"Indestructible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indivisible, and in the intense conviction of it, more than in all the works it may throw off, that the author becomes immortal. Nay, his works may perish like those of Orpheus or Pythagoras; but he himself, in his name, in the footprint of his being, remains, like Orpheus or Pythagoras, undestroyed, indestructible. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with its thirteen rows of menhirs made up of 570 individual stones, we come to the end of the avenue and gaze backward upon the plain covered with these indestructible ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... But it can be carded, and if the Chinese can make excellent silk goods from it, why cannot we? I suspect, too, that Cynthia silk can be worked in with cotton, or, perhaps, woolen goods, adding to their beauty and durability (for it is indestructible in wear), and thus open up branches ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... rushing, whirling, meeting, and crushing together, and melting and steaming in the white-heat of their own hurry. But now there's a crop of something better than stones, I can promise you! It goes on gathering, and being garnered and mingled and sifted and winnowed—the precious, indestructible harvest of how many millions ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... rest, We cannot be stopped at a given point—that is no satisfaction, To show us a good thing, or a few good things, for a space of time—that is no satisfaction, We must have the indestructible breed of the best, regardless of time. If otherwise, all these things came but to ashes of dung, If maggots and rats ended us, then alarum! for we are betrayed! Then indeed ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... is not dead. Every word she uttered—every idea she formed and expressed, was an inexhaustible and indestructible impulse." He paused, considered a little further, and relapsed into gloom, adding, "and the dozen others whose names will be with hers in the 'Times' to-morrow? Their words too are still in the air, to endure there to all eternity. Hm! How the air must be crammed with nonsense! Two sounds ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... changes according to the impulses that go out from God, but God remains unchanged. All that possesses form, all organization must be destroyed in the incandescent process of forming world-bodies, but the divine, the intellectual principle is indestructible; and when matter under the impulses that went forth from God, has reached the grade of development at which organization is possible, then the divine principle steps into force as the positive element, and that is life. This positive ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... a creative deity is gradually being abandoned, and nearly all truly scientific minds admit that matter must have existed from eternity. It is indestructible, and the indestructible cannot be created. It is the crowning glory of our century to have demonstrated the indestructibility and the eternal persistence of force. Neither matter nor force can be increased nor diminished. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... "metaphysical requirements": one must also above all give the finishing stroke to that other and more portentous atomism which Christianity has taught best and longest, the SOUL-ATOMISM. Let it be permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelled from science! Between ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of "the soul" thereby, and thus renounce one of the oldest and most venerated hypotheses—as happens frequently to the ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... fifteen inches. Gradually, however, the industrious dam-builders had dug away these shallows, using the material—grass, roots, clay, and stones—for the broadening and solidifying of the dam. The tough fibred masses of grass-roots, full of clay and almost indestructible, were just such material as they loved to work with, the ancient difficulty of making bricks without straw being well known to them. Over a large portion of the pond the bottom was now clean sand and mud, offering ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... realise that equality is not some crude fairy tale about all men being equally tall or equally tricky; which we not only cannot believe but cannot believe in anybody believing. It is an absolute of morals by which all men have a value invariable and indestructible and a dignity as intangible as death. He may at least be a philosopher and see that equality is an idea; and not merely one of these soft-headed sceptics who, having risen by low tricks to high places, drink bad champagne in tawdry hotel lounges, ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... indestructibleness. [15:51] Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, [15:52]in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead be raised, indestructible, and we shall be changed. [15:53]For this destructible must put on indestructibleness, and this mortal must put on immortality. [15:54]And when this destructible has put on indestructibleness, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall the ...
— The New Testament • Various
... savage wilderness. Strange but happy Providence, that a voice from that savage wilderness, now fertile in men, was inspired to uphold the pledges and promises of the Declaration! The unity of the republic on the indestructible foundation of liberty and equality was vindicated by the citizen of a community which had no existence ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... events had happened which had bound him by indestructible fetters to the old faith. He had vowed to his dying mother to remain faithful to the Holy Church and loyally to keep his oath. It was not difficult for one of his modest temperament to be content with the position of spectator ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the poor have obliterated the record in many a noble house abandoned by history; even the fated steps of the Queen save in one bloodstained closet have left but little authentic trace. But Knox is still present with all the force of an indestructible individuality—in the existing life of the country which took so strong an impression from him, and in the absolutely personal facts of the church in which he preached, the house in which he lived, the stone under which ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... not be compared to a lyre and his soul to its harmony, a harmony which ceases to exist when the instrument is broken. Using more modern terms, we may ask whether the soul is the resultant of the forces of the bodily organism, or whether it is the indestructible and mysterious motor which produces the action of ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... condition, stands flush with the street, surrounded by a half-acre of garden, defying the elements as well as the hand of time. Much of the fine woodwork has been removed or destroyed, but the perfect proportion of the rooms is indestructible. The hall arch and stairway remain untouched and convey some idea of the former beauty of the woodwork ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... solvent of all foreign substances; in its own way and time it dissipates all things that are not harmonious with itself. No lesser or feebler principle would have survived the tests to which this has been subjected; but this is indestructible; even we could not destroy it if we would, for it is no inalienable possession of our own, but a gift from on High to the whole of mankind. But let us piously and proudly remember that it was through the Puritans that the gift ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... from starvation and thirst, after tearing deep out of the soil every trace of vegetation, including the wiry roots of the pampas-grass. Under such circumstances the existence of an unprotected tree is impossible. The only plants that hold their own, in addition to the indestructible thistles, grasses, and clover, are a little herbaceous oxalis, producing viviparous buds of extraordinary vitality, a few poisonous species, such as the hemlock, and a few tough, thorny dwarf-acacias and wiry rushes, which ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the last vessel that arrived in Port Jackson from the Navigator Islands, during our stay, consisted partly of cordage of different degrees of thickness, made from a plant peculiar to those islands, the nature of which is such that, we were assured, it is almost indestructible by water and the humidity of the atmosphere; whilst its toughness makes it ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... some lost, would become intermixed with the loose surface shells and be rapidly buried beyond further disturbance. Thus an exploration of these heaps of refuse might be expected to disclose, and really does show, a great variety of indestructible indications of the people around whose summer-lodges they were formed,—how they lived, what they fed upon, and the degree of skill and culture to which they had attained. Scores of these shell-heaps ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... is to say, the present lifeboat—differs from all other boats in four particulars:—1. It is almost indestructible. 2. It is insubmergible. 3. It is self-righting. 4. It is self-emptying. In other words, it can hardly be destroyed; it cannot be sunk; it rights itself if upset; it empties itself if filled. Let us illustrate these points in succession. Here is ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... she laughed at old age from the vantage-ground of a rosy skin and an iron constitution. Perhaps she never looked as well in her life as she did on her marriage-day. She had all the benefits of her ugliness, and was big and fat and strong, with a look of happiness on her indestructible features which made a good ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... of its model and in its own fragility. No one paid it the equivocal compliment of thinking it a substance or a material force. Nobility was not then impossible in sentiment, because there were ideals in life higher and more indestructible than life itself, which life might illustrate and to which it might fitly be sacrificed. Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honour ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... cases do, undoubtedly, occasionally occur, in which the native inherent indestructible qualities of the hair defy all attempts at change or even modification, and resist even this potent remedy: of which, however, in all his experience" (the wonderful specific has been invented for about six months) "the inventor has ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Christian era. They graded the roadway and then covered the whole with hewn blocks of stone, carefully jointed and cemented together so that the entire surface presented a perfectly smooth plane. Such roads, although very costly to build, are almost indestructible by time. In China, as well as in several other countries of Asia, the executive power has always charged itself with both the construction and maintenance of roads and navigable canals. In the instructions which are given to the governors of the various ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... learn something of art, and so long for more, and will find, as I have, that there is no getting it save by the general acknowledgment of the right of every man to have fit work to do in a beautiful home. Therein lies all that is indestructible of the pleasure of life; no man need ask for more than that, no man should be granted less; and if he falls short of it, it is through waste and injustice that he is ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... style of rope, for the fibres soon break, and projecting in every direction, make it difficult to handle. We had an abundance of this palm growing on the hill-side, as it prefers higher land than the cocoa-nut. Its most valuable property is, being almost indestructible in water. Among the fibres there are some coarser ones, with which the Dyaks of Borneo manufacture arrows for their blow-pipes, and occasionally the Malays use them for pins. Interwoven with them is a mass of small fibre almost as soft as cotton. This, from its combustible nature, is ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... body? Was not his body, which was transparent, indestructible by such means as would ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... want within her immediate limits, procuring an easy and comfortable subsistence in those which are more remote; and instead of weakening her power and diminishing her resources, effectually contributing to the augmentation of both, and forming monuments which may descend to the latest posterity, indestructible records of ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... kindled hope was deceitful. The great plague, indeed, returned no more; but what it had done for the Londoners, the great fire, which broke out in the autumn of 1666, did for London; and, in September of that year, a heap of ashes and the indestructible energy of the people were all that remained of the glory of five-sixths of ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... present condition of the earth is. They are, however, not so much to be regarded as the remains of some outward tradition (against such a supposition it is decisive that they occur chiefly with poets), but rather as utterances of an indestructible longing in man, which, being so deeply rooted in human nature, contains in itself the guarantee of being gratified at some future period. But, with all this, we must do justice to the objection drawn from the evident parallelism of passages such as chap. xxxv. 9, and ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... rendered unmovable] stuck, jammed; unremovable; quiescent &c 265; deterioration &c 659. indefeasible, irretrievable, intransmutable^, incommutable^, irresoluble^, irrevocable, irreversible, reverseless^, inextinguishable, irreducible; indissoluble, indissolvable^; indestructible, undying, imperishable, incorruptible, indelible, indeciduous^; insusceptible, insusceptible of change. Int. stet. Phr. littera ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... communicating its effect, however inappreciable, to the most distant planet, and as far beyond as the power of gravitation may extend. It is precisely so with all social events, even those of the most insignificant character. Every one of them has its appropriate influence, which is indestructible; and they all combine to make up the great whole of human action, the results of which at any specific period are only the necessary and inevitable consequences of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... establish such peace in my father's realm and mine, that it shall not be in the power of every wandering adventurer to challenge me to single combat". Moreover, throughout all the wild vagaries of the narrative, character, that mysterious and indestructible essence, is not wholly lost. No two books can be more absolutely unlike one another than the "Wilkina-Saga" and the "Various Letters of Cassiodorus", yet the same hot-tempered, impulsive, generous man is ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... like the interior, nor was it treated like the latter with a specially prepared material. The material employed for the walls was admirably suited for the purpose, being when dry almost as hard as sandstone and practically indestructible. The manner in which such walls disintegrate under atmospheric influences has already been set forth in detail in this report. An inhabited structure with walls like these would last indefinitely, provided occupancy continued and a few slight repairs, which would ...
— Casa Grande Ruin • Cosmos Mindeleff
... however, with the summer-house that I have to do principally, for it is to it that the terror of blood has clung through the lapse of years, as the scent of the Turkish Atar is said to cling, indestructible, to the last fragment of the vessel which had once ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... but enduring friendships, he had admitted but one love to his life, except the love of his mother. This one love for seven years he had sought to kill. But anything forceful enough to penetrate to the stronghold of Nicol Brinn's soul was indestructible, ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... critical observance of it has escaped our attention. Fermentation brings us acquainted with this unerring axiom; that nothing in nature is lost; or that matter, of which all things are composed, is indestructible. For instance, the vinous process of fermentation, succeeded by distillation, produces ardent spirits, or alcohol, the elements of which are here described. If we pass this alcohol, or spirits of wine, through a glass, porcelain, or metallic tube, heated right hot, provided with a ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... give you the philosophy of bomb throwing from my point of view; from the point of view you pretend to have been serving for the last eleven years. I will try not to talk above your head. The sensibilities of the class you are attacking are soon blunted. Property seems to them an indestructible thing. You can't count upon their emotions either of pity or fear for very long. A bomb outrage to have any influence on public opinion now must go beyond the intention of vengeance or terrorism. It must be purely destructive. It must be that, and only that, beyond the faintest suspicion of any ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... reason which anybody ever ventured for this amazing assertion is this, that "all philosophers agree that matter is naturally indestructible by any human power. You may boil water into steam, but it is all there in the steam; or burn coal into gas, ashes, and tar, but it is all in the gas, ashes, and tar; you may change the outward form as much as you please, but you can not destroy ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the life of the body ceases and the body itself is burned and its ashes scattered to the winds and waves, the infinitesimal, imponderable, and indestructible something we call the soul is known to lose itself in a sunbeam and make for the sun, with all its memories about it, that it may then receive further development, fitting it for other systems altogether beyond conception; and the longer it has lived in Mars the better for ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... early; the beef and pudding are noble; the mince-pies—peculiar; the nuts half play-things and half-eatables; the oranges as cold and acid as they ought to be, furnishing us with a superfluity which we can afford to laugh at; the cakes indestructible; the wassail bowls generous, old English, huge, demanding ladles, threatening overflow as they come in, solid with roasted apples when set down. Towards bed-time you hear of elder-wine, and not seldom of punch. At the manorhouse it is pretty ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... ravaging a whole territory, or sweeping the coffers of the rich, or invading the cottages of the poor—all this material wealth may easily be repaired. If the nation remains with its moral and intellectual strength, brighter and larger and more indestructible possessions than the first will soon replace them. On the three great pillars of American society—equality of right, community of interest, and reciprocity of duty, rests this great Republic. Riches and honor and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... in spite of the vilest betrayals? Love is indeed often the inspirer of subjective visions, creating in the beloved object the qualities it admires and the virtues it adores, powerless to accept what it is not willing to see, dwelling in a fortress guarded by intangible, and therefore indestructible, fiction and proof against the artillery of facts. Unorna's confidence was, however, not misplaced. The man whose promise she had received had told the truth when he had said that he had ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... cartilage of the nose. They seem generally to be in good spirits, and spend their time in everlasting talk, funeral ceremonies, and marriages. This flow of animal spirits must be one reason why they are such an indestructible race. The habitual influence on their minds of the agency of unseen spirits may have a tendency in the same direction, by preserving the mental quietude ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... sun is shining on them; and when they shed their flowers, the ground below is carpeted as with gold. Another valuable timber tree, the "nispera" (Achras sapota), is also common, growing on the dryer ridges. It attains to a great size, and its timber is almost indestructible, so that we used it in the construction of all our permanent works. White ants do not eat it, nor, excepting when first cut, and before it is barked, do any of the wood-boring beetles. It bears ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... in a stiff and obdurate mass has rotted away and set free those hard and smooth fibres which nothing can rot. These, when thoroughly purged of the foul black pollution in which they have sweltered so long, will go out to all quarters of the world under the name of "coir" to make indestructible door mats and other indispensable things. It will penetrate to every corner of India in which a white man lives, to mat his verandahs and stuff ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... absolutely indestructible. It may change its form, but not a pound of material substance can be destroyed. Matter moves in cycles, and the key to the problem of successful permanent agriculture is the circulation of plant food. While some elements have a natural cycle which is amply ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... and the inaugural words of President Jefferson held up "the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad." The Constitution is the work of "the people of the United States," and it should be as indestructible ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... transformed or discredited; but there are elements in religion which have their roots much less in the reason of man than in his sorrows and his affections, and are the expression of wants, moral appetites and aspirations which are an essential, indestructible part ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... "but neither flowing time nor chafing circumstance can erase affection from the constant mind. Mind is more obdurate than steel; and love, the tenderest of the train of passions, is, in its memory, as indestructible as gold;—gold that resists the all-corroding fire. No; the fire may melt the impress from the seal, the sun the angles from the stony ice; the jagged rocks may from encounter with the wind and rain grow smooth; this hilly globe may grow at length to be ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... knowledge that Christopher Columbus is not only a name, but that the human being whom we so describe did actually once live and walk in the world; did actually sail and look upon seas where we may also sail and look; did stir with his feet the indestructible dust of this old Earth, and centre in himself, as we all do, the whole interest and meaning of the Universe. Truly the most commonplace fact, yet none the less amazing; and often when in the dust of documents he has seemed most dead and ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... picture done by a dying painter, full of a beautiful colour. Even if all these orchids died to-night yet their beauty is an indestructible memory. ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never; they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness; and that dreadful vitality of deeds was pressing hard on Tito for ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... great, firm-based, indestructible mountain upon our left hand, one of a noble range which, rising from the green plain, runs eastward. The last peak there is the mountain of which I speak, whose foot is in the Ictian sea and whose head ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... of these plants consist of very simple vegetable cells, enclosed in indestructible silex (as other Algae are in carbonate of lime), it is obvious that the death and decomposition of such multitudes must form sedimentary deposits, proportionate in their extent to the length and exposure of the coast against ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... standing to God. In the Timaeus, the matter is put in this way. The soul of the world, and all other souls human and divine, are the work of the Creator, who is identified with God, and they are not inherently indestructible, since anything that has been made can be unmade. They are, however, practically indestructible, since God made all things because He was good and wished them also to be as good as possible. His goodness, therefore, will ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Cowfold was busy, for it was market-day. Sheep-pens were in the square full of sheep, and men were purchasing them and picking them out as they were sold; dogs were barking; the wandering dealer who pitched his earthenware van at the corner was ringing his plates together to prove them indestructible; old Madge Campion, who sold gooseberry-tarts and hot mutton-pies on her board under an awning supported by clothes-props, was surrounded by a shoal of children, as happy as the sunshine; the man with the panorama was exhibiting, at ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... recently dead? A great growth of legends around a man is the very best proof you could have not only of his existence but of the fact that he was an origin and a beginning, and that things sprang from his will or his vision. There were some who seemed to think it a kind of favour done to the indestructible body of Irish Catholicism when Mr. Bury wrote his learned Protestant book upon St. Patrick. It was a critical and very careful bit of work, and was deservedly praised; but the favour done us I could not see! It is all ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... attributes to God we are forced back upon the question, Is creation perfect? The idea is in harmony with that of a God supremely intelligent who could make no mistakes; but then, what means the degradation of His work, and its regeneration? Moreover, a perfect world is, necessarily, indestructible; its forms would not perish, it could neither advance nor recede, it would revolve in the everlasting circumference from which it would never issue. In that case God would be dependent on His work; ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... out for a copyist. Madame Wesendonck has given me a gold pen of indestructible power, which has once more turned me into a caligraphic pedant. The scores will be my most perfect masterpiece of caligraphy. One cannot fly from his destiny. Meyerbeer years ago admired nothing so much in my scores as the neat writing. This act of admiration has been my curse; ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... character and genius were more conspicuous in the formation of our government and in putting it on indestructible foundations than leading armies to victory and conquering the independence of his country. "The Union in any event" is the central thought of the "Farewell Address," and all the years of his grand life were devoted to its ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... helps make tight margins, and is very useful at cervical margins; generally discolors, but not always, and does not discolor the tooth unless a carious portion has been left, and then only discolors that portion. In oral fluids it is indestructible if well condensed, otherwise it is crumbly. There is no change of form, except a slight expansion, which does no harm. A weak electric current is set up between the gold and tin, and tin oxid is formed. The hardening and discoloration both depend upon the separation of the tin by ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler
... entire unanimity, by a priest—one who shall be sacrificer, intercessor, representative; bearer of man's worship, channel of God's blessing. How comes it, that, in spite of all the cruelties and lies that have gathered round the office, it lives, indestructible, among the families of men? Why, because it springs from, and corresponds to, real and universal wants in their nature. It is the result of the universal consciousness of sin. Men feel that there is a gulf betwixt them and God. They know themselves to be all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... column of the air being found sufficient to keep off the excess of cold or heat. The roofs of all the buildings shed from the front, except two of which are of gable shape. The roofs are to be made of solid, close-fitting planks, covered with fine ticking and coated with the patent indestructible fire-proof paint, and applications which our citizens have just begun to use here, and which they ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... he found it unsatisfactory. He buys them secretly, lest his wife justly accuse him of extravagance, and practises cunning in getting rid of them afterward; for to a conscientious gentleman throwing away a razor is a responsible matter. It is hard to think of any place where a razor-blade, indestructible and horribly sharp as it is,—for all purposes except shaving,—can be thrown away without some worry over possible consequences. A baby may find and swallow it; the ashman sever an artery; dropping it overboard at sea is impracticable, ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... interred in Joseph's tomb. You cannot bury the truth, you cannot strangle her, you cannot even shake her! You may burn up the records of the truth, but you cannot impair the truth itself! When the records are reduced to ashes truth shall walk abroad as an indestructible angel and minister of the Lord! "He shall give His angels charge over thee," and truth is one of His angels, and she ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... error was detected by Mr. Dallinger. He found among the lower forms of life the most surprising and indestructible vitality. Many animals could survive much higher temperatures than Dr. Bastian had applied to annihilate them. Some germs almost refused to be annihilated—they were all ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... and thirst. And he was pleased beyond measure. And the monarch, laying aside all signs of royalty, entered that excellent asylum with but his minister and his priest, desirous of beholding that Rishi who was an indestructible mass of ascetic merit. And the king saw that the asylum was like unto the region of Brahman. Here were bees sweetly humming and there were winged warblers of various species pouring forth their melodies. At particular places that tiger among men heard the chanting of Rik hymns by first-rate ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... her, the savage, violent, and ignorant creature—had been revealed clearly in that moment the tremendous fact of our isolation, of the loneliness impenetrable and transparent, elusive and everlasting; of the indestructible loneliness that surrounds, envelopes, clothes every human soul from the cradle to the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... might of Twashtri. And they all consulted with the saints, O descendant of Bharata. And they deliberated as to what was proper to be done, and were overwhelmed with dread. And seated on the top of the Mandara mountain, and bent on killing Vritra, they only bethought themselves of Vishnu, the indestructible one.'" ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... e., thinker and thought are the same, and hence the statement that the actual intellect is "intelligent" and "intelligible" at the same time. As matter is the principle of generation and destruction the rational soul, which is thus shown to be an immaterial substance, is indestructible, hence immortal. And it is the ideas it acquires which make it so. When the rational soul is concerned with pure knowledge it is called the speculative or theoretical intellect. When it is engaged in controlling the animal powers, ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... the grind of it, for the pleasure-loving wife who had buoyed herself with dreams of gaiety and delight which her life in the North had denied her, had driven her back upon the elemental that was only latent in her. Coqueline was her all now. Nita clung to her baby as the one indestructible link with that purity of life which no woman, however fallen, can ever wholly disregard, or forget. The child was a sheet-anchor for all time. Whatever the future had in store, little Coqueline was her child, born in wedlock, the pledge ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... they were thrown back by the impetuosity of the Crusaders; they returned to the attack. Fresh and fresh multitudes poured down from Turkistan; the furious deluge of the Tartars under Zingis spread itself and disappeared; the Turks sunk in it, but emerged; the race seemed indestructible; then Othman began a new career of victory, as if there had never been an old one, and founded an empire, more stable, more coherent than any Turkish rule before it. Then followed Sultan after Sultan, each greater than his predecessor, while ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... first-class mahogany, yet if of good picked quality, dry and sound, and properly tongued and framed, there is not much to fear, and its light and elegant appearance is a great gain in a large room, added to this it improves by age and is practically indestructible. ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... interesting fact in the history of the island is found in its chronicles, for here were obtained the timbers for the Constitution (Old Ironsides), that noble frigate so well known to every American. Some of the stumps of the indestructible live-oak from which the timber was cut for her ribs may yet be seen. Deer, raccoons, bear and 'possum are abundant in the thick forest. The climate is temperate and healthy: many of the former slaves live to a great age. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... British and European capitals. Thus far, our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any more. As such it is precious as the sign of an indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come when it ought to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... indeed, is mainly a foreign one—the history of modern Rome merges in that of the papacy; but Northern Italy has a history of its own, and that is a history of separate and independent cities—points of reciprocal and indestructible repulsion, and within, theatres of action where the blind tendencies and traditions of classes and parties weighed little on the freedom of individual character, and citizens could watch and measure and study one another with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... is undeniable and the mind of man can never wholly escape it. Familiarity may temper, but inborn human superstition is indestructible. The brooding silence will shadow the lightest nature. The storms must ever inspire wonder. The gloom hushes the voice. And so the growing dread. Man may curse the hills in his brutal moments, the thoughtful may be driven to despair, ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... town where life so maintained its course, we cannot expect to find whole quarters preserved, just as they appeared in the first half of the seventeenth century; the general disposition of the town, however, is so original and effective that its indestructible plan survived until our days. There are in the world but few towns that possess such a charming singularity, and Venice is probably the only town offering a similar attraction, although it differs in ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt
... on past the thinning stars raced the patient electronic bloodhound; invisible, irreversible, indestructible; slowly, but inexorably accelerating. It flashed by the planet Damocles at multiples of the speed of light, and sensing the proximity of the prey on which it was homed, spurted into the intergalactic depths ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... the times in regard to stopping haemorrhage, was, however, accompanied by a large mortality, and it finally evolved into the simple removal of the gland, or its obliteration by pressure or violence. Bergmann conveys the idea that circumcision was at one time the indestructible marking and the distinctive feature of the slave, the mind of the period not being able to emancipate itself from the idea that the genitals must in some manner be mutilated, not being able to conceive any other degrading mark of manhood which ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... did the obelisk lend itself to its symbolical purposes! There was a most wonderful harmony between the idea and the object which expressed it. Being composed of the most durable of all materials, the hard indestructible granite, the eternal sun was thus fittingly represented by an object that lifts its stern finger in unchangeable defiance of the vicissitudes of the seasons and the ages. Its highly polished surface and rich rosy red colour, ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... after that, incorporation in the soil of a forgetfulness that seems indifferent alike to their exertions and their ambitions. But the end is not here. Somewhere, and most certainly in some other form, the effort achieves immortality and reasserts itself, indestructible and eternal. For such are the myriad filaments of existence, and so indissolubly are men linked with each other by invisible chains, that it is but seldom that impulse can be traced back to its birth, or courage ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... conclusion of the whole matter may be forecasted thus: The Negro element in this country is permanent and indestructible. So great are the numbers of the Negroes, and so intimate their relations with the white people, that it is safe to say without fear of contradiction that the status of the Negro element will determine ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... International Alliance together. We must believe all through that good is stronger than evil, that justice and mercy are stronger than hatred and destruction, just as life is stronger than death. We women who have worked together for a great cause have hopes and ideals in common; these are indestructible links binding us together. We have to show that what unites us is stronger than what separates us. Between many of us there is also the further link of personal friendship cemented by many years of work together. We must hold on through all difficulties to these things which ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... yet so unlike. It was Honora's face which was ravaged, though Mary had sinned the sin. True, pallor and pain were visible in Mary's face, even in the disguising light of that strange hour and place, but back of it Kate perceived her indestructible frivolity. She surmised how rapidly the scenes of Mary's drama would succeed each other; how remorse would yield to regret, regret to diminishing grief, grief to hope, hope to fresh adventures with life. Here in all verity was "the eternal feminine," ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... shall have disappeared, nay after the atoms of earth and sun and all his attending planets of our system shall have amalgamated themselves with other systems in the boundlessness of space; destroyed, obliterated, annihilated, they shall never be, for matter is indestructible. When it passes from one form it enters another; the dead animal that is cast into the earth lives again in the trees and shrubs and flowers and grasses that grow in the earth above where its body was cast. Our earth shall die in course of time, ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... printed form, thought is more imperishable than ever; it is volatile, irresistible, indestructible. It is mingled with the air. In the days of architecture it made a mountain of itself, and took powerful possession of a century and a place. Now it converts itself into a flock of birds, scatters itself to ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... hands a small parcel rudely made up in a piece of newspaper that was greasy enough to have previously contained his morning's breakfast. He had come from where he was working below London Bridge: he had found something that might have been lost by Mr. Rossetti. It was the tormenting volume: the indestructible, unrelenting phantom that would not be laid! Rossetti now perceived that higher agencies were at work: it was not meant that he should get rid of the book: why should he contend against the inevitable? Reverently and with both hands he took the besoiled parcel from the brown ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the existence of both sides of the parallelogram, of both eternal indestructible forces of which the life of man is compounded: the force of his animal nature and the force of the consciousness of Kinship to God. Saying nothing of the animal force which asserts itself, remains always the same, ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... carefully beyond the line of fire from the forts, sailed on to Seattle, four ships were brought into action against the mortar batteries of Port Townsend which appeared to set at defiance all known rules of ship-building, and which, indestructible as they were, threatened to annihilate all existing systems. They were low vessels which floated on the water like huge tortoises. These mortar-boats, which were destined to astound not only the Americans but the whole world, had been constructed in Japanese shipyards, ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... summer, however, he returned in force, indeed with a very considerable army, and with the intention of bringing us, too, within that great administration which he and his adoptive son Augustus were to do so much to make a final and in many ways an indestructible thing. ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... the despot's power! When the oppress'd for justice looks in vain, When his sore burden may no more be borne, With fearless heart he makes appeal to Heaven, And thence brings down his everlasting rights, Which there abide, inalienably his, And indestructible as are the stars. Nature's primeval state returns again, Where man stands hostile to his fellow man; And if all other means shall fail his need, One last resource remains—his own good sword. Our dearest treasures ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... allowance,[153] has been obscured by the invention of an imaginary Fr. *beaufetier, waiter at the side-board. Professor Skeat attributes the success of this myth to its inclusion in Mrs Markham's History of England. But the most indestructible of all these superstitions is connected with the word cabal. It comes from a Hebrew word meaning hidden mystery, and is found in the chief Romance languages. The word is of frequent occurrence in English long before the date of Charles II.'s acrostic ministry,[154] though its modern ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... great battle of the war. In that battle fell also Joan's sturdy old enemy Talbot. He was eighty-five years old, and had spent his whole life in battle. A fine old lion he was, with his flowing white mane and his tameless spirit; yes, and his indestructible energy as well; for he fought as knightly and vigorous a fight that day ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... are to go into every nook and lane of ice that will yield at all to wind and steam, they must be as nearly indestructible as man can make them. For Arctic work, therefore, and for discovery work, ships built of the teak wood of Malabar and Java are considered most precisely fitted. Ships built of teak are said to be wholly indestructible by ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... States and limit the central power in this Republic as had never been done before. The wild doctrines of Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens on these points are not our law. If the Union is perpetual, equally so is each State. The Republic is "an indestructible Union of indestructible States." If this part of our law had in 1861 received its present definition and emphasis, and if the Southern States had then been sure, come what might, of the freedom they actually now enjoy each to govern ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... or poetic fiction, whichever it may be, brings to mind a more indestructible reality than anything else that has occurred within the present field of our vision; though this includes the scene of Guy of Warwick's legendary exploits, and some of those of the Round Table, to say nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... bones burned to whiteness, may be similarly treated. Indeed, in all of the forms of bones here described, the phosphate of lime remains unaltered, as it is indestructible by heat; the differences of composition are only in the admixture of ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... said it was called indestructible, because nobody could destroy it, but I've taken my new knife ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... object rendered unmovable] stuck, jammed; unremovable; quiescent &c. 265; deterioration &c. 659. indefeasible, irretrievable, intransmutable[obs3], incommutable[obs3], irresoluble[obs3], irrevocable, irreversible, reverseless[obs3], inextinguishable, irreducible; indissoluble, indissolvable[obs3]; indestructible, undying, imperishable, incorruptible, indelible, indeciduous[obs3]; insusceptible, insusceptible of change. Int. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... battle-sword, and starting up once more a warrior. And, in so intense a moment, his demeanor would have still been calm. Such an exhibition, however, was but to be pictured in fancy; not to be anticipated, nor desired. What I saw in him—as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old Ticonderoga already cited as the most appropriate simile—were the features of stubborn and ponderous endurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier days; of integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... these facts, That there is a Treaty of Warsaw and that this is the Austrian-Saxon temper and intention towards him and it, Friedrich learned from the Menzel Documents. And if the reader will possess himself of these two facts, and understand that they are of a germinative, most vital quality, indestructible by the times and the chances; and have been growing and developing themselves, day and night ever since, in a truly wonderful manner,—the reader knows in substance what Menzel ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... though very noticeable relaxations of the existing prerogative, were, as respected the temper which dictated them, no more than everyday manifestations of the emperor's perpetual benignity. Fortunately for Marcus, the indestructible privilege of the divina domus exalted it so unapproachably beyond all competition, that no possible remissions of aulic rigor could ever be misinterpreted; fear there could be none, lest such paternal indulgences should ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... plate below the floor, and to the hood of the bow which serves to reinforce it. This bow is a heavy steel angle in one piece, reaching from plate to plate and extending back into the car 6 feet on each side. By this construction it is believed that the car framing is practically indestructible. In case of accident, if one platform should ride over another, eight square inches of metal would have to be sheared off the posts before the main body of the car would be reached, which would afford an effective means ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... with people of this sort, and his personal interests never could be made to do so with results perfectly satisfactory to himself. There it was,—the thing those lucky elect possessed without a thought or an effort. It was an indestructible possession, apparently, too. You couldn't throw it away. Dissipation, dishonesty, even a total collapse that brought its victim down to the sink that he himself had sprouted from, seemed powerless ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness; and that dreadful vitality of deeds was pressing hard on ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... end with all a heathen's strength, knowing what she lost, and believing, too, that she would find but sleep. And now it was otherwise, for in her heart she did not believe that she was about utterly to perish. What, could the body live on in a thousand forms, changed indeed but indestructible and immortal, while the spiritual part, with all its hopes and loves and fears, melted into nothingness? It could not be; surely on some new shore she should once again greet her love. And if it was not, how would they meet her in that under world, coming self-murdered, ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... of one of their greatest poets. My sister sends it to me, accompanied by some beautiful verses of her own. An old fable says that these laurels grew spontaneously upon Virgil's grave, and that they are indestructible. May this be a blessed omen for me! I greet you, Virgil's holy shadow! I bow down before you, and kiss in all humility your ashes, which have been ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... After the speaker has declared never from any man loved by her, to have solicited any present or gift, and that she rested perfectly contented to live in their hearts, that she would there curl herself up with indestructible and ineffable pleasure, finding herself richer with this heart than with anything, and thinking of no other thing than to give them more pleasure and happiness than she received from them. But in spite of the iterated ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... promise, I venture-to say, of early completion only in our own fortunate country; but even with us the recovery halts and is impeded at times, and there are immediately serviceable acts of legislation which it seems to me we ought to attempt, to assist that recovery and prove the indestructible recuperative force of a great government of the people. One of these is to prove that a great democracy can keep house as successfully and in as business-like a fashion as any other government. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the great ones are safe from danger. They are supported in their undertakings by such powerful and numerous interests that they cannot fail without involving public credit; even governments are forced to come to their aid. One of these powerful and indestructible enterprises I have dreamed of grafting on to the European Credit Company, the Universal Credit Company. Its very name is a programme in itself. To stretch over the four quarters of the globe like an immense ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... crucifixions there would come to men a new revelation of the splendour of the human soul, the true divinity that dwells in man, the God made manifest in the flesh by acts of valour, heroism, and self-sacrifice which transcend the instincts and promptings of the flesh, and bear witness to the indestructible life of the spirit. ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... treachery. Do you know what we learned from the reading of your ancestor's will? Why, that he died the victim of the malevolence of these people; and now, at the lapse of a hundred and fifty years, his descendants are still exposed to the hate of that indestructible society." ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... in a rarefied Winthrop atmosphere, Charlotte, that you haven't any modern vocabulary. He is telling you the pet name of his car, to give you confidence. Nobody ever dies in a tin 'Lizzie.' Not only is the machine indestructible, but the people that ride in it. Isn't the driver a ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... own grounds, those of expediency, it might be objected that a bargain which on one side you allow to be discreditable leaves the legacy of an indestructible desire on that side to wipe out the discredit by tearing it up. Though Cavour became great by his connection with a movement which, before all things, was swayed by sentiment, he never entirely recognised the part that sentiment plays in politics. He blamed O'Connell ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... most stable and resisting inorganic bodies, and the unstable tissues of living bodies—to be alike in restless, orderly motion, to be, in fact, motion itself and not the thing moved, to be changeable but indestructible, passing through phases but eternal, there seems less difficulty in assuming it to be the ultimate reality, and mind and consciousness to be its most highly specialised qualities. Huxley, while stating this view plainly enough, refused to accept it as ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... two sarongs are alike, and the painted battek, notwithstanding the simplicity of the cotton background, represents an amount of labour and finish which makes the archaic garment a costly, though almost indestructible production. The graceful slandang, a crossed scarf of the same material, only serves as a shoulder-strap, wherein the brown Malay baby sits contentedly, for the ugly white jacket of the Dutchwoman is ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... these two narrow words, hic jacet.' Even so. Yet while the cadence of this august rhetoric is yet in our ears, another voice is heard as of the angel seated by a void and open tomb, 'Why seek ye the living among the dead?' The spirit of Hellas is indestructible, however much the material existence of the Greeks be lost beyond recovery; for the life of humanity is not many but one, not parcelled into separate ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... tree, belonging to the mallow family. The inner bark of the young branches yields a tough fiber, fit for cordage, and used in Demerara for making coffee bags, and the finer pieces of it for cigar envelopes. The wood is considered almost indestructible under water, and its hardness and durability render it valuable for various purposes. The flower buds and unripe fruits yield a viscid yellow juice, useful as a dye, and a thick, deep, red-colored oil is ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... Why can't both of us die? Many people die who want to live! Why should we live who want to die? Tell me that, little miserable!" But the baby defiantly sucked his thumb, as if it held the elixir of life, and looked indestructible vitality ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... fixed firmly down under his chin with a handkerchief, the side rims over his ears like flaps, and, for the rest, presenting the appearance of a coal-scuttle bonnet behind, as well as in front. We followed its peculiar aspect. Driving on under this indestructible headgear, he flickered in and out of the world, while, with entwined arms and leaning back against the wind with all our might, Seraphina and myself were borne along in his train. He knew of a ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... made a circuit around the fortified works on the isthmus, and its indestructible walls contained an Egyptian garrison, who could easily defend it against a force ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of their productions to the mere realities that flutter and bloom for their brief hour, and then die. There is nothing in entomology so beautiful as a well-busked trout or salmon fly. And then it is comparatively indestructible. Take a natural May Fly and squeeze it in your hand. It is reduced to a pulp. Try the same experiment with an artificial one, and its plumage remains unruffled—which is more than you do, since the chance is that you will have to employ a surgeon to extract the hook ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... moment in eternity when this fair Earth, and also the beauteous splendor of the silent stars, will be locked forever in darkness, and the final sleep of doom." If this be so, we ask of the inmost soul, if life be but the fitful awakenings of the indestructible spirit, ebbing and flowing in response to the rise and fall of Nature's cosmic barometer and the transmutations of matter; if life is, in reality, but a brief and passing moment, eternally repeated, from the flush of youth, "the gilded salon to the bier and the ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... about him, such as no other human being is gifted withal; it is indestructible, and clings forevermore to everything that he has touched. I was not impressed, at Blenheim, with any sense that the mighty Duke still haunted the palace that was created for him; but here, after a century and a half, we are still ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... of the rise and development of prostitution shows us how indestructible and essential an element prostitution is of the marriage system which has long prevailed in Europe—under very varied racial, political, social, and religious conditions—it yet fails to supply us in every respect with the data ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... adopted and failed. At length the Chevalier d'Arcon, a French engineer, proposed a plan which seemed to ensure a complete triumph. This was the employment of floating batteries so constructed as to be impervious to shot and indestructible by fire. The bottoms of these batteries were made of massive timber, and their sides were secured with a rampart or wall composed of timber and cork, with an interstice between, filled up with wet sand. Raw hides were fastened on the outside, and to prevent the effect ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of men and horses lay scattered and heaped; grinding and crunching them under foot fought the skeletons. Everywhere charged the bone-gaunt white steeds; everywhere on foot or on wind-blown misty battle-horses, raged and ravened and raved the indestructible spectres; weapons and hoofs clashed and crushed; while skeleton jaws and phantom-throats swelled the deafening tumult with the war-cry of every opinion, bad or good, that had bred strife, injustice, cruelty in any world. The holiest words went with the most hating blow. Lie-distorted ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... other Australian resource that is capable of almost indefinite development. This is its TIMBER. The eucalyptus or gum-tree prevails almost universally in Australia, and some of its commonest varieties, being both strong and indestructible by insects, are of almost unequalled value for ship-building, railway ties, and dock and harbour construction. That the Australians are fully alive to the importance of developing their foreign trade is seen in the efforts they have made to provide facilities ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... outrageous stimulation, I am almost ashamed to have spoken of the feeble endeavour made in these volumes to counteract it; and, reflecting upon the magnitude of the general evil, I should be oppressed with no dishonourable melancholy, had I not a deep impression of certain inherent and indestructible qualities of the human mind, and likewise of certain powers in the great and permanent objects that act upon it, which are equally inherent and indestructible; and were there not added to this impression a belief, that the time is approaching when the evil will be systematically ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... it," said the count, "and may God reward you for the sacrifice you are so generously disposed to make for us! Anna, your friend Julia is our good angel. To her we shall owe it if our happiness is henceforth indestructible and indissoluble. Do you know the immense sacrifice this young maiden ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... most industrious sewer I have ever known,—and not only industrious, but neat, conscientious, and rapid. Machines, with iron frames and wheels, had not then been invented; but since they have, I have never seen a better one than my mother. Her frame, if not of iron, seemed quite as indestructible, even if it did turn out fewer stitches. Times without number has she sat up till midnight, plying her needle by the dull light of a common candle: for there was no gas in our suburban district. While we children were sound ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... concessions, having recourse to trickery, to everything that a true artist should banish from his conscience. But what he meant to do after that—ah! what he meant to do—he beheld it superb and heroic, above attack and indestructible. All this was the everlasting mirage that goads on the condemned disciples of art, a falsehood that comes in a spirit of tenderness and compassion, and without which production would become impossible to those who die of their failure ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... rarely failed to repay a kindness or an injury, stroke for stroke, when opportunity offered. Long-Hair was a typical Indian. That is to say, a type of inhumanity raised to the last power; but under his hideous atrocity of nature lay the indestructible sense of gratitude so fixed and perfect that it did ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... And with all my deficiencies I am conscious that I may risk the chance of a lower world's disdain, seeing that the 'higher world without end' is open to me in its imperishable brightness and beauty, to live in both NOW, and for ever. No one can cast me out of that glorious and indestructible Universe, for 'whithersoever I go there will be the sun and the moon, and the stars and visions and ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... rugged Iron King—dead? He who, if not as indestructible as he seemed, was at least constituted of that stern stuff of which centenarians are made, and whom all expected should live far up into the eighties or nineties—dead? The father who had lived over them like some mighty governing and protecting power ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of bringing the evidence would be to transport it under its own power. The thought intrigued him. Actually it wouldn't be too difficult. Externally the Egg wasn't in bad shape. The virtually indestructible durilium hull was still intact. The controls and the engines, hermetically sealed inside the hull, were probably as good as the day they stopped running. The circuitry would undoubtedly be bad but it could be repaired and restored, and new fuel slugs could be obtained for ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... esprit as well). You readily will understand," he adds, "that henceforth I can dream very little of personal ambition and of a future wrapped up in myself. In political relations serfdom may have an end; but the dominion of one soul over another in the spirit region—should that not remain indestructible?"—Oh, Liszt's prophetic soul! Thereafter his life was shaped by this extraordinary woman, for weal and, it must be confessed, for reasons which will appear ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... well knew and the latter-day discoveries of Cobalt prove—and there is also heavy timber; but north of the Great Clay Belt, between the Clay Belt and the Bay, lies the impenetrable and—I think—indestructible game ground. Swamp and rock will prevent agricultural settlement but will provide an ideal fur preserve similar ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... to note that the first observation which led to this most important scientific conclusion that energy is indestructible however much it may change its form, was made by an American, Benjamin Thompson, who left this country at the time of the Revolution, and after a curious life became the executive officer, and in effect king, of Bavaria. While engaged in superintending ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... be anything except a stingwing," she finally said. "Nothing else could possibly look like that. And even if it didn't spin silk, it would bite if you got near, so you would have to kill it." She smiled with satisfaction at the indestructible logic ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... persons and things do not suffice, whose love is vital, elemental, and indestructible. It has no beginning and no end; it simply is. With this the Grey Angel has no power; the grave is robbed of its victory ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... ultimate particle of which water is composed, is not changed, and this is precisely the explanation which Anaxagoras gave of the same phenomena. For him the unit particle of water constituted an elementary body, uncreated, unchangeable, indestructible. This particle, in association with like particles, constitutes the substance which we call water. The same particle in association with particles unlike itself, might produce totally different ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... those who imagine and express this indestructible order, are not only the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting; they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley |
