"Adamantine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like goodly vessels driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish. Forgive me, then, and let us part, at least, as friends part. I have assailed thy resolution in vain, and mine own is fixed as the adamantine decrees ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... majesty swore at him for an idiot, and turned his back. Every word of this Mrs. Dove heard Colonel Mar tell my Lady—and then they fell to rating the poor youth, and trying to force out who this secret flame may be; but his is of the same stuff as his mother, adamantine and impervious. And now the Colonel keeps him on hard duty continually, and they watch him day and night to find out what places he haunts. But bless me, Mrs. Hunter, is the church clock striking? We must be gone, or my good man will ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rebellion against tyranny, or of shedding blood for the rights of man? Not one of them has, as yet, come down to hell in glory; a proof that these people have no distinguished heads among them. Those are to my mind who wish to clear up every thing, who fight with the adamantine shield of individuality, against which all prejudices, earthly or heavenly, are shivered. Show me such a man who is willing to become great on earth at the expense of his soul, and ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... Saviour kindly laid upon him, and has enslaved himself with a thousand superstitious observances which to us appear absurd; but his sincerity should awaken in us an affectionate interest in his behalf, not engender the bitter hatred which at present forms an adamantine barrier between us. If the Protestant would give up a little of his bigotry, and the Catholic a part of his superstition, and they would consent to meet each other half way, as brothers of one common manhood, inspired by the same Christian hope, and ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... sustains the faith of thousands, who never read and cannot understand the learned books of Christian apologists, who want, perhaps, words to explain the ground of their belief, but whose faith is of adamantine firmness, who hold the gospel with a conviction more intimate and unwavering ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... the Creator remained in his own nature. And his children, receiving from him the immortal principle, borrowed from the world portions of earth, air, fire, water, hereafter to be returned, which they fastened together, not with the adamantine bonds which bound themselves, but by little invisible pegs, making each separate body out of all the elements, subject to influx and efflux, and containing the courses of the soul. These swelling and surging as in a ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... the truth of Mr Whittlestaff, he was a man very open to such shafts of ridicule. The "robur et aes triplex" which fortified his heart went only to the doing of a good and unselfish action, and did not extend to providing him with that adamantine shield which virtue should of itself supply. He was as pervious to these stings as a man might be who had not strength to act in opposition to them. He could screw himself up to the doing of a great ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... destination before you permitted a young lady to leave the shelter of our castle,' he said. And the Duchess replied by an angry outburst, a hailstorm of reproaches, before which Eberhard Ludwig remained silent, cold, rigidly self-contained. The Duchess paused; it was like beating one's hand against some adamantine barrier. She had the sensation that all she said, felt, suffered, passed unnoticed; the man before her was waiting for information, that was all. It was intolerable, and the hopelessness of any pleading came ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... you, Adelbert, that your wife made a mistake also? Did it ever bore itself through your adamantine skull that it is not an unbroken round of gayety for a young girl to shut herself up in a lonesome house for three years, gradually acquiring children, and meantime being "sassed" by her husband because she is not ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... times as broad as that of the sun at setting. Now in the dusk it was a great silver lamp hanging over Nardos, the Beautiful, the City Built on the Water. The light glimmered over the tall white towers, over the white ten-mile-long adamantine bridge running from Nardos to the shore, and lit up the beach where we were standing, with a brightness that seemed almost that ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... true," replied the crying maid, "That Sita followed Rama to the woods, And that she of the Pandus also shared With them their toils—if ever woman's charms Had power to move the adamantine heart Of man, then let thy Rati go with thee To share with thee thy joys and woes as well. If thou shouldst go alone, remember then, Dear lord, the sin rests solely on thy head That a young maiden has been left alone To mourn for ever for her husband on The seas—and all ...
— Tales of Ind - And Other Poems • T. Ramakrishna
... forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on my forehead, my obstinacy was adamantine. I reflected for some time, and then answered as if I had discovered a new idea, "I mean ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... that the delicate probe of the French mind had dissected out a shade of feeling of which I had often been conscious. There is a coldness about all the luscious exuberance of Milton, like the wind that blows from, the glaciers across these flowery valleys. How serene his angels in their adamantine virtue! yet what sinning, suffering soul could find sympathy in them? The utter want of sympathy for the fallen angels, in the whole celestial circle, is shocking. Satan is the only ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and the moonlight still held. My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the gasp of Arthur, as we recognized the features of Lucy Westenra. Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... against it. His throne can no more be shaken by the puny attacks of men or devils than the everlasting mountains can be disturbed by the storm-blasts which howl around them. What more, then, is needed, than to shut up the wicked in a prison-house, through whose adamantine walls the accusing cry can never pierce, and whose doors are for ever barred by the holy decree of the Almighty? Ah! were it so, even this thought might possibly gratify pride and enmity, could a condemned, though not judged spirit for ever carry with it a conviction of having waged a war ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... although I am a good swimmer, I doubted my ability to keep afloat for three or four hours, with a heavy sea pouring into the circular cavity, which would presently be filled with a whirlpool of seething, foaming water. I should be knocked and buffeted from side to side against the adamantine rocks till I was dead, then tossed and played with till the tide ran out and carried my body into the vast ocean beyond, as food for fishes. My friends would never hear of me again, and my animals on the island would starve till—yes, ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... and limitary land, The Scythian steppe, the waste untrod of men! Look to it now, Hephaestus—thine it is, Thy Sire obeying, this arch-thief to clench Against the steep-down precipice of rock, With stubborn links of adamantine chain. Look thou: thy flower, the gleaming plastic fire, He stole and lent to mortal man—a sin That gods immortal make him rue to-day, Lessoned hereby to own th' omnipotence Of Zeus, and to repent his ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... listended to her story with all the sympathetic horror she could wish, and she felt buoyed up in her adamantine decision, although she still harped on the ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... own power, that prudence supplied the place of all other divinities, and that happiness is the unfailing consequence of virtue. But, surely, the quiver of Omnipotence is stored with arrows, against which the shield of human virtue, however adamantine it has been boasted, is held up in vain: we do not always suffer by our crimes; we are not always protected ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... my pilgrimage, Ye would lie down and join your moans with mine. Let this poor wretch but pass, who war doth wage With heaven, the elements, the powers divine! I beg for pity or for death. No more! But open, ope Hell's adamantine door! ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... made up mostly of sorrow and pain, filled him with longing to help others. "A sensitive, firm, wide-ranging, unresting spirit, he looks out mournfully over the throngs of men that fill the world, all of them totally depraved, all of them caught, from farthest eternity, in the adamantine meshes of God's decrees; the most of them also being doomed in advance by those decrees to an endless existence of ineffable torment; and upon this situation of affairs the excellent Michael Wigglesworth proposes to ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... variously coloured "serpentine" rocks; it is granite, and granite alone, that appears everywhere—granite, less lofty and less eccentric in form than the "serpentine" cliffs and crags; but presenting an appearance of adamantine solidity and strength, a mighty breadth of outline and an unbroken vastness of extent, nobly adapted to the purpose of protecting the shores of Cornwall, where they are most exposed to the fury of the Atlantic waves. In these wild districts, the sea rolls and roars in fiercer ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... slept and fast, Hear any trumpet, but the last. Crape, ever true and trusty known, Stole from the maid's bed to his own, Then in the spirituals of pride, Planted himself at Dulman's side. Thrice did the ever-faithful slave, With voice which might have reach'd the grave, And broke Death's adamantine chain, On Dulman call, but call'd in vain. 1210 Thrice with an arm, which might have made The Theban boxer curse his trade, The drone he shook, who rear'd the head, And thrice fell backward on his bed. What could be done? Where force hath fail'd, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... them tooke, and, tempering goodly well 85 Their contrary dislikes with loved meanes, Did place them all in order, and compell To keepe themselves within their sundrie raines*, Together linkt with adamantine chaines; Yet so as that in every living wight 90 They mix themselves, and shew their kindly might. [* ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... proportions and strange outlines. There were hills with lofty summits, marvellous castles, turreted and towered, and majestic cathedrals, their icy pinnacles and spires reaching high above the top-masts of the ship and their polished adamantine surfaces sparkling in the brilliant sunshine and scintillating fire and colour with the wondrous iridescent beauty of ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... Jerusalem. On his way back to France, the ship was attracted by the famous lodestone rock which appears in many mediaeval romances, and, all his companions having perished, Ogier wandered alone ashore. There he came to an adamantine castle, invisible by day, but radiant at night, where he was received by the famous horse Papillon, and sumptuously entertained. On the morrow, while wandering across a flowery meadow, Ogier encountered Morgana ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... inflames instantly in fluorine, with projection of brilliant sparks and liberation of dense fumes of boron trifluoride, BF{3}. The adamantine modification behaves similarly if powdered. When the experiment is performed in the fluorspar tube, the gaseous fluoride may be collected over mercury. The gas fumes strongly in the air, and is instantly decomposed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... first discovery will be that such communication has adamantine limitations. The off-hand impression of most persons would probably be that we are able to make literal conveyance of our thought. But, in truth, one could as soon convey the life out of his veins into the veins of another as transfer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... May Mindian Delphis melt this hour with love: And, swiftly as this brazen wheel whirls round, May Aphrodite whirl him to my door. Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love. Next burn the husks. Hell's adamantine floor And aught that else stands firm can Artemis move. Thestylis, the hounds bay up and down the town: The goddess stands i' the crossroads: sound the gongs. Turn, magic wheel, draw homeward him I love. Hushed are the voices of the winds ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... known, must be loved. And though you have all the knowledge of a von Humboldt, and do not love her, you will never understand her or her teachings. You will go through life with her, and yet parted from her as by an adamantine wall. ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... earth if I had not snatched it from obscurity in the very nick of time, at the moment that those matters herein recorded were about entering into the widespread insatiable maw of oblivion—if I had not dragged them out, as it were, by the very locks, just as the monster's adamantine fangs were closing upon them for ever! And here have I, as before observed, carefully collected, collated, and arranged them, scrip and scrap, "punt en punt, gat en gat," and commenced in this little work, a history ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... alternative was to run away or be killed. I took to flight, and the bull, bristling with fury, pursued me closely. The pistol was soon ready, and then looking back, I saw his head five or six yards behind my horse's tail. To fire at it would be useless, for a bullet flattens against the adamantine skull of a buffalo bull. Inclining my body to the left, I turned my horse in that direction as sharply as his speed would permit. The bull, rushing blindly on with great force and weight, did not turn ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... seeing her become any better—so serene she seems in her settled and unutterable sadness.' Such, we have often fancied, was the feeling of the great Florentine toward the world, and which—pained, pitying, yearning enthusiast that he was!—escaped irresistibly from those deep- set eyes, that adamantine jaw, and that brow, wearing the laurel, proudly yet painfully, as if it were a crown of everlasting fire! Dunbar was not altogether a Dante, either in melancholy or in power, but his 'Dance' reveals kindred moods, operating at times ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... with adamantine locks Fix'd fast the springs of poor Pandora's box, Then had she, bright enchantment! bloom'd for ever In all the charms consenting Gods could give her— Wit, Wisdom, Beauty, she had every grace Which makes man play the madman for a face! But ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... and bad each had, in its turn, a perfect and distinct existence? He chose to think that this was the case. Who, within his inner consciousness, does not feel that same ferine, savage man struggling against the stern, adamantine bonds of morality and decorum? Were those bonds burst asunder, as it was with this man, might not the wild beast rush forth, as it had rushed forth in him, to rend and to tear? Such were the questions that Mainwaring asked himself. And how had it all ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... 1784, Mrs. Siddons, about whom all the world has been talking, exposed her beautiful, adamantine, soft and lovely person for the first time, at the Smock Alley Theatre, in the bewitching, tearful, and all melting character of Isabella. From the repeated panegyrics in the impartial London newspapers, we were taught to expect the sight of a heavenly angel; but how were we ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... at her, felt as one does who has been reading a fairy-tale and is called to the family meal. All the things he had meant to say, that had seemed so eloquent, now seemed foolish. He awoke her hastily in case his courage should fail before that most adamantine thing—an unsympathetic atmosphere. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... irresistible desire to go forth in the world and by his prowess dazzle all mankind for the purpose of attracting one pair of eyes. The same occurs to the lady, and she determines to make all men fall at her feet by way of illustrating to one adamantine heart that he was a dullard to have passed over her charms. And this young lady of the rose and lily complexion, and knight of the bright-hued locks and herculean muscles, being young—sufficiently young ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... saying that I might be accused or put to death or boxed on the ears with impunity. For I may repeat once more, that to strike is worse than to be stricken—to do than to suffer. What I said then is now made fast in adamantine bonds. I myself know not the true nature of these things, but I know that no one can deny my words and not be ridiculous. To do wrong is the greatest of evils, and to suffer wrong is the next greatest evil. He who would avoid the last must be a ruler, or the friend of a ruler; and to be the ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... the night. It was one of those nights of the torrents of tears which wash away all save the adamantine within us, if there be ought of that besides the breathing structure. The reason why she wept with so delirious a persistency was, that her nature felt the necessity for draining her of her self-pitifulness, knowing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to take pickaxe and shovel and determine to level a mountain which obstructed his view. Yet Government departments are supposed to be under popular control. The Castle in Ireland, theoretically, was under popular control, but it was adamantine in policy. If the cant about popular control of legislation and Government departments is obviously untrue, how much more is it in regard to public services like railways, gas works, mines, the distribution of goods, manufacture, purchase and sale, which are ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... Carpi, his fear lest her extraordinary charms should seduce any man was such, that he not only employed women as executioners, but refused to permit her a priest or monk, thus forcing her to die unshriven, and refusing her the benefit of any penitence that may have lurked in her adamantine heart." ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... intellectual animal than a walrus. But the walrus did not awake, and he approached to within ten yards. Then, rising suddenly to his feet, Annatock poised the heavy weapon, and threw it with full force against the animal's side. It struck, and, as if it had fallen on an adamantine rock, it bounded off and fell upon the ice, with its hard point shattered and its ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... dear Edward!" he heard distinctly uttered at a few yards from his bed side. The storm was laid; the wind was hushed; the sea had ceased to rave: it was two o'clock in the morning; and every motion was audible. Recollecting the adamantine strength of his prison, Bertram felt his German superstitions stealing over him; but again he heard the voice; and, opening his eyes, he saw a dull light in the room. Instantly he raised his head; and he beheld the figure of a young woman standing by a little table. She was muffled ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... sea Of blackness whence no light could issue forth. Beyond this fierce horizon, farther yet Than vision's wing could bear my gaze, I knew Hell's desolate kingdoms stretched their iron wastes, Hell's burning mountains waved their brands of flame, Hell's lava rivers plunged in fury down Their adamantine beds. ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... are mine no more—Time hath them all, Time and his adamantine gaoler Death: Despoilure vast—yet seemeth it but small, When unto thee I turn, thy bloom and breath Filling with light and incense the last shrine, Innermost, ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... and re-establish the Government throughout all our wide domain upon the broad and eternal foundations of freedom, truth, and justice, then neither domestic traitors nor foreign despots will ever dash against its adamantine base. There it will stand, and stand forever, the mighty continental breakwater between the continents of Asia and of Europe, against which the breakers of internal faction, and the waves of despotic ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mathematics, which are those of nature, and logic, which are those of mind, be fully understood, no one will seek such an argument in the former but in the latter only, for they alone, as I have shown, are purposive, and they are wholly so. The only God that nature points to is an adamantine Fate. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... ships. As he had provisions for only eight or nine weeks, his men might starve. His mind was filled, as he himself says, with melancholy and dismal horror at the prospect of seamen and soldiers, worn to skeletons by hunger, drawing lots to decide who should die first amidst the "adamantine frosts" and "mountains of snow" of bleak ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... art he that sees all things. Thou art the sound that arises from slapping one palm against another. Thou art he the palm of whose hand serves as the dish or plate whence to take his food. Thou art he who is possessed of an adamantine body. Thou art exceedingly great. Thou art of the form of an umbrella. Thou art he who has an excellent umbrella. Thou art well-known to be identical with all creatures. Thou art he who having put forth three feet covered all the universe with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... many the hardships that he endured through the lack of herbs that he needed for meat, because the desert, being dry, yielded even these in but scant supply. But, being kindled by love of her Master, this adamantine and indomitable soul bore these annoyances more easily than other men bear their pleasures. Wherefore he failed not of the succour that is from above, but, many as were the sorrows and toils Chat he endured, comfort ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... prig of the first water. He had been reared altogether in convention. Home life and Eton and Christchurch had taught him many things, wise as well as foolish; but had tended to fix his conviction that affairs of the heart should proceed on adamantine lines of conventional decorum. It never even occurred to him that a lady could so far step from the confines of convention as to take the initiative in a matter of affection. In his blind ignorance he blundered brutally. He struck better than he ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... stalk about shivering, from place to place; he would exclaim, "Surely this is not life; this means annihilation. No flesh and blood can long endure this; this frozen earth is bound in the everlasting embraces of adamantine frost, and can never develop vegetation for the sustenance of any living thing." He little dreams of the priceless myriads of germs which bountiful Nature has safely garnered in the warm bosom of our mother earth; he sees no evidence of that vitality which the beneficent sun will develop to grace ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... preserving all that is valuable of their taste and qualities; so ordering them, that they may delight the palate, without disordering the stomach, by leaving out those inflammatory ingredients which are only fit for an "iron throat and adamantine bowels," and those costly materials which no rational being would destroy, for the wanton purpose of merely giving a fine name to the compositions they enter into, to whose excellence they contribute nothing ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... quenchless head; Poets, making earth aware Of its wealth in good and fair; And the benders to their intent, Of metal and of element; Of flame the enlightener, beauteous, And steam, that bursteth his iron house; And adamantine giants blind, That, ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... man's creation, it is not his handiwork. It is no mere provincialism of this dwindling sphere of ours, but a fact and a law supreme, holding sway beyond the uttermost star, valid in infinity and eternity, at this hour, the sovereign law of life for whatsoever or whomsoever lives and knows, the adamantine foundation upon which all law, civilisation, religion and ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... each way that, when described, it was too late to alter the helm. Its giant shape filled the foreground, towering high above the masts, grim and gaunt and ghastly, immovable as the adamantine buttresses of a frowning seaboard, while the liner lurched and staggered like a wounded thing in agony as her engines slowly drew her back from the rampart against which she had ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... procurator for his resolution and success in rebuffing would-be patrons eager to pamper me. Also, all winter, I dreaded that he would he less lucky or less adamantine when spring came. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... once a man became infected, his former interests and anxieties fell away from him like an old garment. In Harley Street an attitude of stubborn disbelief continued amongst those still mortal. There is something magnificent in that adamantine spirit which refuses to recognize the new, even though it moves with ever-increasing distinctness before the very eyes of the deniers. I was not surprised. I was familiar with ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... that it is a seminary where immortal minds are training for eternity'? What parent but is, at times, weighed down with the thought, that there must be laid the foundations of a building which will stand, when not merely temple and palace, but the perpetual hills and adamantine rocks on which they rest, have melted away'!—that a light may there be kindled which will shine, not merely when every artificial beam is extinguished, but when the affrighted sun has fled away from ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... spear-thrust: aye she pierced The backs of them that fled, the breasts of such As charged to meet her. All the long shaft dripped With steaming blood. Swift were her feet as wind As down she swooped. Her aweless spirit failed For weariness nor fainted, but her might Was adamantine. The impending Doom, Which roused unto the terrible strife not yet Achilles, clothed her still with glory; still Aloof the dread Power stood, and still would shed Splendour of triumph o'er the death-ordained But for a little space, ere it should quell That Maiden 'neath the ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... the rock," Saint Bernard said, "Grave it on brass with adamantine pen! 'Tis God himself becomes apparent, when God's wisdom and God's goodness ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... lot Hard as Evander's; if by felon hands Chain'd to the earth, with slow-consuming pangs He felt sharp want, and with an asking eye Implor'd relief, yet cruel men deny'd it, Wouldst thou not burst thro' adamantine gates, Thro' walls and rocks, to save him? Think, Philotas, Of thy own aged sire, and pity mine. Think of the agonies a daughter feels, When thus a parent wants the common food, The bounteous hand of ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... earth. This alone was afforded To the man whom men know me, or deem me, to be. But, far down, in the depth of my life's mystery, (Like the siren that under the deep ocean dwells, Whom the wind as it wails, and the wave as it swells, Cannot stir in the calm of her coralline halls, 'Mid the world's adamantine and dim pedestals; At whose feet sit the sylphs and sea fairies; for whom The almondine glimmers, the soft samphires bloom)— Thou abidest and reignest forever, O Queen Of that better world which thou swayest unseen! My one perfect mistress! my all ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... wounded, when the tide of a great battle raged fiercest and strongest, his foothold bathed in the life-blood of his comrades. Such scenes ever tend to pervert the kinder tendencies of our nature, and to render the mind adamantine in its manifestations; nor were his less susceptible to these influences than others. When first he entered the ranks of the army, and joined in the death-dealing battle, he saw the daily commission of crimes which made his soul shrink even to contemplate; but, by degrees, he learned to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... enter here On this sacred Ring must swear, [Puts it on his Finger, holds his Hand. By the Figure which is round, Your Passion constant and profound; By the Adamantine Stone, To be fixt to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... had taken upon itself that appalling and exasperating calmness of very good people who never get angry, but drive others to frenzy by the simple occlusion of an adamantine veil between their own feelings and their opponents'. "I'll tell you all about it after I've put up the horse," he said hurriedly, glad to escape until the veil was lifted again. "I suppose the hired ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... anything of a wind our antelope of a schooner took to her heels with speed. Lightly built,—not, like vessels designed for this coast, double-planked and perhaps iron-prowed,—she would easily have been staved by a shock upon this adamantine ice. The mate stood at the bow, shouting, "Luff! Bear away! Hard up! Hard down!" And his voice wanting strength and his articulation distinctness, I was fain, at the pinch of the game, to come to his aid, and trumpet his orders after him with my best ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the request of the District Attorney, Drake was to be taken "dead or alive," but according to an adamantine principle of the Force, he must be taken not only alive, but unscathed if that were humanly possible. This meant that he must not be given an opportunity to run and so render shooting necessary. If, however, he should break away, his chance of escape ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... mortals! lost in doubts below, But guess by rumour, and but boast we know,) O say what heroes, fired by thirst of fame, Or urged by wrongs, to Troy's destruction came. To count them all, demands a thousand tongues, A throat of brass, and adamantine lungs. Daughters of Jove, assist! inspired by you The mighty labour dauntless I pursue; What crowded armies, from what climes they bring, Their names, their numbers, and ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... From its adamantine lips, Spread a death-shade round the ships Like the hurricane's ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... not discuss whether Dr. Cumming's interpretation accords with the meaning of the New Testament writers: we simply point to the fact that the text becomes elastic for him when he wants freer play for his prejudices, while he makes it an adamantine barrier against the admission that mercy will ultimately triumph—that God, i.e., Love, will be all in all. He assures us that he does not "delight to dwell on the misery of the lost:" and we believe him. That misery does not seem to be a question of feeling with him, either one way or the ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... he undoubtedly was, had not the adamantine hardness of character which enabled his admiral to risk all on the hazards of the moment; or possibly the Grand Turk was deficient in that clearness of strategical instinct which never in any circumstances foregoes a present advantage for something ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... away, smiling to herself, happily putting things away and humming an air. Queed watched her in annoyed silence. His adamantine gravity inspired her with an irresistible impulse to levity; so the law ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to him, to find himself quietly studied and calmly measured by those thoughtful blue eyes; he felt, with his fine, instinctive tact, that the soul within was infolded in some crystalline sphere of protection, transparent, but adamantine, so that he could not touch it. What was that secret poise, that calm, immutable centre on which she rested, that made her, in her rustic simplicity, so unapproachable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... straight for the biggest outlying rock—a square, black boulder about the size of an ordinary railway car. He came up to it on the summit of a foaming wave; but just as I looked for him to be dashed to pieces against its adamantine sides, he threw his legs into the air and disappeared. A stealthy, satisfied smile glowed upon Samuela's rugged visage, and, as he caught my eye, he said jauntily, "Polly savee too much. Lookee him come on top one time!" I looked, and sure enough there was the daring villain crawling up ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... in which to repair their disrupted finances and buttress themselves against the eventual facts. Naturally, the minor speculators throughout the city—those who had expected to make a fortune out of this crash—raged and complained, but, being faced by an adamantine exchange directorate, a subservient press, and the alliance between the big bankers and the heavy quadrumvirate, there was nothing to be done. The respective bank presidents talked solemnly of "a mere temporary flurry," Hand, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... He was sure of you all through, from the beginning, as you say. That's why he didn't write or expect letters from you. He nattered himself that he was secure. Poor old Nevile!" He felt sorry now for Ingram. She was really adamantine. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... open water, studying the movement of the floes which pressed against us, I would hear him shouting to the ship below us as if coaxing her, encouraging her, commanding her to hammer a way for us through the adamantine floes: ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... words of his, I then discharged the favourite weapon of the king of the celestials—the dreadful thunderbolt. And inspiring the Gandiva with mantras, I, aiming at the locality of the crags, shot sharpened iron shafts of the touch of the thunder-bolt. And sent by the thunder, those adamantine arrows entered into all those illusions and into the midst of those Nivata-Kavachas. And slaughtered by the vehemence of the thunder, those Danavas resembling cliffs, fell to the earth together in masses. And entering amongst those Danavas that had carried away the steeds of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Philibert, sending the blood to her cheeks. There is a magnetic touch in loving fingers which is never mistaken, though their contact be but for a second of time: it anticipates the strong grasp of love which will ere long embrace body and soul in adamantine chains of a union not to be broken even ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Jove, relentless power, Thou tamer of the human breast, Whose iron scourge and torturing hour The bad affright, afflict the best! Bound in thy adamantine chain, The proud are taught to taste of pain, And purple tyrants vainly groan With pangs unfelt ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... we ever doubt that God ponders and numbers in his heart the afflictions of his people, and that he measures our tears and inscribes them on adamantine tablets? And this inscription the enemies of the Church shall never be able to erase by any device whatever except by repentance. Manasseh was a terrible tyrant and a most inhuman persecutor of the godly. And his banishment and captivity ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... glut my mind with lukewarm blood, Swiftly distilling from the bastard's breast. My father's ghost still haunts me for revenge, Crying, Revenge my overhastened death. My brother's exile and mine own divorce Banish remorse clean from my brazen heart, All mercy from mine adamantine breasts. ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... lived a good life, devoted to study, instruction, and works of benevolence. He has been a teacher of the young, a helper of the poor, and he has gained respect, affection, and honourable repute. He is safe in the security of silence and in the calm self-poise of his adamantine will. His awful secret sleeps in his bosom and is at rest forever. He has suffered much and he still suffers; yet, lulled into a false security by the uneventful lapse of years and by that drifting, desolate, apathetic recklessness which is sequent on the subsiding storm ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... innocent, and the suffering under private wrongs; if their learning and genius can, with almost superhuman witchery, unfold the mazes and intricacies by which the minute links of title are chained to the adamantine pillars of the law;—how much more glory belongs to them when this eloquence, this learning, and this genius, are employed in defence of their country; when they breathe forth the purest spirit of morality ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin |
