"Impermeable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clearly affterward: the simpler the words the better, praps. You may, for instans, call a coronet an 'ancestral coronal,' if you like, as you might call a hat a 'swart sombrero,' a glossy four-and-nine, a 'silken helm, to storm impermeable,' and 'lightsome as a breezy gossamer;' but in the long run it's as well to call it a hat. It is a hat, and that name is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... feathers, which overlap evenly, and puts round its body a thick cushion of air on a bed of down. It has on its tail a pot of cosmetic, a bottle of hair-oil, a fatty gland from which the beak obtains an ointment wherewith it preens the feathers one by one and renders them impermeable to moisture. A great expender of energy by reason of the exigencies of flight, it is essentially, chilly creature that it is, better-adapted than any other to the retention ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... times less than on our own globe. Again, on Mercury it is seven times greater, which heat would scorch and consume every organic substance on the earth, and speedily envelope the boiling ocean in a shroud of impermeable vapor. Granting even that space may not be a vacuum, and yet the law of gravitation be true, we may still be allowed to consider both Saturn and Uranus and Neptune, as inhospitable abodes for intelligent creatures; and, seeing the immensity of room in the system, ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... covering was but little employed, and was finally abandoned during the first year of the 19th century. It was revived again in 1840, when people began to take a renewed interest in tar paper roofs, the method of manufacturing an impermeable paper being already so far perfected that the squares of paper were dipped in tar until thoroughly saturated. The roof constructed of these waterproof paper sheets proved itself to be a durable covering, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various
... vicinity of Tammany Hall, fearless of detection, for no one could have recognized the Broadway exquisite in his assumed garb. His upper garment was an old great coat razeed into a frock; his feet were cased in heavy fireman's boots, which, with their impermeable uppers and ponderous soles, were equally serviceable for keeping out snow-water and kicking niggers' shins; his head was protected by a stout leather cap, and in his hand he carried a hickory, not so ponderous as Lloyd's stick, but none the less capable of doing worthy execution in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... he meets with any peculiarly difficult or precipitous track, frequently compares it to some road well known to his countrymen, which fallen rocks had blocked up, or a wintry flood had rendered impermeable. Spain presented, as it presents at this day, to the engineer, almost insurmountable difficulties. The Moorish provinces of the south alone possessed any tolerable roads; nor were the ways of Arragon or Castile mended after the wealth of Mexico and Peru had ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... or Secchini's roof between this friar, so punctual in his religious observances, so scrupulously pure in conduct, so cold in temperament, so acute in intellect, so modest in self-esteem, so cautious, so impermeable, and his contemporary, Bruno, the unfrocked friar of genius more daring but less sure, who was mentally in all points, saving their common love of truth and freedom, the opposite ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... abolishing of cess-pools and their replacement by water-closets, together with the abolishing of brick drains and their replacement by impermeable and self-cleansing stone-ware pipes, has been attended with an immediate and extraordinary reduction of mortality. Thus, in Lambeth Square, occupied by a superior class of operatives, in the receipt of ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... Samms, and calmly and clearly he narrated everything that had just happened. He continued his crisp report, neglecting not the smallest detail, while their tiny craft was drawn inexorably toward a redly impermeable veil; continued it until their lifeboat, still intact, shot through that veil and he found himself unable to move. He was conscious, he was breathing normally, his heart was beating; but not a voluntary muscle would ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... moisture during the hot season. This system of drainage is not a modern invention; the Italian monks understood it as well as, and even better than, we do. In deep and loose soils they used sometimes, just as we do now, porous clay pipes; but when the subsoil was formed of compact and nearly impermeable matters, they employed a system of drainage, the extent and grandeur of which astonishes us. It is that of drainage by cavities, applied by the Etruscans, Latins, and Volsci to all the Roman hills formed of volcanic tufa, the tradition of which I have found still preserved in some countries ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various |
