"Irresistibly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... melancholy, obscure, but recurrent, mixed in his fluctuating thoughts. Finally, it pursued him, haunted him, and caught him with the strange tenacity of an incorporeal grasp. Sara, now dethroned from her place of power, loomed in all his dreams. Irresistibly, he was drawn toward the forbidden recollection of her delightfulness. There seemed no longer any danger in these musings. He had entrusted his actual life to the safe-keeping of the nicest woman he had ever known. Where then was the harm in harking back, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... you need not go on,—I know what you are going to say, and I will neither be flattered nor fascinated. Come, confess now, like a dear candid creature, throw off your irresistibly bewitching mask, and own that your sentiments ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... enough to be wise, consult foolishly together concerning the Mouse. It blesses him that gives, and him that takes—this business of charity. And then, there is something irresistibly relishing and splendid in the consciousness of being the instrument of a special providence! Have I all my life admired those beneficent characters in novels and comedies who rescue innocence, succor distress, and go about pressing gold into the palm of poverty, and telling it to take it ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... credit, but not for fame. But suddenly, as he turned over these 'Occasional Pieces,' Leonard came to others in a different handwriting—a woman's handwriting—small, and fine, and exquisitely formed. He had scarcely read six lines of these last before his attention was irresistibly chained. They were of a different order of merit from poor Mark's; they bore the unmistakable stamp of genius. Like the poetry of women in general, they were devoted to personal feeling—they were not the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... window, descended the terrace and walked along the beach. She could have gone to her room and found the solitude she craved, but she wanted movement, and the night was so beautiful that it called to her irresistibly. The moon was at the full, she could see the blue of the sea under its crystal flood. The blades of the palm trees glittered like sinister weapons unsheathed. She could outline every leaf of palm, cocoanut, and ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... while he studied the tantalizing innocence of her expression. He felt certain that he was going to say something irresistibly unwise. To gain time he looked away and commenced aimlessly stirring his cup. "Well, if you must have it, because to tell a woman that would be to tempt her to ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... long. The idea that those puny vessels could be bent on such a purpose seemed to him irresistibly comic, and he promised his prisoner, with much condescension, that the St. Augustine alone should sink ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... aunts;" for among that flock of devoted relatives in white muslin and gay ribbons was Will. Standing in the front row, her bright face was good to see, for her black eyes sparkled, every hair on her head curled its best, her cherry bows streamed in the breeze, and her feet pranced irresistibly at the lively parts of the music. She longed to dance the hornpipe which the little Quaker aunt did so capitally, but, being denied that honor, distinguished herself by the comic vigor with which she "polished up the handle of the big front door," and did the other "business" recorded by the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... whispered eagerly to the king, her flashing glance sped across to Toulan, who, in the tumult, had found means to come in, and now looked straight at the queen. Now, as her glance came to him as an unspoken command, he made his way irresistibly forward through the crowd of courtiers, ministers, and ladies, and now stood ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... result unsatisfactorily. In writing these letters to prospective fathers-in-law, the cardinal point is, of course, the creation by the young man of a good impression in the mind of the father, and for this purpose he should study to make his letter one which will appeal irresistibly to the ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... I'm much obliged. I've got the pace, I think, and can practice with a chair to keep my hand in," said Mac with such a comic mixture of gratitude and resignation that Rose went off again so irresistibly that her cousins joined her with ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... at Mr. Vincy's, where, on New Year's Day, there was a party, to which Mr. Farebrother was irresistibly invited, on the plea that he must not forsake his old friends on the first new year of his being a greater man, and Rector as well as Vicar. And this party was thoroughly friendly: all the ladies of the Farebrother family were present; the Vincy children all dined at the table, and Fred had ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... or man? It never does lift them; the doubt is never solved, but it is always suggested. The mystery of a partial humanity, morally irresponsible but humanly conscious, haunts the entrancing page. It draws us irresistibly on. But as the cloud closes around the lithe figure of Donatello, we hear again from its hidden folds the words of "The Birth-Mark": "Thus ever does the gross fatality of earth exult in its invariable triumph over the immortal essence, ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... The conclusion is irresistibly forced upon us that when we view the surface of Jupiter we are not looking at any solid body. The want of permanence in the features of the planet would be intelligible if what we see be merely an ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... subjected to forces superior to his own, and independent of his will. The sun enlightened and warmed him, the fire burned him, the thunder terrified him, the wind beat upon him, the water overwhelmed him. All beings acted upon him powerfully and irresistibly. He sustained this action for a long time, like a machine, without enquiring the cause; but the moment he began his enquiries, he fell into astonishment; and, passing from the surprise of his first reflections to the reverie of curiosity, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... time, the idea of reforming as well as of punishing the delinquent, formed a part of prison discipline. But this happy alteration, in which the public had taken so hearty an interest, and which the exertions of the citizens had irresistibly accelerated, could not be completed in a moment. While the new penitentiaries were being erected (and it was the pleasure of the majority they should be terminated with all possible celerity), the old prisons existed, ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... towards a great flowering which would bring a glory into two lives? But if she yielded at once to his wish, without a word of regret, if she took the speedy return to London quite simply as a matter of course, he would feel almost irresistibly inclined to take her in his arms and to say, "No, you shall stay on at Little Cloisters. We'll manage somehow." Perhaps he could stand three hours daily in the train. He could read the papers. A man must do that. As well do it in the train as in an ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the exhaustive work of Langen, we need linger no longer in this well-ploughed field. We repeat, the evidence all points irresistibly to the conclusion that Plautus is wholly careless of his dramatic machinery so long as it moves. The laugh's ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... earliest childhood, "Johnnie." Plain "John Bruce" was written uncompromisingly in every line of his face; just the converse of Forrester, whom old maids of rigid virtue, after seeing him twice, were irresistibly impelled to speak ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... seated himself, and at his touch the generator of the ship came startlingly to life. It grumbled softly at first, then the hoarse sound swelled to a thunderous roar, while the metal grating surged up irresistibly beneath the captain's feet. His weight was intolerable. He ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... felt, but never could so well express. When I hear fine music I am haunted with passages therefrom night and day; and especially at first waking, which, by their importunity, give me more uneasiness than pleasure; elegant lessons still tease my imagination, and recur irresistibly to my recollection at seasons, and even when I am desirous of thinking of ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... moment in the play, namely that expressing the frenzied grief of Orfeo over the loss of Euridice. Yet, he notes, "when we return from these criticisms to the real merit of the piece, we find in it a charm of musical language, a subtlety of musical movement, which are irresistibly fascinating. Thought and feeling seem alike refined to a limpidity that suits the flow of melody in song. The very words evaporate and lose themselves in floods of sound." Surely, here is the description of ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... vanity!" They are concerned with the same hero (who is Byron under various disguises) and they picture him as a proud, mysterious stranger, carelessly generous, fiendishly wicked, profoundly melancholy, irresistibly fascinating to women. Byron is credited with the invention of this hero, ever since called Byronic; but in truth the melodramatic outcast was a popular character in fiction long before Byron adopted him, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... neighbouring villages to have their arms inspected, singing choruses all the way. There is a railway, it is true, on the Klein Laufingen bank, but a railway where the little station and mouth of the tunnel have been so ornamentally treated that at a slight distance a train coming in irresistibly suggests one of those working models set in motion by either a dropped penny or the fraudulent action of the human breath, as conscience permits. So innocent an affair is powerless to corrupt Laufingen, and has brought as yet but ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... great difficulty, even on this imperfect apparatus, had the current been regular; but, unfortunately, there were whirlpools in numbers, and soon the kibitka, notwithstanding all Michael's efforts, was irresistibly drawn into ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way: holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions: Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... had filled their columns with talk of the man. The huge Scotch lawyer of the Tenderloin was proclaimed as something new and startling in the grey mass of the city's population. Then as in the brave days that followed the man caught irresistibly the imagination of writing men, himself dumb in written or spoken words except in the heat of an inspired outburst when he expressed perfectly that pure brute force, the lust for which sleeps ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... place, England's maritime power was increasing more irresistibly than that of France. Although Richelieu (1624-1642) had recognized the need for a French navy and had given a great impetus to ship-building, France had become inextricably entangled in European politics, and the navy ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... truly, and in the storm and tempest of the time irresistibly attractive to men and women whose sympathies were on fire for the Northern cause. King's patriotism won for him a liberal hearing on subjects that otherwise the people ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... law against vicious intromission has been very favourably represented by a great master of jurisprudence[575], whose words have been exhibited with unnecessary pomp, and seem to be considered as irresistibly decisive. The great moment of his authority makes it necessary to examine his position. "Some ages ago, (says he,) before the ferocity of the inhabitants of this part of the island was subdued, the utmost severity of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest, and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an actual belief;—but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the bug being of solid gold, had a remarkable ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... The sixth and seventh principles remain passive and negative, whereas in cases of accidental death the higher and the lower groups actually attract each other. In cases of good and innocent Egos, moreover, the latter gravitates irresistibly toward the sixth and seventh, and thus either slumbers surrounded by happy dreams, or sleeps a dreamless profound sleep until the hour strikes. With a little reflection and an eye to the eternal justice and fitness of things, you will see why. The victim, whether good or bad, is irresponsible ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... and parlourmaid in his own somewhat yellow person, and very well he performed his task, but as he went silently about his business of serving this large party, which he did with a slow precision and apparent utter disregard of his master's orders, he reminded us irresistibly of the soi-disant American definition of "Life," and we began to wonder whether it were not a Chinaman who summed up existence in the words, "After all, Life is only one d——d thing ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... interest in. The small, deformed, pale girl had a pathos in her whole appearance that touched deeply Marion's sympathies. They were in different classes, and, so far, had come little in contact; but now she felt irresistibly drawn to the art studio during the hours when Helen was there, and, standing near, watched her ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... above the fear of man. He lived with the open Bible in his hand; his soul delighted in the deep, broad sublime truths of salvation. The ministers of the Covenant in those days dwelt in the bosom of Jesus Christ, breathed His spirit, saw His glory, pulsated with His love, and were irresistibly carried forward in the discharge of the duties of their high office. They served as the ambassadors of the King of heaven. Only by dishonoring their office, vitiating their conscience, shrivelling their manhood, disowning their Lord, and imperiling their souls, could Christ's ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... band struck up a march, which was very little more than a rhythmic snarling and booming of the drums, with now and then the shrill savage cry of the clarinet stabbing the general dim. Irresistibly the whole line swung ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... it into beneficence, and its opposite into the idea of maleficence. A man is happily or unhappily born; people are irresistibly drawn on by the general torrent that conducts one to glory, the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Dome in the midst, and the towers of the two Houses of Parliament rising up into the smoky canopy, the thinner substance of which obscured a mass of things, and hovered about the objects that were most distinctly visible,—a glorious and sombre picture, dusky, awful, but irresistibly attractive, like a young man's dream of the great world, foretelling at that distance a grandeur never to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... natural right that a man shall quietly enjoy and have the sole disposal of his property," the Americans must enjoy this right equally with Englishmen, and Parliament must be bound to respect this right in the colonies as well as in England; from which it followed irresistibly that the consent of the colonies to any taxation must be sought exclusively in their own assemblies, it being manifestly impossible for that consent to be "constitutionally had ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... feel Viola was quite in the wrong, a tiresome, unreasonable, jealous person; but irresistibly my thoughts modified themselves, sobered by that sudden recollection that I was not bound to her nor she to me. Perhaps I should not have to complain of her tyranny very long. Waves of memory rolled over me against my will, memories of the wonderful passion that existed between us, something ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... despair. My pick nearly slipped from my hands. What was the point of this digging if I was to die smothered and crushed by this water turning to stone, a torture undreamed of by even the wildest savages! I felt like I was lying in the jaws of a fearsome monster, jaws irresistibly closing. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... most effectual mode of suppressing opinions; why should we not burn? If the relation in which government ought to stand to the people be, as Mr. Gladstone tells us, a paternal relation, we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that persecution is justifiable. For the right of propagating opinions by punishment is one which belongs to parents as clearly as the right to give instruction. A boy is compelled to attend family worship: ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... particular; they let themselves be governed by circumstances; they had no choice, I can assure you; at one time Barrow Strait would be closed against one, and the next year it would be open for another; again the ship would be irresistibly driven towards Regent's Inlet. In this way we have at last been able to learn the geography of ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... many a young married woman, making her other fascinations more touching to her husband, and deepening the admiration she excites; and the more so, as it is a collision which cannot exist except among the very innocent. Years, at any rate, will irresistibly remove this peculiar charm, and gradually replace it by the graces of the matronly character. But in Agnes this change had not yet been effected, partly from nature, and partly from the extreme seclusion of her life. Hitherto she still retained the unaffected expression of her ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... joke about the parish," said Boldwood, as if the subject came irresistibly to his tongue, and with a miserable lightness meant to ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... yielding occasional good things in wit or poetry: she was famed among her friends as a punster and parodist, and once answered at a dinner to a question what wine they used, "Oh, we drink Heidsick, but we keep mum." An irresistibly taking and womanly remark of hers, disposing in its own way of whole schemes of Calvinistic theology, was her reply to the argument for endless punishment: "Well, if God ever sends me into such misery, I know He will give me a constitution to bear it." Again, as the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... needles, &c., and was about to shut it in disappointment, when my glance fell on a small box. Small, mysterious-looking boxes always possessed a talismanic attraction in my eyes; and the next moment I was busily at work examining the contents. The round lid lifted, I found my gaze irresistibly fascinated by a child's face, with fair, curling hair, and azure eyes. But the great beauty lay in its expression; that was so calm, holy, and serene, that I felt insensibly better as I gazed upon it. It was a peculiar face; and ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... performances of hers that were equally funny," rejoined Mrs. Delano. "I used to be entertained with a variety of them; especially when we were in Italy. If any of the pifferari went by, she would imitate the drone of their bagpipes in a manner irresistibly comic. And if she saw a peasant-girl dancing, she forthwith went through the performance ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... slim and dark—a graceful, well-bred, brightly intelligent person, with a voice exquisitely sweet and winning in tone. Her ears, hands, and feet were objects to worship; and she had an attraction, irresistibly rare among the women of the present time—the attraction of a perfectly natural smile. Before Cosway had been an hour in the house, she discovered that his long term of service on foreign stations had furnished him with subjects of conversation which favorably contrasted ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... propounded in England. To Addison, further, belong those essays which (most frequently introduced in regular alternation in the papers of Saturday) rise into the region of moral and religious meditation, and tread the elevated ground with a step so graceful as to allure the reader irresistibly to follow; sometimes, as in the "Walk through Westminster Abbey,', enlivening solemn thought by gentle sportiveness; sometimes flowing on with an uninterrupted sedateness of didactic eloquence, and sometimes shrouding sacred truths in the veil of ingenious allegory, as in the "Vision ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the name may suggest will not survive a walk of a few yards up its narrow and noisome recesses. But at the end of the Rue Damiette, behind the vista of old houses, the arches of St. Maclou will tempt you irresistibly towards the end of the road that curves out at the north-west corner of the church, just opposite the famous fountain which has been so mutilated by the Huguenots. At this point turn sharply to the left, down the Rue Martainville ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... is, of course, Lady Castlemaine; Tamaran, Charles II; and the handsome Rajeb with whom the lady deceives the monarch, Jack Churchill. It is a wanton little book, and at the time must have been irresistibly piquant. Beyond the likeness between the characters of Mirtilla and Hattige the novel has, however, little in common with Mrs. Behn's play. Gildon's comment is, of course, founded upon the passage in Oroonoko which says: ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... coat was just as bloody as Goliath's head was." Then Budge turned to me and explained that "all Tod likes Goliath for is 'cause when his head was cut off it was all bloody." And then Toddie—the airy sprite whom his mother described as being irresistibly drawn to whatever was beautiful—Toddie glared upon me as a butcher's apprentice might stare at a doomed ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... them so courteously. To me the conquest of Mexico, Central America, and Peru appears one of the darkest pages in modern history. One virtue indeed shone out—undaunted courage; and the human mind is so constituted that this single redeeming point irresistibly enlists our sympathies. But for this, Pizarro would be execrated as a monster of cruelty, and even the fame of Cortez, immeasurably superior as he was to the rest of the conquerors, would be tarnished with innumerable deeds of violence, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... It seemed, too, that the plain was cultivated. Everywhere appeared extensive patches, each of a single colour, in every tint between deep red and yellowish green, and so distinctly rectangular in form as irresistibly to suggest the idea of artificial, if not human, arrangement. But there were other features of the scene that dispelled all doubt upon this point. Immediately to the south-eastward, and about twenty miles from where I stood, a deep arm of the sea ran up into the land, and ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... flung himself, so dominated by the fiery urge within him that he did not hear Genevieve call to him from Penny's car, which just then swung around the corner and came to a sharp stop on the skirts of the crowd. George shouldered his way irresistibly through this mass; the methods of his football days when he had been famed as a line-plunging back instinctively returned—and, all the fine chivalry forgotten which had given to his initial statement ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... science, and experience which engineers and artillerists can command, and therefore it would seem that instances of defective strength should not arise. Such cases, however, do occur everywhere, and irresistibly give rise to the suspicion that not only is the system of construction of guns of large caliber faulty, but also that the conditions of their manufacture must be considered as defective. Bearing in mind the enormous sums of money expended ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... Livres Dificiles a Trouver.' Not, I hasten to add, for its accuracy or even the amount of information it contains. But there is a charm about these nine old quarto volumes with their handsome type and title-pages in red and black that appeals irresistibly to the collector. He was a true bibliophile, this worthy Lutheran pastor, and his gradations of rarity are delightfully expressive and concise. 'Rare,' 'tres-rare,' 'fort-rare,' he describes his treasures, ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... value, free from disturbing fluctuations, is hardly attainable, and without it an unlimited legal tender for private transactions assigned to both metals would irresistibly tend to drive out of circulation the clearer coinage and disappoint the principal object proposed by the legislation in view. I apprehend, therefore, that the two conditions of a near approach to equality of commercial value ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes
... and the hand, in the human foetus, and the process by which they are gradually formed is regulated by natural laws. But the resulting products are so exquisitely constructed, so admirably adapted to the elements of nature, and so evidently designed for the uses of life, that they irresistibly suggest the idea of wise and benevolent contrivances; and this idea is as strong and clear as it could have been had they been produced instantaneously by the direct act of creative power. And so of the planets and astral ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... bright rose-satin glancing and glittering, and flowing over rug and mat; with her black waving hair clustering and curling like shining floss silk; with a rich white shimmer of pearls on the pale smooth forehead and large beautiful arms. She did look irresistibly bewitching beyond doubt; and it was just as well for Sir Norman's peace of mind that he did not see her, for he was bad enough without that. So she stood thinking tenderly of him for a half-hour or so, quite undisturbed ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... ties of sympathy or lead to acts of repudiation which cross frontiers irrespectively of the indications on the barometer of foreign politics. A man may find his spiritual home in the most unexpected place. He may irresistibly be drawn by the currents of philosophy and art to a foreign country. The customs in his own may drive him to bitter denunciation. No one has said harder things of Germany than Nietzsche. Schopenhauer wished it to be known that ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... stands close to the road and just in the edge of a grassy old apple orchard. It is a low, unpainted building, with generous double doors in front, standing irresistibly open as you go by. Even as a stranger coming here first from the city I felt the call of Baxter's shop. Shall I ever forget! It was a still morning—one of those days of warm sunshine—and perfect quiet in the country—and birds in the ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... stick of dry wood she dealt the reptile a blow, but the stick being decayed and brittle, inflicted little injury on the serpent, and only caused it to turn itself towards Mrs. Jameson, and fix its keen and beautiful, but malignant eyes, steadily upon her. The witchery of the serpent's eyes so irresistibly rooted her to the ground, that for a moment she did not wish to remove ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... were generally worn. The head was slightly declined to one side, the face was smoothly shaven, and the eyes twinkled with kindly humor and shrewdness. There was a chirping, cheery, old-school air in the whole appearance, an undeniable Dutch aspect, which, in the streets of New Amsterdam, irresistibly recalled Diedrich Knickerbocker. The observer might easily have supposed that he saw some later descendant of the renowned Wouter Van Twiller refined into a nineteenth-century gentleman. The occasional start of interest as the figure was recognized by some one in the ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... life. Dulled by a great grief, she did not so very much care what became of her. The future's burden was heavy, and if it were necessary she now put it down, there would still be a sense of relief. As this thought passed like a shadow over her consciousness she felt herself irresistibly attracted to the awful face before her. Her assailant's gaze seemed to have wound itself about her own till she could not disentangle it. She was dimly conscious that she was falling under a spell and summoned ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... temples of Sisera. It was dashed off with remarkable power, and showed a touch or two that were actually lifelike and deathlike, as if Miriam had been standing by when Jael gave the first stroke of her murderous hammer, or as if she herself were Jael, and felt irresistibly impelled to make her bloody confession in ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... embankment, resembling the dykes in Holland, and meant to serve a similar purpose; by means of which the Mississippi is prevented from overflowing its banks, and the entire flat is preserved from inundation. But the attention of a stranger is irresistibly drawn away from every other object, to contemplate the magnificence of this noble river. Pouring along at the prodigious rate of four miles an hour, an immense body of water is spread out before you; measuring a full mile across, and nearly a hundred fathoms in ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... of unlocking, Betty again turned upon her father, her eyes glowing in the dim light of the corridor with wide, sorrowful gaze, large and irresistibly earnest. Bertrand glanced from her to his wife, who slightly nodded her head. Then he said to the surprised jailer: "We will wait here. My daughter may be able to recognize him. Call us quickly, dear, if you have reason ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... our conversation on Wages, you will see this more irresistibly; you yourself will then shrink from affirming the possibility of such an advance as from an obvious absurdity; meantime, here is a short demonstration of it, which I am surprised that Mr. Ricardo did not use as the strongest and most compendious ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... by this time dropped the reins, and was clinging with both arms to Old Prancer's neck; and as he turned his face to the company, and backed gallantly down the street, the sight was too irresistibly ludicrous. Shouts and laughter, and expressions of encouragement to poor cousin Betty, were heard on all sides; till at length a militia officer, taking pity upon her helpless condition, led the unwilling Prancer ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... demonstration about as much attention was paid by the nine couple of buccaneers whom he was now exercising for the first time as might have been expected, and it was brought to abrupt conclusion by the sudden charge of two of them from the rear. Being coupled, they mowed his legs from under him as irresistibly as chain shot and being puppies, and of an imbecile friendliness they remained to lick his face and generally make merry over him as he struggled to ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... also cast those articles upon the pile like extinguishers, and was skipping among the fragments with an agility which contrasted with his stout figure in full evening costume, and his besmirched face, made the sight irresistibly ludicrous. ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... concession. This method of proof is absolutely conclusive if every possible contingency is stated and provided for. Notice that in this section "B" everything that was mentioned in the first section "A" is used, and the whole is one solid mass moving forward irresistibly to the conclusion of the first and the most important ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... that had ever happened in her life. And if she found it amusing that the nonplussed visitor should not have known, beforehand, that we had our luncheon an hour earlier on Saturday, it was still more irresistibly funny that my father himself (fully as she sympathised, from the bottom of her heart, with the rigid chauvinism which prompted him) should never have dreamed that the barbarian could fail to be aware of so simple a matter, and so had replied, with no ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... than Eudoxia. An infinite magic of youth and loveliness, of purity and energy, was shed over her regular features. She had the traits of a Hebe, and the form of a Juno. When she smiled and displayed her dazzlingly white teeth, she was irresistibly charming. When, in a serious mood, she raised her large dark eyes, full of nobleness and spirit, then might people fall at her feet with adoration. Countess Lapuschkin had often been compared and equalled to the Princess Elizabeth, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... believe in Jesus Christ," etc. According to the Seven Points, "God in his election has not looked at the belief and the repentance of the elect," etc. According to the Five Points, all good deeds must be ascribed to God's grace in Christ, but it does not work irresistibly. The language of the Seven Points implies that the elect cannot resist God's eternal and unchangeable design to give them faith and steadfastness, and that they can never wholly and for always lose the true ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... variety of beauty to be found in trees and leaves, in ferns and flowers, has immeasurably expanded. He will have acquired a firmer grasp of plant life as a whole. He will have a truer measure of the beauty in it. And irresistibly, but most willingly, he will have been more closely drawn to ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... Jocko straightened up like a veteran, looked sleepily around, and raising his right paw, saluted in military fashion. The movement pushed the hat back on his head, and gave a swaggering look to the forlorn figure that was irresistibly comical. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... the Palatine and Caelian Hills, it raged, first for six, and then again for three days, among the inflammable material of booths and shops, and driven along by a furious wind, amid feeble and ill-directed efforts to check its course, it burst irresistibly over palaces, temples, and porticoes, and amid the narrow tortuous streets of old Rome, involving in a common destruction the most magnificent works of ancient art, the choicest manuscripts of ancient literature, and the most venerable ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... trial. At first a kind of numbness had descended upon him. He had gone back to his business, his correspondence, his interviews, his daily consultation with the Cardinal, and had conducted all these things efficiently enough. Yet, underneath, the situation arranged itself steadily and irresistibly. It had become impressed upon him that, whether for good or evil, the world was as it was; that Christian civilization had taken the form which he perceived round him, and that to struggle against it was as futile, from a mental ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... down with the apron, while she held it, that I had found one of her soft dimpled hands, and I gave the luckless turkey such a tender pressure that it uttered a miserable squeak and departed this life. Melindy all but cried. I laughed irresistibly. So there were no more turkeys. Peggy began to wonder what they should do for the proper Thanksgiving dinner, and Peter turned restlessly on his sofa, quite convinced that everything was going to rack and ruin because he had a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Milt grinned irresistibly. "Not a friend. But I'm going to make 'em. I'm going to take up engineering, and some French, I ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... and he saw an ocean careening and frothing under a golden moon; a tide sweeping down, curdled with sand, a grim stream of silt, rushing on with the sullen sweep of doom and the wildfire of the prairie, leaping, cavorting, reaching out, turning and shooting, irresistibly borne under the lash of the wind. He saw in the current a live thing freeing itself ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... glimpses. He attracted her immensely through his subtle impersonality underlying all that was seemingly personal. She could not fathom his depth, nor determine his shallowness—she did not even guess which it might be. She was irresistibly drawn to him; yet she was on her guard, as one who, looking down from a great height, in fear of vertigo clings to the parapet over which he leans. The parapet she clung to was her own good American common sense. ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... to the latter can not be overstated. God alone possesses Qualitative Infinity, which is strictly synonymous with absolute perfection; and the neglect of the distinction between this and Quantitative Infinity, leads irresistibly to pantheistic and materialistic notions. Spinozism is possible only by the elevation of 'infinite extension' to the dignity of a divine attribute. Dr. Samuel Clarke's identification of God's immensity with space has been shown by Martin to ultimate in Pantheism. From ratiocinations ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... of the Lord from Nineveh, the metropolis of that country which threatened destruction to Israel. He knew the deep corruption of his own people, and foreboded the issue which the extension of the means of grace to the Gentiles might very easily bring about in the end. But yet, he felt almost irresistibly impelled to carry out the commission of God, and in order to cut himself off from the possibility of following the voice which called him to the east, he resolved to go to the far distant west. The voice, however, followed him even there; but the farther he advanced on his journey, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... little attention and awoke small comment. There was another woman present better calculated to do this. A fair woman, large and of a bountiful presence, accustomed to conquest, and gifted with the power of carrying off her victories with a certain lazy grace irresistibly fascinating to the ordinary man; a gorgeously appareled woman, with a diamond on her breast too vivid for most women, almost too vivid for her. I noticed this diamond early in the evening, and then I noticed her. She was not as fine as the diamond, but she was very ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... voices singing an anthem in her honor, especially composed for the occasion. Her love of fun was greatly excited by this unexpected situation, and she used to relate the anecdote, with details about her unprepared condition which were irresistibly amusing. In a letter home she refers incidentally to the large breakfast party and says: "I could not help wondering if old mother Scotland had put into 'the father of all the tea-kettles' two thousand teaspoonfuls of tea ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... the long pathway of light was a solitary moth winging its fitful way toward the lamp. Now it was in the light and now it dodged out into the darkness. But always it returned a few feet nearer to the waiting scouts. It seemed irresistibly drawn ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump
... schoolroom, in white linen dress or trim serge skirt and tailored waist, was attractive enough to cause Phoebe's heart to flutter with admiration a dozen times a day; but Miss Lee in Sunday morning church attire was so irresistibly sweet that the vision sent the little girl's heart pounding and caused a strange shyness to possess her. The semi-tailored dress of dark blue taffeta, the sheer white collar, the small black hat with its white wings, the ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... wronged, and even suppressed, for by unloosing in the world a most terrible war, in direct contravention of our interests and sentiments, the balance which the Triple Alliance should have helped to assure was destroyed and the problem of Italy's national integrity was virtually and irresistibly revived. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... irresistibly the feelings with which she had read Flint's letter, little dreaming that it was his,—the letter so full of wise and friendly counsel. She remembered how, as she read, she had been filled with a yearning desire to rise to the ideal her unknown counsellor had set before her, and filled too with ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... cried Claud Belleville. "You, to whom from the first instant I have felt so irresistibly drawn. I am unfortunate, indeed. But you cannot be seriously angry. Give me a chance to redeem myself, I implore you, Miss Montfort. See what a charming little cove opens yonder, just opposite. Delightful to drift and dream for an hour, in the company ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... sharp frost, the pattering hail, and the congealed streams, we had the blue sky, the vernal zephyr, and the genial sunshine; the stream murmuring with a broader wave, as if making up for the season spent in the fetters of congelation; and that luxurious flow of the spirits, which irresistibly comes over the heart, at the re-assertion of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... distinct classes of modern dramas—tragedies and comedies. In the former, events crowd irresistibly on to some terrible conclusion, usually resulting in the death of the principal characters. An atmosphere of gloom surrounds it, and the flashes of light serve but to intensify the general darkness. Even when the soul of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... amusement of those to whom they were known. Their amazing and almost indistinguishable resemblance to each other, and the consequent unconscious mutual mimicry of tone and gesture which prevailed between them, while they were a source of frequent perplexity, were also irresistibly provocative of mirth. What wonder that those who saw the little hucksters for the first time should have felt strongly inclined to regard them in a comic light; or that the mere mention of their names should have unfailingly brought a ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... cover in a back-parlour. Pisa and its monuments have, in other words, been industriously vulgarised, but it is astonishing how well they have survived the process. The charm of the place is in fact of a high order and but partially foreshadowed by the famous crookedness of its campanile. I felt it irresistibly and yet almost inexpressibly the other afternoon, as I made my way to the classic corner of the city through the warm drowsy air which nervous people come to inhale as a sedative. I was with an invalid companion who had had no sleep to speak of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... brilliantly illuminated the grotto with an intense white light; five enormous hands could then be seen floating in space, also intensely luminous, but emitting a green lustre; each hand went wandering in search of its prey, ultimately seizing a brother, whom it drew irresistibly forward in the direction of Sophia. Moved by a mysterious influence, two of them grasped her arms, two clutched her by the shoulders, one placed his hand on her head. The serpent again hissed seven significant times, and in place of the solid Sophia ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... conquer this power. The spirit that works in men by nature, is of such activity and efficacy, that it drives men on furiously, as if they were possessed to their own ruin. How much hath it of a man's consent! And so it drives him strongly and irresistibly. Much will, desire, and greediness, will make corruption run like a river, over all its banks set in the way thereof,—counsel, persuasion, law, heaven, hell, yet men's corruption must be over all these. Preaching, threatenings, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Some of the songs, or himines, were religious, and they were especially beautiful, the deep basses of the men mingling with the altos and thin sopranos of the women and forming a combination of sound that irresistibly reminded one of an organ. In fact, "kanaka organ" is the scoffer's description of the himine. On the other hand, some of the chants or ballads were very barbaric, having come down from ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... I, "if 'A,' the wanted man, is among the crowd? One reads that murderers are irresistibly drawn back to the scene ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... almost any fine forenoon from mid-June until August. It steals pungently through the blue sparkle of the morning, fading away toward noon when the moistness is dried out. But when one first issues from the house at breakfast time it is at its highest savor. Irresistibly it suggests worms and a tin can with the lid jaggedly bent back and a pitchfork turning up the earth behind the cow stable. Fishing was first invented when Adam smelt that odor ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... no great distance off. She looks at Derriman with a half-uneasy smile as he clanks hither and thither, and hopes he will not single her out again to hold a private dialogue with—which, however, he does, irresistibly attracted by the white muslin figure. She must, of course, look a little gracious again now, lest his mood should turn from sentimental to quarrelsome—no impossible contingency with the yeoman-soldier, as her quick ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... as long as they lived. What good did my Rose and my Ring do these two women? None on earth. From having all their whims indulged by their husbands, they became capricious, lazy, ill-humoured, absurdly vain, and leered and languished, and fancied themselves irresistibly beautiful, when they were really quite old and hideous, the ridiculous creatures! They used actually to patronise me when I went to pay them a visit—ME, the Fairy Blackstick, who knows all the wisdom of the necromancers, and could have turned them into baboons, ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... into forensic battle, fearless of all consequences; and as the ancient war-chariot would sometimes set its axle on fire by the rapidity of its own movement, so would the ardent soul of Otis become ignited and fulminate with thought, as he swept irresistibly to the goal. ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... her in dull surprise and then braced himself. Sadie had moods, but generally came round if he made love to her. Besides, although she was in one of her rages, her attitude was irresistibly inciting. ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... their origin sometimes in the reality of affection: the love lasts all the while, freshly indignant at every new load heaped upon it; till, at last, a word, a look, a sorrow, a gladness, sets it free; and, forgetting all its claims, it rushes irresistibly towards its ends. Thus was it ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the Crowns, the Lowlands of Scotland came to be more and more closely bound to England, while the Highlands remained unaffected by these changes. The Scottish nobility began to find its true place at the English Court; the Scottish adventurer was irresistibly drawn to London; the Scottish Presbyterian found the English Puritan his brother in the Lord; and the Scottish Episcopalian joined forces with the English Cavalier. The history of the seventeenth century prepared the way for the acceptance of the Celtic ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... achievements in Ruhleben offer any reliable index to his proclivities. He would gather a party of seventy or eighty prisoners round him. Then, producing a five-mark piece, he would offer to raffle it at ten pfennigs—one penny—apiece. The possibility of picking up five shillings for a penny made an irresistibly fascinating appeal. It struck the traditional sporting chord of the British character and a shower of pennies burst forth. The deal was soon completed, and everyone was content with the result. Someone ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... seems all purity, and her temper all softness. I have not, you find, been blind to her merit; on the contrary, I have both admired and pitied her. But far indeed is she removed from all chance of rivalry in my heart! A character such as hers for a while is irresistibly alluring; but when its novelty is over, simplicity uninformed becomes wearisome, and softness without dignity is too indiscriminate to give delight. We sigh for entertainment, when cloyed by mere sweetness; and heavily drags on the load of life when the companion of our social hours ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the bundle and stick from him again, firmly and irresistibly, and they did not speak again till they were out of ear-shot of the lodge. Then Jack began, taking Frank's arm—a custom for which he had often ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... suspiciously at the president's private car, standing alone on the siding directly opposite the commissary. The Nadia was occupied. It was lighted within, and the window shades were drawn down. Ruiz Gregorio could never get far from the lighted car without being irresistibly drawn back to it, and finally he darted back in time to see a man rise up out of the shadow of the nearest box-car, spring to the platform of the Nadia and kick lustily at the locked door. The door ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... districts fled in precipitate flight towards Naples, towards the shore, towards the hill country beyond the Sarno. It was truly a marvellous spectacle to observe the relentless stream of burning lava crushing irresistibly every opposing object in its fatal path. Onlookers at a distance could perceive the walls of houses bulging outward under pressure of the moving mass, until the roof collapsed in an avalanche of tiles upon the ground, whilst with a final crash the whole structure—cottage, farm, church ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... of dealing with my professional duties at this very unripe stage of my career irresistibly remind me of a not very highly educated female painter who had taken it into her head to make an historical picture of Cleopatra. Sending to a friend for a few "references" upon the subject of that imperial gypsy's character and career, she sent them hastily back, saying she ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... never since have I desired to promote revolutionary changes in religion. Such changes, to be good, must be evolutionary, gradual, and in obedience to slowly increasing knowledge: such a change is now evidently going on, irresistibly, and quite as rapidly as ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... with the British army on the march. A scarlet bar stretches across the plain, of which the further end is lost in the white mirage—all in order, walking irresistibly on to the conquest of an empire greater than Haroun Al Raschid's, so naturally done, that as you look, you think you see the columns swing as they advance, and hear the heavy, weary tramp of the troops above the din and shouting of the cloud of camp-followers, on camels ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... still more, and I was glad that I had a school-day at the place. I heard good reading and spelling, saw good writing, and listened with real enjoyment to the fresh young voices raised again and again in song. There was, however, something so curiously exotic that for a moment it seemed irresistibly funny, in "The Old Oaken Bucket," from lips that have difficulty with the vowel sounds of English; from children that never saw a well and never will see one;—and I was irreverent enough to have much the same feeling about "I love thy templed hills," etc., in that patriotic Plymouth Rock song which ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... death so bloody!—One question I would ask you, noble sir. My father's remains——" She paused unable to proceed. "An hour will place them at your disposal, most honoured lady," replied the squire, in the tone of sympathy which the sorrows of so young and so fair an orphan called irresistibly forth. "Such preparations as time admitted were making even when I left the host, to transport what was mortal of the noble Berenger from the field on which we found him amid a monument of slain which his own sword had raised. My kinsman's vow will not allow him to pass your portcullis; but, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... laughed. Peal upon peal, like silver bells, irrepressibly, infectiously, irresistibly, Alicia laughed. She cries with her eyes open and her mouth shut, and she laughs with her eyes shut and her mouth open. The effect is beyond all words enchanting. The doctor paused in his ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... a note of anxiety in Renata's gentle voice. She was always nervous and anxious if she fancied Patricia was worried, struggling to stand between her and the petty annoyances which were supposed to be so irresistibly maddening ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... of her journey, and obtain the reward of her labors. But now the object of her search was once more removed, and a new journey more fatiguing than the others was set before her. Could she bear it?—she who even now felt the old weakness, and something even worse, coming back irresistibly upon her. Could she, indeed, bear another journey? This question she put to herself half hopelessly; but almost immediately her resolute soul asserted itself, and proudly answered it. Bear such a journey? Ay, this journey she could bear, and not only this, but many more. Even though her ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... more sharp salutes or stricter discipline, and these men were in Russia where discipline was a curiosity. A Czech is so anxious to accomplish that he is willing to discipline himself. When a Czech marches, he marches irresistibly. In theory, he may be a Socialist. In action, he ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... off Yarmouth. Whenever duty permitted us, our fiddles were never idle. My performance was not very scientific, certainly; but I learned to play, after some months' scraping, many a merry tune, such as would make the men kick up their heels irresistibly when they heard it. ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... sit down at an adjoining table with my desk, and they might go on with their chat. They did so, and for some time talked of old college days and on indifferent subjects; but my attention was soon irresistibly attracted by finding them getting into conversation in which, on Harrington's account, I felt a deeper interest. I found my employment impossible, and yet, desiring to hear them discuss their theological differences without constraint, I did not venture to interrupt them. At ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... to have been something irresistibly attractive in the character of Pius IX. That illustrious champion of Ireland and of liberty, Daniel O'Connell, resolved, towards the close of his days, to visit Rome and pay the homage of a kindred spirit to the Holy Father. Not only was he anxious to be enriched with the choicest heavenly benedictions, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... forever hid. Thus sometimes it is even when your anxiety becomes transcendental, that the soul first feels herself able to transcend it; that she rises above it, in fiery victory; and borne on new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly, even because so rapidly, so irresistibly. Always must the Wanderer remember, with a certain satisfaction and surprise, how in this case he sat not silent, but struck adroitly into the stream of conversation; which thenceforth, to speak with an apparent ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... clerks and railway porters to locomotive drivers and fitters, are organized in a single union of the entire industry. There is work enough for many years to some of the old Fabian kind in these directions; and this work will irresistibly reunite the disputants instead of perpetuating a quarrel in which, like most of the quarrels which the Society has survived, there was nothing fundamental ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... "is probably altogether different. There is something fine about her—really fine. Our world wouldn't shrivel in her eye; it would probably swell up and fill the universe," I added by an impulse that came from nowhere irresistibly upon me: "that is, if she ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... far older woman than Mrs. Argenter, and had had her cares and troubles; yet she and Sylvie laughed like two girls together, over their work and their stories. That was it,—the work! Sylvie was doing all she could. The cheerfulness of doing followed irresistibly after, into the loops and intervals of time, and kept out the fear ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... lights of knowledge and religion are contending with the gloom of barbarian rudeness. Perhaps there are still two other cases capable of palliation—that of a mind so constituted as to be nothing, if not a mirror of its age, and faithfully and irresistibly reflecting even its vices and pollutions; or that of a mind morbidly in love with the morbidities and the vile passages of human nature. But suppose the case of a writer, sitting under the full blaze of Gospel truth, professedly a believer in the Gospel, and intimately acquainted with ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... are incomprehensible, and there are certain invitations contained in even the coarsest food which appeal very irresistibly to a fasting stomach. Danglars felt his own not to be very well supplied just then, and gradually the man appeared less ugly, the bread less black, and the cheese more fresh, while those dreadful vulgar onions recalled to his mind certain sauces and side-dishes, ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... remarks made were not brilliant nor irresistibly funny, the picture-gallery soon suffered severe losses. So small a thing will make us laugh when we try to look grave. The brigand exploded at a cutting allusion to his dagger; the Quakeress yielded to a profound ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... is apt and forceful makes its use irresistibly tempting. Coarse or profane slang is beside the mark, but "flivver," "taxi," the "movies," "deadly" (meaning dull), "feeling fit," "feeling blue," "grafter," a "fake," "grouch," "hunch" and "right o!" are typical of words that it would make our ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the fall of Sevastopol, to negotiations for peace. Then began a period of radical reforms, recommended by public opinion and carried out by the autocratic power. The rule of Nicholas, which had sacrificed all other interests to that of making Russia an irresistibly strong military power, had been tried by the Crimean War and found wanting. A new system must, therefore, be adopted. All who had any pretensions to enlightenment declared loudly that the country had been exhausted and humiliated by the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... from those who were worthy to receive them; on the other hand he would not tell the uninstructed what they would interpret as a licence to do whatever they pleased, inasmuch as there was no God. What he did was to point so irresistibly in the right direction, that a reader of any intelligence should be in no doubt as to the road he ought to take, and then to contradict himself so flatly as to reassure those who would be shocked by a truth for which they were not yet ready. If I am ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... desirable to do so. The service to astronomy itself would be not inconsiderable of enlisting wider sympathies on its behalf, while to help one single mind towards a fuller understanding of the manifold works which have in all ages irresistibly spoken to man of the glory of God might well be an object ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... sometimes regards it as a proof of the supersensual nature of his passion that he is, willing to marry another woman. The hero of May Sinclair's novel, The Divine Fire, who is irresistibly impelled to propose to a girl, even while he trembles at the sacrilege of her touching a book belonging to his soul's mistress, is only a reductio ad absurdum of a rather popular theory. All narratives of this sort can probably ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... myself are but frail memorials of the mighty men who flourished in the days of the patriarchs: but who, alas! have long since smouldered in that tomb towards which my steps are insensibly and irresistibly hastening. As I pace the darkened chamber, and lose myself in melancholy musings, the shadowy images around me almost seem to steal once more into existence, their countenances to assume the animation of life—their eyes to pursue me in every movement! ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... however, to see her again, and met her near the school, on Wednesday morning with a short note and a little offering which I was irresistibly tempted to make her. She could not speak to me, but kissed her hand with a very speaking and touching ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... week he avoided the shore, but there came a day when its inexplicable lure drew him to it again irresistibly. It was a warm, windy evening and the air was sweet and resinous, the lake misty and blue. There was no sign of life about Four Winds and the shore seemed as lonely and virgin as if human foot had never trodden it. The Captain's yacht was gone from the little harbour ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... recommendation from his father. He is in perplexity as to his behaviour towards such a young lady and Gaston offers to instruct him therein. Ambrosio acts as bride, Gaston shows how she is to be courted and Don Pinto gawkishly imitates his teacher's gestures. This scene is most irresistibly comic. When wine and food are brought by Ines and her servants, Don Pinto so entirely absorbs himself in satisfying his hunger and thirst, that at last the wine gets the better of him. He falls asleep ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... domestic goats, and Franz could not consider them as game. Moreover, other ideas, much more enthralling, occupied his mind. Since, the evening before, he had really been the hero of one of the tales of the "Thousand and One Nights," and he was irresistibly attracted towards the grotto. Then, in spite of the failure of his first search, he began a second, after having told Gaetano to roast one of the two kids. The second visit was a long one, and when he returned the kid was roasted and the repast ready. Franz was sitting on the spot ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... procure for it what it wants, and if not cheeked will develop into the irritable whining adult we are all acquainted with. Habits of disrespect, of indifference to the rights of others, of cruelty, may all be irresistibly formed or dispelled in the first few ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... But I think it might lead me into wild extravagance, or into complete idleness. And I think, I know, that I might be tempted irresistibly to give an audience what it wanted. There's something in me which is ready to rush out to satisfy expectation. I hate ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... To relieve himself from this distressing attention, he took out his pocket-book and busied himself with his pencil; using it alternately for minuting memoranda of the scene before him, or sketching some of its more striking features. These were at this moment irresistibly captivating. The boat was gliding through a sea unrippled by a breeze: the water was exquisitely clear and reflecting the rich orange lights of the decaying sunset: a bold rocky shore was before him—haunted by gulls and sea-mews, flights ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... bait with fine snap tackle, and on Nottingham principles, has prevailed to an increasing extent, but the familiar style of spinning from the weir beams still holds its own. It presents a minimum of toil, and the rushing water helps you so much that it appeals irresistibly to the happy-go-lucky instincts of the fair-weather sportsmen, who are probably, after all, a majority of Thames trout fishers. Our friends are persevering, but they persevere in the wrong way, contenting themselves by fishing the same water from morning to night, instead ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... attention. People smiled almost unwittingly when little Chris Wyndham turned her laughing eyes their way; they were so clear, so blue, so confidingly merry. There was a rare sweetness about her, a spontaneous charm irresistibly winning. She loved everybody without effort, as naturally as she loved life, with an absence of self-consciousness so entire that perhaps it was not surprising that she ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... wonted moodiness; now and then he gives the children a sly look of commiseration, as if the screws of his feelings were unloosing. They-the little property-look so interesting, so innocent, so worthy of being something more than merchandise in a land of liberty, that Mr. Scranton's heart has become irresistibly softened. It gets a few degrees above Mr. Scranton's constitutional scruples. "Painful affair this! What do you think of it, Mr. Scranton?" enquires a member of the profession, touching ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... accumulation and possession; the calamity of fire that destroys the labor of years; the blessedness of peaceful industry; the horrors of revolutionary fanaticism; the benediction of civic concord,—these are the themes that are brought before us in a series of stirring pictures that are irresistibly fascinating. To have felt and expressed so admirably the poetry of every-day life, and that at the very time when the Romanticists were beginning to fill the air with noise about the prosaic dullness of the present time as compared with the Middle Ages, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... "They remind me irresistibly of a pair of plump babies sucking at opposite ends of a stick of sugar candy!" Rosa Tazewell said aside to the hostess, as the latter paused beside her on her way through the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... could be said in praise of her. Shipwrights had never done sounder or better work; but how long could she continue the fight under such conditions? We were drifting into the congested area of the western Weddell Sea, the worst portion of the worst sea in the world, where the pack, forced on irresistibly by wind and current, impinges on the western shore and is driven up in huge corrugated ridges and chaotic fields of pressure. The vital question for us was whether or not the ice would open sufficiently to release us, or at least give us a chance ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton |
