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Impenetrable   /ɪmpˈɛnətrəbəl/   Listen
Impenetrable

adjective
1.
Not admitting of penetration or passage into or through.  "Impenetrable rain forests"
2.
Permitting little if any light to pass through because of denseness of matter.  Synonyms: dense, heavy.  "Heavy fog" , "Impenetrable gloom"
3.
Impossible to understand.



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"Impenetrable" Quotes from Famous Books



... was enveloped in a grey winding-sheet, impenetrable, all-pervading; a dense mass of vapour ceaselessly rolling onward, yet never rolling past. It was as if the mountain had become entangled in the folds ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... glitter of water. In spite of the numerous impediments in our way, we pushed forward until we found ourselves well-nigh in darkness, though the sun was still high above the horizon, the tree-tops which joined overhead being interlaced by numberless creepers of various descriptions, forming a roof impenetrable by the light of day. An almost insupportable mouldy odour, like the effluvium arising from a dead body, pervaded the atmosphere; but eager to obtain the bird, Lejoillie pushed on, and I followed. The pool into which ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston

... to a Jacobite named William Anderton, whose intrepidity and fanaticism marked him out as fit to be employed on services from which prudent men and scrupulous men shrink. During two years he had been watched by the agents of the government; but where he exercised his craft was an impenetrable mystery. At length he was tracked to a house near Saint James's Street, where he was known by a feigned name, and where he passed for a working jeweller. A messenger of the press went thither with several assistants, and found ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... westward for several days till the weather became stormy; then, as their heart was not in the venture, they put back to Europe with a fresh stock of the legends Henry had so heartily despised. They had come to an impenetrable mist, which had stopped their progress; apparitions had warned them back; the sea in those parts swarmed with monsters; it became ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... effect in these places is very peculiar. The overhanging trees almost unite their branches over the chimney of the steamer as she wends her way slowly and steadily along; deep ravines extend downward into an impenetrable abyss on either side; the sky glimmers through the foliage in a horizontal line with the eye, and one can almost fancy the world has been left below somewhere, and that a new highway has been entered, upon which passengers steam their way to the stars. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... right rose the mountain wall, dark with pine and spruce, though here and there a flaming service-berry or a hawthorn broke through the evergreens like sudden fire. The tangle of trees and shrubs seemed impenetrable, and yet Virginia had told of a trail which led from the creek not three rods from the ford—led up, up, up for five miles until it reached the ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase

... world is wild and passionate. Man's weary laughter and his sick despair Entreat at their impenetrable gate, They heed no voices in their ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... the Sudan grasslands presents an unobstructed zone between the thousand-mile belt of desert to the north and the dense equatorial forests to the south, between hunger and thirst on one side, heat and fever and impenetrable forests on the other. Hence the Sudan in all history has been the crowded Broadway of Africa. Here pass commercial caravans, hybrid merchant tribes like the Hausa, throngs of pilgrims, streams of peoples, herds of cattle moving to busy markets, rude incursive shoppers or looters ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... I understand that we must hope to see you at another time and elsewhere. That travellers in our country need an escort you would not wonder if you could see how the roads run, among lofty mountains shrouded in impenetrable forests. These give cover to hordes of brigands, who prey upon travellers and merchants, robbing and killing indifferently. Almost every month there are punitive raids made from the towns, and brigands are captured and put to death. But the pest ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... leading, and for quite half an hour they threaded their way in and out amongst the huge pillar-like trunks, which seemed to have grown closer together and looked as though if they were left undisturbed for a few years longer they would all join together and form an impenetrable wall. Then with the darkness seeming thicker than ever, they stopped short and stood hand ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn

... has his headquarters at Versailles, all as in a seat of war: clerks writing; significant staff-officers, inclined to taciturnity; plumed aides-de-camp, scouts, orderlies flying or hovering. He himself looks forth, important, impenetrable; listens to Besenval Commandant of Paris, and his warning and earnest counsels (for he has come out repeatedly on purpose), with a silent smile. (Besenval, iii. 398.) The Parisians resist? scornfully cry Messeigneurs. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... back as if she herself could have been seen, though she was quite invisible to them, for the screen, which was transparent to her eyes, was impenetrable to theirs. She remembered this, at length, and ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... were she would not greatly care. She was determined to assert her independence, and if she stooped to fib about the Hepburn picnic it was chiefly from the secretive instinct that made her dread the profanation of her happiness. Whenever she was with Lucius Harney she would have liked some impenetrable mountain mist to ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... and she skilfully avoided tete-a-tete talks with anyone other than Roger. Moreover, there was that in her manner which utterly forbade even the delicate probing of a friend. The Nan who was wont to be so frank and ingenuous—surprisingly so at times—seemed all at once to have retired behind an impenetrable ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... intimate acquaintance with the Pentateuch everywhere manifests itself; compare in proof of this the Dissertations on the Genuineness of the Pentateuch, i. p. 136 ff. There are too many instances, down to most recent times, of living piety breaking, in this respect, through almost impenetrable barriers, to allow us to consider this as a strange thing, and to make it necessary for us to excogitate the various ways and means by which Amos may have received this education. It is only on the lower ground of the mere forms of language, that the rank of Amos ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... that night the boat was moored to a tree on the eastern side of the stream, far-away from the haunts of civilised man, while Rob lay sleepless, listening to the strange and weird sounds which rose from the apparently impenetrable forest on the far-away ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... explore the dense wood which extended to the very edge of the shore, in search of the lovely country so enthusiastically described in the account written by Lord Anson's chaplain. How far were these enchanting descriptions from the truth! Impenetrable forests met him on every side, overgrown plants, briars, and tangled shrubs, at every step caught and tore his clothes. At the same time the explorers were attacked and stung by clouds of mosquitoes. Game was scarce and wild, the water detestable, the roadstead was never ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... down, down; each mountainous mass of water, as it reached the dreadful brink, recoiling, as in horror, from the abyss; and after rearing backward in helpless terror, as it were, hurling itself down to be shattered in the inevitable doom over which eternal clouds of foam and spray spread an impenetrable curtain. The mysterious chasm, with its uproar of voices, seemed like the watery mouth of hell. I looked and listened till the wild excitement of the scene took such possession of me that, but for the strong arm that held ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... in reality the effect of one or other of the passions, sometimes even those of the worst kind, and which a sound judgment would most condemn, and endeavour to extirpate.—Man is a stranger to nothing, more than to himself;—the recesses of his own heart, are no less impenetrable to him, than the worlds beyond the moon;—he is blinded by vanity, and agitated by desires he knows not he is ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... military glory; it did not dignify home, or the virtues of the family circle; it did not declare the folly of riches, or show that the love of money is a root of all evil. It made sensual pleasure and outward prosperity the great aims of successful ambition, and hid with an impenetrable screen from the eyes of men the fatal results of a worldly life, so that suicide itself came to be viewed as a justifiable way to avoid evils that are hard to be borne; in short, it was a religion which, though joyous, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... high for as much as half a mile at a stretch. At one moment the road would pass a dense banana plantation with the strange tall poles of the pawpaw trees standing sentinel, the next it would pass the dark recesses of a mangrove bay, where the sea ebbs and flows amid an impenetrable thicket of interlacing roots. And at frequent intervals a slight rise of ground would show the emerald sea beyond, gleaming as though lit with ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... ridges of the mountains. The first way is very difficult, and scarcely practicable, for in some parts the streams flow through narrow ravines, bordered on each side by perpendicular rocks, and occasionally their course is hidden amidst impenetrable forests. The other way, across the mountains, leads again into the Puna region, and from thence over the steep ridges of the Andes to their barren summits. Descending from these summits, we arrive on the sharp ridges of one of the many side branches of the Puna Cordillera, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... expecting to find in the packet some key to the interesting mystery which had sent Professor Farrago into the Everglades—I thrust the missive into my pocket and resumed a study of the immediate landscape. It had not changed as we progressed: ocean, sand, low dunes crowned with impenetrable tangles of wild bay, sparkleberry, and live-oak, with here and there a weather-twisted palmetto sprawling, and here and there the battered blades of cactus and Spanish-bayonet thrust menacingly forward; and over all the vultures, sailing, ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... no mistaking the lady with the thick, impenetrable veil, nor her companion, whose heavy dark face was distinctly visible through the thin Indian gauze. Behind them walked the hideous negro, swinging his light cane jauntily, but beginning to cast angry glances at the two Russians, whom ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... secret affection drew me to the mysterious regions of the East and South,—towards Arabia, the wild Ishmael bequeathing sworded Korans and subtile Aristotles as legacies to the sons of the freed-woman,—to solemn Egypt, riddle of nations, the vast, silent, impenetrable mystery of the world. By continual pondering over the footsteps of the Seekers, the Sought-for seemed to grow to vast proportions, and the Found to shrink to inappreciable littleness. For me, over the dreary ice-plains of the Poles, over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... behind that impenetrable curtain, to learn why she hated her island. Never had he been so intrigued. Why, there was drama in the very dress she wore! There was drama in the unusual beauty of her, hidden away all these years ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... his eyes, therefore, when he saw the flame flicker and expire. His sight had surely deceived him. And now, since the light did not reappear, there must be some smoke wreath or impenetrable mist brooding about the tower's gray old head, and obscuring it from the lower world. But no! For right over the dim battlements, as the wind chased away a mass of clouds, he beheld a star, and moreover, by an earnest concentration of his sight, was soon able to discern even the darkened shrine ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... was impenetrable, and at the end of his reading he turned back to read and re-read many pages, holding the book to the light, and seeming to examine ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths

... danger they were glad to breathe in the fresh air. If only the fog was thicker it might be of help to them; if they had only looked landward their hearts would have been lighter, for there in huge rolls of gray the fog was moving, thick, impenetrable, over the ground, and in a short time, probably not over a minute, the castle and the whole coast ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... already known to each other. Some needed introduction. Such introduction consumed a few minutes, even after the last had come and been checked off on the Master's list, in cipher code. The brightly lighted room, behind its impenetrable curtains, blued with tobacco-smoke; but no drop of wine ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... Honeycombed everywhere with caves and passages leading into darkness impenetrable. There were pits into which we might so easily have fallen; ravines to span, sometimes with a leap, sometimes by a long ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... without disaster to their corps d'armee, although they had been constantly beaten. The rigor of the season had prevented those grand concentrations of forces and those brilliant strokes in which Napoleon ordinarily delighted; the troops advanced with difficulty through impenetrable forests, soaked by the rain: the men fell in great numbers without a battle. In the month of January, 1807, the emperor at last took up his winter-quarters, carefully fortifying his positions, and laying siege to the towns which still resisted him in Silesia. Breslau, Glogau, Brieg ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... form which had so recently appeared standing by her bedside. The same haggard countenance, the same awful appearance of murderous death. A faintness came upon her; she turned to flee to her chamber—the candle dropped from her trembling hand, and she was shrouded in impenetrable darkness. She groped to find the stairs: as she came near their foot, a black object, apparently in human shape, stood before her, with eyes which seemed to burn like coals of fire, and red flames issuing from its mouth. As she stood fixed a moment in inexpressible trepidation, a large ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.

... were rent by incessant flashes, or rather streams, of lightning. At one time they were piled up high in the sky, at another they descended to the earth, filling the air with a baleful darkness, more impenetrable than the obscurity of midnight. Wherever the hurricane passed, whole tracts of forest were shivered and stripped of their leaves and branches; and trees of gigantic size, which resisted the blast, were torn up by the roots and hurled to a great distance. Groves were torn from the mountain-precipices, ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne

... shock to his sense of property in his child, that these people—the mere dust of the earth, as he thought them—should be necessary to him; and it was natural that in proportion as he felt disturbed by it, he should deplore the occurrence which had made them so. For all his starched, impenetrable dignity and composure, he wiped blinding tears from his eyes as he paced up and down his room; and often said, with an emotion of which he would not, for the world, have had a ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... length of days. Thus the best ends of our mortal being are lost sight of; the solemn circumstances, the suggestive mysteries of life, are misconstrued. The heavens, which give a myriad hints of worlds beyond the grave, are, to many, impenetrable walls, shutting them in to mere pursuits of sense,—the upholstery of a workshop or bazaar; and this earth, which is but a step,—a filmy platform of our immortal course,—is to them the solid abiding place of all interest, and of ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin

... separated from him and from the rest of the world by the almost impenetrable barriers of her deafness, sat Jenny Mullion. She was perhaps thirty, had a tilted nose and a pink-and-white complexion, and wore her brown hair plaited and coiled in two lateral buns over her ears. In the secret tower of ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... felt himself the superior, intellectually and by nature, of most of the men he saw. He penetrated and comprehended them, but to them he was impenetrable; a certain air of authority rested upon him; he had abandoned the service of God; but the training whereby he had fitted himself for it stood him in good stead; it had developed his insight, his subtlety, and, strange to say, his powers of ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne

... preservation of their species, is a puzzle. Moreover, hundreds of these anomalous nests are excavated some distance beyond high-water, in country where the growth of grass is so strong and dense as to form an almost impenetrable barrier to those infantile turtle which have the fortune to get out of the death-traps, and in obedience to instinct, endeavour to reach the sea. Is it that Nature, "so careful of the type" imposes Malthusian practices to avoid the danger of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... place. But unfortunately, although the king was dethroned and deported, and the capital and the whole of the river in the hands of the British, the bands of armed soldiery, unaccustomed to conditions other than those of anarchy, rapine and murder, took advantage of the impenetrable cover of their jungles to continue a desultory armed resistance. Reinforcements had to be poured into the country, and it was in this phase of the campaign, lasting several years, that the most difficult and most arduous work fell to the lot ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... to amend the Constitution which led to the Bill of Rights: "If they are incorporated into the Constitution, independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the Legislature or Executive; they will be naturally led to resist every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights." Ibid. 385. Nine years later as author of the Virginia Resolutions ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... summer night ran its course, while the gusts of wind tugged and tore at the thin sides of our tent; no snowfall accompanied the south-easterly wind, but the loose snow of the surface was whirled up into a drift that stood like an impenetrable wall round the tent. After midnight it moderated a little, and by four o'clock there was comparatively fair weather. We were on our feet at once, put together camera, glasses, aneroids, axe, Alpine rope, with some lumps ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... late that night when I sealed the fated letter for M——; but I retired and slept easy, there was a burden removed which had well-nigh crushed me. What I have experienced since, words may never tell; the young have deemed me impenetrable to the natural susceptibilities of our natures, while the old have called me trifling. But, Ella, depend upon it, a heart once truly given, can never be bestowed again. I have erred in trying to conceal my history in the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... in this bedroom, there would be light enough out there. There was no moon; but the summer night, as he knew, would never deepen to real obscurity. It would keep all of a piece till dawn, like a sort of gray dusk, heavy and impenetrable beneath the trees, but quite transparent on the heath and in the glades; and then it would become all silvery and trembling; the wet bracken would glisten faintly, high branches of beech trees would glow startlingly, each needle on top of the lofty firs would change to a tiny sword ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... walk together, axe in hand, through my park, which is as dense and impenetrable as the virgin forests of America, or the jungles of India. It has not been touched for sixty years, and I have sworn to break the head of the first gardener who dares to approach it with ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... moved half-heartedly upon Lee. The two armies, the Union out-numbering the Confederate more than two to one, met in the dreary and almost impenetrable forest, southwest of Fredericksburg, known as the Wilderness, though the battle which followed bears the name of Chancellorsville. For five days the bloody work went on, with the result that Hooker retired beaten and humiliated before his enemy. Lee and the South had ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd

... the greatest ship that ever sailed the seas would not move them from their accustomed orbit. But not a robin in the hedge was disturbed, not a rabbit in the field, not a weasel in the lane. Nature never put off her impenetrable mask. Or did she really not care? And was a human soul less to her than a ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... most destructive sniffs; but I remember asking myself if such privileges had been an indispensable preparation to the career on which my friend appeared now to have embarked. I remember too making up my mind about the cleverness, which had its uses and I suppose in impenetrable shades even its critics, but from which the friction of mere personal intercourse was not the sort of process to extract a revealing spark. He accepted without a question both his fever and his chill, and the ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... marked by injustice and crime proves nothing against the position that they may have been appointed by a higher Power to work out a revolution in the East. "The dark mystery of the moral world," in this as in a thousand other instances, remains impenetrable. Heaven selects its own agents, and all that it becomes us to say concerning such relations is, that they do not appear in all cases to be made from among men specially entitled to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... tropical aspects. Our route lay through rocky valleys, over a bed of fine granite sand. The rocks were all blackened, forming a gloomy landscape, especially as all the morning the heavens were one impenetrable mass of clouds. The atmosphere felt, at first, damp and suffocating; but at length the wind got up, ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... promised immunity. They followed it silently, pausing for a while to listen for sounds of pursuit, and at last, with minds relieved, if not quite certain, plodded on into the obscurity. They had entered, it seemed, an aisle of a forest which stretched, darkly impenetrable, on either side. Before them, blackness, darkness within dark, like a cave, a smell of dampness like a dungeon. The sky lightened for a moment and they saw the shape of leaves and tree fronds far above them like a pattern on a carpet—a pattern which changed with elflike witchery, ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... now brilliantly,—till finally flashing with a pale glare on the dark dead face, with the proud closed lips and black level brows, it flickered out; and one of the many countless mysteries of the Great Pyramid was again hidden in impenetrable darkness. ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... the wondrous, impenetrable picture-land: The crimson seas, Flashing in uncreated light, Crowded with galleons On a mission to ports where dwell the old gods And the mighty intellects of the Immortals. The ceaseless occupations, The language and the lore; The arts, and thoughts, the music, and the instruments; The ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... hurt, and in spite of Durrance's impenetrable face, she felt that she had succeeded. It was a small sort of compensation for the weeks of mortification which she had endured. There is something which might be said for Mrs. Adair; extenuations might be pleaded, even if no defence was made. For she like Ethne was overtaxed that night. That ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... insane," continued the impenetrable Warner. "The best test is a reference to the undeveloped normal type. Even a baby does not expect to find a ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... he thought; and he found the fire blazing and reddening the ceiling and curtains, the room all aglow with rich shadows, and his wife awaiting him, in full toilet, just as superb as you will see her tonight, just as sweet and cold and impassible and impenetrable. At least," continued Mrs. McLean, taking breath, "I have manufactured this little romance out of odds and ends that McLean has now and then reported from his conversation. I dare say there isn't a bit of it true, for Mr. Laudersdale isn't a man to publish his affairs; but I believe ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... as vainly, to fit them with the proper story. Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck. Other spots again seem to abide their destiny, suggestive and impenetrable, "miching mallecho." The inn at Burford Bridge, with its arbours and green garden and silent, eddying river - though it is known already as the place where Keats wrote some of his ENDYMION and Nelson parted from his Emma - still seems to wait the coming of the appropriate legend. ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... have been impracticable for any save the sure-footed iron-plated horses of the East. After traversing the valley for some miles, the rugged line of Piwa closed in upon us on the left, and a black impenetrable mountain seemed to bar our farther progress. After three quarters of an hour's ascent we were glad to halt. Clambering to a grassy knoll, we made a frugal meal of the hardest of biscuit soaked in muddy water, the only food, ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... in making Peter Pupkin a hero and solving for him the whole perplexed entanglement of his love affair with Zena Pepperleigh. Incidentally it threw him into the very centre of one of the most impenetrable bank mysteries that ever baffled the ingenuity of some of the finest legal talent that ever adorned one of the most enterprising ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... second time I attempted to leave the cell. For the second time this impenetrable woman called ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... of this little scene, were differently affected by it. The glance, moist with joy, which his wife cast upon her eldest child was a fatal revelation to the husband of the secrets of a heart hitherto impenetrable. That eldest child was all Juana; Juana comprehended him; she was sure of his heart, his future; she adored him, but her ardent love was a secret between herself, her child, and God. Juan instinctively enjoyed the ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac

... Street. There are no shops open; the sky over their heads is mud, the earth is mud under their feet, the muddy houses stretch in long rows, black, gaunt, uniform. The little party reach Hyde Park, also wrapped in impenetrable mud-grey. The man's face brightens for a moment as he says, "It is time to go back," and so they return, without the interchange of a word, unless perhaps they happen to see an omnibus horse fall down on the greasy stones. What is ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... after all, as great a surprise to Rachel as to any of the Gylingden gossips. Dorcas, knowing how Rachel thought upon it, had grown reserved and impenetrable upon the subject; indeed, at one time, I think, she had half made up her mind to fight the old battle over again and resolutely exercise this fatal passion. She had certainly mystified ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... shows nothing but a series of invariable sequences and co-existences. The difference is, in other words, that the theologian puts a legislator behind the laws, whilst the man of science sees nothing behind them but impenetrable mystery. The difference, so far as any practical conclusions are concerned, is obviously nothing. The laws of Nature, you tell us, are the work of infinite goodness and wisdom. But we are utterly unable to say what infinite ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... last head Dr. Grey was impenetrable, he parried, Or gave vague general replies to all Miss Gascoigne's questions. She gained nothing except the firm, decided answer, "I will not have Sir Edwin Uniacke ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... crest—and after that, perhaps two seconds later, came the explosion. There was a rumbling and a jarring, as if the earth were convulsed under foot; volumes of dense black smoke shot upward, shutting the mountain in an impenetrable pall of gloom; and in an instant these rolling, twisting volumes of black became lurid, and an explosion like that of a thousand great guns rent the air. As fast as the eye could follow, sheets of flame ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood

... an arduous task, for the way was through one of the jungle-paths, with walls of dense vegetation right and left, of the most impenetrable nature. Every here and there, too, the enemy had cut down a tree, so that it fell with the branches towards the pursuers, who were compelled to force a way through the dense mass that choked ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... during that day was horrible; the snow, caught up in dense whirls, covered the brig with an impenetrable veil; at times, under the influence of the hurricane, the fog would rise, and their terror-stricken eyes beheld the Devil's Thumb rising on the shore like ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... he entered the room I recognized him as one of the most unscrupulous agents of the notorious Third Section, one of the gang who drugged and kidnapped poor Alexander of Bulgaria. My own disguise, it is hardly necessary to say, was impenetrable. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... was, so far as appeared to me, swallowed up in the sea,—crushed and broken into fragments by the falling ice, and every one of my companions was swallowed up with it. And there I was on an ice-raft, in the middle of the Arctic Sea, without food or shelter, wrapped in a great black, impenetrable fog, with the prospect of a lingering death staring ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes

... spindles and looms of the factory town, or illuminate the thoroughfares of cities. Beyond and above all such services as these, electricity is the corner-stone of physical generalization, a revealer of truths impenetrable by ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... the fog became of an impenetrable thickness, and beyond the shop it seemed that there was pandemonium. Some fire, blazing at some street corner, flared as though it were the beating heart of all that darkness, and the cries of men and the slow, clumsy passing of the traffic ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... his watch. Ten minutes to one! No use waiting any longer. He scribbled a hasty note, left it on the writing-table, and walked into the garden past the impenetrable Caterina, who barely deigned to glance up from her knitting. He would look for a carriage, and give himself the luxury of a drive down. It was too hot to ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... within the power of man to foretell the future and to solve unerringly its mighty problems. Almighty God has His plans and methods for human progress, and not infrequently they are shrouded for the time being in impenetrable mystery. Looking backward we can see how the hand of destiny builded for us and assigned us tasks whose full meaning was not apprehended even by the wisest statesmen of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... penetrating the vast blue dome above, like monarchs in royal vestments robed. Still others are seen, white and shadowy, stretching away down into Colorado, peak beyond peak, ridge beyond ridge, until lost in the impenetrable distance. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... chaos of jagged spikes and tangled branches. The tough cones, opened by the fire, had germinated and seedlings had sprung up amidst the riot of logs, growing as thick as grass. They were now about the height of a tall man's head, forming, with the tangled abatis of spiky trunks, a seemingly impenetrable jungle. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... Eros. Verily Truth is as Eve, which was ashamed being naked; Wherefore doth Propriety dress her with the fair foliage of artifice: And when she is drest, behold! she knoweth not herself again. - I walked in the Forest; and above me stood the Yew, Stood like a slumbering giant, shrouded in impenetrable shade; Then I pass'd into the citizen's garden, and marked a tree clipt into shape, (The giant's locks had been shorn by the Dalilahshears of Decorum;) And I said, "Surely nature is goodly; but how much goodlier is ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.

... Rue du Petit Carreau to the Rue du Temple, there was fighting. The Pagevin, Neuve Saint Eustache, Montorgueil, Rambuteau, Beaubourg, and Transnonain barricades were gallantly defended. There, there was an impenetrable network of streets and crossways barricaded by the People, surrounded ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... wading as rapidly as he could, and Paul kept by his side. He comprehended Henry's plan, their last and desperate chance. In a few moments more they were at the great raft, and in the bank, amid a dense, almost impenetrable mass of foliage, they hid their rifles and ammunition. Henry uttered a deep sigh as ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... many misfort'nates as can per-jooce such sang-widges as them, though, to be sure, they eats uncommon quick 'old 'ard there, Jeremy—" But, indeed, the sandwiches were already only a memory, wherefore his brow grew black, and he glared at the still munching Jeremy, who met his looks with his usual impenetrable gloom. ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... complexion. We may discriminate the janizaries, who have been gradually raised to an establishment of forty thousand men; a national cavalry (the spahis of modern times); twenty thousand cuirassiers of Europe, clad in black and impenetrable armor; the troops of Anatolia, whose princes had taken refuge in the camp of Timur: and a colony of Tartars, whom he had driven from Kiptchak, and to whom Bajazet had assigned a settlement in the plains of Adrianople. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... farming. Or put the question to a still higher legal functionary, who, on the same occasion, when he should have been a reed, inclining here and there, as adverse gales of evidence disposed him, was seen to be a manufactured image on the seat of Justice, cast by Power, in most impenetrable brass. ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens

... and prickly shrub. I came to the sacred wood in which the Ahkbasians used to pray when they were pagans, but in which, since their conversion, they have chiefly committed murder. I passed through three strange woods, the first of juniper and wild pear; the second, all dead, bleached and impenetrable, of what had once been hawthorn, but now one jagged, fixed mass of awkward arms and cruel thorns; the third, a beautiful, spacious pine-wood, climbing over cliffs to the far verge of the cape where the lighthouse flashes. These were like woods in a fairy tale, and may well have had each their ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... conversation on this point becoming extremely pointed and jocose, Miss Cummins finally turned and fled, escaping to the railway station as fast as her trembling legs could carry her. So the trip was a fruitless one, and the mystery that enshrouded Timothy and Lady Gay was as impenetrable as ever. ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... me, who had never seen any but single specimens of the plant, and not many of these. I think our green house at the north boasts but two; but here they were growing close together, and in such a manner as to form a compact and impenetrable hedge, their spiky leaves striking out on all sides like chevaux de frise, and the tall slender stems that bear those delicate ivory-coloured bells of blossoms, springing up against the sky in a regular ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... the older members in the party, and soon the yacht was ready to fly back to her dock, up the River, near 72nd street. But the thick haze that had made the moon look so romantic, developed into an impenetrable fog. And anyone who has ever experienced such a fog hanging over New York Harbor, knows what it is to try to go ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... glorious religion under which we have prospered is a curse, and that the immortal gods are accursed demons. In their teachings they aim to overthrow all morality. In their private practices they perform the darkest and foulest crimes. They always keep by themselves in impenetrable secresy, but sometimes we overhear their evil discourses ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous

... dimensions struck me at once, as they rose in lonely majesty on the bare plain, with nothing to detract from their grandeur, or to afford, by its littleness, a point of comparison. We were never tired of gazing upon these noble monuments of an age shrouded in impenetrable mystery. They were afterwards seen at less advantage, in consequence of the intervention of some rising ground; but from all points they created the strongest degree ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... laws of the mind itself) is all we know of the object: and that the real nature of the Thing is, and by the constitution of our faculties ever must remain, at least in the present state of existence, an impenetrable mystery to us. "Of things absolutely or in themselves," says Sir William Hamilton,(19) "be they external, be they internal, we know nothing, or know them only as incognizable; and become aware of their incomprehensible existence, only as this is indirectly and accidentally revealed to us, through ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... heart. It was a dreadful prognostic for all my future life. But, as I have just observed, my conductors entered, and another subject called imperiously upon my attention. I could have been content, mortified as I was at this instant, to have been shut up in some impenetrable solitude, and to have wrapped myself in inconsolable misery. But the grief I endured had not such power over me as that I could be content to risk the being led to the gallows. The love of life, and still more a hatred against oppression, steeled my heart against that species ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... coming to visit me. I fear you must be very solitary at Hornsea. How hard to some people of the world it would seem to live your life! how utterly impossible to live it with a serene spirit and an unsoured disposition! It seems wonderful to me, because you are not, like Mrs. ——, phlegmatic and impenetrable, but received from nature feelings of the very finest edge. Such feelings, when they are locked up, sometimes damage the mind and temper. They don't with you. It must be partly principle, partly self-discipline, which keeps ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... these cunning rogues would be apt to explore most thoroughly. The partridge is undoubtedly acquainted with the same process of reasoning; for, like the vesper-bird, she, too, nests in open, unprotected places, avoiding all show of concealment,—coming from the tangled and almost impenetrable parts of the forest to the clean, open woods, where she can command all the approaches and fly with equal ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... in single file, bent nearly double, and seeing nothing before them but the shining backs and shoulders of the negroes who hacked out the way for them to go. And again they would come suddenly upon a precipice, and drink in the soft cool breath of the ocean, and look down thousands of feet upon the impenetrable green under which they had been crawling, out to where it met the sparkling surface of the Caribbean Sea. It was three days of unceasing activity while the sun shone, and of anxious questionings around the camp-fire when the darkness fell, and when there ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... caught it with his left hand, at the same time darting his head (which some modern heroes of the lower class use, like the battering-ram of the ancients, for a weapon of offence; another reason to admire the cunningness of Nature, in composing it of those impenetrable materials); dashing his head, I say, into the stomach of Adams, he tumbled him on his back; and, not having any regard to the laws of heroism, which would have restrained him from any farther attack on his enemy till he was again on his legs, he threw himself upon ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... in the least furthering the performance of our duties. In practical life no one regards miracles as possible; and their limitation to the past and to rare instances does not make them more credible. (3) In so far as the Christian mysteries actually represent impenetrable secrets they have no bearing on moral conduct; so far as they are morally valuable they admit of rational interpretation and thus cease to be mysteries. The Trinity signifies the three moral qualities or powers ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... scaling-ladders to get up among it," laughed Kit. "Talk of impenetrable jungles! here is a ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... sheer shining walls, whose reflection made the clear water almost black. The huge arch of the cave's entrance faced them. Behind was the dark channel, and beyond it the sunlight on the sea, before them the impenetrable gloom of the cave. The noise of the water dropping from its roof into the sea beneath struck their ears sharply. The hollow roar of the sea far off in the utmost recesses of the cave came to them. ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... not know who I am!" she continued, endeavouring to assume her usual tone of command, and talking now to an absolute and impenetrable darkness. "You may learn when it is too late that you have chosen the wrong person for this pleasantry. I am the Marquise de Montespan, and I am not one who forgets a slight. If you know anything of the court, you must know that my word has some weight with the king. You may carry ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... not break upon Billy with her startling news. Billy was so easily driven into an impenetrable silence! She must draw him out by old familiar methods and not frighten him into caution. By the time the Comrade was fastened to the Station wharf, the girl had got herself well in hand. The men of the crew who were ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... impenetrable wall of mystery along which he was groping, he returned to the living-room, raised one of the windows and unbolted the front door to make sure of an exit in case these strange, foolish Talbots should unexpectedly return. ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson

... out from crinkled heavy lids and a bulldog jaw shot out from under a fat beak of a nose. And over the broad expanse of countenance was spread a smile so sweet, so deep, so high that it gave the impression of obscuring the form of features entirely. In point of fact it was a thick and impenetrable veil that the Senator had for long hung before his face from behind which to view the world at large. And through his mouth, as through a rent in the smile, he was wont to pour out a volume of voice as musical in its drawl and intensified southern burr as the ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... at great cost to bear as unconcerned a part as before in simple festivities and gatherings, while the clouds gathered and the thunder muttered in his soul. And all the time the answer never came. Wrestle as he might, there seemed to him an impenetrable barrier between him and the golden light of God. He learnt in what dark and cold isolation it is possible for the soul to wander. Slowly, very slowly, the outlook brightened; a whole range of new emotions opened before him. The expressions of suffering and sorrow, that had seemed to him before ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... 'The preparations of the heart in man, &c., is from the Lord.' And again, 'God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me' (Job 23:16). The heart, as it is by nature hard, stupid, and impenetrable, so it remains, and so will remain, until God, as was said, bruiseth it with his hammer, and melts it with his fire. The stony nature of it is therefore said to be taken away of God. 'I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... perceptible. The whole spirit of the mistress of these rooms pervaded the drawing-room where Augustine awaited her. She tried to divine her rival's character from the aspect of the scattered objects; but there was here something as impenetrable in the disorder as in the symmetry, and to the simple-minded young wife all was a sealed letter. All that she could discern was that, as a woman, the Duchess was a superior person. Then a painful thought came ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac

... ticket them and lock them up carefully in a kind of mysterious underground room shut in by iron gratings called a godoun. On rare occasions, only to honor some visitor of distinction, do they open this impenetrable depositary. The true Japanese manner of understanding luxury consists in a scrupulous and indeed almost excessive cleanliness, white mats and white woodwork; an appearance of extreme simplicity, and an incredible nicety ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... difficulty, time, and expense, which the attempt to bring it to light would occasion, excavations in this city, are now almost, if not entirely, abandoned; for it is to be remembered, that Herculaneum was destroyed by a flood of liquid lava, which as it cools, hardens into solid and impenetrable rock; whereas the hot ashes of Vesuvius overwhelmed Pompeii, and consequently it is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various

... and howled, and we rode and scampered, and finally we started him. He ran and bounded like a buck, and kept us well in the rear for some time; but at last he got caught in an impenetrable thicket of cane; then he turned to bay, and I tell you he fought the dogs right gallantly. He dashed them to right and left, and actually killed three of them with only his naked fists, when a shot from a gun brought him down, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... of Robinson Crusoe in my nature, for I loved the isolation of this spot immensely. It wasn't an island, but it was all but an island. Towards the land, two jutting promontories of rock denied access to anything not a goat; the sea in front; an impenetrable pine wood to the rear: and there I lived so happily, so snugly, that even now, when I want a pleasant theme to doze over beside my wood-fire of an evening, I just call up Pertusola, and ramble once again ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... are able to say of the immediate catastrophe which decided the fate of England, and through England, of the world. The deep impenetrable falsehood of the Roman ecclesiastics prevents us from discovering with what intentions the game of the last few weeks or months had been played; it is sufficient for Englishmen to remember that, whatever may have been the explanation of his ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... swimming strongly—and after a time a lurid flash of lightning showed him a black mass of trees close ahead. They vanished, the succeeding darkness was impenetrable, and the crash of thunder was deadened by the roar of water. For a moment or two his head was driven under, but when he got it clear, another dazzling flash revealed a high bank only a few yards away, and when ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss

... of the vegetable world, from the supposed resemblance of their broad leaves to the human hand. The Date, the fruit of the Date Palm, derives its name from the Greek dactylus, a finger, from its mode of growing in clusters spreading out like the fingers of the hand. The Palm sometimes forms impenetrable forests; but more frequently is found in small groups of two or three, or even singly, beside springs and fountains of water, affording a kindly shade to ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... impenetrable to that low voice so full of pathos and love. But he was at a loss what to reply: strange influences were flowing round him, carrying him out of himself. He kissed the gentle head that reclined on his bosom. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... deer-brush and gathered a bunch of flowers that Linda bound together with some wiry desert grass and fastened to her belt. It was not long before Donald spied an amole, and having found one, discovered many others growing near. Then Linda led the way past thorns and brush, past impenetrable beds of cholla, until they reached a huge barrel cactus that she had located with the glasses. Beside this bristling monstrous growth Linda paused, and reached for the axe, which Donald handed to her. She drew it lightly across ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... preparations for the next war, which are not to be confined, as heretofore, to the so-called military states, but are to extend over all Anglo-Saxondom.[323] "Open covenants openly arrived at" signify secret conclaves and conspirative deliberations carried on in impenetrable secrecy which cannot be dispensed with even after the whole business has passed into history.[324] The self-determination of peoples finds its limit in the rights of every Great Power to hold its subject ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... the sublimity of a storm at sea. The world about the ship is in wild commotion. The sky seems to have dropped into the sea, and now joins the roaring waves as they rush along. The blackness of the night is impenetrable, save as the lights from the ship gleam for an instant into the moving mass of water. Now and then a wave, rearing its crested head higher than the rest, breaks in spray upon the deck. The wind seems eager to hurl every movable object from the vessel, but as everything is fast, it must ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson

... not the will kept free? Beheld I not The road of duty close beside me—but One little step, and once more I was in it! 20 Where am I? Whither have I been transported? No road, no track behind me, but a wall, Impenetrable, insurmountable, Rises obedient to the spells I muttered And meant not—my own doings tower behind me. 25 A punishable man I seem, the guilt, Try what I will, I cannot roll off from me; The equivocal demeanour of my life Bears witness on my prosecutor's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... secured for myself a haven, a yet more impenetrable shade than this, against the time when, having seen four generations of men, two behind and two beyond, I may consider in silence what is likely to be the end of it all. It is true that I am getting old, but I am not yet prepared for a lodge in the wilderness. My present house ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... of the palm trees in company with some native boats. That was the first intimation we received that Krakatoa was in eruption, and from that time, eight o'clock, onwards through the day the rumbling thunders never ceased, while the darkness increased to a thick impenetrable covering of smoky vapour. Shortly after this we got under way, and proceeded until the darkness made it impossible to go on further. It was while we were thus enveloped in darkness that the stones and cinders discharged by the mountain began to fall upon the ship. In a ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... Urania's unfathomable eyes to Enriquez's impenetrable countenance. I might have been equal to either of them alone, but together they were invincible. I looked hopelessly at the baby. With its sharp little eyes and composed face, it certainly was a marvelous miniature of Enriquez. ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... preternaturally sly in the absolute darkness, but even through that impenetrable veil I knew it for a sham. I had laid hold of the hand-rail. It shook violently in my hand; he also was holding it where he stood. And these suppressed tremors, or rather their detection in this way, struck a strange chill to my heart, just as I was ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... anyone to fire, because in a few seconds the smoke came back, a huge, impenetrable curtain, and hid the man and the hillock. But Dick had not the slightest doubt that it was the great Southern leader, and he was right. It was Stonewall Jackson on the hillock, rallying his men, and Dick's own cousin, Harry Kenton, rode by ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler

... tundras—marshy plains—which in summer encircle the Polar Sea with a belt of verdure and wild flowers, but which in winter-time are merged with the frozen ocean in one boundless, bewildering wilderness of white. In hazy weather land and sky formed one impenetrable veil, with no horizon as dividing line, when, even at a short distance away, men and dog-sleds resembled flies crawling up a white curtain. But on clear days, unfortunately rare, the blue sky was Mediterranean, ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... heart with all its claims had to remain in the background. The smiling boy Cupid, with his gracious raillery and his smarting griefs, seemed to make no impression on that pale, grave, and taciturn artillery lieutenant, and not to dare shoot an arrow toward that bosom which had mailed itself in an impenetrable cuirass of misanthropy, stoicism, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... replied Hans; "thou hast had thy share of life." He strode over the prostrate body, and darted on. And a flash of blue lightning rose out of the East, shaped like a sword; it shook thrice over the whole heaven, and left it dark with one heavy, impenetrable shade. The sun was setting; it plunged towards the horizon like ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... if all our efforts to forward the calling of the next conference in the interest of permanent peace brought up dead against an invisible barrier, an impassable wall like the secret line drawn in the air by magic, thinner than a cobweb, more impenetrable than steel. What was it? Indifference? General scepticism? Preoccupation with other designs which made the discussion of peace plans premature and futile? I did not know. But certainly there was something in the way, and the undiscovered nature of that ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke

... already beginning, of the dangerous Roman summer, he constantly deferred his return to Paris until the morrow. What had she guessed in consequence of the encounter, the details of which she had asked of him with an emotion scarcely hidden in her eyes of a blue as clear, as transparent, as impenetrable at the same time, as the water of certain Alpine lakes at the foot of the glaciers. He thought he was doing right in corroborating the story of Boleslas Gorka's madness, which he knew better than any one else to be false. But was it not the surest means of exempting Madame ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... found the subject quite hopeless as to discussion, he changed it, and said "I have lately seen some friends of yours, and I assure you I gave you an excellent character to them: I told them you were firm, fixed, and impenetrable to all ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... confounded by the blaze, they removed the mysterious veil, and displayed to them the Deity in the radiant glory of his unity. From the vulgar eye, however, these doctrines were kept inviolably sacred, and wrapped in the veil of impenetrable mystery." ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... judicious. "I really do," she said. "It does appear quite impenetrable, Sir Kenneth. I can't understand how you're doing it. Or why, ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... that, with his daughter thrown on the defensive, with Maggie's cause and Maggie's word, in fine, against her own, it wasn't Maggie's that would most certainly carry the day. Such a glimpse of her conceivable idea, which would be founded on reasons all her own, reasons of experience and assurance, impenetrable to others, but intimately familiar to herself—such a glimpse opened out wide as soon as it had come into view; for if so much as this was still firm ground between the elder pair, if the beauty of appearances had been so consistently ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... and that she might see it all no more she bent her head and glanced down on the gaping abyss in which Paris seemed to be engulfed. In its depths not a light could yet be seen; night had rolled over it and plunged it into impenetrable darkness. Its mighty, continuous rumble seemed to have ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... even more so than the occasion seemed to warrant, but they studied each other's faces furtively, as if each sought in the other some clue to the mystery which was to himself impenetrable. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... my sentence. I turned about and made a leap over the fungus tops towards the upper end of the cavity. I saw that the space turned upward and became a draughty cleft again, ascending to impenetrable darkness. I was about to clamber up into this, and then with ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... Bedford—so much seemed clear. Though at first from my window I could make out nothing. I was feeling more than a trifle dazed,—there was a singing in my ears,—the sudden darkness was impenetrable. Then I became conscious that the guard was opening the door of his compartment. He stood on the step for a moment, seeming to hesitate. Then, with a lamp in his hand, he descended ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... are ours. Our reason for doubting Stewart's familiarity with the "Theodicee," and with Leibnitz in general, is derived in part from these phrases. We do not believe that any sincere student of Leibnitz has found him dark and impenetrable. Be it a merit or a fault, this predicate is inapplicable. Never was metaphysician more explicit and more intelligible. Had he been disposed to mysticize and to shroud himself in "impenetrable darkness," he would have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... steamer, Foma stood leaning against the tarpaulin, and attentively listened to each and every sound about him. And everything was blended into one picture, which was familiar to him. Through fog and uncertainty, surrounded on all sides by gloom impenetrable to the eye, life of man is moving somewhere slowly and heavily. And men are grieved over their sins, they sigh heavily, and then fight for a warm place, and asking each other for the sake of possessing ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... treating of, will agree with me, that the presence of a lake is indispensable to exhibit in perfection the beauty of one of these days; and he must have experienced, while looking on the unruffled waters, that the imagination, by their aid, is carried into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable. The reason of this is, that the heavens are not only brought down into the bosom of the earth, but that the earth is mainly looked at, and thought of, through the medium of a purer element. The happiest time is when the equinoxial ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... the dusk, without farewell or salutation steadily as their own steers. And there are a few millions of them—unhandy men to cross in their ways, set, silent, indirect in speech, and as impenetrable as that other Eastern fanner who is the bedrock of another land. They do not appear in the city papers, they are not much heard in the streets, and they tell very little in the outsider's ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... Yellowknife seemed to be no longer a river, but a narrow lake, and the third day the rowers came into the Nine Lake country at noon, and until another dusk the bateau threaded its way through twisting channels and impenetrable forests, and beached at last at the edge of a great open where the timber had been cut. There was more excitement here, but it was too dark for David to understand the meaning of it. There were many voices; dogs barked. Then voices ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood



Words linked to "Impenetrable" :   heavy, penetrable, uncomprehensible, impenetrableness, dense, thick, impenetrability, incomprehensible



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