic; Cicero, Asiatic. What a rabble has persecuted my friend! An elephant is born to be consumed by ants in the midst of his unapproachable solitudes: Wordsworth is the prey of Jeffrey. Why repine? Let us rather amuse ourselves with allegories, and recollect that God in the creation left His noblest creature at the mercy ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... and resembles more a natural function than the handling of man-invented appliances. The fore- and-aft rig in its simplicity and the beauty of its aspect under every angle of vision is, I believe, unapproachable. A schooner, yawl, or cutter in charge of a capable man seems to handle herself as if endowed with the power of reasoning and the gift of swift execution. One laughs with sheer pleasure at a smart piece of manoeuvring, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... certainly the most perfect representatives of the breed during the decade between 1860 and 1870, and at the shows held at Birmingham, Islington, the Crystal Palace, and Cremorne Gardens, this beautiful brace was unapproachable. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... nations—their meeting-place politically and commercially, as well as for the indulgence of pleasure without restraint. Round and round the golden mile-stone in front of the Forum—now in gloom of eclipse, now in unapproachable splendor—flowed all the active currents of humanity. If excellences of manner, refinements of society, attainments of intellect, and glory of achievement made no impression upon him, how could he, as the son of Arrius, pass day after day, through a period so long, from ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... awful words, when he realized they were a counsel of perfection, and felt embarrassed at the unapproachable grandeur of his idea. So he hastens to add that, of course, "the true pilot" will be called "a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing." [Footnote: 2 Bk. VI, 488-489.] But this wistful admission, though it protects ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... ocean and shore, and the peaks of the isles and the mainland; Where no frost nor storm is, in clear blue windless abysses, High in the home of the summer, the seats of the happy Immortals, Shrouded in keen deep blaze, unapproachable; there ever youthful Hebe, Harmonie, and the daughter of Jove, Aphrodite, Whirled in the white-linked dance with the gold-crowned Hours and the Graces, Hand within hand, while clear piped Phoebe, queen of the woodlands. All day long they rejoiced: but Athene still in her chamber Bent herself over ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... and even stern old Aunt Clay unbent to the extent of lending her gardener to do the work. She had also donated a clump of Adam's and Eve's needles and threads that proved very decorative, but quite as unapproachable ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... beside her and tried to make himself agreeable. He wanted some one to be nice to him. But Karna was unapproachable; those dirty feet had quite turned her head. And either Lasse had forgotten how to do it, or he was wanting in assurance, for every time he attempted a pleasant ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... than water. Living in such close daily communion with Guy, and talking with him unrestrainedly at last upon all possible points—save that one unapproachable one, which both seemed to instinctively avoid alluding to in any way—Granville began to feel that, murderer or no murderer, Guy was in all essentials very near indeed to him. Nay, more, he found himself at times ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... stone wall, for thus I regarded it, became at last almost unendurable. Clavering shy, and the secretary unapproachable—how was I to gain anything? The short interviews I had with Mary did not help matters. Haughty, constrained, feverish, pettish, grateful, appealing, everything at once, and never twice the same, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... letters there has been a cabal, an academic interest, a factious league amongst universities, and learned bodies, and individual scholars, for exalting as something superterrestrial, and quite unapproachable by moderns, the monuments of Greek literature. France, in the time of Louis XIV., England, in the latter part of that time; in fact, each country as it grew polished at some cost of strength, carried this craze to a dangerous excess—dangerous as all things false ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... vanishes on the shore in little gelatinous pools. During those intervals of idleness, when the absence of thought leaves the hand inert upon the modelling tool, Felicia, deprived of the sole moral nerve of her intellect, became savage, unapproachable, sullen beyond endurance,—the revenge of paltry human qualities upon great tired brains. After she had brought tears to the eyes of all those whom she loved, had striven to evoke painful memories or paralyzing anxieties, and had reached the brutal, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... stepmother in his father's absence, and showed her that he felt her comfort to be his first care. He came and went like a polite, unresponsive shadow, spending silent evenings with her in the library, or acting as an irreproachable and unapproachable escort when escort was needed. Margaret, watching him, began to despair of ever gaining ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... confusion of molten soil and superheated steam, and so remained spinning furiously and maintaining an eruption that lasted for years or months or weeks according to the size of the bomb employed and the chances of its dispersal. Once launched, the bomb was absolutely unapproachable and uncontrollable until its forces were nearly exhausted, and from the crater that burst open above it, puffs of heavy incandescent vapour and fragments of viciously punitive rock and mud, saturated with Carolinum, and each a centre of scorching and blistering energy, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... six broad. It is situated at the lower extremity of the plain called Huleh, and is almost entirely surrounded by flat marshy ground, thickly set with reeds and canes, which make the lake itself almost unapproachable. The depth of the Huleh is not known. It is a favorite resort of aquatic birds, and is said to contain ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... rereading brought no comfort whatever. Rather, it served to bring home to him the hard realities of the whole wretched affair. Cousin Gussie's interest was what he had banked on, and that interest was absolutely unapproachable. To write Minor at the Boston office was a possibility, of course, but, in his present frame of mind Galusha felt no hope that such a proceeding would help. Thomas had written what amounted to that very thing; Thomas was ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Eastern universities, where no Indian had ever been, where constant association with the flower of our race would by its own force raise him to a higher level. Well, it worked. He led his classes as a stag leads a herd. He was a silent, dignified, shadowy figure; his fellow-students considered him unapproachable, nevertheless they admired and they liked him. In all things he excelled; but he was best, perhaps, in athletics, and for this I took the credit—a Jovian satisfaction ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... once perceive that when I heard from the worthy Casimir how this unapproachable lady had actually written to the Grand Duke Ivan and had gone so far as to send him her photograph, I became excited. It appeared to me that I found myself upon the brink of an important discovery. I set six of my first-class men at work: three ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... wretched huts wherein for a little he had sheltered his heart; to burn all behind him, and so prevent the weakness of a return; and to go and pitch his tent further, higher, he knew not where—upon some unapproachable mountain where the air is icy, but before the eyes, the vasty stretches of light ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... who is the lover of Cleinias, has been already introduced to us in the Lysis, and seems there too to deserve the character which is here given him, of a somewhat uproarious young man. But the chief study of all is the picture of the two brothers, who are unapproachable in their effrontery, equally careless of what they say to others and of what is said to them, and never at a loss. They are 'Arcades ambo et cantare pares et respondere parati.' Some superior degree of wit or subtlety is attributed to Euthydemus, ...
— Euthydemus • Plato
... of the Temple appear by no means imposing, it must be remembered that but a small part of the religious ceremonies took place within the walls. The Holy of Holies was entered only once a year, and that by the High-priest alone. It was the secret and unapproachable shrine of the Divinity. The Holy Place, the body of the Temple, admitted only the officiating priests. The courts, called in popular language the Temple, or rather the inner quadrangle, were in fact the great place of divine worship. Here, under the open air, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... prisoners. Peace and freedom have become but a vision which the imprisoned view through the bars they themselves have made. The spring we see now is in a world not ours, a world we have left, which is still close to us, but is unapproachable. The children are in it, and even, apparently, the ducks. It is a world we see sometimes, as a reminder—once a year or so—of what we could have made of life, ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... vigorous. It was plain that she had not Alice Featherstone's reserve and pride, nor he thought the depth of tenderness that the latter hid. She was softer and more pliable, for Alice was marked by an unflinching steadfastness. He smiled as he admitted that for him Alice stood alone on an unapproachable plane. ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... one day Angusinanguaq planned to avenge his fellow-villagers. He rowed out to those unapproachable ones, and took them by surprise, being a great wizard, and killed many of the men, and cut off their heads and piled them up on the side bench. And having completed his revenge, he ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... preferences betray him more than his aversions. Modern History touches us so nearly, it is so deep a question of life and death, that we are bound to find our own way through it, and to owe our insight to ourselves. The historians of former ages, unapproachable for us in knowledge and in talent, cannot be our limit. We have the power to be more rigidly impersonal, disinterested and just than they; and to learn from undisguised and genuine records to look with remorse upon the past, and to the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... in various shapes and sizes stud the Southern seas, are sometimes rendered almost unapproachable by the immense waves which fall upon them. Even in the calmest weather these huge breakers may be seen falling with prolonged roar on the beach. The lightest undulation on the sea, which might almost escape observation away from land, takes the form of a grand, quiet billow ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... we have music of a different sort. A shepherd-boy pipes and sings one of those songs which, for freshness and purity, seem unapproachable—the watchman's song in the first act of the Dutchman is another example. The piping goes on while the elder pilgrims chant a sort of marching tune as they pass—part of it is the second section of the great hymn already described—the boy shouts ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... his glory provided she never yielded to his passion. Whether Fatima was to know that she was his sister I left undecided in framing my plot. Meanwhile she is careful to show herself to him only at critical moments, and then always in such a way as to remain unapproachable. When at last she witnesses the completion of her task in his coronation at Naples, she determines, in obedience to her vow, to slip away secretly from the newly anointed king, that she may meditate in the solitude of her distant ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... powerful instrument in the consolidation of the rights of private property, and as such it deserves the attention of historians who seek to trace the evolution of law and morality. As understood in the Banks' Islands and the New Hebrides the word taboo (tambu or tapu) signifies a sacred and unapproachable character which is imposed on certain things by the arbitrary will of a chief or other powerful man. Somebody whose authority with the people gives him confidence to make the announcement will declare that such and such an object may not be touched, that such and such a place may not be approached, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... morning, when his wife had attempted to condole with her brother-in-law, Prince Peter had observed a look of pain on his brother's face. The look had at once been masked by an expression of unapproachable pride, and he had begun to question her about their flat, and the price she paid. At luncheon, before the family and guests, he had been witty and sarcastic as usual. Towards every one, excepting the children, whom he treated with almost reverent tenderness, he adopted an ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... a lesson he gives us miserable little moderns in the worth of fame! So great, so unapproachable,—and yet!—doubted and slandered and reviled three hundred years after his death by envious detractors who cannot write ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... north, alone, in a ladies' compartment—with the feeling that Harold was so near, yet so unapproachable: it was an endless agony. He had the Maharajah, who loved and admired him, to keep him from brooding; but I, left alone, and confined with my own fears, conjured up before my eyes every possible misfortune that Heaven could send us. I saw clearly now that if we failed ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... political and literary humbug, and slave-holding, are the three great butts at which Hosea Biglow and Parson Wilbur shoot, at point-blank range, and with shafts drawn well to the ear. The fringe of its seaboard (itself consisting chiefly of unapproachable swamp or barren sand wastes), surrounded by weak neighbours or thin wandering hordes, only too easy to bully, to subdue, to eat up; from which bands of pirates, under the name of liberators, swarm forth year after year, almost unchecked, to neighbouring lands, and ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... betook myself for further information to Narkiz. He, as I might have anticipated, was somewhat unapproachable, stood a little on his dignity, expressed his surprise that such paltry matters could 'interest' me, and, finally, told me what he knew. I heard the ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... and the granite tombs, some gleaming pale, passionless, others red and warm, painted by a master hand; and the wind-caves, dark-portaled under their mist curtains, and all that was deep and far off, unapproachable, unattainable, of beauty exceeding, dressed in ever-changing hues, was mine by right of presence, by right of the eye to see and the mind ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... in the interstices of the rocks surrounding a moss-grown pool, but they were quite unapproachable. One clump above we did manage to reach and bear away a few roots of, in triumph; but at one time there was only two inches of stone for the foot to rest on, with sheer rocks below; and consequently, without a rope, the experiment would hardly be worth ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... be easily carried into effect. Be hopeful, O my heart, thy harrowing doubts Are past and gone; that which thou didst believe To be as unapproachable as fire, Is found a glittering ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... leaf picked up by the edge of the storm in which Clark sat, its unapproachable center. The telegram compiled by Birch and signed by Wimperley, as president, was on his desk, just as the secretary had laid it before he went silently out, unable to meet the mystifying glance of those gray eyes. Clark ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... the house, and she was devoured by eagerness to know. She handpicked Lord Nick's gang in the hope of finding a weakness among them; some weakness upon which she could play in one of them and draw out what they were all concealing. The Pedlar was as unapproachable as a crag on a mountaintop. Masters was wise as an outlaw broncho. Lester was probably not even in the confidence of the others because since the affair with Landis his nerve had been shattered to bits and the others secretly despised him for being beaten by the youngster at ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... of the pilgrim the gift of persuasion. So famous has this stone become, not only in Ireland but in England, that the most plausible fluency is characterised by its name, which at once confers on such oratory the stamp of unapproachable eloquence. It must be confessed, however, that in many instances "Blarney" conveys doubts of the speaker's sincerity, as well as admiration for his capacity. To see this talisman would be with me, on another occasion, ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... say, that God is not good, but goodness; is not holy, but holiness; is not infinite, but infinity. This, I apprehend, will have struck many readers as merely a rhetorical bravura; sublime, perhaps, and fitted to exalt the feeling of awe connected with so unapproachable a mystery, but otherwise not throwing any new light upon the darkness of the idea as a problem before the intellect. Yet indirectly perhaps it does, when brought out into its latent sense by placing it in juxtaposition with paganism. If a philosophic theist, who is also a Christian, or who ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... now, how, in spite of the East India Company conquering and governing India, India itself remained a terra incognita, unapproachable by the students of England and of Europe. That there were literary treasures to be discovered in India, that the Brahmans were the depositaries of ancient wisdom, was known through the labours of some of the most eminent servants of the East ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... branches, adorned with red flowers. Thousands of birds, the lories, and greenfinches, and gold-winged pigeons, not to speak of the noisy paroquets, flew about in the green branches. Below, on the bosom of the water, were a couple of shy and unapproachable black swans. This rara avis of the Australian rivers soon disappeared among the windings of the Wimerra, which water the charming landscape in the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... unexplored. Though his rejection of the former alternative was a foregone conclusion, his adoption of the latter was a remarkable proof of the strength of his passion. There was only one district unexplored, and that was practically unapproachable. ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... had a model constantly before their eyes, whose more excessive follies it were difficult to rival; and this was the King himself, whom the whole nation was called upon to obey. If Louis XIV. was a Nebuchadnezzar, unapproachable from pride, Louis XV. was a Sardanapalus in effeminacy and insouciant revelries. The shameless infamies of his life were too revolting to bear more than a passing allusion; and I should blush to tear away the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... to hide this; not easy always to look long enough at the hearts laid at her feet, to give them the sympathetic courtesy which was their due. She never had tried her hand at flirting; but it was left for this season to stamp Miss Kennedy as 'the most unapproachable woman in town.' Which, however, unfortunately, made her more popular than ever. She was so lovely in her shy reserve; the hardwon favours were so delightful; the smiles so witching when they came; ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... small boudoir on the side of the drawing-room, which was very rich in articles of virtu, more especially in some remarkably fine carvings, attributed to Cellini, Brustolini, and others. These were left to Hook by his brother, the late Dean of Worcester. As an improvisatore, Hook was unapproachable. In regard to his literary merits, let the following suffice, taken from the late Mr. Barham's life ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... uprushing sun, as bubbling and sparkling wine is poured into a beaker. I found myself thrilled from head to foot with an intense and mysterious rapture. What did it all mean, this awful and resplendent solemnity, full to brim of a solitary and unapproachable holiness? What was the secret of the thing? Perhaps every one of those stars that we had seen fade out of the night was ringed round by planets such as ours, peopled by forms undreamed of; doubtless on millions of globes, the daylight of some central sun was coming in glory over ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mature? Is there a standard by which we may ascertain beyond question whether a composition be Veal or Beef? I sigh for fixity and assurance in matters aesthetical. It is vexatious that what I think very good my friend Smith thinks very bad. It is vexatious that what strikes me as supreme and unapproachable excellence strikes another person, at least as competent to form an opinion, as poor. And I am angry with myself when I feel that I honestly regard as inflated commonplace and mystical jargon what a man ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... honours, and what higher praise could be given? It is superior, both in penetration and in beauty, to Matthew Arnold's famous Memorial Verses. Indeed, in the art of writing subtle literary criticism in rhythmical language that is itself high and pure poetry, Mr. Watson is unapproachable by any of his contemporaries, and I do not know of any poet in English literature who has surpassed him. This is his specialty, this is his clearest title to permanent fame. And although his criticism is so valuable, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... spirit, go forth, and out of that dead dust grow plants and herbs afresh for man and beast, and He renews the face of the earth. For, says the wise man, "all things are God's garment"— outward and visible signs of His unseen and unapproachable glory; and when they are worn out, He changes them, says the Psalmist, as a garment, and ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... every people. Paddy's love of fighting and of whiskey has been long proverbial; and of his tact in swearing much has also been said. But there is one department of oath-making in which he stands unrivalled and unapproachable; I mean the alibi. There is where he shines, where his oath, instead of being a mere matter of fact or opinion, rises up into the dignity of epic narrative, containing within itself, all the complexity of machinery, harmony of parts, and fertility of invention, by which your ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... fascinating in itself or more instructive in its issues, than the examination of the leading characteristics of individual families as displayed through a series of generations. But it is a subject that from its very nature is more or less unapproachable, since it is but little that we know even of our immediate ancestors. Occasionally in glancing at the cracking squares of canvas, many of which cannot even boast a name, but which alone remain to speak ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... of this thorny wilderness, down in the dells, you may find gardens filled with the fairest flowers, that any child would love, and unapproachable linns lined with lilies and ferns, where the ousel builds its mossy hut and sings in chorus with the white falling water. Bears, also, and panthers, wolves, wildcats; wood rats, squirrels, foxes, snakes, and innumerable birds, ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... say you are terribly frank;' then a design to sound this difficult and usually unapproachable diplomat came into her irrational head. Older men than he had been vanquished by her beauty ere now. 'England has not yet recognized my husband's claim as next heir,' she whispered. 'Major Counsellor, do you think your nation could ever be brought ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... sleeping as soundly as if she had to make up the lost slumber of ten nights; but the smith's anxiety would no longer allow him to remain in the close room. Ruth followed him into the open air, and when she timidly touched him—for there had always been something unapproachable to her in the silent man's gigantic figure—he looked at her from head to foot, with strange, questioning sympathy, and then asked suddenly, with a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... honour and yet yield. The more he thought the less he liked it, but all the more he felt necessity at his throat. And, as always with him, when he thought he seemed as if turned to stone. 'One way or another,' Milo tells us, 'every man of the House of Anjou had his unapproachable side, so accustomed were ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... whispering than thy Arcadian melodies, when, in tones worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, which proclaims the winter wind more lenient than for a man to be ungrateful. Thy sire was old surly M——, the unapproachable church-warden of Bishopsgate. He knew not what he did, when he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring of blustering winter:—only unfortunate in thy ending, which should have been ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... and these we call plastidules, that plastidules are composed of carbon and hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and are endued with a special soul, which soul is the product of some of the forces which the chemical atom possesses, he affirms that this is one of those positions which is still unapproachable, adding, "I feel like a sailor who puts forth into an abyss, the extent of which he cannot see;" and, again, "I must enter my decided protest against the attempt to make a premature extension of our doctrine in this manner—never ceasing to repeat a hundred-fold a hundred times, 'Do not take ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... the king had inscribed in his notebook, "My departure.—I do not mean to have anything more done." The temperature favored his designs; it did not freeze, the country remained inundated and the towns unapproachable; the troops of the Elector of Brandenburg, together with a corps sent by the emperor, had put themselves in motion towards the Rhine; Turenne kept them in check in Germany. Conde covered Alsace; the Duke of Luxembourg, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... possible," answered Mrs. Stanhope; "simple people like us are always a good deal put out and embarrassed by grandeur and display. It has something awful and unapproachable in ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... France and all its appurtenances, and the King of Prussia and the Empress Maria Theresa had, between them, set entire Europe by the ears; when at home the ladies, if rumor may be credited, were less unapproachable than their hoop-petticoats caused them to appear, [Footnote: "Oft have we known that sevenfold fence to fail, Though stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs of whale."] and gentlemen wore swords, and some of the more reckless bloods ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... pliable, insinuating and complimentary. She was smitten, too, by a sudden mad desire. Always she was alive with coquetry to her finger tips, and to-night she was aflame with it. But this quiet, grave young man hitherto had seemed to her unapproachable. She used to believe him in love with Helen Harley; now she fancied him in love with some one else, and she knew his present frame of mind to be vexed irritation. Difficult conquests are those most valued, and here she saw an opportunity. He was so different from the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... Such exalted figures are usually condensations or composite persons. The elders are not merely the father, but also the old, or the older ones parents in general, in so far as they are severe and unapproachable. Apparently the mother also will prove unapproachable if the adult son desires her as a wife. [The male child, on the other hand, frequently has erotic experiences with the mother. The parents connive at these, because they do not understand the significance ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... depressed him with such a tender melancholy, and filled his soul—the soul of a Hungarian and a musician—with such loneliness and unrest. He knew that, so far as he was concerned, she was as distant as the Venus in the Louvre; she was, for him, a beautiful, unapproachable statue, placed, by some social ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... seen her in quite that unapproachable mood. He wanted her to forget the Red Cross and the war for a little while, to look and speak with the old lightness. He wasn't a sentimental man, but he did want to go away with a picture of her ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... that a great man is not as others; that he may quite conceivably eat mustard with mutton, or peas with a spoon; that his conversation will be of things the ordinary man knows nothing about; that he is unapproachable; that he is, in short, on a glorified pedestal. This love of the personal is demonstrated in the absurd wish people have to know about the private doings of Royalty, it is shown in the remarkable fact that thousands will hang about a church door ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... Garden. Why, the elements did a righteous work, when they effaced the outlines of these coarse and trivial shapes, unworthy even the poor marble on which they were imposed. Turning from these, however, we find lovely things enough to rebuke this savage mood of criticism. The palm-trees are unapproachable in beauty,—they stand in rows like Ionic columns, straight, strong, and regular, with their plumed capitals. They talk solemnly of the Pyramids and the Desert, whose legends have been whispered to them by the winds that cross the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... regarding as manlier than that of her husband. Hence she had long cherished the desire that he should spend some time with her father. But John would not hear of it. He would get working at the forge, he said, and ruin his hands for the delicate art in which he was now unapproachable. ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... brilliancy—which laundering increases—its wearing qualities, and its exquisite freshness. The celebrated Irish linen is the most valuable staple in the market, and on account of its fineness and strength, and particularly its bright color, it attains an unapproachable excellence because the best processes are used throughout the entire manufacture. Linen is less elastic and pliable than cotton and bleaches ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... week died of want and of exposure to the weather: for which that Recording Angel seemed to have a regular fixed place in his sum, as if they were its halfpence. All such things she would hear discussed, as we, my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, in our unapproachable magnificence never hear them, and from all such things she would fly with ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... story among a thousand. "Our escort was commanded by two German officers. They were unapproachable. Anyone who tried to speak to them was threatened with a revolver. In order that we might get a drink, we were made to collect empty meat tins which served as our drinking cups until we reached Cassel. We were abused and threatened wherever we went. Sometimes they made signs ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... afraid to be seen as the human being that I am. I laugh when I feel like it. I have no sense of jar when people call me "Matt." I have a good time, and I shall stay young as long as I stay alive. Wealth hasn't made me a solemn ass, fenced in and unapproachable. The custom of receiving obedience and flattery and admiration has not made me a turkey-cock. Life is a joke; and when the joke's on me, I laugh as heartily as when it's on ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... of infinitude? Add a great many bricks together, and they form a pyramid as huge as the peak of Teneriffe. Add all the common minds together that the world ever produced, and the mind of a Shakspere towers over the whole, in all the grandeur of unapproachable infinity. That which is infinite admits of neither increase nor diminution. Is it not so with genius of a certain altitude? Homer, Milton, Shakspere, were perhaps men of equal powers. Homer was, it is said, a beggar; ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... seemed that of a fiend in the lurid atmosphere of Pandemonium, and his gestures and words, as far as they could be heard, seemed equally violent and irregular. All alone, and in a place of almost unapproachable seclusion, his demeanour was that of a man who strives for life and death with a mortal enemy. "Ha! ha!—there—there!" he exclaimed, accompanying each word with a thrust, urged with his whole force against the impassible and empty air, "Did I not tell thee so?—I have resisted, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... under this unstinted praise. "I am glad you like it," she said. "I always like to have a thing first-class of its kind, though I can't pride myself that it compares with your Spanish accent, Edgar; that stands absolutely alone and unapproachable for badness. I don't worry about my mathematical stupidity a bit since I read Dr. Holmes, who says that everybody has an idiotic area in ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... when the warm rays touched her; they too came from the home of answers. As the daisy mimics the sun, so is the central fire of our system but a flower that blossoms in the eternal effulgence of the unapproachable light. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... been so exemplary that she had been called "La contessa del cuore freddo." [Footnote: The countess with the cold heart.] Podstadsky confessed that even he had been desperately in love with her, but finding her unapproachable, had left Rome in despair. What then was his delight when, a few moments ago, he had learned from her own lips that she was a widow, and had come to spend a season ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... hope, or pride, or affection, like an imperial banner flung from "the outer wall," her imagination waved and triumphed. "The clouds of glory" she trailed after her were dyed in spheres unapproachable by death, or shame, or disappointment, and the gift described in the Arabian story as conferred by the genii's salve when he touched therewith the eyes of the traveler and caused him to see all the wonders of the earth, its gems, its gold, its gleaming chrysolites, its inward fires, unobscured ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... things as do but store the joyous memory With food for solace rather than for thought, Like light-lined figures on a painted jar. I wonder where Euktemon is to-night, Euktemon with his rough and fitful talk, His moody gesture and defiant stride; How strange, how bleak and unapproachable; And yet I liked him from the first. How soon We know our friends, through all disguise of mood, Discerning by a subtle touch of spirit The honest heart within. Euktemon's glance Betrayed him with it's gusty friendliness, Flashing at moments from the clouded ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... Holy Ghost teacheth (1 Cor. 2:13)," he used the language to which you will find no parallel in the literature of mere human genius. And no man of candor or intelligence can pass from the writings even of the unapproachable Shakespeare into the perusal of the Bible without feeling that the difference between the two is not one simply of degree, but of kind; he has not merely ascended to a loftier outlook in the same human dwelling, but he has gone ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... making friends with the lazy sleepy-eyed burros. They let him pull their long ears and rub their noses, but the mustangs standing around were unapproachable. They had wild eyes; they raised long ears and looked ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... of Death! Mystery unapproachable of God! Destined it was, from the foundations of the world, that each mystery should make war upon the other: once that the lesser mystery should swallow up for a moment a limbus of the greater; and that woe is past: once that the greater mystery ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... unapproachable manner instantly incased him, as if in remembrance of something that hurt. "Oh, pray don't mention it," he said, with a formality that matched hers. "It was nothing but what anyone would have ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... spot, without blame, till the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, [6:15]which the blessed and only Potentate will show in its times, the King of kings and Lord of Lords, [6:16]who only has immortality, dwelling in light unapproachable, whom no man has seen nor can see; to whom be honor ...
— The New Testament • Various
... mother, sons and daughters, are wrapt at once in fiery whirlwinds of ruin. And, amidst this general agony of destroying wrath, one central mystery, as a darkness within a darkness, withdraws itself into a secrecy unapproachable by eyesight, or by filial love, or by guesses of the brain—and that is the death of oedipus. Did he die? Even that is more than we can say. How dreadful does the sound fall upon the heart of some poor, horror-stricken ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... an impulsive, generous man, somewhat inconsiderate and careless in his habits, is at times perfectly desperate under the accumulated load of her disapprobation. Her children regard her as inhabiting some high, distant, unapproachable mountain-top of goodness, whence she is always looking down with reproving eyes on naughty boys and girls. They wonder how it is that so excellent a mamma should have children who, let them try to be good as hard as they can, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... and wild and unapproachable, after two bad nights, and two uninterrupted days at his desk. Under any other circumstances he would take the warning and leave off. But nothing warns him now. He is still working as hard as ever, for Armadale's sake. How much longer will my ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... the arrogant selfishness of his heart began to yield. His heart was broken before it might soften, but soften at last it did. And so he built up in his soul the image of a grave, sweet saint, kindly and gentle-voiced, unapproachable, not to be profaned. To this image—ah, which of us has not had such a shrine!—he brought in secret the homage of his life, his confessions, his despairs, his hopes, his resolutions; guiding thereby all his life, as well as poor mortal man may do, failing ever of ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... critic, from whom it is a pleasure to quote: "The thing about Michelangelo is this; he is not, so to say, at the head of a class, but he stands apart by himself: he is not possessed of a skill which renders him unapproached or unapproachable; but rather, he is of so unique an order, that no other artist whatever seems to suggest comparison with him." Mr. Selwyn Image goes on to define in what a true sense the words "creator" and "creative" may be applied to him: how the shows and appearances of the world were for him but hieroglyphs ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... the monster that could string thirty-foot cables as thick as fishing-twine. Then he found that it was not a snare at all. It was a construction at whose center something undiscoverable had made a nest, with eggs in it. Some creature had made an unapproachable home for itself where its young would not be assailed ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... flew, or playing sweet old melodies at the piano. The young officers were rather afraid of her. She was "a somewhat superior old maid," said a youngster whom she had found it expedient to repress. Some women declared her a trifle unapproachable, unsympathetic perhaps, but even that did not seem to disconcert her. Something happened ere long that did, however, for a few months after adjournment of the court Davies reappeared at Laramie. He had actually taken a leave of absence, and now he was at Cranston's six evenings ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... surprised," he said. "No stranger has entered it, or ever will, for it is unapproachable and well-guarded. One intrepid white man ventured a year ago to ascend to the grass plateau that forms its southern boundary, but he was expelled immediately on pain of death. My country, known to the neighbouring tribes as the Land ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... that Pickering's prophecy had been a true one. On a subsequent visit to the Bush street saloon he found the Blind Boss unapproachable. After waiting almost an hour and seeing several men who had come after him, led to the rear room for a conference, word was brought him by the little, keen-eyed man that the position of Mayor's secretary was ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... John Porter, one of the most accomplished soldiers in the Northern Army, was entrusted with the defense of the north side of the Chickahominy, and had erected formidable lines of breastworks along Beaver Dam Creek, already strong and unapproachable from its natural formations. Jackson was to have encountered Porter on the extreme right flank of the Union Army at an early hour in the day, and as soon as A.P. Hill heard the sound of his guns, he was to cross ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... verdure, only an incumbered space pierced by aged trees, loaded with parasitic plants, lichens, agarics—impure fruits of corruption. In the low parts is water, dead and stagnant because undirected; or swampy soil neither solid nor liquid, hence unapproachable and useless to the habitants both of land and of water. Here are swamps covered with rank aquatic plants nourishing only venomous insects and haunted by unclean animals. Between these low infectious marshes and these higher ancient forests extend plains having nothing ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... New York the question was at its height. The theory of the floating island, and the unapproachable sandbank, supported by minds little competent to form a judgment, was abandoned. And, indeed, unless this shoal had a machine in its stomach, how could it change its ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... immodest verses to debauch my reason by talking of such matters?" Rejoined the old woman, "By Allah, O my lady, thou sayst sooth! But reck not thou of yonder ignorant hound, for thou art seated in thy lofty, firm-builded and unapproachable palace, to which the very birds cannot soar neither the wind pass over it, and as for him, he is clean distraught. Wherefore do thou write him a letter and chide him angrily and spare him no manner of reproof, but threaten him with dreadful threats ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... close to him in the illuminated car, but they were alien, unapproachable, when they stood on an unfamiliar street-crossing snow-dimmed and silent with night. He stared at a street-sign and found that he was on Madison Avenue, up in the Fifties. As they turned east on Fifty-blankth Street he stopped under the street-light, took an envelope from his pocket, and found on ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... death-bed of the damned; or they may nobly burst the banks of self, and, rising momentarily higher and higher, till every Nilometer is drowned, will seek for ever, with expanding strength, to reach the unapproachable level of that source in the Most Highest whence they originally sprung. For this cause, the kindest fatherly word which ever reached man's ear, the surest scheme for happiness that ever touched his reason, was one from God's own heart—"My son, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... high priest, that is passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession." Oh, let us consider Him together, my brethren. In holiest Light our Representative sits. He who but now was weighted with our guilt, and made sin for us, is in that Light ineffable, unapproachable. Where, then, are the sins? Where, then, the sin? Gone for all eternity! Nor does His position vary at all with all the varying states, failings, coldness, worldliness, of His people here. With holy calm, His work that has perfected them forever perfectly finished, He sits, and ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... is very mixed. There are the old fidalgos, haughty and unapproachable, and often very poor, the descendants of the nobles whose duplicity, ability in intrigue, and want of patriotism are so often alluded to in the pages of Napier. Then there are the new nobility, the "titled Brasileros," as Galenga calls them, who have come back ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... and resolved rather to defend that city with all their energy. Thus the war was concentrated in the first instance around Avaricum, Vercingetorix placed his infantry amidst the morasses adjoining the town in a position so unapproachable, that even without being covered by the cavalry they needed not to fear the attack of the legions. The Celtic cavalry covered all the roads and obstructed the communication. The town was strongly garrisoned, and the connection ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... bird is an erstwhile friend—he has been outlawed by highest authority, and is fair game. The bird (with the toothpick in his mouth) creates a smile from other chiefs of the system in good standing who are not too busy to look at him. They have ceased all attempts to buttonhole him, for he is unapproachable. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Walcott's probationary year with Mr. Underwood had nearly expired. For a while he had maintained his old suavity of manner and business had been conducted satisfactorily, but as months passed and Kate Underwood was unapproachable as ever and the prospect of reconciliation between them seemed more remote, he grew sullen and morose, and Mr. Underwood began to detect signs of mismanagement. Determined to wait until he had abundance of evidence with which to confront him, however, he said nothing, but ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... three hundred pounds and had an abominable voice, was infinitely her superior in the power of creating a part. But Rachel had the voice of an angel. In the expression of disdain or terror she was unapproachable. In the softer passions she was feeble. We all looked upon her Lady Tartuffe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... some short reply and instantly turned the matter off. The momentary softness which had marked his meeting with Elsmere had entirely vanished, leaving only the Mr. Wendover of every day, who was merely made awkward and unapproachable by the slightest touch of personal sympathy. No living being, certainly not his foolish little sister, had any right to take care of the squire. And as the signs of age became more apparent, this one fact had often worked powerfully on the sympathies of Elsmere's ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... workmanship which he took in hand. Before Hamlet, Othello, and The Tempest were written, Romantic Poetry had done its best in Spenser, Philosophical Divinity in Hooker, Civil and Moral Discourse in Bacon. All these alike are unapproached and unapproachable in their several kinds. We have nothing more tuneable and melodious than Spenser's verse; no higher and nobler eloquence than Hooker's prose; no practical wisdom of deeper reach or more attractive garb than Bacon's Essays. Yet they did not learn their cunning from Shakespeare, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... and pop-guns, and lingered at the well-curb to ask Dorothy for water that did not reach his thirst. She was there in the flesh, with her arms aloft balancing the well-sweep, while he stooped with his lips at the bucket; but in spirit she was unapproachable. He felt, with disgust at his own persistence, that she even grudged him the water. He grew savage and restless, and fretted over the subtle changes that he counted in Dorothy as the summer waned. She was thinner and paler; perhaps with the heats ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... the class, and kept that place also; and finally he got so far ahead of all his classmates that, not to retard his progress, Mr. Middleton felt obliged to advance him a step higher and place him beside Walter who, up to this time, had stood alone, unapproached and unapproachable, at the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the Englishman to whom she spoke. "It never struck me that Penrhyn was a particularly lovable fellow. He's so deuced haughty; the Welsh are worse for that than we English. He's as unapproachable as a stone. I don't fancy the Lady Sioned worships the ground he treads upon. But then, he's the biggest diplomate in Great ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... imaginations to his stature to see the beauty he saw. That unapproachable greatness that prevents our immediate sympathy with her did not exist for him. There she stood, a gracious girl, the first created being that had ever seemed a mate for him, light and slender, lightly clad, the fresh breeze of the dawn moulding the subtly folding ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... and face an uncertain future. These were dark days but we managed to live through them. I have often heard her say that she lived by faith and not sight, that poverty had its compensations, that there was something very sweet in a life of simple trust, to her, God was not some far off and unapproachable force in the universe, the unconscious Creator of all consciousness, the unperceiving author of all perception, but a Friend and a Father coming near to her in sorrows, taking cognizance of her grief, and gently smoothing her path in life. But it was not only by precept that she taught us; her ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... and drank water. Wherever Lucien saw him, at the library or at Flicoteaux's, there was a dignity in his manner, springing doubtless from the consciousness of a purpose that filled his life, a dignity which made him unapproachable. He had the expression of a thinker, meditation dwelt on the fine nobly carved brow. You could tell from the dark bright eyes, so clear-sighted and quick to observe, that their owner was wont to probe to the bottom of things. He gesticulated very little, his demeanor was grave. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... a very different person, in relation to his officers, from the colonel of a regiment; he is a demi-god, a Dalai lama, living in solitary state; sublime, unapproachable; and the radiation of his dignity stretches through all the other members of the nautical hierarchy; hence all sorts of petty intrigues, disputes, grumblings, and jealousies, which, to the irreverent eye of an "idler," give to the whole little society the aspect of nothing ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... diaphanous and fading, always on the limit of vision, the point of disappearing, but are established. They are soundless, immaterial, and far, like a pleasing and personal illusion, a luminous dream of lasting tranquillity in a better but an unapproachable place, and the thought of crossing to them never suggests anything so obvious as a boat. They look like no coast ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... thyself; rise up to thy full height; Shake from thy soul these dreams effeminate, These passions born of indolence and ease. Resolve, and thou art free. But breathe the air Of mountains, and their unapproachable summits Will lift thee ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... which a recluse education, and her papa's cautions, naturally led her. So that pride, reserve, affectation, and censoriousness, made up the essentials of her character, and she became more unamiable even than Coquetilla; and as the other was too accessible, Prudiana was quite unapproachable by gentlemen, and unfit for any conversation, but that of her servants, being also deserted by those of her own sex, by whom she might have improved, on account of her censorious disposition. And what was the consequence? ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... the beautiful country of beautiful France. It is the chateau once more. It is the same, but changed. The unapproachable elegance, the inviolable security, have witnessed invasion. The right wing of the chateau is in ruins, with traces of fire upon the blackened walls; while here and there, a broken statue or a roofless temple are sad ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... drew her closer to him—"there is no denying that. But presently I shall have to explain to you an odd phenomenon. Virginia, you know, used to be famous for its good living, and Maryland was simply unapproachable for good cooking. It was expected when the District was made out of these two that the result would be something quite extraordinary in the places of public entertainment. But, by a process which nobody can explain, in the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... visibly disturbed, yet put on a certain air of indifference that scarcely deceived even Peggy. The worst of it was there was no one with whom she could share her annoyance, for, if the Paymaster had no sympathy, the other two brothers were unapproachable. Gilian found her in a little rain of tears. She started with shame at his discovery, and set herself to a noisy handling of dinner dishes that by this time he knew well enough were not in her daily office of industry. And she said never a word—she that never heard ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the fire; and the light, streaming up along her dress, transfigured her into something alien and unapproachable. The easy flex of her untrammelled waist was magnificent. She had the effect of a statue, draped and ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... States Coast Survey Report of 1858 declares, that, "For depth of water, boldness of approaches, freedom from hidden dangers, and the immeasurable sea of gigantic timber coming down to the very shores, these waters are unsurpassed, unapproachable." ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... going to turn against her father, which is more than the rest of you can say. You can tell her, if you want to, that I'm still his friend." It was plain to be seen that he was adopting this pitiful policy as a means of gaining the attention of the otherwise unapproachable Christine." He was ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... wish to win the mother.[24] For this reason he had not been able earlier to withstand Julie although Maria attracted him far more. For the former was the indulgent mother of his power of imagination, the latter on the contrary the proud, unapproachable mother of his real childhood. Moreover, though he did not conceal from himself that his heart belonged to the chaste Maria, yet he resolved, if Julie should convince him that she had been the ghostly visitor, to offer her his hand immediately. "The doubt, whether she deserved it, which was near ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... to alter him, but she was equally assured as to her perfect right to differ from him in every possible way. He quite fell in with this view of the situation; so long as he was allowed unchallenged to be as stiff and stand-off and unapproachable as he pleased, he was well content that she should be extraordinarily sympathetic, gracious, and gay. It pleased him that the "retainers" should adore her and come to her in their troubles and difficulties; that she should ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... not tell you that I had not seen the interior of the cathedral. I do not know where the tomb (if there be a tomb) of the Eleven Thousand Virgins is; and then, it appears, it is unapproachable, alas! ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... seaward sluice; it is not a living thing in the landscape, bright and vivacious, but rather something secret and still, drawn almost reluctantly away, rather than hurrying off on business of its own. And yet the whole place gives me the constant sense of being an island, remote and unapproachable; the great black plain, where every step that one takes warns one of its quivering elasticity of soil, runs sharply up to the base of the long, low, green hills, whose rough, dimpled pastures and old elms contrast sharply ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the tips," Mr. Sutcliffe said. "I like it. Makes you look like a jolly boy, instead of a dreadful, unapproachable young lady. A little San Giovanni. A ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... Roy—we'll see if God takes your advice. We'll see if He helps you, or Lynch. Or Mary. Ah, the saintly Mary, the pure, the unapproachable! We'll see if He protects her from Fitz's dirty arms, or the greasy kisses of the Cockney! Eh, Roy? We'll see if He ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... faith worthy of those gods to whom some day I shall present him; and I should find his Christian ignorance and fanaticism transferred, whole and rude, to the service of those gods whose shrine is unapproachable save to the spiritual man, who has passed through the successive vestibules of science ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... of a high moral tone and unapproachable principle, which I read carefully for some ray of human weakness, for some stroke of nature untrammelled by the calling code of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... crowded with carriages brought thither by the musical matinee, and such a throng of arriving guests pressed round the entrance, decorated with a kind of tent with scallopings of red velvet, that he deemed the house unapproachable. How could he manage to get in? And how in his cassock could he reach the Princess, and ask for a minute's conversation with Baroness Duvillard? Amidst all his feverishness he had not thought of these difficulties. However, he was approaching ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola |
