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More "Impregnable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the other Greeks beyond the Isthmus, endeavours to reduce the power of Athens, and to restore independence to the Greek maritime states who were the subject allies of Athens. At the commencement of the war the Peloponnesian armies repeatedly invade and ravage Attica, but Athens herself is impregnable, and her fleets secure her the dominion ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... sealed, but in the wide precincts of the Serapeum no one thought of surrender or of prompt defeat. The basement of the building, on which stood the grandest temple ever erected by the Hellenes, presented a smooth and slightly scarped rampart of impregnable strength to the foe. A sloping way extended up over a handsomely-decorated incline, and from the middle of the grand curve described by this road, two flights of steps led up to the three great doors in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... And long before that time the fugitives would have decided on a plan of defense. What that defense would be, and where it would be made, were matters over which the men considered gravely. Ladd averred the Yaqui would put them into an impregnable position, that at the same time would prove a death-trap for their pursuers. They exhausted every possibility, and then, tired as they were, still kept ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... reasoning of Tazewell pass, and press with all his force some plain views of the case. Some lawyers are successful in the elenchical mode of argument—to use a logical term—that is, in demolishing the structure of their opponents, while they fail in the deictic, that is, in raising on its ruins an impregnable fabric of their own; but it was difficult to decide which process was the most thorough in the reasoning of Tazewell. In putting his arguments before a jury he showed great adroitness. He either knew himself or learned from others the calling of every juryman; and ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... and there the antic sits Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh, which walls about our life, Were brass impregnable; and, humour'd thus, Comes at the last, and with a little pin[1] Bores through his castle wall, and—farewell, King!" [Footnote 1: In Hamlet's famous soliloquy the pin ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... sides to it; they must go deeper, to the radical question of Right and Wrong, or they surrender the chief advantage of their position. What Spinoza says of laws is equally true of party-platforms,—that those are strong which appeal to reason, but those are impregnable which compel the assent both of reason and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... times this sea-girt fortress was almost impregnable. Two ancient cannon lying at its gate show that the conqueror of Agincourt thundered against it in vain. Its weak point was want of water: it had none but the rain-water collected in a great cistern. In these days it could not hold out an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... But at the point where she had hoped to find him vulnerable she now began to fear he was proof against all persuasion. The iron and stone quality that she had early suspected in him had actually cropped out as an impregnable barrier. Nevertheless, if Lassiter remained in Cottonwoods she would never give up her hope and desire to change him. She would change him if she had to sacrifice everything dear to her except hope of heaven. Passionately devoted as she was to her religion, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... field. Among the election occurrences which they regarded as specially providential was the defeat of Tarte in Beauharnois. If he had been elected it might have been necessary for Laurier to do something for him, but now that he had fallen upon the glacis of the impregnable fortress he had elected to assail, who were they to repine over the doings of fate? "The Moor has done his work; the Moor can go!" Moreover, had he not been for long an inveterate Bleu? Had he not actually been the organizer ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... present themselves as the acme of despair. A sensation of relief and lulling repose would be more reasonably expected, especially after so stormy a career as that of Louis. The change from restless and capricious Paris to dewy shades and luxurious halls in the heart of changeless and impregnable England ought, on common principles, to have promoted the content and prolonged the life of the old king. Possibly it did, but if so, the French had not many months' escape from a second Orleans regency, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... name," answered Wilkin Flammock, "and Damian, though a brave youth, hath not his uncle's ascendency of character, and authority. His men also complain that they are harassed with the duty of watching for protection of a castle, in itself impregnable, and sufficiently garrisoned, and that they lose all opportunity of honourable enterprise, as they call it— that is, of fight and spoil—in this inactive and inglorious manner of life. They say that Damian the beardless was a man, but that Damian with the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the staring, manlike visitor there was a glimpse of enormous, crocodile jaws and huge, amethyst eyes. Instantly the head and arms receded, leaving an empty-seeming, lifeless shell. An impregnable fortress of spines, the thing drifted slowly away through ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... dishwashers in less than two weeks' time, with the natural feeling that any change in that department must be for the better, but the present incumbent was even more incompetent than his predecessors. Even Nancy's impregnable nerves began to feel the strain of the continual clamorous assault ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... chance if a ricochet shot struck it. If it did, the very low angle of impact made it fly off without doing any harm. The turret was dented with some centre shots, as I saw when I visited the vessel later, but it was practically impregnable to the ordnance the Confederates used. On the other hand, the direct fire from the ship was limited in its effect to the displacement of earth on the parapet or the knocking away of the cheeks of the embrasures. The body of the garrison was ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... by their terrible reverse, would be more than likely to seek an early revenge, Jack and Carlos were kept very busy during the ensuing fortnight in so far improving the defences of the estate as to render it practically impregnable. The remains of the wrecked stone bridge were removed, and a timber drawbridge was built in its place; entrenchments were dug commanding the approach to it and to the one or two other spots where it was thought that the passage of the river might possibly be forced; a further ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... up her work, and rose to go with a slightly abashed air, though her small brown eyes were still blanks of impregnable defence. "Well, I dunno what I've said to stir you both so," she remarked again. "If I've said anythin' that riled you, I'm sorry, I'm sure. As I said before, folks must do as they are a mind to with their own children. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... individualistic influence of the English Common Law. When the Socialistic autocracy is once completely in power, with its professed policy of taking away human ambition and initiative, its position will be almost impregnable and become more and more secure as the average citizen becomes more and more servile, lazy and unambitious. Socialism is politically decadent and contains within itself the germ of self-destruction. ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... him in baptism." Mr. M., you will confess that this is an impregnable proof-text. You have never been "buried ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... that is slow and hard to make understand. "It isn't my nature. But, if I'm resurrected, I'll seem to be mercenary until I get a full suit of the only armor that's invulnerable in this world. Why, I built my fort like a fool. It was impregnable except for one thing—one obvious thing. It hadn't a supply of water. If I build again it'll be round a spring—an income big enough for my needs and beyond anybody's power to ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... honourable beyond the chance of temptation. But misery has the virtue of Ithuriel's spear, with a difference. As the one touched the beast and transformed him to the seeming of a high intelligence, so will the other touch a seemingly impregnable armour of bright honour, and turn it into tinder, leaving the poor beast revealed and unprotected from his own base natural longings. The poor Bommaney was maddened to think he had not done what the other's thoughts charged him with, even though he ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... parts, which are properly so many Rocks jutting out into the Sea, with large Harbours between them. That called Valetta, in honour of the Grand Master who so gallantly defended the place against the Turks, is extremely well Fortified, and also defended by a Castle, held to be impregnable. The City contains about Two Thousand Houses, well built with white Stone, and Flat-roofed, surrounded by Rails and Balusters. On t'other side of the Harbour is another City, formerly called Il Borgo, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... in the papers that Pickering was to be theirs. It was said on all sides that Nidderdale was doing very well for himself. The absolute money was not perhaps so great as had been at first asked; but then, at that time, Melmotte was not the strong rock, the impregnable tower of commerce, the very navel of the commercial enterprise of the world,—as all men now regarded him. Nidderdale's father, and Nidderdale himself, were, in the present condition of things, content with a very much less stringent bargain than that which ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... negotiated, better terms perhaps were obtained than would otherwise have been the case. The terms granted included the independence of Korea, for centuries a tribute-paying vassal of China, and the cession of the island of Formosa. Japan had occupied the peninsula on which stands the impregnable fortress of Port Arthur, and had captured the latter in a few hours; but she was not to be allowed to keep them. A coalition of European powers, Russia, Germany, and France—England refused to join—decided that it would never do to let Japan possess Port Arthur, and forced her to accept a money ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... field against Cyrus, the future conqueror of Babylon, but was defeated, and obliged to return to his capital, where he shut himself up. Hither he was soon followed and besieged by Cyrus, with a far inferior force; but, at the expiration of fourteen days, the citadel, which had been deemed impregnable, was taken by a stratagem, and Croesus was condemned to the flames. When the sentence was about to be executed, he was heard to invoke the name of Solon, and the curiosity of Cyrus being excited, he asked the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... were they promised in the Treaty of Berlin? Turkey restored to strength, reformed, and, if reformed, made secure for a distant future; Greece contented; Russian influence excluded; and the Balkans fortified as "an impregnable frontier" for Turkey. Very different were the realities. Turkey had been partitioned; Greece had not been satisfied; surrender of Turkish territory to Greece, though it was the one form of surrender ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... of the capacity and efficiency of the chief of the staff of the great army. Such an operation as that of Yorktown, anywhere else, would be considered as the highest disgrace; here, glorifications of strategy. McClellan's bulletins from Yorktown describe the rebel fortifications as being almost impregnable. Of course impregnable! ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... the Belgians laughed at any one taking Antwerp, the impregnable fortress of Western Europe. The Germans laughed, too. But it was the bass, hollow laugh of their great guns placed ten to twenty miles away, and pouring into the city such a hurricane of shell and shrapnel that they forced its evacuation ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... and kept telling her that things were not all right with her; that she ought not to be afraid, yet had good reason for being afraid; that she knew of no essential safety. There must be some refuge, some impregnable hiding-place, for the thing was a necessity, and she ought to know of it! There must be a human condition of never being afraid, of knowing nothing to be afraid of! She wondered whether, if she were quite good, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... simplicity and of insidious craft; he must play the part of watchman, of robber; now prodigal as a spendthrift, and again close-fisted as a miser, the bounty of his munificence must be equalled by the narrowness of his greed; impregnable in defence, a very dare-devil in attack—these and many other qualities must he possess who is to make a good general and minister of war; they must come to him by gift of nature or through science. No doubt it is a grand thing also to be a tactician, since ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... lover, was also her instructor in this philosophy, and the principles he instilled into her mind were such as tended to seduce her. Finding her cold and impregnable on the side of her passions, and firmly attached to her husband and her duty, he attacked her by sophisms, endeavoring to prove that the list of duties she thought so sacred, was but a sort of catechism, fit only for children. ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... it is expedient that age should know of youth. "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a hell of heaven, a heaven of hell." Of all earthly consolations this is the greatest, that the mind is its own place. The mind is an impregnable fortress which can be held against all comers, the mind is a sanctuary open day or night to the pursued, the mind is a flowery pleasance where shade refreshes even in summer droughts. To some trusted friend we try to give the clue of the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... curious round forts, rising out of the sea, are built of granite; that in time of war they are to be united by a line of torpedoes and the wires of electric batteries. They are perfectly impregnable to shot, and they are armed with very heavy guns, so that an enemy attempting to come in on that side would have a very poor ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... legitimate powers, Dr. Manning is in ecstasies. The "very exalted person" becomes "a righteous judge, a learned judge, a Daniel come to judgment—yea, a Daniel." These shouts of joy ought to be enough to show men where the real danger lies. Our present position is impregnable. But if we abandon it for the new one proposed to us by the Rationalist party, how shall we be able to stand? How could a national religious Establishment which should seek to rest its foundations—not on God's Word; on the ancient Creeds; ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... made. The wealth he had acquired by them was devoted to the restoration of the temples and cities of his country, and, above all, to making Babylon one of the wonders of the world. The temples of Merodach and Nebo were rebuilt with lavish magnificence, the city was surrounded with impregnable fortifications, a sumptuous palace was erected for the king, and the bed of the Euphrates was lined with brick and furnished with quays. Gardens were planted on the top of arched terraces, and the ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... is not very easy, indeed, to say what Mr. Foxton positively believes; having, like his German prototypes, a greater facility of telling what he does believe, and of wrapping up what he does believe in a most impregnable mysticism. He certainly rejects, however, all that which, when rejected a century ago, left, in the estimate of every one, an infidel in puris naturalibus. Like his German acquaintances, he accepts the infidel paradoxes—only, like them, he will still ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... not discover, has been proved by our enemies not to be impassable to men, and it would be disgraceful for us after having begun so well to leave our enterprise incomplete, and to give up the place as impregnable after the enemy themselves have shown us how it may be taken. Where it is easy for one man to climb, it cannot be hard for many to climb one by one, as their numbers will give them confidence and mutual ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... Afraid of these warriors, yet wishing to bind them to him by indissoluble ties, Iwo gave Renaud his daughter Clarissa in marriage, and helped him build an impregnable fortress at Montauban. This stronghold was scarcely finished when Charlemagne came up with a great army to besiege it; but at the end of a year of fruitless attempts, the emperor reluctantly withdrew, leaving Montauban still in ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... Secure in the impregnable position of his own learning and in the scholarship of his church; amid a hush of profound awe and admiration, the ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... neither be told nor counted nor conceived. So they laboured at the work three hundred years; and, when they had brought it to end, they went to King Shaddad and acquainted him therewith. Then said he, "Depart and make thereon an impregnable castle, rising and towering high in air, and build around it a thousand pavilions, each upon a thousand columns of chrysolite and ruby and vaulted with gold, that in each pavilion a Wazir may dwell." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... is the place of confidence; the bosom is only for those who have a right to closest intimacy. It is the place of love, near the heart. It is the place of safety, for he is in the clasp of the everlasting arms, and none can snatch him out of the impregnable shelter. It was the darkest night the world ever saw that John lay on the bosom of Jesus. That is the place of comfort for all sorrowing believers, and there is abundance of room for them all on that breast. John leaned on Jesus' breast,—weakness reposed on strength, helplessness ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... very pleasing; there was a certain indefinable charm about the scene as we passed in and out among the thickly-wooded islands, or dived between those strong but almost hidden fortifications of which the Russians are so proud. Once having passed these impregnable mysteries, we found ourselves in more open water, and before us lay the town with its fine Russian church of red brick with rounded dome, the Finnish church of white stone, and several other handsome buildings denoting a place of importance and considerable ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... a man might search the walls of an apparently impregnable fortress for some vulnerable spot. "Ah, I see," he said, after a moment. "You must have believed Madelina to be still alive when Dacre married. What was the ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... believe that you can change what, believe me, is unchangeable. To Wingrave, women are less than playthings. He owes the unhappiness of his life to one, and he would see the whole of her sex suffer without emotion. He is impregnable to sentiment. Ask him and I believe that he ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sweep of all the festering superstitions that fascinate the silly and the sentimental to-day as much as they did three thousand years ago. Mr. Stead is a Puritan, and the Old Testament should be his impregnable rock. Yet Deuteronomy is most definite about "Julia." "There shall not be found with thee ... a consulter with a familiar spirit. For whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto the Lord." His organisation ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... fearlessness of her character, which was made perfect at last by her perfect love. Alone, she had always had courage. Even in her most listless hours she had never been a craven. But now she felt the completeness of a nature clothed in armour that rendered it impregnable. It was a strange thing that man should have the power to put the finishing touch to God's work, that religion should stoop to be a handmaid to faith in a human being, but she did not think it strange. Everything in life seemed to her to be in perfect accord because her heart was ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... grow." And what is it that makes the covenant of God with man thus sure? sure not only in itself, but (as the apostle speaks) to all the seed. Is it not this, because it hath a strong foundation, a double, impregnable foundation? First, His own free grace. Second, The blood of Christ; which is therefore also called, the blood of the covenant. Because of all this, this all, which hath an infinity in it, the Lord God hath made ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... Bay take one farther afield and into more varied scenes. In its upper stretches, three thousand feet above the sea, the Murray River flows through a level country before it plunges into mountain fastnesses, almost impregnable in summer, for a long and troubled detour, to emerge at length into this last valley. To reach this flat upland one must drive through a beautiful mountain pass with great heights towering on either side of the winding roadway. In the upper river the fishing is still unsurpassed. ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... solid might of the giant engines in his ship—but he had seen explosive charges that he knew would split any ship open from end to end bounce harmlessly from the smooth walls of this ship. He had seen it destroy the fleet of magnetic ships that had formed a supposedly impregnable guard around the mightiest city ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... ravaged the Roman Empire of the East almost without opposition. Only the impregnable walls of Constantinople resisted the destruction. A few years later the savage horde appeared upon the Rhine, and in enormous numbers penetrated Gaul. No people had yet understood them, none had even checked their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... fiends Rinaldo strove, Where every silent tree possessed A spirit prisoned in its breast, Which the first stroke of coming strife Would startle into hideous life: So dense, so still, the Austrians stood, A living wall, a human wood! Impregnable their front appears, All horrent with projected spears, Whose polished points before them shine, From flank to flank, one brilliant line, Bright as the breakers' splendors run Along the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... numerous as were their spies, and the English army generally knew as little of it as the French. When the moment arrived for the execution of his project, the English general retired behind these lines, in the face of an overwhelmingly numerous enemy, who gazed with wonder upon the impregnable defences which were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... read and re-read your article on Mill's Essays. I suppose it is this article which has sent the 'Edinburgh' into a second edition. I am rejoiced to think that it is so. The ground which you take is, I feel sure, impregnable; but the force of your whole argument, which is much what I have tried to work out for years past, only makes me lament the more the folly of the line taken by most of the writers who shrink from the materialistic and atheistic philosophy of Mill and Tyndall—for the ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... me to hope the speedy arrival of the express; but he does not come: and I know not why, I experience in my heart oppression and anguish. O, who will tell me what has become of Hildegarde and my children? But what have I to fear? Rothenwald is impregnable, and should all our enemies surround it, is it not under the protection of Our ...
— Theobald, The Iron-Hearted - Love to Enemies • Anonymous
... "That is what makes my position impregnable. I have no personal spite against him. He is bad, that is all. His life ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... observes a pair of Red-Heels, a Patch, or any other Particularity in his Dress, she cannot take too much care of her Person. These are Baits not to be trifled with, Charms that have done a world of Execution, and made their way into Hearts which have been thought impregnable. The Force of a Man with these Qualifications is so well known, that I am credibly informed there are several Female Undertakers about the Change, who upon the Arrival of a likely Man out of a neighbouring Kingdom, will furnish him with proper Dress from Head to Foot, to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... be for Alwa, should he see fit. He has men and horses, and a fort that is impregnable. The Miss-sahib would be safe there ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... therefore, was a training of mind and body to despise pleasure and attain independence. In this way virtue was teachable, and could be so acquired as to become an inseparable possession. The man who had thus attained to wisdom, not of words, but of deeds, was, as it were, in an impregnable fortress that could neither crumble into ruin nor be lost by treachery. And so Antisthenes, being asked what was the most essential point of learning, answered, "To unlearn what is evil." That is to say, to the Cynic conception, men were born with a root of evil in them in the love of pleasure; ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... last night with an account of their being in Edinburgh to the number of five thousand. This sounds great, to have walked through a kingdom, and taken possession of the capital! But this capital is an open town and the castle impregnable, and in our possession. There never was so extraordinary a sort of rebellion! One can't tell what assurances of support they may have from the Jacobites in England, or from the French; but nothing of either sort has yet appeared-and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... of this plan, Duke Mercury, with an army of thirty thousand, whereof nearly ten thousand were French, besieged Stowell-Weisenberg, otherwise called Alba Regalis, a place so strong by art and nature that it was thought impregnable. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of Irish labor, with nothing in them,—they ring like slabs of marble together, in response to the wild appeals of O'Connell, and the British stand conquered before them, with shouldered arms. Ireland is on her feet, with nothing in her hands, impregnable, unassailable, in utter defencelessness,—the first time that ever a nation sprung to its feet unarmed. The veterans of England behold them, and forbear to fire. They see no mark. It will not do to fire upon men; it will do only to fire upon soldiers. They are ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... belonging to Bala Khan, a Pathan who sometimes styles himself as a rajah. He has a body of fierce fighting men; and he lives unmolested for two reasons: looting would not be worth while and his position is isolated and almost impregnable. Now, if I am right, we shall find shelter there, for he was an old friend of my father's and I might call him a friend of mine, since I ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... In contrast with this we shall presently see that the assertion of a future life which is not materially conditioned, though unsupported by any item of experience whatever, may nevertheless be an impregnable assertion. But first I would conclude the foregoing criticism by ruling out altogether the sense in which our authors use the expression "Unseen Universe." Scientific inference, however remote, is connected by such insensible gradations with ordinary perception, that one may well question the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... he was clay or sand after all. But this was permitted that we might learn that our noblest natural qualities as much need to be dealt with by the grace of God as our vices and defects. Many a fortress has been taken from a side which was deemed impregnable. No one expected that Wolfe would assail Quebec from ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... the British two impregnable and secure bases of operations, within reasonable distance of one another, and each in close proximity to points most essential to control. During Nelson's entire command, the three chief centres of interest and of danger were the Straits of Gibraltar, the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... troops. Their ardour was in nowise damped by the incessant rain that fell, and converted the surrounding country into a wide morass, nor by the snow that followed, which gave the Drakenberg Mountains an additionally impregnable aspect and rendered them at once ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... ancient and impregnable theory that all brides are beautiful, was there ever a woman who looked her best in the uniform of approaching servitude? In any case, Ellaphine's best was not good, and she was at her worst in her ill-fitting white gown, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... theories of man as a machine pure and simple which would make him the most complicated of mechanisms, a marvel of intricate parts, but would deprive him of his essence as self-conscious unique in the universe. Man, thinking man, at any rate, dreads to lose the cherished impregnable conviction that he is something apart, inherently, and therefore infinitely different from every other phenomenon in the ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... the question comes up again whole and entire? When by dint of confusions and sophisms such theorists imagine that they have extinguished the intelligence which radiates from nature, that intelligence again confronts them in man, and there, as in an impregnable fortress, sets all attacks at defiance. Mark then where lies the real problem. Whether the eternal God formed the body of the first man directly from the dust of the earth; or whether, in the slow series of ages, He formed the body of the first man of the dust of the earth, by making ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... could never reach it. There are too many to pursue and capture you. If you wish to know, however, it lies up the river that empties into Jad-ben-lul whose waters kiss the walls of A-lur—up the western fork it lies with water upon three sides. Impregnable city of Pal-ul-don—alone of all the cities it has never been entered by a foeman since it was built there while Jad-ben-Otho was ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... night met with no better success. The fact became obvious then that to artillery fire the Mercutians were impregnable. For several days no further military operations were attempted, with the exception of an occasional shell futilely ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... unjust. Palamas may have a clear vision of the tragedy of life. But in the light of this revelation, with his unfettered contemplation, he builds, like Bertram Russell, a "shining citadel in the very centre of the enemy's country, on the very summit of his highest mountain; from its impregnable watch-towers, his camps and arsenals, his columns and forts, are all revealed; within its walls, the free life continues while the legions of Death and Pain and Despair and all the servile captains of tyrant Fate afford the burghers of that dauntless ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... striking mental characteristic of his sermons is the originality of his perceptions of religious truth. He takes up the themes and doctrines of the Church, the discussion of which has filled libraries with books of divinity which stand as an almost impregnable wall around the simple facts and teachings of the Scriptures, protecting them from attack by shutting them from sight, and in a few brief and direct statements cuts into the substance and heart of the subjects. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... mountains is enclosed by a formidable rampart, and surrounded by an immense fosse. And as for our fortified citadel, it is so secured by a precipitous barrier and enclosure of rocks, that, even in that horrible attack and invasion of the Gauls, it remained impregnable and inviolable. Moreover, the site which he selected had also an abundance of fountains, and was healthy, though it was in the midst of a pestilential region; for there are hills which at once create a current of fresh air, and fling an agreeable ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... College after the Revolution was not more cordial and not more adequate than the meagre succors of Colonial legislation. The first Governor of independent Massachusetts, from the height of his impregnable popularity, for more than twelve years defied the repeated attempts of the Corporation, backed by the Overseers, to obtain the balance of his account as former Treasurer of the College, and died its debtor in a sum exceeding a thousand pounds. The debt was finally paid by his heirs, but not without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... gestures of applause and confirmation. Then the voice of the speaker fell, and lost the loud, animated tones of triumph with which he had enumerated their deeds of success and victory. He described the cataract of Glenn's; the impregnable position of its rocky island, with its caverns and its numerous rapids and whirlpools; he named the name of "La Longue Carabine," and paused until the forest beneath them had sent up the last echo of ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... aggressive show of friendship toward the lone Peruvian for the express benefit of the chief. They knew well that by their rescue of the Mayoruna women they had made their own position among these people virtually impregnable, and that their recognition of Jose as a friend probably would be his only bulwark. Wherefore they left no doubt in the minds of the watchers as to where he stood in ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... Ann's dignity was impregnable. She walked on with her head in the air, the desire for ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of the ancient inhabitants, populous, wonderful and impregnable, from the character of its position, situated in this valley (of Chimaltenango), on an elevated and cool site. It lies eight leagues in a straight line from New Guatemala. Around this ancient and dismantled town, ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... fortifications contributed a great deal to their becoming practically impregnable. The Russian engineering troops saw to it that all these works were built as narrow as possible and were dug as deep as the ground permitted. It was this fact which made the German artillery fire so surprisingly ineffective at this point. In spite of its ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... battalions, armed with spears eighteen feet long, the squadrons of Burgundy rode in vain. Their lines were impregnable. Their enemies fell in numbers. In the end the whole Burgundian army, seized with panic, broke and fled, "like smoke before ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... remained on the hilltops, sombered and silent. The awful reality, impregnable and drear, before them had changed their spirit, and they looked into each ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... Impregnable in the old days, before cannon were brought to India, Kuttarpur lives to-day remote, unfriendly, inhospitable. Within its walls there is no room for many visitors; they who come in numbers, therefore, must perforce ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... looking over the records and documents on file in the various archives of state and nation, that they are absolutely beyond question, and it is our object to give these truthfully. These rough and untidy, but impregnable truths, dressed in the sweet persuasive language of the author, and fluted, embossed, embroidered, and embellished by the skilful hand of the artist, ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... same moment, too, came something else that damped my spirits more than any rains, however fierce and heavy, could damp my skin—the sense of my own utter helplessness. There I was—having acted on impulse—at the foot of a mass of grey stone which had once been impregnable, and was still formidable! I neither knew how to get in, nor how to look in, if that had been possible; and I now saw that in coming at all I ought to have come accompanied by a squad of police with authority to search the whole place, from ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to lodge in, but not to live in. Foolish people hate and dread and envy such an association of men of varied powers and influence, because it is lofty, serene, impregnable, and, by the necessity of the case, exclusive. Wise ones are prouder of the title M. S. M. A. than of all their ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... braved hardships, faced dangers, resisted temptations which would have been too powerful for him had it not been for his strong love of Home. A strong love of Home in any man's heart is a triple wall of brass around his moral nature—an impregnable bulwark against the assaults of moral evil. No labor is too great for the strong lovers of Home to accomplish. See them on ocean's billowy bosom; on mountains of ice and snow; on fields of bloody strife; on burning deserts; in trackless ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... he confessed, "to having visited the offices of The Monthly Review with the same object. I left a note for him there, in charge of the editor, inviting him to a conference at my house. I received no reply. His anonymity seems to be impregnable." ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... say up to ten years ago or less, permanent fortification mounting heavy guns was impregnable to direct assault if it were properly held and properly munitioned. It could hold out for months. Its heavy guns had a range superior to any movable guns that could be brought against it—indeed, so very heavily superior that movable guns, even ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... was situated near Pensacola. Lieutenant Slemmer, seeing that an attack was about to be made upon him, transferred his men from Fort McRae, an untenable position, to Fort Pickens, an almost impregnable fortification, which ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... v. Shaw, 309 U.S. 495 (1940). Here it was said that the reasons for sovereign immunity "partake somewhat of dignity and decorum, somewhat of practical administration, somewhat of the political desirability of an impregnable legal citadel where government, as distinct from its functionaries may operate undisturbed by the demands of litigants," ibid. 500-501. The Court went on to hold that when the United States took possession of the assets of Fleet Corporation and assumed its obligations, it did not waive its ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... features.' This policy, founded on our experience of the German defence during the Third Battle of Ypres, was very sound. All the redoubts constructed in the area occupied by the 184th Brigade were so well sited and so strongly wired that the faith seemed justified that they were part of one impregnable system. But against loss of one important factor no amount of industry could serve to insure. 'Strong points' must act in concert and for such mutual action 'on the day' good visibility was essential. As we shall see, ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... destruction of the Temple, one of the prominent figures was Baruch, the faithful attendant (65) of Jeremiah. God commanded him to leave the city one day before the enemy was to enter it, in order that his presence might not render it impregnable. On the following day, he and all other pious men having abandoned Jerusalem, he saw from a distance how the angels descended, set fire to the city walls, and concealed the sacred vessels of the Temple. At first his mourning over ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... conversing upon that important topic. He innocently eavesdrops. The individual who advocates the wearing of gloves is (of course) frivolous, fashionable, and feeble. His companion, who despises such vanities, is poor, though honest,—brawny and impregnable. It is wonderful how stupidly the kid-glove advocate reasons. The honest son of toil overwhelms him in a few moments. When a man talks so splendidly about the hard palm of labor being more useful to the world than the silken fingers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... glimpse of Boabdil's banners; the populace rose, beat back their Christian guards, and opened the gates to the last of their race of kings. The garrison alone, to which the Spaniards retreated, resisted Boabdil's arms; and, defended by, impregnable walls, promised an obstinate and ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book IV. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not prepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn round, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder step by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him impregnable in his little Quebec. I pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this. Father Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and sanctity, that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any mere tricks of the stage. No, thought I, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... taken up and the next day (12th) found us up against infantry again at Fisher's Hill, between Cedar Creek and Strasburg, a position impregnable against direct assault. For three days we remained face to face with Early's infantry, constantly so close as to draw their fire and keep ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... been something very consolatory, very sweet, to the poor girl in her lover's last words. And yet they had almost made her tremble. He had been so bold, and stern, and confident. He had seemed so utterly to defy the impregnable discretion of Mr. Beckard, so to despise the demure propriety of Hetta. But of this she felt sure, when she came to question her heart, that she could never, never, never cease to love him better than all the world beside. She would wait—patiently ...
— The Courtship of Susan Bell • Anthony Trollope
... laboured honestly in the design. Then Berkeley, who carried on the work, despairing of securing all, bethought himself of an expedient: By giving up the material world, which he thought might be spared without loss, and even with advantage, he hoped by an impregnable partition to secure the world of spirits. But, alas! the Treatise of Human Nature wantonly sapped the foundation of this partition and drowned all in one universal ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... rankles in me still, making me fear The man was mad, some word of lonely seas, A desert island and a mutineer And dead Magellan's gallows. Sirs, my life Was hardly safe with him. Why, he resolved To storm the Castle of St. Vincent, sirs, A castle on a cliff, grinning with guns, Well known impregnable! The Spaniards fear Drake; but to see him land below it and bid Surrender, sirs, the strongest fort of Spain Without a blow, they laughed! And straightway he, With all the fury of Satan, turned that cliff To hell ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... singular forms. Some of them might be mistaken for pyramids, they are so regular and well defined; some resembled lofty cones, and others resembled lofty square or pentagonal redoubts. One of the latter description lies upon the eastern bank of the river, and could easily be made an impregnable fortress, which could command all water communication between Egypt and Dongola. The scenes of verdure and cultivation through which we had passed today, removed all suspicions from my mind as to what had been reported to me of the great difference ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English
... Devon battalion, which, as one of the best here, and trusted for its steadiness in all circumstances, was given the most vulnerable point to hold, has busied itself in the formation of works that promise to make Helpmakaar Hill impregnable, though its long, low spur is exposed to artillery fire from Bulwaan and Lombard's Kop and the scrub-screened nek between them. The works there show what can be done under difficulties by a good ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... French flags on several balconies and shops. England's declaration of war against Germany arouses tremendous enthusiasm. The heroic defense made by the Belgians against three German army corps advancing on the almost impregnable fortress of Lige—a second Port Arthur—is a magnificent encouragement for the French. At some of the houses in Paris one now sees occasionally assembled the flags of France, Russia, Great ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... perhaps, another reference to "our age," left her, and next attacked Celeste Fishblate, having long ago discovered Nattie to be impregnable to the process known as "pumping," a fact that had augmented her ever-increasing dislike ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... this is too much," gasped the Chancellor. "The man is impregnable. It is too much, your Majesty. I fought through the war of '70 and '71, but I surrender to this; ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... French people, however, are loth to purchase estates in the country they may be said to inhabit on sufferance, while rich Germans prefer to build palatial villas within the triple fortifications and thirteen newly constructed forts which are supposed to render Strasburg impregnable. ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... only too well known in diplomatic circles that Russia coveted the railroads of Graustark, as a means of throwing troops into a remote and almost impregnable portion of Austria. If the debt were paid promptly, it would be impossible, according to international law, for the great White Bear to take over these roads and at least a portion of the western border of the principality. ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to be what it is, and not what it is, at one and the same time. Thus, although sin exists, we vindicate the character of God, on the ground that it is an inherent impossibility to exclude all evil from a moral universe. This is the high, impregnable ground ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... it was found to be defended by a strong stockade, with a trench inside, from which the crouching natives could fire through loopholes, while outside of the stockade was a deep ditch of water. Feeling their position impregnable, the savages flourished their weapons and uttered tantalizing whoops at the white men. The whoops quickly changed when the cabins within the stockade were set on fire by a rocket. The natives fled, leaving the village to be burned to ashes. The Americans pushed ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... east, makes on all sides (that only excepted which joins it to the city) a frightful and inaccessible precipice. The castle is situated on a high rock, and strongly fortified with a great number of towers, so that it is looked upon as impregnable. In the great church they have a set of bells, which are not rung out as in England, (for that way of ringing is not now known in this country,) but are played on by the hand with keys, like a harpsichord, the person playing having great leather covers for his fists, which enables him ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... potentate unless the townsmen gave their consent thereto.' Now, what would the military engineers of Chatham and Paris and Berlin, who are now at their wits' end, not give for a secret like that! A wall impregnable and insurmountable and not to be sapped or mined from the outside: a wall that could only suffer hurt from the inside! And then that wonderful wall was pierced from within with five magnificently answerable ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... sumptuous Hall, flaunting and gay with banners which chronicled the victories and the power of the Republic—in the impregnable stronghold of the realm, under the astonished gaze of the entire Venetian court and the brilliant throng of the households of nobles and ambassadors who looked down from the circling galleries, expectant and awestruck under the spell ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... cities, and distant from the splendid court, frequented the lonely mountains, and the unambitious fields; nor went but rarely among the throngs of Ilium. Yet, not having a breast either churlish, or impregnable to love, he espies Hesperie, the daughter of Cebrenus,[61] on the banks of her sire, who has been often sought by him throughout all the woods, drying her locks, thrown over her shoulders, in the sun. The Nymph, {thus} seen, takes to flight, just as the frightened hind from ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... entrance through the pane. So violent did its contortions become that I momentarily anticipated the yielding of the glass, and the excited assailant coming crashing through. Considerably to my relief the window proved more impregnable than seemed at one time likely. The stolid resistance proved, in the end, to be too much either for its endurance or its patience. Just as I was looking for some fresh manifestation of fury, it seemed rather to tumble than to spring off the sill; then came, once more, the same sound of ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... badly fortified; the emperor considering Flushing to be quite impregnable. "You say that the bombardment of Flushing makes you apprehensive of its surrender," he wrote on the 22nd August. "You are wrong to have any such fear. Flushing is impregnable so long as there is bread ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... insurrection, and requested to send in the State militia. By evening all the forces of organized society were under arms. The leaders of the Law and Order party were jubilant. Their position appeared to be impregnable. They felt that back of them was all the weight of constituted authority, reaching, if need be, to the Federal Government at Washington. Opposed to them was lawlessness. Lawlessness had occasionally become dignified revolution, to be sure, but only ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... so that the bottoms were generally overflowed, leaving only narrow causeways of dry land between points of debarkation and the high bluffs. These were fortified and defended at all points. The rebel position was impregnable against any force that could be brought against its front. Sherman could not use one-fourth of his force. His efforts to capture the city, or the high ground north ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... and Greek fire; the rapid evolutions of his cavalry completed the dismay and disorder; the Syrian crowds fell back on each other; many thousands were stifled or slaughtered in the entrance of the great street; the Mongols entered with the fugitives; and after a short defence the impregnable citadel of Aleppo was surrendered by cowardice or treachery. Among the suppliants and captives, Timur distinguished the doctors of the law, whom he invited to the dangerous honor of a personal conference. The Mongol ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... box-shaped houses that bulged out as if trying to see what was going on beneath. The massive timbers used in the construction of this fort, the square, compact form, and the small, dark holes cut into the walls, gave the structure a threatening, impregnable aspect. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... Ringdove, and was boarded before we came to anchor in the bay. When the boat from the brig was approaching, it was strange to see the trepidation which seized every one of our crew. Although all, with the exception of myself, were in possession of genuine legal documents that should have served as impregnable barriers against impressment, yet they had witnessed so many facts showing the utter disregard of human or divine laws on the part of the commanders of British ships-of-war when in want of men, that they awaited the result of the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... the usual. One had been blackmailed by an actress after an affair and railroaded her off the Earth. Another had a habit of taking bribes to advance favorite sons in civil and military service. And so on. The Republic could not suffer at their hands; the Republic and the dynasty were impregnable. You simply spied on everybody—including the spies—and ordered summary executions often enough to show that you meant it, and kept the public ignorant: deaf-dumb-blind ignorant. The spy system was simplicity itself; you ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth
... bunch of ostrich feathers, bending its majestic form here and there over the verdant and luxuriant undergrowth, the mahogany tree, the stout lignumvit, the banana, the fragrant and beautiful orange and lemon, and the long, impregnable hedge of the dagger aloe, all go to show us that we are in the sunny clime of ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... the reader of the impregnable strength of the argument already presented in previous chapters, fixing the application of this symbol to these United States. This is an established proposition, and needs no farther support. An exposition of the remainder of the prophecy will therefore consist chiefly of an effort ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... fact, of cheapness and superiority, as upon impregnable ground. Gentlemen may tax their ingenuity, and produce a thousand speculative solutions of the fact, but the fact itself will remain undisturbed. Let us look into some particulars. The total consumption of bar-iron in the United States is supposed to be about 146,000 tons, of which 112,866 ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Mrs. Somers had heard nothing from her husband; but the destruction of the Gosport Navy Yard, and the seizure of several northern vessels in the harbor of Norfolk, left her little to hope for in that direction. Suddenly an impregnable wall seemed to rise up between the North and the South, and she not only feared that Captain Somers had lost all his worldly possessions, but that he would hardly be able to escape himself from the fiery furnace of ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... was selected by the Emperor to drive the English out of Portugal. As he advanced, in the summer of 1810, Wellesley retired before him, and just when the pursuer believed the game was his, he was confronted by the impregnable lines of Torres Vedras, whose position and strength was all unsuspected. All winter Massena hovered about the hole, but the fox was safe in his earth, and in the spring the old hound again turned his face toward Spain, with ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... these detached works were to be all joined together by a paling, intended to enclose the whole settlement; meanwhile, the Martello tower was to be carried on with all possible speed; and it was hoped that this, when completed, would almost supersede the necessity of the rest, and form an impregnable barrier to the efforts of any native force; while the tangled brushwood, and newly-felled trees, were to form a formidable ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... it!" exclaimed Larry. "We're impregnable here. Tina, now the air-power, for help may be on its way. And then call some other city. Can you do that? They must have sent us help ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... that the firm did not have an impregnable fortune to throw into the breach, even though it carried on such a far-reaching business and although its transactions were enormous. And who had even heard of such a crazily hazardous speculation as Tidemand's fatal plunge in rye! Everybody could see that now, and ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... exterior. The wind was laden with a penetrating moisture that chilled him as the dry icy breezes from Huron never had done, and the pain in his lungs made him faint and dizzy. He wondered if his red-cheeked little sister could live in one of those vast, impregnable buildings. He thought of stopping some of those serious-looking men and asking them if they knew her; but he could not muster up the courage. The distressing experience that comes to almost every one some time ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... a city!" Geoffrey said at last. "Standing on this rocky tongue of land jutting out at the entrance to this splendid bay it ought to be impregnable, since it can only be attacked on the side facing that sandy isthmus. What a number of ships are lying up the bay, and what a busy scene it is with the boats passing and repassing! Though they must be two miles away I fancy I can hear the shouts of ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... was that the missionaries in Polynesia preached and prayed, doctored and taught, ten years before they made a single convert. It was not until they bagged the king that a pawn was taken by the whites from the adversaries' stubborn game. The genius of these strugglers against an apparent impregnable seat of wickedness was patience, "the passion of ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... impregnable position of his own learning and in the scholarship of his church; amid a hush of profound awe and admiration, the learned ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... been to my taste. With one I tried it on and failed, and when randy now could not help thinking of the couple in the house. I tried it on with Harriet, but she so snubbed me, that I set her down as an impregnable virgin. Then I turned my eyes to Brown, though it seemed absurd to think of such a fat middle-aged woman; but I one day chanced to see that she had a very fat pair of calves, and I knew she must have a big arse; and as fat legs had an irresistible ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... memory, it is assisted by photographs. The castle of Chinon in this form appears to me as an enormous ruin, a mediaeval fortress of the extent almost of a city. It covers a hill above the Vienne, and after being impregnable in its time is indestructible to-day. (I risk this phrase in the face of the prosaic truth. Chinon, in the days when it was a prize, more than once suffered capture, and at present it is crumbling inch by inch. It is apparent, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... that military garb at Court, the king, seeing him with a case of pistols at his girdle, which he never greatly liked, told him, merrily, "he was now so fortified, that, if he were but well victualled, he would be impregnable."—WILSON'S Life and Reign of James VI., apud KENNET'S History of England, vol. ii. p. 389. In 1612, the tenth year of James's reign, there was a rumour abroad that a shipload of pocket-pistols had been exported from Spain, with a view to a general ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... of Christ is in regard of the great strength thereof: it stood "upon a very high mountain," chap. xl. 2. The material temple also in Jerusalem, as it is described by Josephus, was a very strong and impregnable place. Interpreters think that Cyrus was jealous of the strength of the temple, and for that cause gave order that it should not be built above threescore cubits high, whereas Solomon had built it sixscore cubits high, Ezra vi. 3. The Romans afterwards, when they had subdued Judea, had a ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... crossed over into Sicily. He remained there upward of two years. At first he met with brilliant success, and deprived the Carthaginians of a great part of the island. Subsequently, however, he received a severe repulse in an attempt which he made upon the impregnable town of Lilybaeum. The fickle Greeks now began to form cabals and plots against him. This led to retaliation on his part, and he soon became as anxious to abandon the island as he had been before to leave Italy. Accordingly, when his Italian allies again begged him to come ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... the people of the seaports in my praise of the Norwegians;—I speak of the agricultural population. If that country could be brought to maintain a million more of inhabitants, Norway might defy the world; it would be [Greek: autarhkas] and impregnable; but it is much ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... of the Confederate forces, Early's division was ahead at Hamilton's Crossing, intrenched in an almost impregnable position. On Wednesday, April 29, the rest of Jackson's corps was moved up from below, where Doubleday's and Morrow's demonstrations ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... election campaigner. He was a tall, lean man, with bright penetrating eyes, and a delightful suspicion of an Irish brogue, a man with hands horny from the plough and a brain that belongs only to the rulers of men. He represented a political party that had its stronghold in Glenoro and its impregnable fortress in the Oa; so he took his place upon the platform amid uproarious ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... was gaining importance and impressiveness of tone as he went on; it was a pity that the sound of wheels and of horses' hoofs in the avenue interrupted what would have been one of his best presentations of the subject and have put him into an impregnable position. As it was, he had but to imagine himself there and forget his wife's opinion, which he did not find any difficulty in doing. The wheels were those of Colonel Pepperell's carriage; put together with English thoroughness, it had all the weight and unwieldiness of vehicles of that time. Lady ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... was a master of the feelings and could sway the multitude before him as one man. "His style of argument was by vivid picture, apt comparison, and forcible illustration, rather than by close reasoning like Webster's, or impregnable logic like that of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... fortified their town with care and great labor, as if they intended to act alone on the defensive. It was a favorite spot with the Indians, having long been the scene of those mysterious rites, performed by their Prophet, and by which they had been taught to believe that it was impregnable to the assaults ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... and was in the habit of cruising with the people of the other settlements of Pakoo and Rembas, still they could not hold themselves responsible for their good conduct; and as both held strongly fortified positions (of course supposed by themselves to be impregnable), they did not think that they would abstain altogether from piracy unless we visited and inflicted a similar chastisement to that they themselves had suffered. They also stated that, although they never would again ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... one who appointed the comparatively unknown attorney as counsel. Hayes saw instinctively the immense importance of the case, and knew intuitively that a crisis had come in his career. He set laboriously to work to establish an impregnable ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... and to its faithful ministers the defence of innocence is even more imperative than the conviction of guilt. The law is a Gibraltar, fortified and armed by the consummate wisdom of successive civilizations, as an impregnable refuge for innocence; and here, within its protecting bulwarks, as in the house of a friend, you are called on to plead your defence. You have heard the charges of the prosecution; listened to the testimony of the witnesses; ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... invasion of a band of adventurers from abroad. A word of command from him, and the Spaniards, with all their advantages of firearms and horses, could never have passed the causeway or set foot within that impregnable city of Tenochtitlan—that fatal causeway, as indeed ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... about his school hurt him more than what was said about his church. In regard to his church he was impregnable. Not even the Bishop could touch him,—or even annoy him much. But this "penny-a-liner," as the Doctor indignantly called him, had attacked him in his tenderest point. After declaring that he did not intend to meddle ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... the two Lines; Romer chasing,—till the fire of the Infantry (intolerable to our enemies, and hitting some even of our fugitive friends) repels him. For the notable point in all this was the conduct of the Infantry; and how it stood in these wild vortexes of ruin; impregnable, immovable, as if every man of it were stone; and steadily poured out deluges of fire,—"five Prussian shots for two Austrian:"—such is perfect discipline against imperfect; and the iron ramrod against ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the enemy's reach. So he danced around warily. Macdonald followed him slowly. LeNoir opened with a swift and savage reach for Macdonald's neck, but failed to break the guard and danced out again, Macdonald still pressing on him. Again and again LeNoir rushed, but the guard was impregnable, and steadily Macdonald advanced. That steady, relentless advance began to tell on the Frenchman's nerves. The sweat gathered in big drops on his forehead and ran down his face. He prepared for a supreme effort. Swiftly retreating, he lured Macdonald to a more rapid ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... friends. The exile till then had only thought of pleasure, of wine, women, and song, the "sweet meat which cost him the sour sauce ye have heard," on the approach of danger, had fled on board the ships he had prepared to "certain impregnable isles in the ocean," and if these impregnable islands may be identified with Zipangu or Japan, the conquerors pursued him even here. There is nothing more interesting in Polo's book than his story of the Mongol failure in the Eastern islands, fifteen ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... moving from one hairbreadth escape to another with the calmness of an angel who knows his life is not of earth, and on the fourth day there came the awful battle, the struggle for a position that had been held by the enemy for four years, and that had been declared impregnable from the side of ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... This city was prodigiously rich,(616) and strongly fortified. It was situated, as was also Selinus, on that coast of Sicily which faces Africa. Accordingly, Hannibal opened the campaign with the siege of this city. Imagining that it was impregnable except on one side, he directed his whole force to that quarter. He threw up banks and terraces as high as the walls: and made use, on this occasion, of the rubbish and fragments of the tombs standing round the city, which he had demolished for that purpose. Soon after, the plague infected ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... August 1813, they were at least respectable; and in the partial combats which had taken place over-night, though some had fallen, the rest were stoutly maintained. It was to be determined, that day, how far they were or were not impregnable. ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... the policy of the Government seems to be already settled. The events of the late war admonished us to make our maritime frontier impregnable by a well-digested chain of fortifications, and to give efficient protection to our commerce by augmenting our Navy to a certain extent, which has been steadily pursued, and which it is incumbent upon us to complete as soon as circumstances ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe
... God is for the truth and right, and, if you are standing for the truth and right, the Almighty Power is backing you up, the ground you stand on impregnable, because of that position. You do not expect God to work miracles, you do not expect him to do anything; but simply the sense that you are in his presence, that you are on his side, re- enforces you more than a thousand men could re-enforce ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... nobly ambitious of reputation throughout the earth; she desires to be called good as well as great; to be regarded not only as powerful, but also as beneficent. She is creating an army; she is forging cannon, and preparing to build impregnable ships of war. But all these will fail to satisfy her pride, unless she can cleanse herself from that corruption by which her political democracy has debased itself. A politician should be a man worthy of all honor, in that he loves his country; and not one worthy ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... forward; and long before the German Revolution and the conclusion of the Peace, England was secure in the possession of that permanent organization of home defence which, humanly speaking, has made these shores positively impregnable, by converting Great Britain, the metropolis and centre of the Empire, into a nation in arms. There is no need for me to enlarge now upon the other benefits, the mental, moral, and physical advancement which this legislation has given us. Our doctors ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... reader of the impregnable strength of the argument already presented in previous chapters, fixing the application of this symbol to these United States. This is an established proposition, and needs no farther support. An exposition of the remainder of the prophecy will therefore ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... was level, it was infinitely cheaper to improve. The stakes in the game were staggering. The mere thought of them made his heart leap. The only obstacle, of course, lay in those glaciers, and he began to wonder if they could not be made to open. Why not? No one knew positively that they were impregnable, for no one knew anything certainly about them. Until the contrary had been proven there was at least a possibility that they were less formidable than ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... it for a long time, surrounding it on all sides, and at length took it by composition. For it is said there bred such innumerable quantities of small worms in the waters of the fort, that the people swelled and burst, by which mortality the king was forced to submit and surrender, the place being impregnable by any human force. The 3d we came to Candah, eleven c. a small aldea, the road being stony and very troublesome. The 4th to Magergom, four c. a large aldea, and by a very bad road. The 5th ten c. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... their summits were the hill forts that formed so prominent a feature in the warfare of both Mysore and the Nizam's dominions to the north. These forts were, for the most part, considered absolutely impregnable, but the last war with the British had proved that they were not so, as several of the strongest had been captured, ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... others. That Smith himself lasted so long as the head of the Church, with the powers and perquisites of that position, can be explained by the fact that, either by accident or shrewd design, his position before the unintelligent masses had been made impregnable. If it was not true that Joseph Smith had received the golden plates from an angel and had translated them—again with the assistance of an angel—and had received from heaven the revelations vouchsafed from time to time for the explicit guidance of the ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... it, they perceived that, in many instances, art had only availed itself of the natural advantages of the position, and that the towers and turrets were carved out of the living rock which formed the impregnable bulwarks and escarpments. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... good habits, and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of the ill luck that fools are dreaming of. There is no luck, for all practical purposes, to him who is not striving, and whose senses are not all eagerly attent. What are called accidental discoveries ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... of Arab robbers had possessed themselves of the fastness of a mountain, and waylaid the track of the caravan. The yeomanry of the villages were frightened at their stratagems, and the king's troops alarmed, inasmuch as they had secured an impregnable fortress on the summit of the mountain, and made this stronghold ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... was not until after a long and fierce combat that they were forced to retreat and seek safety within the walls of Sardis. The army of Cyrus invested the city, but it was so strongly fortified on all sides but one as to be impregnable by assault and the side left unprotected by art was supposed to be amply protected by nature, since it abutted on the very edge of a steep precipice. But, after the siege had lasted fourteen days, a Persian sentinel ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... enormous authority is a fine thing; but to have the on-looking world consent to it is a finer. The tower episode solidified my power, and made it impregnable. If any were perchance disposed to be jealous and critical before that, they experienced a change of heart, now. There was not any one in the kingdom who would have considered it good judgment ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... blue coat wi' the bonny gowd buttons upo' 't?' asked Robert, who thought he had discovered a new approach to an impregnable hold, which he would gladly storm ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... slightly. Behind the staring, manlike visitor there was a glimpse of enormous, crocodile jaws and huge, amethyst eyes. Instantly the head and arms receded, leaving an empty-seeming, lifeless shell. An impregnable fortress of spines, the thing drifted slowly away through the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... of the world, this great power, is my home. This temple is in air. I am one of the gods. I live in inaccessible heights. This supremacy, which I looked up to from below, and from whence emanated such rays of glory that I shut my eyes; this ineffaceable peerage; this impregnable fortress of the fortunate, I enter. I am in it. I am of it. Ah, what a decisive turn of the wheel! I was below, I am on high—on high for ever! Behold me a lord! I shall have a scarlet robe. I shall have an earl's coronet on my head. I shall assist at the coronation of kings. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... nature is quite as little in need of improvement as any other. There are the Cretans; they held up their heads. Accordingly they had their fire institutions, and that true institution against bribery and luxury, and all such stuff. They fancied themselves impregnable. Why, bless you! even Marcus Tullius, that was a prosing kind of man and rather peevish about such things, could not keep in the truth. 'Why, Cato, my boy,' says he, 'you talk.' And to hear you, bribery and luxury would not leave one a stick to fight for. Why, now, these ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... given, that we should preach among the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ.' Let us not be driven from our confidence that we have a gospel to preach for all the world; but strong in the faith which rests on impregnable historical grounds, on our own experience of what Christ has done for us, and on nineteen centuries of growing power and unfolding wisdom, let us thankfully welcome all that modern thought may supply for the correction of errors in belief, in organisation, and in life, that may have gathered ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... on the promontory of a peninsula formed by a loop of the river Ampsaga, and was almost impregnable. Modern writers represent it as a square spur, thrust out into a gorge which runs between two mountain-ranges, this gorge being spanned by a bridge at one corner of the square. The town, now known ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... whenever built, the sea almost washed its base: for it is known to have occupied the whole of what is called the Valley of Arques, running as far as Bouteilles. Its position, in reference to the art of war, must have been almost impregnable. Other hypotheses assign its origin to the ninth or tenth century. Whenever built, its history has been fertile in sieges. In 1144, it was commanded by a Flemish Monk, who preferred the spear to the crosier, but who perished by an arrow in the contest. Of its history, up ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... obscure those small checks which are incidental to a war carried out over immense distances against a mobile and enterprising enemy. Cronje had suddenly become aware of the net which was closing round him. To the dark fierce man who had striven so hard to make his line of kopjes impregnable it must have been a bitter thing to abandon his trenches and his rifle pits. But he was crafty as well as tenacious, and he had the Boer horror of being cut off—an hereditary instinct from fathers who ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... hypnotism, telepathy and suggestion, his aim being to organise and direct a crusade against medicine as practised by the faculty. He gathered together materials for a declaration of war against the medicos, attacking them in their, apparently, most impregnable positions, and showing up, often through their own observations, the fatal inanity—in his eyes—of their therapeutics. At the same time he managed to acquire experience of commerce, finance and administration, ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... moments, plenty of hard work in the blazing sun, and the lives of some fine officers and men. The Turks, too, had suffered many casualties. The only tactical result of the operation was that the enemy chose to make the outpost of contention a strong, almost impregnable position, which was captured three months later only by a ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... commanded in front of Paris, and General de Castelnau, who also commanded at the battle of the Marne, and is now chief of staff of General Joffre, has just visited him here. General de Castelnau was sent to "go, look, see." He reports that the position now held by the Allies is impregnable. ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... defence of the Havannah on the west is of the highest importance: so long as the besieged are masters of the town, properly so called, and of the southern part of the bay, the Morro and La Cabana, they are impregnable because they can be provisioned by the Havannah, and the losses of the garrison repaired. I have heard well-informed French engineers observe that an enemy should begin his operations by taking the town, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... that activated a powerful protective energy screen around the ship. It was a device that was carried by all GPP Ships as a means of protection against physical attack. When activated, an energy screen was virtually impregnable, but it could only be used briefly; the power it required placed an enormous drain on a ship's energy resources, and a year's nuclear fuel could be consumed ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... of Ypres, was very sound. All the redoubts constructed in the area occupied by the 184th Brigade were so well sited and so strongly wired that the faith seemed justified that they were part of one impregnable system. But against loss of one important factor no amount of industry could serve to insure. 'Strong points' must act in concert and for such mutual action 'on the day' good visibility was essential. As we shall see, this factor was denied. In rear ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... proceeded the Hunnes of olde time, who afterwarde were called Hungarians. Next vnto it is Bulgaria the greater. Isidore reporteth concerning the people of this nation, that with swift horses they trauersed the impregnable walles and bounds of Alexander, (which, together with the rocks of Caucasus, serued to restraine those barbarous and blood-thirstie people from inuading the regions of the South) insomuch that they had tribute ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... had finally tripped up Donnely. He had thought himself impregnable. Haled into court on charges of misappropriation of public funds, he had just sat and smirked while several witnesses for the State admitted that they had aided Donnely, but they claimed he had "hypnotized" them. Donnely didn't try to interfere with the evidence—that's where he made his ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... pier, and my conclusion was, that the English Ministry were mad when they attempted any thing against Boulogne. The harbour appeared to me impregnable. I must confess, however, that the French appeared to me equally mad, in expecting any thing from their flotilla. Three English frigates would sink the whole force at Boulogne in the open sea. The French seem to know this; ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... than half as many men as their opponents. With caution now much enlarged, Howe sent for reinforcements, and waited two days. The third day it rained, and on the fourth Howe found that Washington had withdrawn to a higher and quite impregnable line of hills, where he held all the passes in the rear and awaited a second attack. Howe contemplated the situation for two or three days longer, and then broke camp and withdrew to Dobbs Ferry to secure Fort Washington, which treachery ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... particular champion. Thus the general effect necessarily was as of men each securely intrenched in his own fastness, and, though they might make sallies for a little engagement in the open, each could retreat to a position of impregnable security, which could be assaulted only by long siege operations ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... but the island of Corregidor lies only seven miles to the south, and the great searchlights at night are quite dazzling when turned directly upon the village. A large amount of money has recently been spent in fortifying Corregidor until it is now considered practically impregnable. ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese
... in faded pink silk, and dirty white muslin, whom he held in cruel captivity by way of gaining her affections; and who wept and wrung her hands and flourished a ragged pocket handkerchief from the top of an impregnable tower, of the size of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... intimately as I knew St. John, I could never glean from him a single secret of a state nature, until, indeed, at a later period, I leagued myself to a portion of his public schemes. Accordingly I found him, at the present moment, perfectly impregnable to my inquiries; and it was not till I knew Montreuil's companion was that celebrated intriguant, the Abbe Gaultier, that I ascertained the exact nature of the priest's business with St. John, and the exact motive of the civilities he had received from Abigail Masham.* Being at last forced, despairingly, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... medicines tried, And every noble remedy applied; With emulation each essay'd His utmost skill, nay more, they pray'd: Never was losing game with better conduct play'd. Death never won a stake with greater toil, Nor e'er was fate so near a foil: But like a fortress on a rock, The impregnable disease their vain attempts did mock; They mined it near, they batter'd from afar With, all the cannon of the medicinal war; No gentle means could be essay'd, 'Twas beyond parley when the siege was laid: The extremest ways they first ordain, Prescribing ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... battle array, and charged over open fields and rising ground toward the two hundred and fifty great guns which had been dragged for weeks through the swamps in the hope of just such an opportunity. The attempt of Lee to carry this impregnable position lost the Confederates as many brave men as all the other six days of unremitting warfare. McClellan held his own till night; Lee withdrew to the neighboring thickets, surprised at the resolute strength of an opponent who had avoided battle at every ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... as before the abettors of heathen or agnostic philosophy, is impregnable: the fatalism is all theirs, the union of sovereign power with infinite love is ours. We have reason as well as they. We realize the facts and mysteries of life as fully as they, but are not embittered ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... heard much about him, and had wondered how he had gained possession of such a girl as Emily Wharton. And now, as she looked about, her wonder was increased. She knew enough of such people as the Whartons and the Fletchers to be aware that as a class they are more impregnable, more closely guarded by their feelings and prejudices against strangers than any other. None keep their daughters to themselves with greater care, or are less willing to see their rules of life changed or abolished. And yet this man, half foreigner half ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... banks of the river Saal, in Merseburg, forming part of Saxony, at the time of which we speak, governed by the aged and excellent Elector Frederick, stood the Castle of Lindburg. It was one of those feudal piles of the Middle Ages, impregnable to the engines of ancient warfare, but which were destined to crumble before the iron shots with which cannon assailed them, as the system they represented was compelled to succumb to the light of that truth which the Gospel was then diffusing over ...
— Count Ulrich of Lindburg - A Tale of the Reformation in Germany • W.H.G. Kingston
... that enchanted grove In which with fiends Rinaldo strove, Where every silent tree possessed A spirit prisoned in its breast, Which the first stroke of coming strife Would startle into hideous life; So dense, so still, the Austrians stood, A living wall, a human wood! Impregnable their front appears, All horrent with projected spears, Whose polished points before them shine, From flank to flank, one brilliant line, Bright as the breakers' splendors run Along ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... also those who occupy a strong city mock the besiegers (and say): What trouble these men are now taking for nothing; our wall is secure, we have food for a very long time, and all other resources. These are the things which make a city strong and impregnable; but nothing else than his opinions makes a man's soul impregnable. For what wall is so strong, or what body is so hard, or what possession is so safe, or what honor (rank, character) so free from assault (as a man's opinions)? All (other) things everywhere are perishable, easily taken by ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus
... was brought face to face with it. Tom went to his death innocently; this man cannot be absolved so easily. In my case, with my knowledge and faith, the conditions are very different, and I oppose an impregnable barrier between myself and the secret being. I am an old priest, and I go knowing the nature of my task. My weapons are such that a good spirit would applaud them and an evil spirit be powerless against them. Do you not see that the Almighty could never permit one of His creatures—for ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... above it, frowning across the busy Medway. Nothing more imposing of its kind than this great Norman Castle remains in England. Having a base of seventy feet square, and consisting of walls twelve feet thick and one hundred and twenty feet high, it still seems what in fact it was, almost impregnable by any arms but those of the modern world. Its great weakness lay always in the matter of provision, but it was perfectly supplied with water, by means of a well sixty feet under ground, in which stood always ten feet of water. From this well a ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... village Nimbalik. The Ghorpade family are an offshoot of the Bhonslas, and obtained their present name from the exploit of one of their ancestors, who scaled a fort in the Konkan, previously deemed impregnable, by passing a cord round the body of a ghorpad or iguana. [214] A noticeable trait of these Maratha houses is the fondness with which they clung to the small estates or villages in the Deccan in which they had originally held the office of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... yonder hills is a walled city, belonging to Bala Khan, a Pathan who sometimes styles himself as a rajah. He has a body of fierce fighting men; and he lives unmolested for two reasons: looting would not be worth while and his position is isolated and almost impregnable. Now, if I am right, we shall find shelter there, for he was an old friend of my father's and I might call him a friend of mine, since I sell ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... it is not to conquer, must not fall like a bomb against another bomb of instantaneous moral explosions, but against the strong walls of an impregnable fortress strongly built up, stone by stone, beginning at that distant day when the foundations were first laid. Persistent work, clarity of ideas, the habit of sifting conflicting motives in the consciousness, ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... So impregnable was her gracious good-humour, so untameable her high spirits, that it was only by remembering the little spitfire of twelve or fourteen years ago that it was credible that she had a temper at all; the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... caucus-rooms of the delegates, day and night, during the 16th and 17th of May. Meanwhile the Seward men were not idle; having the large New York delegation to begin with, and counting the many positive committals from other States, their strength and organization seemed impregnable. The opposing delegations, each still nursing the chances of its own candidate, hesitated to give any positive promises to each other. At midnight of May 17, Horace Greeley,[3] one of Seward's strongest opponents, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... ceilings were high and open, and the walls wide, they were rendered homely by their plain surfaces and the absence of small triflings, conditions that were necessitated because of its identity: an impregnable fortress containing a highly organized and self-sufficient governmental society, each citizen having a particular duty for the common good, and each kept from an unfarcical personal identity by the means of a ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... to collect his thoughts, covered his head with his cloak, and died of suffocation, in the hands of his guard and in sight of the general, before a compromising word had passed his lips. King Eunus was not made of such stern stuff. When Enna, impregnable in its natural strength, had been taken by treachery, he fled with his bodyguard of a thousand men to still more precipitous regions. His companions, knowing that it was impossible to escape their fate (for Rupilius was already moving) fell on each others ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... for vengeance by the faithful allies and retainers of the house, who espoused the cause of the lawful heir, he was compelled to retreat, with a few followers whom he had involved in his crime, to this impregnable tower called the Kaim of Derucleugh, where he defended himself until nearly reduced by famine, when, setting fire to the place, he and the small remaining garrison desperately perished by their own swords, rather than fall into the hands of their exasperated enemies. This tragedy, which, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of this social framework weaken, and ideas which could have had no force before will germinate and develop. Certain theories whose success was enormous at the time of the Revolution would have encountered an impregnable wall ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... judgment might be revoked: "Not me—others—not me—not to-day—years hence." They had paced his private room for hours, trying to get a hold over themselves, devastated with shame and horror at the breakdown of their confident personalities. Some had risen to an impregnable dignity, finer than their lives. One or two ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... the fortress and wandered through its gloomy, impressive galleries, seeing little of the armament because visitors are barred from the real fortifications. The fortress did not seem especially impregnable and was, taken altogether, a distinct disappointment to them; but the ride through the town in the low basket phaetons was wholly delightful. The quaint, narrow streets and stone arches, the beautiful vistas of sea and mountain, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... footsteps which had caused terror to rush over her like a flood, and sent her flying along the street to her one haven. As she ran she had felt a touching faith in the security of her room, if she could reach it. Out there, in the open street, it had seemed impregnable, like a fortress. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Here Vercingetorix was intrenched with eighty thousand troops. It was, like Gergovia, situated on a hill and considered impregnable. Caesar laid siege to this place (52). Vercingetorix appealed to all Gaul for aid. Hardly had the fortress been invested when Caesar's army was surrounded by an immense force of Gauls that had come to the rescue. Caesar needed now ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... of the Incas stood on a lofty eminence, the steep sides of which, on the quarter where the Spaniards approached, were cut into terraces, defended by strong walls of stone and sunburnt brick.31 The place was impregnable on this side. On the opposite, it looked towards the Yucay, and the ground descended by a gradual declivity towards the plain through which rolled its deep but narrow current.32 This was the quarter on which to ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... impelled me to yield myself to the deep sense of exquisite happiness, peace and consolation that swept over my spirit like the touch of a veritable benediction from heaven,—the other which pushed me back against a hard wall of impregnable fact and bade me suspect my dawning joy as though ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... it, and spirit and good feeling enough to organize it, it is a mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to lodge in, but not to live in. Foolish people hate and dread and envy such an association of men of varied powers and influence, because it is lofty, serene, impregnable, and, by the necessity of the case, exclusive. Wise ones are prouder of the title M.S.M.A. than of all their other honors ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... and good luck to you. About a mile farther on you will come to a narrow defile leading to the north, cutting the range. That leads into a broad valley, at the west end of which is the place called the Hole in the Wall. It is practically impregnable. It is entered by a narrow passage which one man could hold against an army. It can be approached at night by riding down the valley, dismounting, and crawling over the mountain until you are above the Hole ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... box in size, it had no less than four doors (two belonged to the closets) and three windows. The closets were utterly useless, being occupied by an indomitable race of rats and mice; they had an impregnable fortress somewhere in the old walls, and kept possession, in spite of the house-keeping artillery Mrs. Moore levelled against them. The poor woman gave up in despair; she locked the doors, and determined to ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... from the portrait beamed out a glad welcome. There are tears in the bachelor's eyes as they meet the blue orbs so fondly fastened upon him, for his thoughts are upon the gentle and confiding embrace that was once his. Woe unto you, Mrs. Kinalden! If there were a single impregnable spot in the good man's bosom, that tear would never have found ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... His own, armed them, equipped them, and furnished them defenses impregnable. Their [10] God will not let them be lost; and if they fall they shall rise again, stronger than before the stumble. The good cannot lose their God, their help in times of trouble. If they mistake the divine command, they will recover it, countermand their order, retrace their steps, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... consequences. We wished to save the honour of the knights—that was all; for no one who has seen Malta can imagine that an island surrounded with such formidable and perfect fortifications would have surrendered in two days to a fleet which was pursued by an enemy. The impregnable fortress of Malta is so secure against a 'coup de main' that General Caffarelli, after examining its fortifications, said to the General-in-Chief, in my presence, "Upon my word, General, it is luck: there is some one in the town to open ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... thou descend, fair daughter of perfection, To hear my vows, and give mankind a queen? Ah! cease, Irene, cease those flowing sorrows, That melt a heart impregnable till now, And turn thy thoughts, henceforth, to love and empire. How will the matchless beauties of Irene, Thus bright in tears, thus amiable in ruin, With all the graceful pride of greatness heighten'd, Amidst the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... promontory above the sea, was Walpi? And if it was, how was she to get up there? The rock rose sheer and steep from the desert floor. The narrow neck of land behind it looked like a slender thread. Her heart sank at thought of trying to storm and enter, single-handed, such an impregnable fortress. And yet, if her friends were there, perhaps they would see her when she drew near and come to show her the way. Strange that they should have gone on and left her with those treacherous Indians! Strange that they should have trusted them so, in the first place! Her own instincts ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... on, until rank after rank had sunk helpless at the impregnable line of defense. They were not killed—at least, not many—but the shock was so paralyzing that those who had experienced its effects made no further attempts to cross the barrier. Many lay for a time helpless ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... and almost impregnable; it is for this very reason also almost unescapable, as he learns to his cost later on. However, he comes to anchor ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... had not noticed it. It was less than half as large as a steamer trunk and had the appearance of being intended as a strong box rather than a traveling receptacle. It was ribbed by four heavy bands of copper, and the corners and edges were reinforced with the same metal. The lock itself seemed to be impregnable to one without a key. Conniston's name was heavily engraved on a copper tablet just ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... along the eastern border of the campus and glanced up at St. George's Hall, it no longer appeared the impregnable fortress of privilege he had once thought it. Yet, in reality, the towers of the college had never looked more formidable. Rising magnificently at the crest of a bleak expanse of snow, the embrasured ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... to wrest from Spain her strongholds on the coast. This was especially the case with the maritime provinces of Chili and Peru. Peru, held firmly by the army garrisoned in Lima, to which Callao served as an almost impregnable port, had been unable to share in the contest waged on the other side of the Andes; and Chili, though strong enough to declare its independence, was too weak to maintain it ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... was to Brest, the chief naval arsenal of France. It combines a dockyard, arsenal, and fortress of the first class. Everything has been done to make the place impregnable. The harbour is situated on the north side of one of the finest havens in the world, and is almost land-locked. Around the harbour run quays of great extent, alongside of which the largest ships can lie—five artificial ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... fathers called him, could not crawl into the crack of a rock to escape from his pursuers. But the venomous population of Rattlesnake Ledge had a Gibraltar for their fortress that might have defied the siege-train dragged to the walls of Sebastopol. In its deep embrasures and its impregnable easemates they reared their families, they met in love or wrath, they twined together in family knots, they hissed defiance in hostile clans, they fed, slept, hibernated, and in due time died in peace. Many a foray had the towns-people made, and ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the task; he had carefully reconnoitred the ground to see all difficulty. Flattery, that almost infallible means in able hands, would certainly miscarry with a woman who for years had known she had no beauty. But a man of strong will finds nothing impregnable; the Lamarques could never have failed to take Capri. Therefore, nothing must be omitted from the memorable scene which was now to take place; all things about it had their own importance,—inflections of the ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... reference to "our age," left her, and next attacked Celeste Fishblate, having long ago discovered Nattie to be impregnable to the process known as "pumping," a fact that had augmented her ever-increasing dislike ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... closed already, so that we could have stood a much more severe siege than from these poor fellows. One or two windows were broken, as well as the glass of the conservatory, and the flower beds were trampled; but finding our fortress impregnable they sneaked away before dark. We fared better than our neighbours, some of whom were seriously frightened, and suffered loss of property. Old Mr. Fordyce had for many years past been an active magistrate— that a clergyman should be on the bench having ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... like the wind, now this way now that, is hurried along like a torrent rolling headlong down a steep mountain, so that no quiet is given to vessels there day or night. But not only did so perilous a station receive his ships, but the town was strong and impregnable, covered on one side by the sea, and very well fortified on the other towards the land, secured by a strong garrison, and above all, by the fidelity of the praefects and principal men, which was wavering ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... afternoon, with strict orders not to return the hail of lead, and not a man in those dusky ranks flinched. Our brigade was instructed to move forward soon after 1 o'clock to assault the series of blockhouses which was regarded as impregnable by the foreign attaches. As the aide dashed down our lines with orders from headquarters the boys realized the prayed-for charge was about to take place and cheered lustily. Such a charge! Will I ever forget that sublime spectacle? There was a river called San Juan, from the hill hard by, ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... "It all started from here," he said, after a long and meditative silence. On the other hill, two hundred yards across a sombre precipice, I saw a line of high blackened stakes, showing here and there ruinously—the remnants of Sherif Ali's impregnable camp. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... happy as a child in beholding her delight, threw himself in an ecstasy on the mound and clasped it in his arms. I can hardly doubt that he regarded it as representing his own grave, to which in his happier moods he certainly looked forward as a place of final and impregnable refuge. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... furious at the non-success of their enterprise, but after reconnoitering the position in every way, the commanders came to the conclusion that it was absolutely impregnable, and that the only plan was to starve out the besieged. It did not appear that there could be any other way of retreat, and a small force could watch the path; as it would be as difficult for the ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... response to it—something that was in league with it, and kept telling her that things were not all right with her; that she ought not to be afraid, yet had good reason for being afraid; that she knew of no essential safety. There must be some refuge, some impregnable hiding-place, for the thing was a necessity, and she ought to know of it! There must be a human condition of never being afraid, of knowing nothing to be afraid of! She wondered whether, if she were quite good, went to church twice every ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... driving the English fleet to seek refuge in its ports because far inferior in numbers. Now, the great aim of Spain was to recover Gibraltar and Jamaica; and to the former end immense efforts both by land and sea were put forth by the allies against that nearly impregnable fortress. They were fruitless. The question suggested—and it is purely one of naval strategy—is this: Would not Gibraltar have been more surely recovered by controlling the English Channel, attacking the British fleet even in its harbors, and threatening England with ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... jagged and sunbaked rock, the only way to ascend the hill is from the south-western side, from the upper portion of which still frown the outworks and bastioned walls which once rendered the fortress impregnable. The road from the town of Junnar is in tolerable repair and leads you across a stream, past the ruined mud walls of an old fortified enclosure, and past the camping-ground of the Twelve Wells, until you reach a group of trees overshadowing the ruined tombs ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... conference was unavailing. The cardinal was soon after removed, under an escort of dragoons, to the fortress of Nantes. From this place he almost miraculously escaped to his own territory of Retz, where he was regarded as sovereign, and where he was surrounded by retainers who, in impregnable castles, would fight to the death for their lord. These scenes took place early in ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Wallenstein followed suit and for eleven weeks the enemies eyed one another from their "lagers," neither willing to risk an attack. In the end Gustav Adolf tried, but even his Finns could not take the impregnable heights the enemy held. At last he went away with colors flying and bands playing, right under the enemy's walls, in the hope of tempting him out. But he ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... himself has recorded his estimate of the results of the first year's campaign. "Germany," he stated in a speech delivered at Lemberg, "is an impregnable fortress. In her forward march she is irresistible. She will prove to the world that she can overcome all her enemies and will dictate to them the peace terms that please herself." And in a discourse pronounced at Beuthen ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... between the piles up to their tops, which were more than five feet out of the earth, and after drove another row of piles looking within side against them, between two or three feet high, which made me conclude it a little impregnable castle against men and beasts. And for my better security I would have no door, but entered in and came out by the help of a ladder, ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... related. A few days afterwards another of the Pirate's fortresses, the island of Bancoote, six miles north of Suwarndrug, surrendered. The Maratha rajah, Ramaji Punt, delighted with these successes against fortified places which had for nearly fifty years been deemed impregnable, offered the English commodore an immense sum of money to proceed against others of Angria's forts; but the monsoon approaching, the commodore was ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... middle of many a lady's heart—red coat, sword, epaulette-belt, cocked hat, feathers, and all. But he was not destined to leap into Emily's. She had enclosed it within too strong a line of circumvallation. After a three months' siege, it was impregnable. So Henry, who really loved his cousin, thinking it folly to endanger his peace and waste his time any longer, called for his horse one morning, shook Emily warmly by the hand, mounted, "and ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Divell," as our fathers called him, could not crawl into the crack of a rock to escape from his pursuers. But the venomous population of Rattlesnake Ledge had a Gibraltar for their fortress that might have defied the siege-train dragged to the walls of Sebastopol. In its deep embrasures and its impregnable easemates they reared their families, they met in love or wrath, they twined together in family knots, they hissed defiance in hostile clans, they fed, slept, hibernated, and in due time died in peace. Many a foray had the towns-people ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... policy impregnated Russia with a strong anti-British feeling, and it was said that her activity in running up earthworks and apparently impregnable fortifications was in anticipation of Disraeli declaring war and ordering the fleet to bombard the Crimean ports; hence, too, in addition to the strong fortifications, torpedo mines were laid for miles ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... of the city at that time, apparently entrenched, with an organization that seemed impregnable. I knew him as a big, bullnecked fellow, taciturn to the point of surliness, owing his influence to his ability to "deliver the goods" in the shape of graft of all sorts, the archenemy of Carton, a type of politician ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... which we get the praise, that we have not regretted them, and are not ashamed at them, and would not rather have said and done differently. For our own inward judgement, testifying the contrary and not admitting the praise, is above passion, and impregnable and proof against the flatterer. But I know not how it is that most people in misfortune cannot bear exhortation, but are captivated more by condolence and sympathy, and when they have done something wrong and acted ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... men, who by this time were out in search of the Indians. Black Hawk, too maddened to think of the difference of numbers, attacked the whites. To his surprise the enemy turned, and fled in a wild riot. Nor did they stop at their camp, which from its position was almost impregnable; they fled in complete panic, sauve qui peut, through their camp, across prairie and rivers and swamps, to Dixon, twelve miles away, where by midnight they began to arrive. The first arrival reported that two thousand savages ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... the almost impossibility of drawing the real truth, and the almost necessary tendency to exaggerate one thing and diminish another. But if the Italian mind, with a head to be chopped off by a despot for a joke, discovered the colourless and impregnable word 'load,' the French gamin, on his own responsibility, hit upon the identical word in French, namely, 'charge'—une charge meaning both a pictorial or verbal goak or caricature, and a load. When did the word ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Nimbhalkar from their ancestral village Nimbalik. The Ghorpade family are an offshoot of the Bhonslas, and obtained their present name from the exploit of one of their ancestors, who scaled a fort in the Konkan, previously deemed impregnable, by passing a cord round the body of a ghorpad or iguana. [214] A noticeable trait of these Maratha houses is the fondness with which they clung to the small estates or villages in the Deccan in which they had originally held the office of a patel or village headman as a watan ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Spanish-American Iron Company, and who is familiar with the topography of the whole region, writes me: "I have always thought that the great mistake of the Santiago campaign was that they assaulted the city at its most impregnable point, instead of taking possession of the heights at Aguadores, which would have been tantamount to the fall of Morro, the possession of the harbor entrance and of the harbor itself. The forces of the Spaniards were not sufficient to maintain any considerable number of men there, and ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... stone walls of El-Kerak at about midafternoon, and rode up to the place through a savage gorge that must have been impregnable in the old days of bows and arrows. It would take a determined army today to force itself through the wadys and winding water-courses that guard that old citadel of Romans ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... baffled and repulsed, retired at the end of twenty-four days. Saint Louis and Philip the Bold, in the thirteenth century, multiplied the defenses of Carcassonne, which was one of the bulwarks of their kingdom on the Spanish quarter; and from this time forth, being regarded as impregnable, the place had nothing to fear. It was not even attacked; and when, in 1355, Edward the Black Prince marched into it, the inhabitants had opened the gates to the conqueror before whom all Languedoc was prostrate. I am not one of those ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... on every side, with no outlet apparent, save to one blessed with wings. Saint Andrew! 'twas an awesome place, yet oddly beautiful, so soft and green below, with those massive walls completely shutting out all the rest of the world, and shadowing the little valley with impregnable grandeur. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... men from this vantage could have rendered either street or barricade untenable, or as support to a barricade in the Place du Pantheon have made such a barricade impregnable to ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... seedling of the true democratic and social Republic, wherein neither caste, color, sex, nor age stands prescribed. It is a moral-suasion temperance society on the teetotal basis. It is a moral-power Anti-slavery society, radical and without compromise. It is a peace society on the only impregnable foundation, that of Christian non-resistance. It is a sound theoretical and practical Woman's Rights Association." Among other Suffragists, Abby Kelly Foster was resident at Hopedale. Another community, at Northampton, was sometimes ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... this strong post forty years after the capital had fallen. It is a single hill, and very high; and the top of it appears like a large mount formed by art, being defended by a double line of fortifications and several towers, which in a rude state of warfare might be pronounced almost impregnable. At the foot of an eminence towards the north there are the remains of a magnificent church as well as of other buildings. On a slope a little farther west there is a cistern connected with a pond, which appears to have had an island in it, and probably some structure suited ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... became apparent to her. Was it a mistake, then? Could not a woman be strong? Was her strength grafted upon elemental weakness—not her individual weakness, but the weakness of her sex, the intended natural weakness of the woman? Had she built her fancied impregnable fortress ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... render it very difficult of access. Having arrived within three gun-shots of Lussan, Cavalier sent Ravanel to demand provisions from the inhabitants; but they, proud of their natural ramparts, and believing their town impregnable, not only refused to comply with the requisition, but fired several shots on the envoy, one of which wounded in the arm a Camisard of the name of La Grandeur, who had accompanied Ravanel. Ravanel withdrew, supporting his wounded comrade, followed by ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and the villagers have come to regard it as quite a natural occurrence. At daylight I am again on the move, and sunrise finds me busy making an outline sketch of the ruins of an ancient castle, that occupies, I should imagine, one of the most impregnable positions in all Asia Minor; a regular Gibraltar. It occupies the summit of a precipitous detached mountain peak, which is accessible only from one point, all the other sides presenting a sheer precipice ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... she wanted an opportunity to heal some wounds, which her late conduct had, she feared, given her reputation; and, as she had a wonderful presence of mind, she conceived the person of the unfortunate beau to be luckily thrown in her way to restore her lady's opinion of her impregnable chastity. At that instant, therefore, when he offered to leap from the bed, she caught fast hold of his shirt, at the same time roaring out, "O thou villain! who hast attacked my chastity, and, I believe, ruined me in my sleep; I will swear a rape against thee, I will prosecute thee with the ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... all means Of Service, Courtship, Presents, that might win her To be at his devotion: but in vain; Her Maiden Fort, impregnable held out, Until he promis'd Marriage; and before These Witnesses a solemn Contract pass'd To take ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... resolved to descend and give battle [Footnote: The traditions concerning the King and the old Earl of Angus on this occasion have been very untenderly handled by Mr. Andrew Lang, Hist. Scot., 1., p. 390.] on the plain, instead of remaining in his almost impregnable position. So on the afternoon of September 9th was fought the bloody and decisive battle of Flodden. Of the two armies, the Scottish was probably the larger; but the English captains had their troops better in hand than the border lords on the Scottish left, or the highland chiefs ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... died on Undine's lips. She found herself grappling with a new social riddle, and such surprises were always stimulating. The name of the untidy-looking young woman she had been about to repel was one of the most eminent in the impregnable quarter beyond the Seine. No one figured more largely in the Parisian chronicle than the Princess Estradina, and no name more impressively headed the list at every marriage, funeral and philanthropic entertainment of the Faubourg Saint Germain than ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... as it disappeared the shielding wall began to give way. It did not cave in abruptly, but softened locally, sagging into a peculiar grouping of valleys and ridges—contesting stubbornly every inch of position lost. And gray Roger knew that the planetoid was doomed. His supposedly impregnable screen was failing in spite of its utmost measure of energy, and, that defense down, the citadel would not last a minute. Therefore he summoned a chosen few of his motley crew of renegade scientists and issued brief instructions. ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... robbery. It was a charitable explanation, and had many flaws, but he clung to it persistently, nurturing it with his hopes and his hunger for her, building it up until it became a structure of logic firmly fixed and impregnable. Women were easily influenced—that had been his experience with them—he was forced to accept it as a trait of the sex. So he absolved her, his hunger for her in no way ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... man of middle height, hard and wiry, with those lines in his face that time neither obliterates nor deepens; the parallels of hunger. He had been through the first Carlist war nearly thirty years earlier. He had starved in Pampeluna, the hungry, the impregnable. ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... was joined en route by about one hundred citizens from the town and surrounding country. At the mouth of the canyon he halted and built a temporary barricade by felling trees across it and up the north wall to a considerable distance, the south wall being deemed impregnable without fortifying. The slope to the right was gradual and cut up with gulches and ravines, some of which extended clear to the top of ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... was unusual, his position as Arbuthnot's superior officer, locally present, was impregnable. He nevertheless kept his temper under provocation, and the dignified restraint of his reply is notable; indeed, the only significant feature of this incident, from the biographical point of view. "No offence ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... to that battle-field—the gate of man's Free-will. Through that portal the powers of darkness must enter if they gained admittance at all. Elsewhere the walls were high as heaven, deeper than hell, for, except at this point, the fortress was impregnable. ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... a mighty king and his great minister of state consulting and planning against one poor girl; and, as angry as I felt toward Mary, I could not help pitying her, and admired, beyond the power of pen to write, the valiant and so far impregnable defense she had put up against an array of strength that would have made a king ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... You cannot change horses when you are crossing a stream. Prince Eugene was in Mantua with a fine army, practically intact, though it had suffered some slight reverses; the fortress was believed to be impregnable; by merely waiting, Eugene might, if nothing else, have exacted favourable terms. But the news of Prina's murder, and the blow dealt at his own authority in Milan, caused him to give over the fortress and the army to the Austrians without more ado; an act which looked like revenge, but it was most ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... exception of the permission, and even after the decision of the Council persisted in retaining the custom. A few priests had attempted resistance, but numberless apostasies and half an insurrection had followed on their action, and now the position had come to be regarded as impregnable. ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... which overhangs Tumbling Run on the south side, a heavy line of earthworks had been constructed when Early retreated to this point in August, and these were now being strengthened so as to make them almost impregnable; in fact, so secure did Early consider himself that, for convenience, his ammunition chests were taken from the caissons and placed behind the breastworks. Wharton, now in command of Breckenridge's division—its ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan
... the tops, making a fence as strong as a wall, for the root which is more then halfe cut in sunder, putting forth new branches which runne and entangle themselves amongst the old stockes, doe so thicken and fortifie the Hedge that it is against the force of beasts impregnable" (ed. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... reach the chief Mandan village. It was in some sense imposing, for the Indian lodges were arranged neatly in streets and squares and the surrounding palisade was strong and well built. Around the fort was a ditch fifteen feet deep and of equal width, which made the village impregnable in Indian warfare. After saluting the village with three volleys of musket fire, La Verendrye marched in with great ceremony, under the French flag, only to discover that the Mandans were not greatly unlike the Assiniboines and other Indians of the ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... panic had seized my men. Before the English had even got near enough to shell our positions to any purpose, the wild flight began. Soon every position was evacuated. There was not even an attempt to hold them, though some of them would have been almost impregnable. It was a flight such as I had never seen before, and shall ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... his Majesty, after receiving the homage of the Venetian authorities, repaired to the arsenal. This is an immense building, fortified so carefully that it was practically impregnable. The appearance of the interior is singular on account of several small islands which it incloses, joined together by bridges. The magazines and numerous buildings of the fortress thus appear to be floating on the surface of the water. The entrance on the land side, by which we were introduced, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... disastrously, issued orders for a general retreat. The Austrians had planned to fall back on the positions which had been prepared in advance in the mountains and to establish themselves, with greatly reduced numbers, on this practically impregnable line, while the transfer of the divisions intended for the Carpathians was effected. But General Cadorna had no intention of letting the Austrians escape so easily. In less than a week he had collected from the garrisons and training ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... earlier times, sure of speedy succor. The teaching of the later days had destroyed the simple fetichism of childhood; and now—afraid of God, by whom she was unforgiven; the saints swept out of her spiritual life like those mist-wreaths of morning which were once taken for solid towers and impregnable fortresses; the Holy Mother vanished with the rest; all spiritual help a myth, all spiritual consolation gone—how could she pray? Lonely as her life had been since mamma died, it had never been so lonely as now, when she felt that God had abandoned her, and that she had sacrificed her lover to her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... of the war, we could have rendered this position impregnable in one night, but at this time we did not do it, and it may be it is well we did not. From about the 1st of April we were conscious that the rebel cavalry in our front was getting bolder and more saucy; ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... who found him guilty without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of clergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud—who would reduce a verdict of 'guilty, death,' by famine, if it were impregnable by composition—all impannelled against poor Archy for presenting them bitter physic the last day of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... by the ordering of society. Her reason had been warped in her youth by an instructor of the devil's stamp;[41] finding her attached to her husband and to her duties, always cold, argumentative, and impregnable on the side of the senses, he attacked her by sophisms, and at last persuaded her that the union of the sexes is in itself a matter of the most perfect indifference, provided only that decorum of appearance be preserved, and the peace of mind ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... great a quantity as may neither be told or imagined. They laboured at the work three hundred years; and when they had wrought it to end, they went to King Sheddad and acquainted him therewith. Then said he, 'Depart and make thereto an impregnable citadel, rising high into the air, and round it a thousand pavilions, each builded on a thousand columns of chrysolite and ruby and vaulted with gold, that in each pavilion may dwell a Vizier.' So they returned and did this in other twenty years; after ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... defenses, vetoed most of his suggestions. The vast sums of money which the Russian central government appropriated for the fortification of Port Arthur, honestly used, would have made the place completely impregnable. It is not too much to say—and this will be borne out by any trained observer and student of the conditions then existing in and around Port Arthur—that sixty per cent. of the money for defense ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... amphitheatre, wherein there was ample room for the formation of a great laager, the wagons being arranged in an irregular ellipse, thoroughly hidden from the veldt outside, while the rocks of the kopje roughly formed a rampart of vast strength, and apparently quite impregnable. ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... unhappily right," Nigel groaned, "yet one perseveres, and after all there is an element of mystery about the whole affair. The French, as you know, have not imitated our blind credulity. Their frontier would seem to be impregnable, and the difficulties of invading England, even from the air, are very much as they were during the last war. It was these considerations which made my uncle persevere in his attempt at secret-service work on the Continent. Everything depends upon our knowing exactly ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... The warehouse—impregnable lair of the Smell, from which it leered smug defiance at the sea-sweet atmosphere of the lower city—occupied a walled-in arch of the Brooklyn Bridge, fronting on Frankfort Street, in that part of Town still known to elder inhabitants ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... again breaks in; but Tristan has already found his refuge in death, and Isolda, obedient to her promise, follows him, and they are joined, safe from the annoyances of the "phantoms of the day," in "the impregnable fortress," the grave. The action, as in the preceding portions of the drama, is of the simplest. On his bed of pain and sorrow Tristan lies wounded and unconscious. Kurvenal has got him away from Mark's court in Cornwall to his ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... to the College after the Revolution was not more cordial and not more adequate than the meagre succors of Colonial legislation. The first Governor of independent Massachusetts, from the height of his impregnable popularity, for more than twelve years defied the repeated attempts of the Corporation, backed by the Overseers, to obtain the balance of his account as former Treasurer of the College, and died its debtor in a sum exceeding a thousand pounds. The debt was finally paid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... works, the "Army of Northern Virginia" fought behind, in this campaign. All the Federal writers who have written about these battles, speak of our works as "formidable earthworks," "powerful fortifications," "impregnable lines;" such works as no troops could be expected to take, and any troops could ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... by composition. For it is said there bred such innumerable quantities of small worms in the waters of the fort, that the people swelled and burst, by which mortality the king was forced to submit and surrender, the place being impregnable by any human force. The 3d we came to Candah, eleven c. a small aldea, the road being stony and very troublesome. The 4th to Magergom, four c. a large aldea, and by a very bad road. The 5th ten c. to Kergom, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... habitual and harrowing experiences that, constant companions of my days and nights as they have been, have acquired all the peculiarities of those chronic and incurable ailments, to which the grave alone can bring release. For, if to the Jews themselves the "Pale," the "norm," etc., were a fatal and impregnable fact, which deformed their entire life, they were also for me, a Russian, something in the nature of a hump on my back, a stationary and ugly growth, arising no one knows when or under what circumstances. Wherever I went and whatever I did, the hump was ...
— The Shield • Various
... burned into Job's mind. How can man, who understands not the visible things of daily recurrence, think to penetrate the meaning of the moral universe, whose ways are hidden, like the caverns of the seas? Not Job, nor any one of those who have spoken, has found the clew to this maze. But Job is impregnable now in his trust in God, as if he were in a fortress whose approaches were guarded by ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... Grand Battery may be called the decisive event of the siege. There seems no doubt that the French could have averted the disaster long enough to make it of little help to the invaders. The water-front of the battery was impregnable. The rear defences consisted of a loopholed wall of masonry, with a ditch ten feet deep and twelve feet wide, and also a covered way and glacis, which General Wolcott describes as unfinished. In this he mistook. ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... young cavalry chieftains moved forward to the night's fray. Bayard was to attack on the main road in front, but not until Kilpatrick had commenced operations on their right flank by a detour through a neglected and narrow wood-path. As the Heights were considered well nigh impregnable, it was necessary to resort to some stratagem, for which Kilpatrick ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... the eastern border of the campus and glanced up at St. George's Hall, it no longer appeared the impregnable fortress of privilege he had once thought it. Yet, in reality, the towers of the college had never looked more formidable. Rising magnificently at the crest of a bleak expanse of snow, the embrasured battlements, silhouetted against the sunset sky, might well have suggested to a beholder grim ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... be setting in, and the infant cause of it here setting up a cry, Susan escaped under pretext of putting Humfrey to bed in the next room, and carried off both the little ones. The conversation then fell upon the voyage, and the captain described the impregnable aspect of the castle of Dumbarton, which was held for Queen Mary by her faithful partisan, Lord Flemyng. On this, Cuthbert Langston asked whether he had heard any tidings of the imprisoned Queen, and he answered that it was reported at Leith ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it the chief general depot of these States. The government appears quite sensible of the policy of rendering this noble station perfectly secure in good season: a series of defences, of first-rate importance, are in a course of erection which, when completed, it is supposed will render the harbour impregnable to any attempt from the sea. To Fort Adams, the rough-work of which is completed, I paid more than one visit; and nothing can ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... of the world, amid a thousand doubts? It seemed to have found, and filled to overflowing, the soul of one amiable little child who had a kind of genius for tranquillity, and on his first coming hither had led Gaston to what he held to be the [43] choicest, pleasantest places, as being impregnable by noise. In his small stock of knowledge, he knew, like all around him, that he was going to die, and took kindly to the thought of a small grave in the little green close, as to a natural sleeping-place, in which he would be at home beforehand. Descending from the tower, Gaston knew he should ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... from Paul's stories of the old Romans, and now he was applying it with gusto to the wild scene lost in the vast green wilderness. But he was sure that the Indians would not return to a headlong charge. The little fortress in stone was practically impregnable to frontal attack and they would resort instead to cunning ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in Nineveh, reorganising his troops, the Assyrian inaugurated a campaign which ended in the subjugation of Northern Syria and its incorporation in the empire. Only one difficulty foiled Tiglath-pileser. He failed to capture the impregnable fortress of Dhuspas, in which Sharduris had taken refuge. This capital of Urartu held out against a long siege, and at length the Assyrian army withdrew. Sharduris remained king as before, but he was utterly spent, and his power had received a blow from which it never ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Brooklyn, swiftest of American cruisers, together with half a dozen more—cruisers, gunboats, yachts, and torpedo-boats—all in war-paint, all ready for instant action, and all flying the banner of stars and stripes. At the wonderful sight Ridge's heart glowed with patriotism and a new courage. How impregnable looked the huge battle-ships!—how terrible! Nothing could withstand them! He felt ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... of the best-preserved specimens of Roman work, rises seemingly from amongst the houses. Pola is full of Roman remains. All is so green and peaceful, in spite of the countless fortifications which render the harbour well-nigh, if not quite, impregnable, that Nature and War seem for once to ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... night, yet some suspicion of these Spanish visits had got abroad. The Dean men were proud of their magnificent sweep of forest-clad hills and dales, and prouder still of the oaks that gave their beloved England her impregnable "wooden walls." They were wild with anger and indignation when the first rumours of King Philip's plot came to their ears. Now they were inclined to treat the daring project with quiet contempt, but Windybank knew that scant mercy ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... Spaniards springing a mine, which killed two lieutenants and about forty men. The Marquis de Salines, the governor, was then summoned, and capitulated. So you see, we made only a day's work of taking a place which the Spaniards thought that they had made impregnable. The professor made a strong point of it that the garrison consisted only of a hundred and fifty men; which certainly accounts for our success, for it is no use having guns and walls, if you haven't got soldiers ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... not, to quote the words of his report, an extremely "defensible theory" that he can not justly deprive the least of those women of any protection of those rights which he claims for himself? No, sir, the natural, or what we call civil right, and its political defense, go together. This was the impregnable logic of the Revolution. Lord Gower sneered in Parliament at the American Colonists a century ago, as Mr. Robert Lowe sneers at the English Reformers to-day: "Let the Americans talk about their natural and divine rights.... I am ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of art all medicines tried, And every noble remedy applied; With emulation each essay'd His utmost skill, nay more, they pray'd: Never was losing game with better conduct play'd. Death never won a stake with greater toil, Nor e'er was fate so near a foil: But like a fortress on a rock, The impregnable disease their vain attempts did mock; They mined it near, they batter'd from afar With, all the cannon of the medicinal war; No gentle means could be essay'd, 'Twas beyond parley when the siege was laid: The extremest ways they first ordain, Prescribing such intolerable pain, As none but Caesar ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of flying. At Haverstraw we were by the river, and even the brick-fields contrived to take on a gorgeous, glittering colour in the afternoon sun. Stony Point, a high rocky promontory just above, is the place where "Mad Anthony Wayne" stormed the fortress thought to be impregnable. The British called it "Little Gibraltar." Jack had been looking out for that and the ruins of the old fort, because daredevil Wayne is quite one of his heroes. The whole peninsula here is a public park, so no wonder everything ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... her first lover, was also her instructor in this philosophy, and the principles he instilled into her mind were such as tended to seduce her. Finding her cold and impregnable on the side of her passions, and firmly attached to her husband and her duty, he attacked her by sophisms, endeavoring to prove that the list of duties she thought so sacred, was but a sort of catechism, fit only for children. That the kind of infidelity she thought so terrible, was, in itself, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... lentils around itself; so the contrary feeling of hatred, when permitted to enter the sanctuary of the heart, assumes at once a tyrannical sway, whose wicked demands of gratification become more and more imperious and exacting day by day, and rears a throne that becomes impregnable in proportion as the sun is allowed to set on its possessions. Even filial love has withered under the shadow of ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... forced to retrace its steps to recover Chattanooga. It was not until November 24 that the South was compelled to release its grip upon that city. Meanwhile in the East, Lee, fallen back to his old lines before Richmond, presented a still impregnable front to Northern advance. No sudden collapse, such as had been expected, followed the Southern defeats at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. Again the contest presented the appearance of a drawn battle. Small ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... in fact, though we venture to question if even the strongest supporters of the special creation hypothesis had not, now and then, an uneasy consciousness that all was not right, their position seemed more impregnable than ever, if not by its own inherent strength, at any rate by the obvious failure of all the attempts which had been made to carry it. On the other hand, however much the few, who thought deeply on the question ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... contempt of the Academy is not denied. From Glasgow to Cornwall, wherever a group of artists collects, there hangs a gathering and a darkening sky of hate. True, the position of the Academy seems to be impregnable; and even if these clouds should break into storm the Academy would be as little affected as the rock of Gibraltar by squall or tempest. The Academy has successfully resisted a Royal Commission, and a crusade led by Mr. Holman Hunt in the columns of the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... both of themselves and their powers, the Normans set themselves to build impregnable military walls, and sublime religious ones, in the best possible practical ways; but they no more made books of their church fronts than of their bastion flanks; and cared, in the religion they accepted, neither for its sentiments nor ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin
... tower Isfendiyar met with as many terrible foes as Rustem had encountered on his way to the White Deev, and as successfully overcame them. Wolves, lions, enchantresses, and dragons barred the way to the impregnable fortress, which rose three farsangs high and forty wide, and was constructed entirely of brass and iron. But Isfendiyar, assuming the guise of a merchant and concealing his warriors in chests, won his way into the castle, gained the favor of its inmates, and made them drunk ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... argument, honest objection with proof of error. In fifty years it never failed to send its representatives to plead our cause before every national political convention, although they went knowing that the prejudice they would meet was impregnable and the response would be ridicule and condemnation. It went to the rescue of every State campaign for half a century with such forces as it could command, even when realizing that there was no hope. In every corner it sowed the seeds of justice ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... motored on to Castrogiovanni, a wonderful old town set, like an eagle's nest, on the very crest of a high hill, and full of relics of Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Saracens, and Normans, who had held its fortress in turns. It looked the real brigand stronghold of old stories, as impregnable as some of our Scottish castles and ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... the town, may, from its lofty position, surmounted by a lighthouse, be discovered at a considerable distance out at sea. Its southern side is completely inaccessible, and art has rendered the other sides equally difficult to ascend; so that it is almost, if not entirely, impregnable. The island is connected to the mainland by a bridge, at the end of which is the fine open place called the Esplanade, extending from the west side of the bay, to the palace of the Lord High Commissioner on the east. Most of the streets ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... River. The capture of West Point by the British would have accomplished for their cause what Burgoyne had failed to achieve—the cutting off of the Northern from the Middle and Southern States, and the establishment of the British in an almost impregnable position on the Hudson. Arnold entered into negotiations with Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander at New York, for the surrender of West Point. For this service Arnold was to be made a brigadier-general in the British ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... drew to a close, the building was far advanced, and the bulwarks were sufficiently high and massive to render the place impregnable. In short, when it wanted but three days to summer the only part that remained to be finished was the gateway. Then sat the gods on their seats of justice and entered into consultation, inquiring of one another who among them could have ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... shall inform them that their property or the country's freedom are endangered, and they will be found a rampart behind which all true patriots, the lovers of order and country, may rally, and which they may hold impregnable against the furious assault of the leveller, or the insidious ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... engaged with other nobles in a conspiracy to dethrone William, the monarch brought his army into Northumbria, besieged and took the fortress at Newcastle, went on to Tynemouth, and then to Bamborough Castle, to which the Earl had escaped. This castle was impregnable, but the Earl was decoyed from it, and after going again to Tynemouth, he was wounded and taken prisoner. But William coveted the Castle of Bamborough, which was still held by the wife of the Earl. He, Mowbray, was taken to an eminence in front of the castle, while the Normans demanded ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... of the ablest officers in the French service, with fifteen thousand choice troops, and every requisite for a vigorous defence. On the other hand, Vendome, at the head of an hundred thousand men, lay in an impregnable camp between Ghent and Bruges, ready to interrupt or raise the siege; and his position there extremely hampered Marlborough in bringing forward the requisite equipage for so great an undertaking, as it interrupted the whole water navigation of the country, by which it could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... possesses any means of saving us, and we are tempted to provide for our own affairs as if nothing more were to be expected from Him. On the contrary, His providence, as He unfolds it, ought to be regarded by us as an impregnable fortress. Let us labor, then, to learn the full import of the expression, that our bodies are in the hands of Him who created them. For this reason He has sometimes delivered His people in a miraculous manner, and beyond all human ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... mental force exerted by others, it is equally true that no one can be adversely affected in this way providing he realizes the "I" within himself, which is the only Real part of him, and which is an impregnable tower of strength against the assaults of others. There is no cause for all of this fear that is being manifested by many Western students of thought-power, who are in constant dread of being "treated" adversely by other people. The man or woman who realizes ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... themselves. The first object with him, therefore, in accordance with his reputation, was to devise some plot, by which not only to destroy the inequality of chances between the party assailing and that defending a post now almost impregnable, but to draw the latter entirely out of their defences. Still, it was deemed but courteous, or prudent at least, to see what could be done in the way of negotiation; and their leader, with a white handkerchief attached to a young sapling, hewn down for the purpose, by way of apology for ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... defend the positions they had won with all the stubbornness possible. In the black recesses of Belleau Wood the Germans had established nest after nest of machine guns. There in the jungle of matted underbrush, of vines, of heavy foliage, they had placed themselves in positions they believed impregnable. And this meant that unless they could be routed, unless they could be thrown back, the breaking of the attack of June 2 would mean nothing. There would come another drive and another. The battle of Chateau-Thierry was therefore not won and ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... felt yourself at home. Rome built with a magic that startled as surely as the glint of her sword. Time and again the nations whom Caesar encountered planned to eliminate his camp. When they reached it the camp had vanished; in its place was a walled, impregnable town. ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... with the crimped fringe drawn down to the eyebrows, resembled that of a Madonna—with her children round her, Lord Newhaven as usual somewhat out of focus in the background; and Hugh, young, handsome, devoted, heartbroken, and ennobled for life by the contemplation of such impregnable virtue. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... addressed his men in a pithy sentence: "I have brought you to the ring, let me see how you can dance." The battle opened with a charge of the English cavalry on the dense ranks of the Scottish infantry, who were armed with long spears which they held so closely together that their line seemed impregnable. The English horsemen found it so. They attempted again and again to break through that "wood of spears," as it has been called, but were every time beaten off with loss. But the Scotch horse failed to support their brave footmen. On the contrary, they fled from the field, through ill-will ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... composed of solid masonry, hewn square, so that each stone fitted exactly, and was further strengthened on the outside by cramps of iron. The walls were never carried above half the height originally proposed. But the whole was so arranged as to form a fortress against assault, too fondly deemed impregnable, and to be adequately manned by the smallest possible number of citizens; so that the main force might, in time of danger, be ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... colestaff. When they had seen the country and considered by the space of forty days they returned and told the commodities of the land, but some said that the people were strong, and many kings and giants, in such wise that they said it was impregnable and that the people were much stronger than they were. Wherefore the people anon were afeard, and murmured against Moses and would return again into Egypt. Then Joshua and Caleb, which were two of them that had considered the land, said to the people: Why ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... monarchy at home, and the development of the various industries of the nation, since in these industries are both power and wealth. Commerce was encouraged, and she girt her island around with those "wooden walls" which have proved England's impregnable defence against every subsequent combination of tyrants and conquerors. The East India Company was formed, and the fisheries of Newfoundland established. It was under Elizabeth's auspices that Frobisher penetrated ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... exchanged the crumbling island of Heligoland for some millions of square miles of undeveloped territory hitherto held by Germany. While Heligoland was being protected by massive concrete walls and armed by huge guns to form a practically impregnable bulwark to the North Sea coast of Germany, England was by peaceful methods developing her new African acquisition. Germany could then afford to wait until the favourable opportunity and by force of arms seize and hold the territory that was once hers and which in the meantime had enormously ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... cults were but mortal men and the writers of every sacred book but scheming priests. You may make it gross to sense that the Creator has never held direct communication with the creature, and you have but stripped religion of its tattered vestments—have not laid the weight of your hand upon the impregnable citadel, the universal Fatherhood of God and Brotherhood of Man. You have never yet talked to the real question. You reject religion because Moses and Mahomet, Luther and Calvin entertained crude ideas of the plans and attributes of the Creator. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... or sand after all. But this was permitted that we might learn that our noblest natural qualities as much need to be dealt with by the grace of God as our vices and defects. Many a fortress has been taken from a side which was deemed impregnable. No one expected that Wolfe would assail Quebec from the ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... it and certain economic laws, subject to many exceptions, which we may consider to be established, but nevertheless it is as far from being an exact science as one can conceive. The exact science notion is the misconception of cloistered learning which can build impregnable systems where there are none to attack them, but which has no idea of the practical difficulties of an unsympathetic world where the precious system must meet every possible objection and not merely those devised by its framers. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... have been made upon the Comick Poets in Fashion, and many Batteries have been rais'd against the Theatre, yet hitherto they have prov'd unsuccessful; the Stage is become Impregnable, where loose Poets, supported by Numbers, Power, and Interest, in Defiance of all Rules of Decency and Vertue, still provide new Snares and Temptations to seduce the People, and corrupt their Manners. Notwithstanding the earnest Cries ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... could not take the fort by means of their cannon was evident; on the sea side it was for them impregnable: their efforts must now be directed to the land. Krantz, after the native chiefs had done speaking, advised that they should wait until dark, and then proceed to the attack in the following way. When the breeze set along shore, which it would do in the evening, he proposed that the men ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... ignobly featured countenance and a small, vague eye must needs be a god of wisdom to persuade his disciples that high nobleness can dwell in a temple so mean and poor. The physical body of the young Marquess of Roxholm was a fortress well-nigh impregnable. 'Tis not well to take liberties with a creature who takes none himself, and can strike a blow which would fell an ox, if need be. Besides this, there was in this young man's look and temper a something ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... regard to which the love of friends corroborates the malice of enemies it is in ascribing to the English an individualism, hard-shelled beyond all human parallel. The Englishman's country is an impregnable island, his house is a castle, his temperament is a suit of armour. The function common to all three is to keep things out, and most admirably has he used them to that end. At first, indeed, he let everybody in; he had a perfect ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... not, at all events as yet, sufficient distinction between the classes to make the struggle for position the life and death affair it is in England. Beyond the landed aristocracy, whose boundaries are impregnable, grade hardly counts. Frau Professor and Frau Candlestickmaker meet at the Weekly Kaffee-Klatsch and exchange scandal on terms of mutual equality. The livery-stable keeper and the doctor hobnob together at their favourite beer hall. The wealthy master ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... it—something that was in league with it, and kept telling her that things were not all right with her; that she ought not to be afraid, yet had good reason for being afraid; that she knew of no essential safety. There must be some refuge, some impregnable hiding-place, for the thing was a necessity, and she ought to know of it! There must be a human condition of never being afraid, of knowing nothing to be afraid of! She wondered whether, if she were quite good, went to church twice every Sunday, and read her bible every morning, she would ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... many of the advocates of each party, but that did not give cogency to their arguments; and I thought on the other hand that the apostolical form of doctrine was essential and imperative, and its grounds of evidence impregnable. Owing to this confidence, it came to pass at that time, that there was a double aspect in my bearing towards others, which it is necessary for me to enlarge upon. My behaviour had a mixture in it both of fierceness and of sport; and on this account, I dare say, it ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Zoar, in western New York, is so surrounded by hills that its discoverers—a religious people, who gave it a name from Scripture said, "This is Zoar; it is impregnable. From her we will never go." And truly, for lack of roads, they found it so hard to get out, having got in, that they did not leave it. Among the early settlers here were people of a family named Wright, whose house became a sort of inn for the infrequent ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... lady of Don Gasper Calderon, the commandant of Payta, who had fled to the town of St Michael, thirty miles from Payta; who, in commiseration of the captives, sent many citrons and other provisions to the Dutch ships. Towards the sea the town of Payta is strongly fortified, and almost impregnable. It is a place of some importance, having two churches, a monastery, and many good buildings; and has an excellent harbour, to which many ships resort from Panama, whence their cargoes are transmitted by land to Lima, to avoid the dangers of the wind and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... visit to the monuments of Burns and Allan Ramsay, and the renowned old Edinburgh Castle. The Castle is now used as a barrack for Infantry. It is accessible only from the High Street, and must have been impregnable before the discovery of gunpowder. In the wars with the English, it was twice taken by stratagem; once in a very daring manner, by climbing up the most inaccessible part of the rock upon which it stands, and where a foe was least expected, and putting the guard to death; and another ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... Percival Ford's answer. "That is what makes my position impregnable. I have no personal spite against him. He is bad, that is all. His life ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... while the British were active in Flanders and by August 23 had broken through the whole Austrian line, capturing the town of Selo, which was the pivot of the Austrian defense, and considered impregnable, and inflicting upon the enemy, in this eleventh battle of the Isonzo, the greatest losses he had sustained since the capture of Goritz. More than 13,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners were captured during the battle, with thirty guns, and all counter-attacks ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... The air was slightly hazy, and the clouds seemed laboring among the distant mountains to raise a storm. As we came opposite the mouth of the Moselle and under the shadow of the mighty fortress, I gazed up with awe at its massive walls. Apart from its magnitude and almost impregnable situation on a perpendicular rock, it is filled with the recollections of history and hallowed by the voice of poetry. The scene went past like a panorama, the bridge of boats opened, the city glided behind us and we entered ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... flight remained him; and that very night he left Urbino hurriedly, taking with him the boy Francesco Maria, and intending at first to seek shelter in his Castle of S. Leo—a fortress that was practically impregnable. But already it was too late. The passes leading thither were by now in the hands of the enemy, as Guidobaldo discovered at dawn. Thereupon, changing his plans, he sent the boy and his few attendants to Bagno, and, himself, disguised ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... from whom I first learned that, in the supreme work of salvation, no human being and no created thing can interpose between the soul and the Creator. Happy is the man whose religious life has been built on the impregnable rock ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... shame upon any forehead but his, that when he was testifying before an investigating committee of Congress, who were inquiring into the cause of his great and shameful failure to take the fort, and just after he had testified that Fort Fisher was impregnable and that it was impossible for any Union force to take it, a dispatch was received in the Committee ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... faithful ministers the defence of innocence is even more imperative than the conviction of guilt. The law is a Gibraltar, fortified and armed by the consummate wisdom of successive civilizations, as an impregnable refuge for innocence; and here, within its protecting bulwarks, as in the house of a friend, you are called on to plead your defence. You have heard the charges of the prosecution; listened to the testimony of the witnesses; and having taken your cause into your own hands, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... of valour and patience in humanity which makes real and redeems the revelation of its secret vileness in The Ring and the Book. It almost looks at first sight as if Browning had for a moment surrendered the whole of his impregnable philosophical position and admitted the strange heresy that a human story can be sordid. But this view of the poem is, of course, a mistake. It was written in something which, for want of a more exact word, we must call one of the bitter ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... such universal service will come a new unity of spirit and purpose, a new confidence and consecration, which would make our defense impregnable, our triumph assured. Then we should have little or no disorganization of our economic, industrial, and commercial systems at home, no staggering war debts, no swollen fortunes to flout the sacrifices of our soldiers, no excuse for sedition, no pitiable slackerism, no outrage of treason. Envy ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... on the frontiers, to throw in provisions for ten weeks into that fort, and warn the commanding officer of his danger. At the same time a messenger was sent to Attakullakulla desiring him to inform the Cherokees that Fort George was impregnable, having vast quantities of powder buried under ground every where around it, to blow up all enemies that should attempt to come near it. Presents of considerable value were sent to redeem the prisoners at Fort Loudon, a few of whom had by this time made ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... have no sense of the fact that my position was impregnable, but dashed blindly at me. The crevice in which I stood and which was the only way through to the ledge where Harry had taken Desiree, was not more than two feet wide. With unarmed savages for foes, one man could have held it ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... in me still, making me fear The man was mad, some word of lonely seas, A desert island and a mutineer And dead Magellan's gallows. Sirs, my life Was hardly safe with him. Why, he resolved To storm the Castle of St. Vincent, sirs, A castle on a cliff, grinning with guns, Well known impregnable! The Spaniards fear Drake; but to see him land below it and bid Surrender, sirs, the strongest fort of Spain Without a blow, they laughed! And straightway he, With all the fury of Satan, turned that cliff To hell itself. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... has, he has perfect, for he reads it so long to understand it, till he gets it without book. He may with much industry make a breach into logic, and arrive at some ability in an argument; but for politer studies he dare not skirmish with them, and for poetry accounts it impregnable. His invention is no more than the finding out of his papers, and his few gleanings there; and his disposition of them is as just as the book-binder's, a setting or gluing of them together. He is ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... have said that he was a usually taciturn man, glad to unlock himself to audience sympathetic and intelligent, when such offered itself. His face bore marks of much, not always peaceful, meditation; the look of it not bland or benevolent so much as close, impregnable, and hard; a man multa tacere loquive paratus, in a world where he had experienced no lack of contradictions as he strode along. The eyes were not very brilliant, but they had a quiet clearness; there was enough of ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... ascent. That historic accident happened long before she was born. To hear a man speak of Croz as a friend sounded almost unbelievable, though a moment's thought told her that Whymper, who led the attack on the hitherto impregnable Cervin on that July day in 1865, was ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... of merchandise. At last Governor Shirley of Massachusetts resolved to attack it, and we may judge of the esteem in which Pepperell was held, by the fact that he was appointed to lead an expedition against a fortress deemed impregnable by the French, and known as the Dunkirk of America. His selection was a tribute not merely to his courage but to his tact. No man of his time was better fitted to control the conflicting tempers of the colonial militia, and he set forth at the head of his 4000 men under ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... about your singing." And the two burst into a flare of talk. To hear such words as cognition, attention, retention, entity, and identity, freely mingled with such other words as silver-fizz and false hair, brought John, the egg-and-coffee man, as near surprise as his impregnable nature permitted. Thus they finished their large breakfast, and hastened to their notes for a last good bout at memorizing Epicharmos of Kos and his various brethren. The appointed hour found them crossing the college yard toward a door inside which Philosophy ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... Gilles de Bretagne, by his marriage with the heiress Francoise de Dinan. The castle is approached by a steep winding path, leading to the plateau upon which it stands. Before the use of firearms, its position rendered it impregnable. Of its seven towers, two ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... obliterated Pope at the second battle of Manassas. Eleven thousand prisoners had been taken at Harper's Ferry and Lee had gone on into Maryland on the flank of Washington. Recruits were coming into the Confederacy by the thousands. Bragg had fifty-five thousand men and an impregnable stronghold in front of Buell, who had but few men more—not enough to count a minute, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... and sage legislator made one clean sweep of all the festering superstitions that fascinate the silly and the sentimental to-day as much as they did three thousand years ago. Mr. Stead is a Puritan, and the Old Testament should be his impregnable rock. Yet Deuteronomy is most definite about "Julia." "There shall not be found with thee ... a consulter with a familiar spirit. For whosoever doeth these things is an abomination unto the Lord." His organisation of research is a delusion; science is not to be thus syndicated. The ordinary observer ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... was established in well-chosen positions in France, which might be impregnable against even forces as superior as three to one; the Austrian army was safely established in front of the Russians. Both the French and the Russians were short of munitions, and particularly of guns of heavier caliber, and of high-explosive shells, which had become ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... who drew him into crime, to leave his master's service, and to commit with him a robbery on their private account before he left. The house fixed on was the one above alluded to in Mark Lane. The premises had before been surveyed, and deemed impregnable; that is to say, was considered too well guarded to be robbed without detection. They, however, got possession of the plate in the following manner:—The boy was a favourite with the cook of the house, and she would have no other ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... nobleman, regarding the site as impregnable and therefore highly desirable, resolved to raise a castle upon the lofty eminence, But the more he considered the plan the more numerous appeared the difficulties in the way ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... re-embarked, after burning some vessels at St. Maloes. This is the history, neither more nor less, of this mighty expedition. They found the causeway broken up, stayed from Tuesday night till Monday morning in sight of the town; agreed it was impregnable; heard ten thousand French (which the next day here were erected into thirty thousand) were coming against them; took to their transports, and are gone to play at hide and seek somewhere else. This campaign being rather naked, is coloured over with the great damage we ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... than one mile off the shore of Vera Cruz, stands the grim old fortress of San Juan d'Ulloa, a most conspicuous object with its blackened and crumbling walls. It has often been declared to be impregnable, and yet, curious to say, it has never been attacked by a foe without being compelled to surrender. Here Cortez landed on Mexican soil, April 21, 1519. He disembarked on a Friday, a day which the Romish church has set apart for the adoration of the ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
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