"Invulnerable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regions, had there obtained celestial weapons from Indra himself then, O Sanjaya, I had no hope of success. When I heard that afterwards Arjuna had vanquished the Kalakeyas and the Paulomas proud with the boon they had obtained and which had rendered them invulnerable even to the celestials, then, O Sanjaya, I had no hope of success. When I heard that Arjuna, the chastiser of enemies, having gone to the regions of Indra for the destruction of the Asuras, had returned thence successful, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... London for her, soft shoes and stockings and frocks of fine texture and beautiful colour that seemed strange and exotic on Lashnagar. But these were worn out and never replaced—except for her mother's funeral she never wore shoes, summer or winter. Her feet and legs were brown and quite invulnerable to stones or brambles. Her father did not realize that she needed clothes; her aunt was too much sunk in shadows to notice the child's appearance. And, reading her legends and romances, it was natural that Marcella should live ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... drawn into the wicked plots of his brother and father-in-law, but they were bad to the core. A Seriff is supposed to be a descendant of the Prophet Mahomet, at any rate he is an Arab, and Messahore was said to be invulnerable and sacred in his person. He was a fine, handsome creature, with insinuating manners, but there was nothing more to say in his favour. He was at the bottom of every disturbance in the country, but was cunning enough to keep himself in the background. Directly ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... could not bear to contemplate. Yet so great was Gawtrey's vigour of health, that, after draining wine and spirits enough to have despatched a company of fox-hunters, and after betraying, sometimes in uproarious glee, sometimes in maudlin self-bewailings, that he himself was not quite invulnerable to the thyrsus of the god, he would—on any call on his energies, or especially before departing on those mysterious expeditions which kept him from home half, and sometimes all, the night—plunge his ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was being done in the prison, the inspector's severity, the cruelty of the convoy officer when he refused places on the carts to those who asked for them, and paid no attention to the fact that there was a woman in travail in the train. All these people were evidently invulnerable and impregnable to the simplest feelings of compassion only because they held offices. "As officials they were impermeable to the feelings of humanity, as this paved ground is impermeable to the rain." Thus thought Nekhludoff as he looked at the railway ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... she was exceedingly wary, and had in her innumerable excursions gathered quite as much knowledge of the tricks of war as the most experienced scout, so that she felt almost intuitively the approach of danger. She had gradually become imbued with the idea that she was invulnerable. To-day, therefore, she moved along this dangerous trail with the greatest apparent nonchalance. Furthermore her thoughts so completely absorbed her that while ascending from the level of the Rito ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... spectacular performances belonged here to the backs, the line it was that made such work possible. Chesney, with his six feet four and a half inches of muscle, and his two hundred and twenty-nine pounds of weight, stood like a veritable Gibraltar of strength. Beside him Rutland was scarcely less invulnerable, and Murdoch, on the other side, played like a veteran, which he was not, being only a nineteen-year-old sophomore, with but one hundred and sixty-seven pounds to keep him ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the old body laugh. No skinny, intellectual mirth, affecting but the lips! It was the merriment of an apple bobbing on the bough, or a brown stream running over rocks, or any other gay creature of earth. And with all was a great dignity, invulnerable to clods, and a kindly and noble beauty. By the light of that laughter much becomes clear—the right place of man upon earth, the entire suitability in life of very brightly-coloured petticoats, and the ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... although at times the bullets had fallen about us as thick as hail. We could not account for this. Many of us had been hit by the balls, but a bruise or a graze of the skin was the worst consequence that had ensued. We were in a fair way to deem ourselves invulnerable. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... about the corporal's right of priority, and the freezing point of brandy. Worst of all, they forgot to cover the new picked surfaces with straw and blankets, so that when they came in the morning the points of attack were as invulnerable as ever. In despair they buried both in one grave—the corporal undermost—without further efforts to attain a decent depth. As to six feet, it was quite unfathomable. They heaped all the stones they could loosen over the bodies, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... snow in a limp, lifeless heap, dead as last summer's lily-pads. One of the quills had driven straight through his left eye and into his brain. Was it any wonder if in time the Porcupine came to think himself invulnerable? ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... gains; These Egypt dogs, and their old dowdy queens, But ill requite these habits and these scenes! To rob Corneille for such a motley piece— His geese were swans, but, zounds, thy swans are geese." Rubbing his firm, invulnerable brow, The bard replied, "The critics must allow, 'Twas ne'er in Caesar's destiny to run." Wils bow'd, and bless'd the gay, pacific ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various
... from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns, called you forth, Down those precipitous black-jagged rocks, For ever shattered, and the same for ever? Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... he thinks of me, must feel anything but pride. I have taught him what spirit is, humbled him with my own spirit that rose invulnerable, triumphant, above all his tortures. I sit here in Folsom, in Murderers' Row, awaiting my execution; Warden Atherton still holds his political job and is king over San Quentin and all the damned within its walls; and yet, in his heart of hearts, he knows ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... exposed him to the violent persecutions of his enemies. Among other frivolous crimes objected to him, he was accused of gaining the king's affections by enchantment, and of purloining from the royal treasury a gem, which had the virtue to render the wearer invulnerable, and of sending this valuable curiosity to the Prince of Wales [k]. The nobility, who hated Hubert on account of his zeal in resuming the rights and possessions of the crown, no sooner saw the opportunity favourable, than they inflamed the king's animosity against him, and pushed ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... his 'Memoirs' having been edited, it is scarce possible to define his literary talent. The book, as it stands, is an excellent piece of narrative, but it loses somewhat by the pretence of style. The man's invulnerable conceit prevented an absolute frankness, and there is little enough hilarity to correct the acid sentiment and the intolerable vows of repentance. Again, though he knows his subject, and can patter flash ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... expressed was absolute. Sweetwater recognised the tone, as one of truth, and inwardly laid down his arms. He could never like the man; there was too much iron in his fibre; but he had to acknowledge that as a foe he was invulnerable and therefore admirable to one who had the good sense to ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... what its own occupants could consume, and that consequently there was comparatively little external trade in farm produce. From these facts he would readily understand that the rural communities in the year 1500, numerous yet isolated, were invulnerable strongholds ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... as it was begun, the lookouts reported that the great Confederate ironclad was steaming down, to do battle, single-handed, with the Union fleet. She was commanded by Buchanan, a very gallant and able officer, who had been on the Merrimac, and who trusted implicitly in his invulnerable sides, his heavy rifle guns, and his formidable iron beak. As the ram came on, with splendid courage, the ships got under way, while Farragut sent word to the monitors to attack the Tennessee at once. The fleet surgeon, ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... maturity of the harvest, and it is still with difficulty we obtain a limited portion of bad bread. Severe decrees are enacted to defeat the avarice of the farmers, and prevent monopolies of the new corn; but these people are invulnerable: they have already been at issue with the system of terror— and it was found necessary, even before the death of Robespierre, to release them from prison, or risk the destruction of the harvest for want ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... could not possibly either love vice, cherish crime, be pleased with depravity, or commit wrong; this decidedly turns the argument against them; they must either admit the most monstrous of all suppositions, or retire from behind the shield with which they have imagined they rendered themselves invulnerable. ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... shaft he sped but bore death upon its point; and although the Crusaders aimed repeatedly at his breast, and he stood in the most exposed position, their arrows fell harmless at his feet. He seemed to be invulnerable to attack; and a report was soon spread abroad, that he was no other than the Arch Fiend himself, and that mortal hand could not prevail against him. Godfrey of Bouillon, who had no faith in the supernatural character of the Mussulman, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... wrapped up in admiration of yourself. According to M. de Marivaux, who reviewed, as I am doing, the spirits of the mighty dead, you "conceived, on the strength of your reputation, a great and serious veneration for yourself and your genius." Probably you were protected by the invulnerable armour of an honest vanity, probably you declared that mere jealousy dictated the lines of Boileau, and that Chapelain's real fault was his ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... and we kept on through the darkness. There was not resistance enough to deploy infantry. A flash, a report, and a whistling bullet from some covert met us, but there were few casualties. I quite remember thinking at the time that Jackson was invulnerable, and that persons near him shared that quality. An officer, riding hard, overtook us, who proved to be the chief quartermaster of the army. He reported the wagon trains far behind, impeded by a bad road in Luray Valley. "The ammunition wagons?" sternly. "All right, ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... you are not invulnerable to these wounds; how, then, can I, an orphan girl, receive them with indifference?" She spoke passionately, and drooped her burning face ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the breast section followed it promptly. Three or four minutes after the bowl of rice was placed immediately in front of the man, and the breast part of the chicken laid in the bowl on the rice. Then followed these words: "Now the gall is good, we shall live in the pueblo invulnerable to disease." ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... the trail of Sublette's party. Five white men and one halfbreed were killed, and several wounded. Seven of the Nez Perces were also killed, and six wounded. They had an old chief, who was reputed as invulnerable. In the course of the action he was hit by a spent ball, and threw up blood; but his skin was unbroken. His people were now fully convinced that he was proof ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... 1917, the Canadian corps, with some British support, captured Vimy Ridge, a point which had hitherto proved invulnerable. When a year later, the Germans, north and south, swept the British line to one side in gigantic thrusts they were unable to disturb this key point, Vimy Ridge, which served as an anchor to the sagging line. The Canadian corps ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... others had a feeling that all these threats did not affect him and that, protected by his fetish, he believed himself to be invulnerable. But his wife fell on her knees at Renine's feet ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... The two queens have quarreled, and Hagen, as the faithful liegeman of Brunhild, seeks the life of Siegfried, who is invulnerable except in one spot on his back. At the end of a day's hunt in the Odenwald (across the Rhine from Worms) the thirsty Siegfried races with Gunter and Hagen to a spring. 9: The silken cross which the unsuspecting Kriemhild has sewn upon her ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... already, and whoever rules it, that I must always be. I, who am the chief of wizards; I, the reader of men's hearts; I, the hearer of men's thoughts! I, the lord of the air and the lightning; I, the invulnerable. If you would murder, Prince, then do the deed; do it knowing that I have your secret, and that henceforth you who rule shall be my servant. Nay, you forget that I can see in the dark; lay down that assegai, or, by my ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... being endowed with a prophetic spirit, knew that her son would lose his life at Troy. She dipped him in the river Styx, by which he was rendered invulnerable, except in the heel, by which he was held during the operation. The seer Calchas announced that, without Achilles, Troy could not be taken. His mother, to keep him from danger, concealed him among King Lycomedes's daughters, disguised as a girl; but being discovered by ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... instead of pulling away he raised an oar with the intention of striking Flaggan when he should rise. It was a fatal mistake. He did indeed strike him, and on the head too; but that was the most invulnerable part of the Irishman's body. Ted grasped the oar, caught the gunwale of the boat, and in a moment overturned it and its occupant ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... purity and elevation of Emerson's character show themselves in all that he writes. His life corresponded to the ideal we form of him from his writings. This it was which made him invulnerable amidst all the fierce conflicts his gentle words excited. His white shield was so spotless that the least scrupulous combatants did not like to leave their defacing marks upon it. One would think he was protected by some ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... even the coldest and most stoical temperaments do not wholly escape from these influences, how could Moore be surprised that Lord Byron, who was so sensitive and full of passion, so hardly used by men and Providence, that he should not prove invulnerable? Moore was not surprised at it in reality, it is true; he only made-believe to be so, and that because Lord Byron was wanting in some of those virtues called peculiarly English. Lord Byron had no superstitious patriotism; he did not love his country ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... in a flutter of successive excitements, now certain that it was invulnerable, now fearing an immediate descent of the enemy, and always longing for peace. In England the Orders in Council which provoked the war were now revoked, and Malcolm Fraser wrote that this must soon bring peace in America, especially since New England and ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... strong plea for compromise is the hopelessness of gaining anything better. This was the consideration urged so vehemently against the early Abolitionists. It was said: "Slavery is wrong—that we all admit—but it is a fixed fact, invulnerable, backed up by wealth, talent, pride and political influence, and all opposition is vain. You Abolitionists are mere sentimentalists, visionaries, doctrinaires." This had great influence with the indifferent, the timid, and especially ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 10, October, 1889 • Various
... were they, as ever went forth armed and determined for premeditated crime; stout in frame, stout of heart, invulnerable by any physical apprehension, unassailable by any touch of conscience, pitiless, fearless, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... would have advocated; Cromwell himself had remarked that it was a choice between the king's head and his own. History has upon the whole accepted the choice he made as salutary. Achilles, forgetting his heel, deemed himself invulnerable, and his conduct became in consequence intolerable; Charles, convinced that his anointed royalty was sacred, was led on to commit such fantastic tricks before high heaven as made the godly weep. Achilles was disillusioned by the arrow of Paris, and Charles by the ax of Cromwell. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Crimean War, three floating batteries covered with iron slabs, and each mounting eighteen fifty-pounders, silenced the Russian fort at Kinburn. This was a lesson it would seem that any one might learn. Louis Napoleon did not fail to learn it. If a ship can be made invulnerable, or nearly so, in every part, then of what avail is that strategy which secures choice of position, and which, of old, almost decided the battle? Will not he come off victor who can produce guns from which the heaviest shot may be hurled at the highest velocity, and gunners who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... honesty on which Wamba or Launcelot Gobbo shall put the gloss for us). Nay, even those to whom Goethe and Byron are not the ideal of modern poetry may retort that Mephistopheles—that even Faust himself—is a much more "interesting" person than the sulky invulnerable son of Thetis, while Gulnare, Parisina, and others are not much worse than Dido. But these are mere details. The main purpose of the Preface is to assert in the most emphatic manner the Aristotelian (or partly Aristotelian) doctrine that "All depends on the subject," ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... lived from hand to mouth and everybody was unhappy. Added to this by March the formidable insurrection of the "White Wolf" bandits in Central China—under the legendary leadership of a man who was said to be invulnerable—necessitated the mobilization of a fresh army which ran into scores of battalions and which was vainly engaged for nearly half a year in rounding-up this replica of the Mexican Villa. So demoralized had the army become from long licence that this guerrilla warfare was waged ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... simplicity; and because it illustrates his feeling for his wife. Others were always welcome to laugh at him; if it amused them, or if it amused him, he would proceed undisturbed with his occupation, his vanity invulnerable. With his wife it was different: his wife had laughed at his singing; and for twenty years the fibre ached. Nothing, again, was more notable than the formal chivalry of this unmannered man to the person on earth with whom he was the most ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spirit is abroad in the East. It arose on the shores of the Pacific when Japan proved that the great powers of Europe are not invulnerable. North and south and west it has spread, rousing China out of centuries of slumber, stirring India into ominous questioning, reviving memories of past glory in Persia, breeding discontent in Egypt, and ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... little time or knowledge or enthusiasm to give to the new enterprise. With all its power, it found itself outfought by this compact body of picked men, who were young, zealous, well-handled, and protected by a most invulnerable patent. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... playing with a dynamo, and the person attempting such things will be surely punished by the result of the act itself. However, no person of impure motives ever acquires a great degree of psychic power, and a pure heart and mind is an invulnerable shield against improper psychic power. Keep yourself pure ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka
... certain parts of the human body, and that some of the members could be protected against the effects of incantation. The spells of contra-incantation were often successfully exerted in the destruction of the human body, except in those parts previously rendered invulnerable. Jezebel was destroyed except her hands and feet, and the same fate is recorded of many other witches, or of those who suffered under the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... realized it?—that we are invulnerable! The world cannot hurt us: it cannot touch us. Felicity is ours, and we are impervious in the enjoyment of it. Something divine! surely something divine on earth? Clara!—being to one another that between which the world can never interpose! ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... found, they seize greedily upon the hook, which fastens itself readily in their crooked bills. All these sea birds are clothed with a coat of feathers so thick and elastic that except in one or two places they are invulnerable to ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... it?" he repeated, his calm eyes resting gravely on the little creature gliding sylph-like beside him. "Suppose your invention out-reaped every limit of known possibility—suppose your air-ship to be invulnerable, and surpassing in speed and safety everything ever experienced,—suppose it could travel to heights unimaginable, what then? Suppose even that you could alight on another star—another world than this—what purpose is ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... in disseminating their teaching. One of these prophets, or preachers, however, had a short career. Three weeks after Lloyd's death, this man, having persuaded himself and his dupes that they were invulnerable, led them against a strong and well-garrisoned redoubt at Sentry Hill, between New Plymouth and Waitara. Early one fine morning, in solid column, they marched deliberately to within 150 yards of the fort, and before straight shooting undeceived them about the value of their charms and passes, ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... girl, and follow my injunctions, as upon their strict observance depends our future happiness. To-morrow night I will conduct you to your poor deserted parent: together at his knees we will implore forgiveness. He will not be invulnerable to the tears and supplications of his child; and I will forget the wild dreams that have so long tyrannised over my kinder feelings, to fix all my thoughts upon love and Theodora. To the happy termination ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... flatter yourself that you have been successful to the measure of your desire. A person interests, or piques, or tantalises you, you do your best to make him out; yet strive as you will, you cannot read the riddle of his personality. From the invulnerable fortress of his own nature he smiles contemptuously on the beleaguering armies of your curiosity and analysis. And it is not only the stranger that thus defeats you; it may be the brother brought up by the same fireside with you, the best friend whom you have known from early ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... storm-beaten landscape. The whisper which had come to her before was now a solemn-speaking voice, and she knew what she must do. She could not keep the two men apart, but she might reach McGurk before and strike him down by stealth, by craft, any way to kill that man as terrible as a devil, as invulnerable ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... issued a prolonged "Y-ah!"—not the howl of a spoiled child, nor the protest of a captive gorilla, but the whole-souled utterance of a mighty son of Anak, whose amiability is invulnerable to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... condescension, have imprudently admitted the sophistry of the Gnostics. [291] Acknowledging that the literal sense is repugnant to every principle of faith as well as reason, they deem themselves secure and invulnerable behind the ample veil of allegory, which they carefully spread over every tender part of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... strokes masterly. Allow for his point of view, and his survey is admirable. He is a large subject. I cannot speak more or wiselier of him now, nor needs it;—his works are true, to blame and praise him,—the Siegfried of England,—great and powerful, if not quite invulnerable, and of a might rather to destroy evil, than ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... preparation of a certain herb boiled with ivy and rue over a fire of cypress-wood, and squeezed into a cup by hands that had never done harm. The juice thus obtained, if applied fresh every month, had the virtue of rendering bodies invulnerable. Isabella said she had seen the herb in the neighbourhood, as she came along, and that she would not only make the preparation forth-with, but let its effects be proved on her own person. She only stipulated, that the receiver of the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... log. "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." He has an ambitious spirit, which is exceeded only by his patience. He has had many mishaps, any one of which would have permanently disabled a larger animal, and we have dubbed him "Little Invulnerable." One of the soldiers of our escort, Private Moore, has made a sketch of him as he appeared to-day lying across a log, of which I ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... night. "Real as you'll seem to me," he said, "I sha'n't have to worry about the striped mosquitoes stinging you on the shoulders; and when we others go plodding along, no helmet or terai need hide that hair of yours. Since you'll be made of my thoughts, you'll be invulnerable. You'll catch up your little train to run across a field of ferns in pursuit of some small, inquisitive wild beast. When the tribes make dances for us, they won't know that a beautiful white lady, in a golden decollete gown, is seated before them, as happy as if that hullabaloo ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... and both fell on the besiegers. Flaming torches and firepots were hurled from the walls. The Christian towers did their work in the midst of flames, particularly the Tower of Godfrey, on whose roof a golden cross shone. The leaders fought amidst piles of their dead and seemed to be invulnerable themselves. Breaches were made in the walls behind which stood a living barricade of Saracens. An Egyptian emissary was caught, his message to the besieged squeezed from him, and his body was then hurled from a catapult into the city. The wooden machines of the Christians began ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... entire Confidence in the Pope's Power; his blessing of Swords, Armours, Colours and Standards; and No body doubted of the Influence, which Saints and Angels had upon Earth, the miraculous Virtue of Relicks, the Reality of Witches and Enchantments, the Black Art, or that Men might be made invulnerable. ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... impregnable, strong, invincible, invulnerable, fortified; steadfast, faithful, true; permanent, durable; rapid, swift, fleet, quick, expeditious, speedy; unrestrained, dissolute, dissipated, rakish, wanton, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... was of his own, because he adheres more closely than even religious men are ordinarily wont to do, to the spirit and genius of those older Scriptures which have yet to liberate a world from all but invulnerable superstitions. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... composed by a single man. Writing did not exist. The story had many repetitions, contradictions, and inferiorities. Later, the philological argument was used against it. These statements summarize the Wolfian theory. The contrariety in dialect form was thought to be an invulnerable argument against the unity of authorship; and for a time the epic of the ancient world was declared to be the work of many hands, the ballads sung by rhapsodists of many names; and the Iliad, with its astonishing display of genius, was declared to be authorless. Less than a century has elapsed ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... struck out: there was, in the first place, a pardonably human sense of aggrievedness that the eldest-born should cross their plans and wishes; that, after the year-long care and thought they had bestowed on him, he should demand fresh efforts from them; and, again, most harassing of all and most invulnerable, such an entire want of faith in the powers he was yearning to test—the prophet's lot in the mean blindness of the family—that, at times, it threatened to shake his hard-won faith in himself.—But before the winter drew to a close ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... head coach, watched grimly the tide of battle. Things had gone worse than he had anticipated. He had not hoped for too much—a tie would have satisfied him; a victory for Hillton had been beyond his expectations. St. Eustace far outweighed his team; her center was almost invulnerable and her back field was fast and heavy. But, despite the modesty of his expectations, Gardiner was disappointed. The plays that he had believed would prove to be ground-gainers had failed almost invariably. Neil Fletcher, the left half, on whom the head coach had placed the greatest reliance, ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour
... horned bonnet is not an invulnerable shield against the arrows of death. Age and infirmities are more potent ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... cold strength pouring into all his veins. It was as though his enemies, in thinking to mix a mortal poison, had rendered him invulnerable. He bent over her ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... serpents and other fauna of legendary history; but in certain country districts there are some animals that no amount of Board School information, nor countless Science Siftings from penny papers can ever destroy, and to this invulnerable class belongs the ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... were the pride and the confidence of the Pequodees, who believed them to be invulnerable; as, indeed, they had hitherto found them to the assaults of their own countrymen. And the other Indian tribes appeared to hold them in the same estimation; for when they found that it was Mason's intention to march directly to the fort on the Mystic, ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... child's perfect faith in the invulnerable superiority of his friends, he had not even looked at the master, but only at his destined victim. Yet as the word "two" rang out Johnny's attention was suddenly attracted to the surprising fact that the master's second, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... in the dim twilight. May this not account in some measure for the attitude assumed by the Empress Dowager towards the Boxer superstitions of 1900, and their pretentions to be able at will to call to their aid legions of spirit-soldiers, while at the same time they were themselves invulnerable to ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... in a place called Bombona, where all the advantages were on the side of the royalists. Bolivar found himself about to attack an army made almost invulnerable by nature; forests, roads, ravines—all protected it. In such a position, Bolivar merely said these words: "We must conquer and ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... matter; and I was as perfectly easy as to the lawfulness of it as if I had been married to the prince and had had no other husband; so possible is it for us to roll ourselves up in wickedness, till we grow invulnerable by conscience; and that sentinel, once dozed, sleeps fast, not to be awakened while the tide of pleasure continues to flow, or till something dark and dreadful brings us ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... British had many successes the key of Canada defied all efforts to take it. Quebec still frowned upon her rock, invulnerable as in the days of old ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... public order? Is this the state of hazard, if not of convulsion, which they can have the courage to contemplate and to brave, or beyond which their penetration can reach and see the issue? They seem to believe, and they act as if they believed, that our union, our peace, our liberty, are invulnerable and immortal—as if our happy state was not to be disturbed by our dissentions, and that we are not capable of falling from it by our unworthiness. Some of them have, no doubt, better nerves and better discernment ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... fell upon them. Through the closed doors resounded the tempestuous roar of the multitudes assembled around the Seraglio. Those within it trembled, and Halil Patrona stood there among them like an enchanter who knows that he is invulnerable, immortal. ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... to be near it I shall certainly take a close look at it," Harry said with a laugh. "I don't fancy we should see anything that our rifles and pistols would find invulnerable." ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... Not in wit only, but in virtue too. She does above our best examples rise, In hate of vice, and scorn of vanities. Never did spirit of the manly make, And dipp'd all o'er in learning's sacred lake, A temper more invulnerable take. No violent passion could an entrance find, Into the tender goodness of her mind; Through walls of stone those furious bullets may Force their impetuous way, When her soft breast they hit, damped and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... the "average American girl" supposed to be satirized in Daisy Miller, and prevented the perception of the fact that, so far as the average American girl was studied at all in Daisy Miller, her indestructible innocence, her invulnerable new-worldliness, had never been so delicately appreciated. It was so plain that Mr. James disliked her vulgar conditions, that the very people to whom he revealed her essential sweetness and light were furious that he should ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... blood, and afterwards heard he had died of his wound. The Wasui elders, contrary to my expectation, then came and congratulated us on our success. They thought us most wonderful men, and possessed of supernatural powers; for the thief in question was a magician, who until now was thought to be invulnerable. Indeed, they said Arabs with enormous caravans had often been plundered by these people; but though they had so many more guns than ourselves, they never succeeded ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... the plains into the sea," cried Ahmed Ismail. "The angels will fight by our side—so the Mullahs have said—-and no man who fights with faith will be hurt. All will be invulnerable. It is written, and the Mullahs have read the writing and ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... was marked by honors and emoluments; and some fortunate accidents soon introduced an opinion, that as long as the guards of the labarum were engaged in the execution of their office, they were secure and invulnerable amidst the darts of the enemy. In the second civil war, Licinius felt and dreaded the power of this consecrated banner, the sight of which, in the distress of battle, animated the soldiers of Constantine with an invincible enthusiasm, and scattered ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... as the jewels he had tossed into her lap, or the collar of pearls worth sixteen hundred pounds he had put about her neck. The offers were ineffectual, and Charles, driven almost to distraction by such invulnerable virtue, might now have yielded to the insidious whispers of divorce and re-marriage had not my Lady Castlemaine taken a hand in ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... do my best," the Doctor said grimly; "but the British subaltern is pretty well impervious to snubs; he belongs to the pachydermatous family of animals; his armor of self conceit renders him invulnerable against the milder forms of raillery. However, I think you can be trusted to hold your own with him, Miss Hannay, without much assistance from the Major or myself. Your real difficulty will lie rather in your ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... an indication of great abilities. An indifferent poet is invulnerable to a repulse, the want of sensibility in him being what a noble self-confidence was in Milton. These excluded suitors continue, nevertheless, to hang their garlands at the gate, to anoint the door-post, and even kiss ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... the favorite subjects of the old Spanish minstrels. The other two were The Cid and Lara's Seven Infants. Bernardo del Carpio was the person who assailed Orlando (or Rowland) at Roncesvalles, and finding him invulnerable, took him up in his arms and squeezed him to death, as Hercules did Antae'os.—Cervantes, Don ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... Conway, "thinks he can make himself shot-proof for twenty-four hours by finding on St. John's Day pine-cones on the top of a tree, taking them home, and eating a single kernel on each day that he wishes to be invulnerable." In Sicily it is customary, on Midsummer Eve, to fell the highest poplar, and with shouts to drag it through the village, while some beat a drum. Around this poplar, says Mr. Folkard,[4] "symbolising the greatest solar ascension and the decline which follows ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... and the hare's foot trace the characteristics of the god Mercury, which, as previously stated, was the prototype of Harlequin. With the bat, or magic sword, the gift from the fairies to him, Harlequin was supposed to be invulnerable, and if he lost his sword he would fall into the ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... about it, and he saw the breasts and foreheads of each of the three novitiates sprinkled with the charmed liquid. Could the ape-man have known the purpose of this act, that it was intended to render the recipient invulnerable to the attacks of his enemies and fearless in the face of any danger, he would doubtless have leaped into the village street and appropriated the zebra's tail and a portion of the ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... most wonderful feat of the Shoshone, and also of the Comanche and Apache, is the facility with which he will hang himself alongside his horse in a charge upon an enemy, being perfectly invisible to him, and quite invulnerable, except through the body of his horse. Yet in that difficult and dangerous position he will use any of his arms with precision and skill. The way in which they keep their balance is very simple; they pass their right arm, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... who should far outstrip his own father in glory and greatness. Years had passed since the marriage of Thetis to King Peleus, and their son Achilles was now grown to manhood, a wonder of strength indeed, and, moreover, invulnerable. For his mother, forewarned of his death in the Trojan War, had dipped him in the sacred river Styx when he was a baby, so that he could take no hurt from any weapon. From head to foot she had plunged him in, only forgetting ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... gently lifted. There is a pleasant, comfortable feeling in sitting listening to all this uproar and knowing the strength of our ship. Many a one would have been crushed long ago. But outside the ice is ground against our ship's sides, the piles of broken-up floe are forced under her heavy, invulnerable hull, and we lie as if in a bed. Soon the noise begins to die down; the ship sinks into its old position again, and presently all is silent as before. In several places round us the ice is piled up, at one spot to a considerable height. Towards evening there ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... ascendant—this miserable little rustic lordling gets the better of me in everything. Isabelle, sweet Isabelle, adores HIM, and detests me—he has beaten my lackeys, and dared to wound ME. But there shall be an end of this sort of thing, and that speedily—even though he be invulnerable, and bear a charmed life, he must and shall be put out of my way—I swear it! though I should be forced to risk my name and ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the cross on the door made the inmates invulnerable, and when made with the finger on the breast it was ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... reprobate; could not reprobate where praise should be the meed. He had no money and little learning, but he had a conscience and he knew that he must be true to that conscience, come to him either weal or woe. Want renders most men vulnerable, but to it, he appeared, at this early age, absolutely invulnerable. Should he and that almost omnipotent inquisitor, public opinion, ever in the future come into collision upon any principle of action, a keen student of human nature might forsee that the young recusant could never be ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... candles of the holy-week matins, holy water, pieces of consecrated stones; of vestments belonging to a miraculous Saint or with some other Anting-Anting or talisman or amuletos, will make themselves invulnerable to bullets; also have power to convert into any of the four elements, like those personages of the Philippine legends and comedies,—Ygmidio, Tenoso, Florante, ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... that it is directed by the inscrutable will of destiny, or by the malice of some jealous enchanter. Now it is an established fact that all or most famous knights-errant have some special gift, one that of being proof against enchantment, another that of being made of such invulnerable flesh that he cannot be wounded, as was the famous Roland, one of the twelve peers of France, of whom it is related that he could not be wounded except in the sole of his left foot, and that it must be with the point of a stout pin and not ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... very much like a pitchers' battle from that time on. Kinsey was fast becoming invulnerable, and batter after batter failed to connect with his wizard delivery. He would smile at them, and then proceed to give them something they were not expecting, so that the heaviest Scranton ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... special advantages as a collector of old English poetry. He knew, as no one else at that time knew, the value of the plays and pamphlets that encumbered the stalls; he had no competitor to fear 'clad in the invulnerable mail of the purse.' Oldys was born in 1696; he became involved, while quite a young man, in the disaster of the South Sea Bubble; and in 1724 he was obliged to leave London for a residence of some years in Yorkshire. Among the books that he abandoned was ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... attendants, the Valkyrs, or battle maidens, were either his daughters, like Brunhild, or the offspring of mortal kings, maidens who were privileged to remain immortal and invulnerable as long as they implicitly obeyed the god and remained virgins. They and their steeds were the personification of the clouds, their glittering weapons being the lightning flashes. The ancients imagined that they ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... prey, but that he knows His end with mine involved, and knows that I Should prove a bitter morsel, and his bane, Whenever that shall be: so Fate pronounced. But thou, O father, I forewarn thee, shun His deadly arrow; neither vainly hope To be invulnerable in those bright arms, Through tempered heavenly; for that mortal dint, Save he who reigns above, none can resist." She finished; and the subtle Fiend his lore Soon learned, now milder, and thus answered ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... pretence of distress in a pantomime being so broadly humorous as to be no pretence at all. Much as in the comic fiction I can understand the mother with a very vulnerable baby at home, greatly relishing the invulnerable baby on the stage, so in the Cremorne reality I can understand the mason who is always liable to fall off a scaffold in his working jacket and to be carried to the hospital, having an infinite admiration of the radiant personage in spangles who goes into ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... this struggle between two diplomates, concealed under the semblance of youthful melancholy, and a woman whose disgust of life made her invulnerable, I told the Count that it was impossible to drag this tortoise out of her shell; it must be broken. The evening before, in our last quite friendly discussion, the Countess ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... Godefroid, "I am not afraid of robbers, for the same reasons that make those gentlemen invulnerable; and I despise life so heartily that if I were murdered by mistake ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... appear, took a northerly direction. He saw his pursuers so close that he had to climb the first large tree he came to. They commenced shooting at him with their arrows, but without effect, for all his body was invulnerable except the space of about an inch near the tip of his tail. At last one of the arrows hit the spot, for he had in this chase assumed the shape of the Fisher ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... of the robe of justice outrages his garment is it to remain an invulnerable shield against our righteous condemnation? He who doles justice, must ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... prepare a coat of mail for him, in order that he might be invulnerable," whispered Amelia tremblingly; exhausted and remorseful, she sank back upon the tabouret. "The beautiful Kleist shall not ravish my beloved from me. He loves me—me alone; and he shall no longer complain of my cruelty. I dare not be cruel! I dare not make him unhappy, for she might comfort ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... possession of his cloak of darkness. Hagen, a mighty Burgundian paladin (in a passage which is obviously adapted from another version for the purpose of recounting Siegfried's previous adventures), tells how "he had slain a dragon and made himself invulnerable by bathing in its blood. We must receive him graciously, and avoid making him our enemy." Siegfried sojourned at Worms for over a year, distinguishing himself in all the martial exercises of the Burgundians and rendering them splendid ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... in without a tremor. He felt himself invulnerable—raised far above the shallowness of common judgment. Though he saw the Prince looking at him with black displeasure, the lucidity of his mind, of which he was very conscious, gave him an extraordinary assurance. He was ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... the heaviest and the most keenly felt, for it touched Lucien where he thought himself invulnerable—in his heart and his love. Coralie might not be clever, but hers was a noble nature, and she possessed the great actress' faculty of suddenly standing aloof from self. This strange phenomenon is subject, until it degenerates ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... and urged each other to strike the first blow, but the Invisible One restrained them. I stood invulnerable beneath His invisible shield, and succeeded in rolling back the tide of flame from ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... weighed a hundred pounds. It is the strongest for its size and the fiercest of all reptiles. Its jaws, though toothless, have cutting edges, a sharp beak, and power to the crushing of bones. Its armour makes it invulnerable to birds and beasts of prey. Like a log it lay on the beach, with its long alligator tail stretched up the bank and its serpentine head and tiny wicked eyes vigilantly watching the shore. Its shell, broad and ancient, was fringed ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and far away. Then the sun set and flamed in the village windows, and a chill went over the world, and in some small garden a woman sang; and Tharagavverug lifted up his head and starved, and his life went from his invulnerable body, and Leothric lay down beside him and slept. And later in the starlight the villagers came out and carried Leothric, sleeping, to the village, all praising him in whispers as they went. They laid him down upon ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... the hitherto dormant power of the nation quickens to action, and says, 'It won't do, Mr. General Pierce!' Forced to submit, the General consoles himself with the fact that his friend Nicholas will draw himself into his invulnerable shell, sing the Te Deums, and trust the fate of war, for a dozen years or ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... the stroke of lance or sword. Though the judges be called to pass on tens of thousands of cases, to sentence to imprisonment or to death thousands of criminals, they should be held by the people safe from the hate and vengeance of those criminals as if they were guarded by an invulnerable shield. ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... stinted draught, no scanty tide, The gushing flood the tartans dyed. Fierce Roderick felt the fatal drain, And showered his blows like wintry rain; And, as firm rock, or castle-roof, Against the winter shower is proof, The foe, invulnerable still, Foiled his wild rage by steady skill; Till, at advantage ta'en, his brand Forced Roderick's weapon from his hand, And backward borne upon the lea, Brought the proud Chieftain ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... not dead, he doth not sleep— He hath awaken'd from the dream of life— 'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife; And in mad trance, strike with our spirits' knife, Invulnerable nothings!" ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... Greeks, in arms await their arrival. At the first onset, Cygnus, dashed by Achilles against a stone, is changed by Neptune into the swan, a bird of the same name, he having been vulnerable by no weapon. At the banquet of the chiefs, Nestor calls to mind Caeneus, who was also invulnerable; and who having been changed from a woman into a man, on being buried under a heap of trees, was transformed into a bird. This Caeneus was one of the Lapithae, at the battle of whom with the Centaurs, Nestor was present. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the Union Government had only been a day behind in perfecting the same experiment. Next day the Monitor arrived on the scene, and the famous duel between the first two ironclads ever constructed commenced. Each proved invulnerable to the other, for neither side had yet constructed pieces capable of piercing protection, but the victory was so far with the North that the hope that the Confederacy might obtain, by one bold and inventive stroke, the mastery of the sea was for the ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... cover fix'd, Or, often blunted and recoil'd, On Plutarch's Moral struck, were spoil'd. The Queen of Wisdom could foresee, But not prevent, the Fates' decree: And human caution tries in vain To break that adamantine chain. Vanessa, though by Pallas taught, By Love invulnerable thought, Searching in books for wisdom's aid, Was, in the very search, betray'd. Cupid, though all his darts were lost, Yet still resolved to spare no cost: He could not answer to his fame The triumphs of that stubborn dame, A nymph so hard to be subdued, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... was added—if proofs were still necessary of Spanish prowess. The Netherlanders may be pardoned if their foes seemed to them supernatural, and almost invulnerable. How else could these enormous successes be accounted for? How else could thousands fall before the Spanish swords, while hardly a single Spanish corpse told of effectual resistance? At Jemmingen, Alva had lost seven ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly gaining an ascendency over mere brutal force.... It may be silenced by military power, but it cannot be conquered. It is elastic, irrepressible, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary warfare. It is that impassible, unextinguishable enemy of mere violence and arbitrary rule, which, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... invulnerable, unburiable is with me, something that would rend rocks asunder: it is called MY WILL. Silently doth it proceed, and unchanged ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the leaden cope of hypocritical virtue. If Edmee had not triumphantly defended me by her confession, she had at least roused the greatest interest in my favour. A man who is loved by a beautiful woman carries with him a talisman that makes him invulnerable; all feel that his life is of ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... devils took possession, so that even the Wandis were afraid. They dare not touch me now. I have trampled them, I have tortured them, I have killed them. They fly from me like sheep. Yet, if I lead, they follow. They think, because I have conquered them, that I am invincible, invulnerable, immortal. They cringe before me as if I were a god. They would offer me human sacrifice if I would have it. I am their talisman, their mascot, their safeguard from defeat, their luck—a dead man, Herne, a dead man! Can't you see the joke? Why don't ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... and barked at her of course. Cui bono or malo? Why, like Job's mates, fill its poor belly with the east wind, or try to draw out leviathan with a hook, or his tongue with a cord thou lettest down? Yet who treads of the fight between invulnerable Achilles and heroic Hector, and admires Achilles? The admiral of the American fleet, sick of the premature pother, signaled the lazy solidity to return. The loathly monster, slowly, like a bull-dog wrenched from his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... began. Battle unprecedented. Frailty struggling against the invulnerable. The gladiator of flesh attacking the beast of brass. On one side, brute force; on the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... took another arrow, fitted it to the notch of the bow and let fly. Again the arrow hit the mark, it struck the centipede right in the middle of its head, only to glance off and fall to the ground. The centipede was invulnerable to weapons! When the Dragon King saw that even this brave warrior's arrows were powerless to kill the centipede, he lost heart and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... was also one of those whom life at the beginning had impressed with the delight of one kind of work and no other. When a mere imp of a boy, the heartless tormentor of a large and sententious stepmother, the despair of schoolmasters, the most ingenious of truants, a humorous ragamuffin invulnerable to punishment, it was already revealed to him that his mission in life was to be the observation and reproduction of human character, particularly in its humorous aspects. To this end Nature had gifted him with a face that was capable of every form of transformation, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... variable and fluid it is alive, and that there may be two opinions about the structural top and the functional top, whereas there can be but one as to the book being or not being on the table. He maintains a quiet cheerfulness, as of one who is conscious of being, if not invulnerable, at least well armed. ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... Anguish and discontent, the unhappy bane Of life, and blackener of each brighter scene. Why to thy votaries dost thou give to feel So keenly all the scorns—the jeers of life? Why not endow them to endure the strife With apathy's invulnerable steel, Of self-content and ease, each ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... money among the crew. But think of it, man! I tell you it is an absolute impossibility for a shot to strike any ship which is provided with my apparatus. And then look at the cheapness. You don't want armour. You want nothing. Any ship that floats becomes invulnerable with one of these. The war ship of the future will cost anything from seven pound ten. You're grinning again; but if you give me a magnet and a Brixton trawler with a seven-pounder gun I'll show sport ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... and rather long chin which he shaved. His eyes were blue, a chill, naive blue. He faced Lingard untouched by travel, without a mark of weariness or exposure, with the air of having been born invulnerable. He had a full, pale face; and his complexion was perfectly colourless, yet amazingly fresh, as if he had been reared ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... Vera; she had eaten too deeply of the knowledge of good and evil—that worldly wisdom in whose strength she had started in life's race, and in the possession of which she had once deemed herself so strong—so absolutely invulnerable to the things that pierce and wound weaker woman—this was gone from her. The baser part of her nature, wherewith she would so gladly have been content, was uppermost no longer; her heart had triumphed over her head, and, with a woman of strong character, this ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... against the man whose every word and glance, although he was but a stranger, had seemed to possess a power to annoy and wound from the first. She felt an almost venomous desire to retaliate; but he appeared invulnerable in his quiet and easy superiority, while she, who expected, as a matter of course, that all masculine thoughts should follow her admiringly, had been compelled to see that his critical eyes had detected that in her ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... His end with mine involvd; and knows that I Should prove a bitter Morsel, and his bane, When ever that shall be; so Fate pronounc'd. But thou O Father, I forewarn thee, shun 810 His deadly arrow; neither vainly hope To be invulnerable in those bright Arms, Though temper'd heav'nly, for that mortal dint, Save he who reigns above, none can resist. She finish'd, and the suttle Fiend his lore Soon learnd, now milder, and thus answerd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... grand, white-whiskered old chap—Rutton Singh, from Jullunder-way. He only grinned, and said it was all right. Stalky had been out of the fort twice before, somewhere or other, accordin' to him. He said Stalky 'ud come back unchipped, and gave me to understand that Stalky was an invulnerable Guru of sorts. All the same, I put the whole command on half rations, and set ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... wit has gained over the laughers on his side, he has struck a blow which puts his adversary hors de combat. A grave reply can never wound ridicule, which, assuming all forms, has really none. Witty calumny and licentious raillery are airy nothings that float about us, invulnerable from their very nature, like those chimeras of hell which the sword of AEneas could not pierce—yet these shadows of truth, these false images, these fictitious realities, have made heroism tremble, turned the eloquence of wisdom into folly, and bowed down the spirit ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... convey to Mr. Smith a little salutary advice ... to remind him that unmeasured severity of invective against others, will naturally produce, at the first favourable opportunity, a retort of similar harshness upon himself; and that unless he feels himself completely invulnerable, the conduct which he has hitherto pursued, is not only uncharitable and violent, but foolish. He should be told that, although he possesses some talents, they are by no means, as he supposes, of the first order. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of the spotless sky, where shone so much glory, where glistened so many swords, that the youth of the time breathed. They well knew that they were destined to the slaughter; but they believed that Murat was invulnerable, and the Emperor had been seen to cross a bridge where so many bullets whistled that they wondered if he were mortal. And even if one must die, what did it matter? Death itself was so beautiful, so noble, so illustrious, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... vehement. But the lines of their passion were opposite. Hers was the primitive, crude, violent flux of the blood, emotional and undiscriminating, but wanting to mix and mingle. His was the hard, clear, invulnerable passion of the bones, finely tempered and unchangeable. She was the flint and he the steel. But in continual striking together they only destroyed each other. The fire was a third thing, belonging ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... the Eastern and Western Powers have to attain a common end. Both bureaucracy and pseudo-democratic oligarchy have to accomplish an identical task, to cement the pacific alliance of the Pledged Allies and to socialise their common industrial and economic life, so as to make it invulnerable ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... disgraceful to be worsted by these men, for I am not the less brave because you pit me against an invulnerable enemy, nor does fire not burn because you throw into it something over which flames have no power, nor does iron lose its power of cutting, though you may wish to cut up a stone which is hard, impervious to blows, and of such a nature ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... to be invulnerable to Cupid's arrows, showed by her warm praises, after he had left that evening, that she was ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... Sanhedrin was unseizable and invulnerable. It carried the roots of evil from France into Scotland, where under a different name it entered into a league with united England, with whom, after having let it in behind the curtain of its secret and having declared deadly ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... knew that he spoke truth when he assured me he could not alter his mother's opposition at present, and I did not disturb our evening talks by reproaches. I assumed a grand air of indifference toward Mrs. Sewall and her attacks, as if I was some invulnerable creature beyond and above her. I didn't even cheapen myself by appearing to observe that Breck's invitations to appear in public with him had suddenly been replaced by demands for ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty |
