"Adamant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shall always manifest perfect health." Convince your passive mind—which has charge of your body—of this by repeated commands, demands and assertions. Always think of your body as being as strong as adamant. Never talk of either health or disease or weakness. You must be above caring for these. They are your Natural rights. Only when you lower yourself they have power to trouble you. Go beyond the lower self. Your ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... done could never be undone. And "Paton had begged him off"! It was all the more wonderful to him, and he was all the more deeply grateful for it, because he knew that, in Mr Paton's views, the law of punishment for every offence was as a law of iron and adamant—a law as undeviating and beneficial as ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... a navy equal to our own, will be quite strong enough to make our Admiralty understand that it is out of the question to go to war with America, so that America will have as much control of the seas as there is any point in having.[87] The Americans are adamant about the Japanese Navy, but very pliant about French submarines, which only threaten us. Control of the seas being secured, limitation of naval armaments merely decreases the cost, and is an equal gain to all parties, involving no sacrifice of American interests. To take next the question of China: ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... as he writhed himself with the pain of remembrance: 'And then, Meg, I had to treat the poor child as if I were stone of adamant, and chide her when my very heart was breaking for her. One moment's softening, and where should we have been? And now I have added to her troubles that fancy that I was obdurate in my anger and implacability.' I assured him that she would honour and thank ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... counted on his: fingers. "I must know the names and faces of your men friends as far as I can. Your woman friends don't count. While I'm you, you will be adamant." He laughed again pleasantly. "But the men are essential—the backbone of ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... ago, "The bubble has burst." How, if the great empire should prove not to have been shattered? how, if the bubble has not burst?—nay, if that great system of intelligent self-government which was taken for a bubble prove to be a sphere of adamant, rounded in the mould of Divine Law, and filled with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... her first husband's murder. Her personality fails to detach itself from the romance of her biography by any salient qualities. But Webster, with true playwright's instinct, casts aside historical doubts, and delineates in his heroine a woman of a very marked and terrible nature. Hard as adamant, uncompromising, ruthless, Vittoria follows ambition as the loadstar of her life. It is the ambition to reign as Duchess, far more than any passion for a paramour, which makes her plot Camillo's and Isabella's murders, and throws her before marriage into Brachiano's arms. Added to this ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Empyreal Thrones! With reason hath deep silence and demur Seized us, though undismayed. Long is the way And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light. Our prison strong, this huge convex of fire, Outrageous to devour, immures us round Ninefold; and gates of burning adamant, Barred over us, prohibit all egress. These passed, if any pass, the void profound Of unessential Night receives him next, Wide-gaping, and with utter loss of being Threatens him, plunged in that abortive gulf. If thence he scape, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... of thought. Certain values she had fostered had tumbled about and had to be put in order. Here were not only hundreds of mill folk making a "fuss" over what Robin had done, but the household of the Manor as well—old Budge, usually as adamant as a brick wall, crying! No one loved the heroic more than Beryl, but to her thinking it lay in a spectacular, and with a dramatic indifference, risking one's own life for another, not in a little unnecessary sentimental impulse. When she had heard of what Robin had done she ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... the unwonted heat. No remonstrances from his master could induce him to abandon his watch from the cliff. To withstand the vertical beams of that noontide sun would seem to require a skin of brass and a brain of adamant; but yet, hour after hour, he would remain conscientiously scanning the surface of the Mediterranean, which, calm and deserted, lay outstretched before him. On one occasion, Servadac, in reference to his orderly's indomitable perseverance, happened to ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Joan had conducted her to her room, which she had spent infinite time and thought in arranging, the old woman remained there to rest until supper-time. Then she reappeared, and, by the signs of her worn, ascetic face, the cruel hollows about those adamant eyes, the drawn cheeks and furrowed brow, the girl realized that rest with her was not easy to achieve. She saw every sign in her now that in the old days she had learned to dread ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... sent the fleets of both kingdoms to aid in repelling the attack, and succeeded in baffling all the attempts of Wallenstein, and finally in driving him off, though he had boasted that "he would reduce Stralsund, even if it were bound to heaven with chains of adamant." Though frustrated in this attempt, the armies of Ferdinand had swept along so resistlessly, that the King of Denmark was ready to make almost any sacrifice for peace. A congress was accordingly held at Lubec in May, 1629, when peace was made; Ferdinand ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... and gracious sunne-shine of your Honor hath infused light and life: so may my lesser borrowed light, after a principall respect to your benigne aspect, and influence, affoorde some lustre to some others. In loyaltie I may averre (my needle toucht, and drawne, and held by such an adamant) what he in love assumed, that sawe the other stars, but bent his course by the Pole-starre, and two guardes, avowing, Aspicit unam One guideth me, though more I see. Good parts imparted are not empaired: ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... most talkative people have no excuse for ruining themselves. As for example in a barber's shop one day there was some conversation about the tyranny of Dionysius, that it was as hard as adamant and invincible, and the barber laughed and said, "Fancy your saying this to me, who have my razor at his throat most days!" And Dionysius hearing this had him crucified. Barbers indeed are generally a talkative race, for people fond of prating flock to them and sit in their ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... why should we demand of Heine that he should be a hero, a patriot, a solemn prophet, any more than we should demand of a gazelle that it should draw well in harness? Nature has not made him of her sterner stuff—not of iron and adamant, but of pollen of flowers, the juice of the grape, and Puck's mischievous brain, plenteously mixing also the dews of kindly affection and the gold-dust of noble thoughts. It is, after all, a tribute ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... homespun kindliness, their human gamut of rough charity, friendly curses, garrulous curiosity and easily estimated credulity or indifference. This city of Manhattan gave him no clue; it was walled against him. Like a river of adamant it flowed past him in the streets. Never an eye was turned upon him; no voice spoke to him. His heart yearned for the clap of Pittsburg's sooty hand on his shoulder; for Chicago's menacing but social yawp in his ear; for the pale and eleemosynary stare through the Bostonian eyeglass—even ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... Fife Was a student of life: He was coarse, and excessively fat, With a beard like a goat's, But he held all the notes Of ruined John Jeremy Platt! With an adamant smile That was brimming with guile, He said: "I am took with the face Of your beautiful daughter, And wed me she ought ter, To save you ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... and dreary, invaded me with the knowledge: between me and my Lona lay an abyss impassable! stretched a distance no chain could measure! Space and Time and Mode of Being, as with walls of adamant unscalable, impenetrable, shut me in from that gulf! True, it might yet be in my power to pass again through the door of light, and journey back to the chamber of the dead; and if so, I was parted from that chamber only by a ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... introduced the first great feature: "Bip, the Bouncing Buster of Boozicks and the Fearless Firer of Fireworks, with the admirable assistance of that adaptable and adamant Timorous-are-ye-poor-mortal-worms, will twist the tail of the tawny lion and break the barbarous bandetta of benighted Britain!" This being announced in one sentence, Bob promptly collapsed amidst cheers from the porch and high squeaks from the darker circle—with ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... indulgence, to a peremptory reminder that debts were meant to be paid. A fresh bill of sale on furniture and stock staved off disaster for a time. But a bad season brought it once more a long step nearer, and the bank, however urgently appealed to, showed itself adamant, not only as to any further advance, but as to any postponement of their own claim. Various desperate expedients only made matters worse, and after a few more wretched months during which his farm deteriorated, and his business went ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dragged on. The allies grew in numbers and in demands. Peter the Great and Augustus were again joined by the Danish king. Great Britain, Hanover, and Prussia, all covetous of Swedish trade or Swedish territory, were now members of the coalition. Charles XII stood like adamant: he would retain all or he would lose all. So he stood until the last. It was while he was directing an invasion of Norway that the brilliant but ill-balanced Charles lost his life (1718), being then but thirty-six ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... She sat on the high stoop. A spray of insolent ivy bobbed against her right ear. A ray of impudent moonlight flickered upon her nose. But I was adamant, nickel-plated. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... precipitately in resigning, Cornet Heald (egged on, doubtless, by Lola) endeavoured to get his resignation cancelled. The authorities, however, were adamant. "Much curiosity," says a journalistic comment, "has been aroused among the Household Troops by the efforts of this officer to regain his commission after having voluntarily relinquished it. Notwithstanding ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... and bound, even if the expression be somewhat too rude, with iron and adamant; and unless you or some one more vigorous than you can break them, it is impossible for any one speaking otherwise than I now speak to speak well; since, for my part, I have always the same thing to say, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... watching the window, Muriel told what she knew. The recital was pitiful; but Hugh Roughsedge sat impassive, making no comments. She felt that in this quarter the young man was adamant. ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mocked him with a sense of helplessness. There had never been more than a little impalpable barrier between them—and yet he had suffered it to keep them apart! And now, though it seemed slighter and frailer than ever, it had suddenly hardened to adamant, and he might beat his life out against it ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... executed for the conspiracy. If ever mercy was becoming to a man, it would have been pre-eminently so to Maurice on this occasion; but he was inflexible as adamant. The mother, the wife, and the son of Groeneveld, threw themselves at his feet, imploring pardon. Prayers, tears and sobs were alike ineffectual. It is even said that Maurice asked the wretched mother "why she begged mercy for her son, having refused to do as much for her ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... that fill'd Pelides' breast, Nor dark Ulysses' wanderings o'er the brine, Nor Pelops' house unblest. Vast were the task, I feeble; inborn shame, And she, who makes the peaceful lyre submit, Forbid me to impair great Caesar's fame And yours by my weak wit. But who may fitly sing of Mars array'd In adamant mail, or Merion, black with dust Of Troy, or Tydeus' son by Pallas' aid Strong against gods to thrust? Feasts are my theme, my warriors maidens fair, Who with pared nails encounter youths in fight; Be Fancy ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Germany." The motor was in the cellar and well-muffled. The old chap hesitated to come down, but a shot that brought down some plaster hurried his decision. In spite of the old woman's pretended fear of Australians, she evidently did not think we were adamant to pity. On her knees with much weeping she begged us to let them go away, and shifted rapidly from one ground of appeal to another. She said her husband was crazy and his wires and things did no harm; he was trying to talk to "le President," ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... pain, through the herb Nerius poison the sheep, yet is a remedy to man against poison... There is great difference between the standing puddle and the running stream, yet both water: great odds between the adamant and the pomice, yet both stones, a great distinction to be put between vitrum and the crystal, yet both glass: great contrariety between Lais ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... black, adamant rock rising sheer from the sea in a rampart wall. Reefs, serried, rank on rank, like sentinels, guarded approach to the coast in jagged masses, that would rip the bottom from any keel like the teeth ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... that must be righted, Sacred rights to be sustained, Truths, though trampled long and slighted, 'Mid the strife to be maintained;— Heavy, brooding mists to scatter— Mists of ignorance and sin,— Walls of adamant to shatter, Thus to let God's ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... governments—the spy has this curious and magnificent quality: he never becomes angry; he possesses the Christian humility of a priest; his eyes are stolid with an indifference which he holds as a barrier against the world of fools who do not understand him; his forehead is adamant under insult; he pursues his ends like a reptile whose carapace is fractured only by a cannonball; but (like that reptile) he is all the more furious when the blow does reach him, because he believed his armor invulnerable. The lash of the whip upon his fingers was to Corentin, pain apart, the ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... when a man has made up his mind not to deviate from a certain straight line of conduct. There was to be a ball that night at the big hotel. Plonville had refused to have anything to do with it. He had renounced the frivolities of life. He was there for rest, quiet, and study. He was adamant. That evening the invitation was again extended to him, the truth being that there was a scarcity of young men, as is usually the case at such functions. Plonville was about to re-state his objections to frivolity when through the open door he caught a glimpse of two of the arriving guests ascending ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... But Tish was adamant. "It's his last night," she said, "and he has promised not to smoke any cigarettes and I've given him two pepsin tablets. This is the ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... little nearer to mine eyes, Methinks I would have wholly changed my form, Even as in Thessaly her form she changed: But if I cannot lose myself in her More than I have—small mercy though it won— I would to-day in aspect thoughtful be, Of harder stone than chisel ever wrought, Of adamant, or marble cold and white, Perchance through terror, or of jasper rare And therefore prized by the blind greedy crowd. Then were I free from this hard heavy yoke Which makes me envy Atlas, old and worn, Who with ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... he passed him in the aisle, beard to beard. Miss Jane Pollock stared hard at the back of Mrs. Maria Hill's bonnet, in the pew in front of her, but when Mrs. Hill turned about to glance up at the organ-loft, to discover who was there, Miss Pollock's face became as adamant, and her eyes remained fixed on her folded hands until Mrs. Hill had twisted about again, and there was no danger of their glances encountering. All over the church, likewise, were people who avoided seeing each other, though conscious, all down their rigid backbones, that those with ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... told Alexina that although she had cannily waited for what she believed to be the propitious moment and told her father about the great scheme, she had never seen him so upset. She stormed, argued, wept, but he was adamant. He would give her neither a cent nor his permission. When she accused him of inconsistency (he had supported woman's suffrage) he replied that women forced to work needed the franchise and no fair-minded man would ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... she might feel herself safe from the venomous attacks of the serpent. He therefore brought her to Delos, a floating island in the AEgean Sea, which he made stationary by attaching it with chains of adamant to the bottom of the sea. Here she gave birth to her twin-children, Apollo and Artemis (Diana), two of the most beautiful of ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... one of them prowling through an orchard, with the yellowbirds hovering about him, crying, Pi-ty, pi-ty, in the most desponding tone; yet he seems not to regard them, knowing, as do they, that in the close branches they are as safe as if in a wall of adamant. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Emperor, "in this strong case of steel and adamant have we found it necessary to enclose the redoubted Ursel, whose fame is spread through the whole world, both for military skill, political wisdom, personal bravery, and other noble gifts, which we have been obliged to obscure for a time, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Lake Superior, with its great ocean billows and slumbering, giant rocks and cold, dark, fathomless depths, there was a new life in a hard, rugged, roomy, new world. We hugged close to the north coast; and the numerous rocky islands to our left stood guard like a wall of adamant between us and the heavy surf that flung against the barrier. We were rapidly approaching the headquarters of our company. When south-bound brigades, with prisoners in hand-cuffs, began to meet us, I judged we were near the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... research project. In passing, General Schulgen stated that an Air Corps pilot who believed that he saw one of these objects was thoroughly interrogated by General Schulgen and scientists, as well as a psychologist, and the pilot was adamant in his claim that he saw ...
— Federal Bureau of Investigation FOIA Documents - Unidentified Flying Objects • United States Federal Bureau of Investigation
... knew it. You're as soft hearted as a girl, for all your adamant exterior. God bless ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... toilet and made her way down the old winding stair to the room in which they had supped the night before. Surely Girdlestone must have had a heart of flint not to be melted by the sight of that fair, fresh face. His features set as hard as adamant as she entered the room, and he looked at her with eyes which ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... want to do right. I've been reading some in Zeke's book, 'Science and Health,' and there was one sentence just got hold of me:[1] 'Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error—self-will, self-justification, and self-love!' Jewel's helped me to dissolve enough so I could face handing over the keys of this house to her mother. I'm not saying I could have offered ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... he pleaded, "I am not adamant. I am only a man, with a man's heart that hungers for you, cries for you, clamours for you day by day! I love you, beautiful child—love you with a poet's love that is alien to these sordid days, with a love that is half worship. I love you as Leander loved ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... resident alien nor the poor; and let none of you devise evil against your brother in his heart. But they refused to heed, and turned a stubborn shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they might not hear. Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant lest they should hear the teaching, and the words which Jehovah of hosts had sent by his spirit through the former prophets. Therefore there came great wrath from Jehovah of hosts. And even when I cried they would not hear, so when they cried I did not ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... at her, said "Yes," good-humoredly, to almost everything, and found slight incentive to depart from his usual reticence. She had learned the limits of her range, and knew that within it there was entire liberty, beyond it a will like adamant. They got on admirably together, for she craved nothing further in the way of liberty and companionship than was accorded her, while he soon recognized that the prize carried off from other competitors could no more follow him ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... flesh faileth us, and we become ignorant and brutish. Our affections cleave to the earth, and temptations with their violence turn our souls towards another end than God. As there is nothing more easily moved and turned wrong than the needle that is touched with the adamant, yet it settles not in such a posture, it recovers itself and rests never till it look towards the north, and then it is fixed—even so, temptations and the corruptions and infirmities of our hearts ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... to the mean-spirited artificer of Roman pearls; or the diamond seeker, seeking through deserts for months; the fine diamond merchant, dying in caravans, of the past; and, finally, the diamond-cutter, grinding that adamant for weeks far, far more indefatigably than to make the optic lenses which reveal hidden planets and galaxies. All that labour, danger, that weary, weary time embodied in a thing so tiny that, like Queen Mab, it can sit ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... he was more or less adamant. By hook or by crook, by special arrangements with friends or agents in nearby towns and the principal showy resorts of New York, he managed to know, providing they did leave the grounds, either with or ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... covets them: dark she is of skin: But yet hers be they; thou but foolest me. She cometh, by the quivering of mine eye. I'll lean against the pine-tree here and sing. She may look round: she is not adamant. ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... pointed out to him, but he was adamant on the matter and became dreadfully irritable and excited. I did not dare to press the point, so of course—" ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... Having conceived, he executed it with that which never failed in Cinque Cento Italy—the artistic spirit of perfection. When it was over, he shrugged his shoulders, wrote his magnificent Apology with a style of adamant upon a plate of steel, and left it for the outlaws of Filippo Strozzi's faction to deal with the crisis he had brought about. For some years he dragged out an ignoble life in obscurity, and died at last, as Varchi puts it, more by his own carelessness than by the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... patriarchs, who keep them more than ten minutes afterwards. It is of no use trying him with anything less than a full-sized "bread" or proposing to him any joint in cut unless it is in the very best cut. In the matter of gravy he is adamant. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... his arm. Both were absorbed In the half-whispered converse of the time; And both, as if accustomed to the path, Turned down an alley, climbed a flight of steps, Entered a door, and closed it after them— A door of adamant 'twixt hope and me. I had my secret; and I kept it, too. I knew his haunt, and it was watched for me, Till doubt and prayers for doubt,—pale flowers I nourished with my tears—were crushed By the ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... Had he not so wound himself into every recess of her heart as to make life without seeing him insupportable? Could it be possible that, after having done all this, he had no regard for her? Was he so hard, so cruel, such adamant as to deny her at least a farewell? As for herself, she was now beyond all fear of consequences. She was ready to die if it were necessary,—ready to lose all the luxuries of her husband's position rather than never see him again. She had a heart! She was inclined to doubt whether any one ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... pride. 'Tis more than LIFE, to watch him hold His hand forth, tremulous yet bold, Over his second's, and to clasp His rival's in a quiet grasp; To watch the noble attitude He takes—the crowd in breathless mood: And then to see, with adamant start, The muscles set, and the great heart Hurl a courageous splendid light Into the eye-and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... knows it's an unhappy life Miss Dorothy will lead with him, and it would be a blessing in disguise if something should happen to prevent the marriage from taking place. As for that sly, black minx, Iris Vincent, she must have a soul as hard as adamant and cruel as death to cheat a poor blind girl out of her lover, and to try all her arts to win him from her. They fairly make love to each other in her very presence; and she, poor soul! never knows it, because she is blind! The curse of God will surely ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... hope, a gleam of sunshine, a whisper of good news. If his mother had not that to give him, let her stay away. He did not wish his heart to be melted within him by regrets and tears; if there was no hope, let it harden on, till it was as hard as adamant, for the hour, that, however long delayed, must come at last—of vengeance! He thought of Solomon Coe as one of a dominant race thinks of the slave who has become his master, and was his murderer in his heart ten times a day. He thought of him as the man who would marry Trevethick's ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... forward, and compressing his lips, which he then opened with a slight smack of determination, giving quiet utterance to his judgment. It was usually quite impossible to move him from a decision thus made, and those who misinterpreted the mildness of his manner soon learned that the man himself was adamant. ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... assertion in the gentle, persistent tone of one who is patient with the unreasonableness of a frightened child. His determination to win success never faltered, rather it hardened with opposition into adamant; but he was beginning to realize his blunder. He had overwhelmed her; had brought about an upheaval of her world so violent that, in her bewilderment, her dread of chaos, she instinctively laid hold on the old supports and clung to them with desperation. She must have time to think, ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... together and condenses the liquid mass. This process is called cooling and congealment. Of the fusile kinds the fairest and heaviest is gold; this is hardened by filtration through rock, and is of a bright yellow colour. A shoot of gold which is darker and denser than the rest is called adamant. Another kind is called copper, which is harder and yet lighter because the interstices are larger than in gold. There is mingled with it a fine and small portion of earth which comes out in the form of rust. These are ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... at last resigned to make some concessions, but remained adamant with regard to religion. Thanks to the victory won by the Spaniards at Mook, where Louis of Nassau lost his life, Requesens was able to grant some of the claims of the States General without losing prestige. He proclaimed a general amnesty, suppressed the taxes of 10 per cent. ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... *seized So woodly*, that he like was to behold *madly The box-tree, or the ashes dead and cold. Then said; "O cruel goddess, that govern This world with binding of your word etern* *eternal And writen in the table of adamant Your parlement* and your eternal grant, *consultation What is mankind more *unto you y-hold* *by you esteemed Than is the sheep, that rouketh* in the fold! *lie huddled together For slain is man, right as another beast; And dwelleth eke in prison and arrest, And hath sickness, and great ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... natives. It took them a month of hard travelling to reach their goal. Their way lay over the native tracks which run as a network over this part of the world. "They are veritable footpaths, never over a foot in breadth, beaten as hard as adamant by centuries of native traffic. Like the roads of the old Romans, they run straight on over everything, ridge and mountain ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... nymph, "To stone transform'd (such fury fires the breast "Of those who desperate love!) I shall not tell: "Nor yet of Scython, of ambiguous form, "Now male, now female; nature's wonted laws "Inconstant proving: thee, O Celmis! too "I pass; once faithful nurse to infant Jove, "Now chang'd to adamant: Curetes! sprung "From showery floods: Crocus, and Smilax, both "To blooming flowers transform'd: unnotic'd these, "My tale from novelty itself shall please: "How Salmacis so infamous became, "Then list; whose potent waves, the luckless limbs "Enerve, of those they bathe. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... through the shallow water and struck out manfully. The icy water made them gasp at first, but soon the reaction came, and they thoroughly enjoyed their swim. They tried to coax Jimmy in, but he lay flat on his back under a tree and was adamant ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... might or by power, but My Spirit [i.e. mercy], saith the Lord of hosts." (104) The twelfth verse of the seventh chapter of the same prophet must, I think, be interpreted in like manner: "Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the Lord of hosts hath sent in His Spirit [i.e. in His mercy] by the former prophets." (105) So also Haggai ii:5: "So My Spirit ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... the mother and sister knew that the Member for Perivale did not intend to go to church on that occasion. To morning service Sir Anthony always went, the habits of Aylmer Park having in them more of adamant in reference to him than they had as ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... there is the main marvel. How he moved From hence, thou knowest, for thou too wert here, And saw'st that of his friends none guided him, But he they loved was leader to them all. Now, when he came to the steep pavement, rooted With adamant foundation deep in Earth, On one of many paths he took his stand Near the stone basin, where Peirithoues And Theseus graved their everlasting league. There, opposite the mass of Laurian ore, Turned from the hollow pear-tree ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... meanwhile beginning to move; for the strokes he had received, having encountered a breastplate as hard as adamant, had only stunned, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... incidental part of the general business of the nation and there was no submerging of the spirit which seeks and demands appropriate public ideals in government and action. So that while other elements have always tended to produce friction between neighboring countries, it was adamant, stubborn, military Prussianism which asserted itself in the middle of 1914 ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... they died. Moreover, Kublai Khan was growing old himself, and the favour which he had always shown to them had excited some jealousy among his own people, and they feared what might happen when he died. But the old Khan was adamant to all their prayers; wealth and honours were theirs for the asking, but he would not let them go. They might, indeed, have died in China, and we of the West might never have heard of Marco Polo or of Kublai Khan, but for a mere accident, a stroke of ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... mind. If it were otherwise—if scientific men were not accustomed to demand verification, if they were satisfied with the imperfect while the perfect is attainable—their science, instead of being, as it is, a fortress of adamant, would be a house of clay, ill fitted to bear the buffetings of the theologic storms to which it has been from time to time, and is ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... giving in, and I for one intend to be adamant. I shall defeat her in time. The male intellect is always ultimately victorious, other things being equal. I was reading Schopenhauer on the subject last night. What a brain that man had, though I confess his analysis of the female mentality ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... adamant, and here his rule prevails. It is pre-eminently a wise one. The stealing of books, as well as the losing of books, from public libraries is a melancholy and ancient chapter in the histories of such institutions; ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... and judgment and the eternal principles of right and wrong, and against himself most of all. With his head pressed down on the bare polished wood of his desk, he hurled himself mentally at an earth of adamant and a heaven of brass, hurled himself ferociously, repeatedly, with a kind of doggedness, as though he would either break them down or dash his own ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... roaring tide, And stricter bounds the cultured fields divide. Then kindles Fancy, then expands the heart, Then blow the flowers of Genius and of Art; Saints, Heroes, Sages, who the land adorn, Seem rather to descend than to be born; Whilst History, midst the rolls consigned to fame, With pen of adamant inscribes their name. ...
— Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld
... of his nationality, for she danced gladly with others of his race. Nor did it look like caprice on her part. On the contrary, there was an expression on her face that resembled something like fear when she refused to be cajoled into dancing with him. At length, finding her adamant, the ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... precision, the happy, distinguished melancholy sometimes united in a good-looking judge.... You watched the weighing of each word at its exit from the shaved, working lips, and the closure of their inexorable adamant behind its heels. As the last commonplace of club gossip, smoke-room heroics, and music-hall sentiment issued from these portals, transfigured by the moderate discount that made it twice itself, you not only saw it was final ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... which quivered upward through the air, and sank quivering downward to the earth. Then, a silence! Poor Hilda had looked into the court-yard, and saw the whole quick passage of a deed, which took but that little time to grave itself in the eternal adamant. ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... morass, previously impassable by man or beast, is beyond all praise and deserving of eternal record. Only conceive a slender bridge of two minute iron rails, several miles in length, level as Waterloo, elastic as whalebone, yet firm as adamant! Along this splendid triumph of human genius—this veritable via triumphalis—the train of carriages bounds with the velocity of the stricken deer; the vibrations of the resilient moss causing the ponderous engine and its enormous suite to glide along the surface of an extensive ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... order, Past and Future will not affect us. The temptation of present pleasure will not overcome the certainty of future pain, for the pain will be as sure as the pleasure, and we shall see all things under a rule of adamant. The foolish and the ignorant are led astray by the idea of contingency, and expect to escape the just issues of their actions: the wise man will know that each action brings with it its inevitable consequences, which even God cannot change ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... fraud, with mediocrity combined, Will to the surface ever rise, and reign. Authority and strength, howe'er diffused, However concentrated, will be still Abused, beneath whatever name concealed, By him who wields them; this the law by Fate And nature written first, in adamant: Nor can a Volta with his lightnings, nor A Davy cancel it, nor England with Her vast machinery, nor this our age With all its floods of Leading Articles. The good man ever will be sad, the wretch Will keep perpetual holiday; against All lofty souls both worlds will still be armed Conspirators; ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... Congress, and the necessity of such a paper was urged upon him with great earnestness. He replied: "An independent newspaper is very necessary to make truth known to the people; but an editor really independent must have a heart of oak, nerves of iron, and a soul of adamant, to carry it through. His first attempt will bring a hornet's nest about his head; and, if they do not sting him to death or to blindness, he will have to pursue his march with them continually swarming over him, and be beset on all ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... to the happy Field of E-lys'ium, the land of the blessed. The left path led to Tar'ta-rus, the abode of the wicked. At this place AEneas saw a vast prison, inclosed by a triple wall, around which flowed the Phleg'e-thon, a river of fire. In front of it was a huge gate of solid adamant. ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... philosopher's stone, which, if it could not transmute metals, could soothe all human suffering and arrest the progress of decay, he travelled for many years in Persia and Arabia, in search of the mountain of adamant, so famed in oriental fables. When he practised as a physician at Basle, he called one of his nostrums by the name of azoth — a stone or crystal, which, he said, contained magnetic properties, and cured epilepsy, hysteria, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Joseph carved a spoon From out a brand; To ivory it changed full soon And adamant. When Mary gave the Babe the food, He became Jesus, Son of God. Before ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... occupied, General Kock, who was in supreme command of our corps, for some reason which has never been explained, refused to permit us to fire upon them. I went to General Kock and pleaded with him, but he was adamant. This was a bitter disappointment to me, but I consoled myself with the thought that the General was much older than myself, and had been fighting since he was a baby. I therefore presumed he knew better. Possibly if we younger commanders had had more authority ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... yet undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine that England may cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom they first arose; and that, while the sands of the Indus and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of a Heathen one, and be able to lead forth her Sons, ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... they concede, end here. But the difference is world-wide when we come to processes—the true experimental test in all classification. Crystallizable substances crystallize—that is all. They pass into a fixed and immovable state, and mostly into one as enduring as adamant; while colloidal or albuminoid matter (laboratory protoplasm) takes on no fixed forms—only those that are ephemeral, merely transitory. This is so marked a feature, in respect to all the primordial forms of life, that Professor Bastian gives them the ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... her the more lovely she becomes, unless she gets the notion that some man wants to marry her money—and then it is time for me to take to the prairies! Her eyes get hard, her mouth goes up on one side and her features seem to set and freeze. She has only one hard side, but that is adamant! Poor girl, I can hardly blame her. As she says herself, there are proposals on her breakfast tray every morning—with all ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... has ebbed away; No more wild surging 'gainst the adamant rocks, No swayings of the sea-weed false that mocks The hues of gardens gay; No laugh of little wavelets at their play! No lucid pools reflecting Heaven's brow— Both storm and ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... threatened to have her arrested for blackmail. Shortly after this episode, we were consulted by Mrs. Ritter, much against the wishes of her daughter, who shrank from the notoriety and the disgrace of a lawsuit. The elder Thane was adamant in his decision that his son should marry the girl, who, he was fair enough to admit, was a young woman of very superior character and who, he was convinced, had been basely deceived. The mother, on the other hand, was relentlessly ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... she then exercised alike by sea and by land, proceeded from that night, in which Pelopidas not surprising any fort, or castle, or citadel, but coming, the twelfth man, to a private house, loosed and broke, if we may speak truth in metaphor, the chains of the Spartan sway, which before seemed of adamant and indissoluble. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... is of a fine American type, sinewy, resolute, hawk-eyed. The mountain sunshine provides me with Roentgen rays, and I see Wall Street inside his brow. "Dew lait," they yell. As there is no answer, they hammer at the door. The door is adamant. They leave reluctantly. "I think I saw the face of one of those Swiss idiots through the curtains," says the lady in pink; "of course he would not understand ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... one flood is scattered by another, but the rock always continues in its place. The stream of time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabricks of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... beheld a little blue bird flash across the huge ball of glimmering adamant, brush it with the tip of a ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... This matter of "highness" in Art, therefore, deserves our most careful consideration. Has it been, or is it, a true highness, a true princeliness, or only a show of it, consisting in courtly manners and robes of state? Is it rocky height or cloudy height, adamant or vapour, on which the sun of praise so long has risen and set? It will be well at once ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... those who deny that it has any place in prophecy at all? No; this prodigy has its place on the prophetic page; and the path which has thus far led us to the conclusion that the two-horned beast is the prophetic symbol of the United States, is hedged in on either side by walls of adamant that reach to heaven. To make any other application is an utter impossibility. The thought would be folly, and the ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... facing Harlan, he felt the man's greatness—his especial fitness for the career he had adopted. Harlan was the ideal outlaw. He was cool, deep, subtle. He was indomitable; he felt no fear; his will was inflexible, adamant. Haydon felt it. The fear he had experienced at his first meeting with Harlan had endured until this minute—it was strong ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... it rained, drawing a wet shroud of gloom over the pavements, the granite walls of the buildings, and the adamant perspective of the streets. Standing in my office window, I could see the flow of black umbrellas moving up and down town, like two torpid snakes. But though I am ordinarily sensitive to the effect of a long drizzle, it failed on that day to depress me. Life had freshened. ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... the utter neglect of any kind of precautions to facilitate the labors of their bees, you might suppose that they imagined these delicate insects to be possessed of nerves of steel and sinews of iron or adamant; or else that they took them for miniature locomotives, always fired up and capable of an indefinite amount of exertion. A bee cannot put forth more than a certain amount of physical exertion, and if a large portion of this is spent in ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... were begun. It was the beginning of a series of trials which made the opera a child of sorrow to the composer. The style of the music was new to the singers, and they pronounced it unsingable. They begged him to make changes, but Beethoven was adamant. The rehearsals became a grievous labor to all concerned. The production was set down for November 20, but when the momentous day came, it found Vienna occupied by the French troops, Bonaparte at Schonbrunn and the capital deserted by the Emperor, the nobility, and ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the thirty-sixth year of his age, one of the most extraordinary men that ever acted a part on the great stage of the world. Endowed by nature with a noble person, "a frame of adamant, a soul of fire," with high intellectual powers, dauntless bravery, kingly sentiments of honor, and a lofty scorn of all that was mean and little, he became, from the very splendor of these gifts, perhaps one of the most ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... off. The land was filled with widows and orphans crying for aid, which the universal destitution prevented them from receiving. Humanitarians shuddered with horror and wept with grief for the imaginary woes of Africans; but their hearts were as adamant to people of their own race and blood. These had committed the unpardonable sin, had wickedly rebelled against the Lord's anointed, the majority. Blockaded during the war, and without journals ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... He would be adamant with Forbes, and decline to countenance any plea in support of continued silence. If Forbes's demand was reasonable, Scotland Yard would grant it. If justice compelled Forbes to come out into the open, no private citizen should attempt to defeat the ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... to consider whether the Government should compensate the owners of creameries or other property wrongfully destroyed; and he admitted that some constables had exceeded their duty, nine of them being actually under arrest on various charges. But on the main point he was adamant. Quoting the remark of a police-sergeant at Tralee, "They have declared war upon us and I suppose war it must be," the CHIEF SECRETARY said in his most emphatic tones, "War it will be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... of adamant, and a greeting like this, even though it was offered on some one else's behalf, was enough to drive Mrs Rimbolt completely out ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... at heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered what the surplus is and where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of heaven, you are more worthless and ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... fit to be the objects of criminal justice. If fatigue, if disgust, if unsurmountable nausea drive them away from such spectacles, ubi miseriarum pars non minima erat videre et aspici, I cannot blame them. He must have an heart of adamant who could hear a set of traitors puffed up with unexpected and undeserved power, obtained by an ignoble, unmanly, and perfidious rebellion, treating their honest fellow-citizens as rebels, because they refused to bind them selves through their conscience, against ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that there was no reserve—no reinforcements behind to support them when they went to battle; their alternative was life or death. It was the consciousness of this fact that made the black phalanx a wall of adamant to ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... countenance made others fly, None durst come near for fear of sudden death. In iron walls they deem'd me not secure: So great a fear my name amongst them spread, That they suppos'd I could rend bars of steel, And spurn in pieces posts of adamant. Wherefore a guard of chosen shot I had: They walk'd about me every minute-while; And if I did but stir out of my bed, Ready they were to shoot me to ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... with a triple purpose: the perpetuity of his empire, of his dynasty, of his individuality. He steeped his body in indestructibility and wrote his name in adamant. He employed the manifold means at the command of his era, and whether his monument were a colossus, a temple or a city, he ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... such an altitude that she could hope for nothing better than to worship meekly at a great distance. She was braver now, she actually approached him and spoke to him, yet timidly enough to have softened a heart of adamant; but Dick, stung by a laughing comment from McKnight, would have passed her by with an exaggerated indifference intended to convey an idea of his sublime superiority to little girls, no matter how large and ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... East, hee himselfe marched with a power into the lande of Kergis, which notwithstanding, he conquered not in that expedition and as it was reported vnto vs, he went on forward euen to the Caspian mountaines. But the mountaines on that part where they encamped themselues, were of adamant, and therefore they drew vnto them their arrowes, and weapons of iron. And certaine men contained within those Caspian mountaynes, hearing as it was thought, the noyse of the armie, made a breach through, so that when the Tartars returned vnto the same place tenne yeeres after, they ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... shared the illusion. I have never had the faintest illusion about Leeds or Birmingham. The industrial dream suited the Scots. Here was a really romantic vista, suited to a romantic people; a vision of higher and higher chimneys taking hold upon the heavens, of fiercer and fiercer fires in which adamant could evaporate like dew. Here were taller and taller engines that began already to shriek and gesticulate like giants. Here were thunderbolts of communication which already flashed to and fro like thoughts. ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... said, in silence he remain'd Their breast they each one clawing tore; themselves Smote with their palms, and such shrill clamour rais'd, That to the bard I clung, suspicion-bound. "Hasten Medusa: so to adamant Him shall we change;" all looking down exclaim'd. "E'en when by Theseus' might assail'd, we took No ill revenge." "Turn thyself round, and keep Thy count'nance hid; for if the Gorgon dire Be shown, and thou shouldst view it, thy return Upwards would be for ever lost." This said, Himself ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Kirata also blazing splendour, let fly an arrow like flaming fire and resembling the thunderbolt at the same object. And the arrows thus shot by both fell at the same instant of time upon the wide body of Muka, hard as adamant. And the two shafts fell upon the boar with a loud sound, even like that of Indra's thunderbolt and the thunder of the clouds falling together upon the breast of a mountain. And Muka, thus struck by two shafts which produced numerous arrows resembling snakes of blazing mouths, yielded up ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... stands the Warrior's Pride? How just his Hopes let Swedish Charles decide; A Frame of Adamant, a Soul of Fire, No Dangers fright him, and no Labours tire; O'er Love, o'er Force, extends his wide Domain, Unconquer'd Lord of Pleasure and of Pain; No Joys to him pacific Scepters yield, War sounds the Trump, he rushes ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... desolation, they "had mocked the messengers of God and despised His word;" that in the language of the prophet, "they had refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears that they should not hear; yea, had made their heart like an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law and the words which the Lord of Hosts had sent in his spirit by the former prophets." He admitted that great sins require great chastisement, and that the sins of London were enormous; that it was ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... could, by any process, be made insensible to pain and pleasure; if the human heart were hard as adamant, then avarice, ambition, and sensuality might channel out their paths in it, and make it their beaten way; and none would wonder or protest. If we could be patient under the load of a mere worldly life; if we could bear that burden as the beasts bear it; then, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... has expressed his willingness, on suitable terms, to meet T'gumbu, the powerful Matabele, in a twenty-ball contest for the World's Cokernut-Shying Championship. There is however a deadlock over details. T'gumbu's manager is adamant that the match shall take place in his nominee's native village of Mpm, but Mr. Hawkins objects, seeing little chance of escaping alive after the victory of which he is so confident. He says he would "feel more safer like on 'Ampstead 'Eaf." Another difficulty is that Mr. Hawkins insists ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... condition is hopeless where the wife possesses firmness, decision, and economy. There is no outward prosperity which can counteract indolence, extravagance, and folly at home. No spirit can long endure bad domestic influence. Man is strong, but his heart is not adamant. He delights in enterprise and action; but to sustain him he needs a tranquil mind, and a whole heart. He needs his moral force in the conflicts of the world. To recover his equanimity and composure, home must be to him a place of repose, of peace, of cheerfulness, of comfort; and ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... have received a baptism standing here, purer than fire, gentle as dew, yet deep and pervading as ocean. I cannot describe what I mean, but I feel it. Before I came, it seemed as if a great wall of adamant rose between me and heaven; now there is nothing but ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... it seemed, 'gainst blazing skies A necromantic tower sate, Crag-like on crags, of giant size; Of adamant its walls and gate. ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... He felt himself adamant in his stern resolution. He at least had the deathlike peace that follows decision. The agony of conflict was over for a time, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... being appointed for life has acted as a breakwater of adamant and reinforced concrete against all labor or capital legislation that has arisen from the passions of the moment. More than once when labor or capital, holding the whip handle in the Commons, would ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... a good many things about this Italy which I do not understand —and more especially I can not understand how a bankrupt Government can have such palatial railroad depots and such marvels of turnpikes. Why, these latter are as hard as adamant, as straight as a line, as smooth as a floor, and as white as snow. When it is too dark to see any other object, one can still see the white turnpikes of France and Italy; and they are clean enough to eat from, without a table-cloth. And yet no ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Grenville as host, the three men conferred together till eleven o'clock, discussing the whole situation "very calmly" (says Burke); but we can fancy the tumult of feelings in the breast of the old man when he found both Ministers firm as adamant against intervention in France. "They are certainly right as to their general inclinations," he wrote to his son, "perfectly so, I have not a shadow of doubt; but at the same time they are cold and dead as to any attempt whatsoever to give them effect." The heat of the Irish royalist ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose |
