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Invisibility   Listen
noun
Invisibility  n.  (pl. invisibilities)  The state or quality of being invisible; also, that which is invisible. "Atoms and invisibilities."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Invisibility" Quotes from Famous Books



... seems to be another reason why we should not become a poetical people. Formerly the poet embodied the hopes and desires of men in visible types. He gave them the shoes of swiftness, the cap of invisibility and the purse of Fortunatus. These were once stories for grown men, and not for the nursery as now. We are apt ignorantly to wonder how our forefathers could find satisfaction in fiction the absurdity ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... princess. After a two-days' journey he came to a mountain. Here he descended and began to look around. Finally he saw a huge rock, in which he found a small hole. He put the key in it, and the rock flew open. With his cap of invisibility on his head, he entered. There within he saw many ladies, who were confined in separate rooms. In the very last apartment he found the princess with a giant beside her. He went near the room of the princess, and opened the door with his key. The walls of all the rooms ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... of a dominating woman of the world with the mysterious and romantic quality of a myth. She was a legend in her lifetime, and she knew it. She tasted the joys of power, like those Eastern Emperors whose autocratic rule was based upon invisibility, with the mingled ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... of a moment he had no longer any common cause; they must go their separate ways, yet apparently the same,—they on the broad, dusty, beaten path, that seemed always full, but from which continually they so strangely vanished into invisibility, no one knowing, nor long inquiring, what had become of them; he on his lonely path, where he should tread secure, with no trouble but the loneliness, which would be none to him. For a little while he would seem to keep them company, but soon they would all drop away, the minister, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... a landslide, a tidal wave, or lava sweeping down a mountain. It was not of this earth, but mysterious, ghostlike. It carried all the mystery and menace of a fog rolling toward you across the sea. The uniform aided this impression. In it each man moved under a cloak of invisibility. Only after the most numerous and severe tests at all distances, with all materials and combinations of colors that give forth no color, could this gray have been discovered. That it was selected to clothe and disguise the German ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... like unto a thousand Yugas (four billion years of the earth), and his night as much—these worlds must come and go... The Days of Brahm are succeeded by the Nights of Brahm. In these Brahmic Days all things emerge from invisibility, and become visible. And, on the coming of the Brahmic Night, all visible things again melt into invisibility. The Universe having once existed, melteth away; and lo! is ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... noticed in Lesson 2, are coloured and marked like the sand and pebbles of their home; and they can even change colour to suit their background. They are wonderfully hidden, owing to this useful dodge. It is as if Mother Nature had given them the marvellous "cloak of invisibility," of which we read ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith

... as into a mysterious gulf murky coils of smoke and brightness of aspiring sparks; and beyond, in the high darkness, were muttering and wailing and strange doings, so that sometimes the smoke rushed back in panic, and curled out and up to the roof, and condensed itself to invisibility among the rafters. And then the wind would rage after its lost prey, and rush round the house, rattling and shrieking at ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman

... infinitesimal. But in the economy of our earth the moon has played, and still plays, a part second only in importance to that of the sun himself. The moon is so close to us that her brilliant rays pale to invisibility countless orbs of a size and an intrinsic splendour incomparably greater than her own. The moon also occupies an exceptional position in the history of astronomy; for the law of gravitation, the greatest discovery that ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... only a moment. In the chart-room window beside me again a figure appeared! No image. A solid, living person, undisguised by any cloak of invisibility. George Prince had chanced my fire and had crept up ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... leaves to listen to something that they could actually hear, as if these motionless creatures of the woodland were looking upon something that they could actually see; as if there were some great secret actually present and displayed in dead silence and invisibility before those only who possessed the senses necessary ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... youth once more, and the Owl was forced to be resigned. The small tent in which guard and prisoner were to sleep was almost in the center of the camp and Robert truly would have needed wings and the power of invisibility to escape then. Instead of it he let the thought pass for a while and went ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... that the violence of the rain had continued, with a few momentary intermissions, till near daylight. The fugitives must, therefore, have passed through the village long after its inhabitants were abroad; and how, without the gift of invisibility, they had contrived to elude notice, ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... mother had taught him always to use the greatest civility—"I hold your eye fast in my hand and shall keep it safely for you until you please to tell me where to find these Nymphs. The Nymphs, I mean, who keep the enchanted wallet, the flying slippers and the what is it?—the helmet of invisibility." ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various

... unknown race in Mongolia, say, people with the power of making themselves invisible, for Tyndall will believe him, and Huxley account for them, and the Illustrated London News publish their portraits—in the stage of invisibility. We do not say the book is admirable, or perfect, or anything else superlative; but we do say, and this with sure confidence, that no one who begins it will leave it till the narrative ends, or doubt for an instant, whether he knows Defoe or not, that he has been enchained by something separate ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... the canal to the great Galligo Mills, to files of massive warehouses groaning with tobacco, into the heart of the town, where stores, and vaults, and banks, and factories lined the wide, undulating streets; it filled the gray concave with flame till the stars of the dawn shrank to pale invisibility in the advancing glare, and the crackle of hot roofs and beams, and the crash of walls and timbers, drowned the cries of the frightened and bankrupt, who beheld their fortunes wither in an hour, and the inheritance of their children fall to ashes. By the red, consuming light, poured past ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... that they were in a certain sense of no use to science. Now, however, astronomers are inclined to utilise them for determining the diameter of the Moon by noting occultations[116] of stars by the Moon, the duration of a star's invisibility behind an eclipsed Moon being a measure of the lunar diameter when such an observation is properly transformed and "reduced." Observations of the heat radiated (or rather reflected) by an eclipsed Moon have ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... glanced down like sheaves of dazzling silver arrows; and over the water, and softly riding down the glen, came soft, filmy clouds of mist, so fine and delicate that they constantly faded into invisibility; while every now and then there were passing glimpses of colour appearing and disappearing over the rushing torrent, as if there had been a rainbow somewhere up above—one which had broken up, and these were its fragments being ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... of hiding dies hard in us. To Betty, to walk abroad in New York in the midst of hurrying crowds, just Betty Brown—one of four million and no longer the beautiful Miss Silver of the society column, was to taste the romance of disguise, or invisibility. ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... me. I walk in the avenue, and eat all the delightful dinners without seeing the spots upon the table-cloth, and behold all the beautiful Aurelias without swearing at old Carbuncle. I am the guest who, for the small price of invisibility, drinks only the best wines, and talks only to the most agreeable people. That is something, I can tell you, for you might be asked to lead out old Mrs. Peony. My fancy slips in between you and Aurelia, sit you never so closely together. It not only hears what she says, but ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... effect. Your brain clears. The things that loomed so large, the "Flandria," and the English Field Ambulance and its miseries, and the terrifying recklessness of its Commandant, are reduced suddenly to invisibility. You can see nothing but the second Waterloo. You forget that you have ever been a prisoner in an Hotel-Hospital. You understand the mystic fascination of the road under your windows, going south-east from Ghent ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... the rink, however, were intoxicating, which largely made up for the invisibility of the receiving committee. The rink was somewhat larger than the town hall at Ashcroft, and the great, high, arched, glass ceiling was studded with electric lights like stars in the heavens. Extensive rows of seats for spectators encircled the entire room, and in the centre, the arena ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... and set them in array all around him in the blackness. But none of these imagined figures could cause the horror which he felt. He drove away the whole pack of them with a silent cry, a motionless dismissing wave of his hands. But there might be other beings round us, condemned to eternal invisibility lest the sight of them should drive men mad. We cannot see them, he thought. As a rule, we have no sensation of these gaunt neighbours, no suspicion of their approach, of their companionship. We do not hear their footsteps. We are ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... for in an instant there was a savage hiss, followed by a series of crackling explosions, sputtering, popping, and shrieking even. For the steam began to generate and rush up from the hold, instantaneously changing from its natural invisibility to dense white clouds of vapour, which rose and spread, and grew so thick that I could not see where to direct the jet of water, but had to trust to my ear for ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... is so minute (one frond producing more than a million) as not to be visible to the naked eye. Hence, on the doctrine of signatures, the plant—like the ring of Gyges, found in a brazen horse—has been thought to confer invisibility. Thus Shakespeare says, Henry IV., Act II., Scene 1, "We have the receipt of Fern seed; ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... a different matter," said Jaffers. "No doubt you are a bit difficult to see in this light, but I got a warrant and it's all correct. What I'm after ain't no invisibility,—it's burglary. There's a house been broke into ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... dizzily aware of shouted orders, the creaking of the toiling, slipping ropes, little jolts and stoppages, two hundred eyes blinking up, not seeing their cringed-up limbs—unnecessary cautious: for the nearer they descended to-ward the half-light, the surer did the area of the lorry make their invisibility. At last they were near; the bell lingered, swinging; babel was around them; the Governor's voice; a cheer: the bell was ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... my window, and my memory a little cruelly restored to this vision of a day long dead, I was still of the same opinion. Oh! I should have put on my boots and my waterproof and gone down to the little wood to meet the enchanter! He would have given me the cap of invisibility, the purse of Fortunatus, and a pair of seven-league boots. He would have taught me to conquer worlds, and to leave the easy triumphs of dreamers to madmen, philosophers, and poets, He would have made me a man of action, a statesman, a soldier, a founder ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton

... combine for her those qualities of novelty, inexperience, and inexhaustible feeling that had seized so firmly upon her imagination, she was reckless of discovery. After all, her Prince was proving exceptionally stupid and complaisant. Her words were gospel to him; and her frequent invisibility seemed only to whet his ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... as delighted. How the heart can melt out at the finger-points when touching the keys of a sweetly-toned instrument! It is thrown to the air, and in its plaint makes sweet music of its melancholy. Like harmonious spirits chanting in their invisibility, making vocal the very atmosphere, it died away as though going to a great distance, and stillness was in the whole house. He stole gently to the door. There seated was Alice; her elbow on her instrument, and her brow upon her hand. The bell rang for dinner. The repast is over, and a glass of ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... Hamburgher, who appeared to have an equally beloved wife in every land and in every place we came to; nor the would-be dandy, who lit cigars innumerable, and invariably flung them overboard after the first puff; nor the priests, who seemed to possess the gift of invisibility, so rarely did they show themselves; nor the hundred thousand events and personages that flash upon our path for a moment on our journey through life, and then linger in the memory only as the dim phantoms of a ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... spots of the leopard and the giraffe have all a cryptic effect which at a very short distance renders the creatures invisible amid their natural surroundings. Nor is it necessary in order to attain this invisibility that the colouring should be really dull and plain. It all depends upon the habitat. Mr. Wallace has described "a South American goatsucker which rests in the bright sunshine on little bare rocky islets in the upper Rio Negro ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... Its invisibility, and the mystery which was attached to it, made this organization doubly terrible. It appeared to be omniscient and omnipotent, and yet was neither seen nor heard. The man who held out against the Church vanished away, and none knew whither he had gone or what had befallen him. His wife and his children ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... him unshaken in his determination to make good that prophecy. If, instead of spending the whole morning in doing his duty to the insurance company, he had been able to spend an early part of it in a state of invisibility within Bullard's private office, he would have justified ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... been swift to advantage himself of Lanyard's tumble. If he had not vanished into thin air, or gone to earth in some untenanted stateroom thereabouts, he found in the close blackness of that narrow passage a cloak of positive invisibility to cover his escape. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... They were told to advance as far as they could, and then hold their line till help could come. The hills were thick with excellent positions. Every fold and dip was utilized by a scattered and numerous foe, to whom the ragged ground was like a cloak of invisibility. No artillery help could be given. We could only seize the ground's advantage and make it serve as help to the attack as well as to the defence. It was here that Marner fell. C Company was sheltering ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... a soldier!" Again Strom permitted himself a brief triumphant smile. "And we have the further advantage of invisibility. The ship is surrounded by a net of wires that create a field of force which bend light rays around us. That explains why your men have never caught us. But to get back to our subject. I will tell you something. Do you ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl

... god, Hypatia? A god made up of our own intellectual notions, or rather of negations of them—of infinity and eternity, and invisibility, and impassibility—and why not of immortality, too, Hypatia? For I recollect we used to agree that it was a carnal degrading of the Supreme One to predicate of Him so merely human a thing ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... he would have stopped if he had not been scared by the advent of Cardinal No. 4. Up to this time he had only asked for an inexhaustible purse, power to call up the Devil ad libitum, and a ring of invisibility to allow him free access to his mistress, who was ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... gifts—the first will give Unbounded riches while you live; The second health where'er you be; The third, invisibility." ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... the latter they acquired—possibly in exchange for some of their own vitality, for spirits of this order are said to have envied man his material body—tuition in sorcery, and such properties as second sight, invisibility, and lycanthropy. ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... facie view is set aside by the Stra. That which possesses invisibility and the other qualities stated in the text, and that which is higher than the high Indestructible, is no other than the highest Self. For the text declares attributes which belong to the highest Self only, viz. in I, 1, 9, 'He who knows all, cognises all,' &c. Let us shortly consider ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... the shell zone; at Pont-a-Mousson, I crossed the borders of the zone of quiet; at Montauville began the last zone—the zone of invisibility and violence. Civilian life ended at the western end of the village street with the abruptness of a man brought face to face with a high wall. Beyond the village a road was seen climbing the grassy slope of Puvenelle, ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... rapid whirl, which rendered her invisible"—the eye failed to see either web or insect for minutes together. Nothing appeals more powerfully to the youthful fancy than those coats, rings, and amulets of eastern lore, that conferred on their possessors the gift of invisibility. I learned, too, to take an especial interest in what, though they belong to a different family, are known as the Water Spiders; and have watched them speeding by fits and starts, like skaters on the ice, across the surface of some woodland spring ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... such as other Prophets had, is contrary to that distinction which God made between Moses, and other Prophets, Numb. 12. 6,7,8. To say God spake or appeared as he is in his own nature, is to deny his Infinitenesse, Invisibility, Incomprehensibility. To say he spake by Inspiration, or Infusion of the Holy Spirit, as the Holy Spirit signifieth the Deity, is to make Moses equall with Christ, in whom onely the Godhead (as St. Paul ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... that the launch must be no great way off, in spite of its invisibility. I then put myself in the place of Small, and looked at it as a man of his capacity would. He would probably consider that to send back the launch or to keep it at a wharf would make pursuit easy if the police did happen to get on his track. How, then, could he conceal ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... (though there were fewer voices to join the shout) in greeting so exquisitely liberal a measure, which is actually founded upon some of their favourite notions respecting the harmlessness of divisions, the total invisibility of the Church, and the hatefulness of "a dominant episcopacy." The rejoicings which were to be heard in quarters apparently so opposite boded no good from the measure to the Church of England; and, certainly, from the strange way in which this law ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... This invisibility, combined with the fact that the Snow Mountain gorals lived on almost inaccessible cliffs thickly covered with scrub spruce forest, made "still hunting" impossible. In fact, Baron Haendel-Mazzetti, who had explored this part of the Snow Mountains fairly ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... the Nara epoch, and indeed all through the annals of early Japan there runs a well-marked thread of superstition which owed something of its obtrusiveness to intercourse with Korea and China, whence came professors of the arts of invisibility and magic. A thunder deity making his occasional abode in lofty trees is gravely spoken of in the context of a campaign, and if at one moment a river is inhabited by a semi-human monster, at another a fish formed ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... 91. The cloak which causes invisibility is found in Grimm's tale of the raven. See Grimm's Fairy Tales, Columbus Series, p. 30. In a Pampanga tale the possessor of a magic stone becomes invisible when squeezes it. See Bayliss, (Jour. Am. Folk-Lore, ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole

... 468. Invisibility best protection while advancing. The best protection against loss while advancing is to escape the ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... said in irritation. "By Caesar, man, have you no imagination? Can't you see it was only a matter of time before someone, possibly working away on an entirely different subject of research, stumbled upon a practical method of achieving invisibility?" ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)

... created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility. Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense of a popular phrase) all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks were right when they made Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity; for he was both ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... through space. The ether is as mysterious as gravitation. With regard to ether we only infer its existence from the effects which we ascribe to it. Evidently the ether must extend as far as the most distant visible stars. But does it continue on indefinitely in outer space? If it does, then the invisibility of the other systems must be due to their distance diminishing the quantity of light that comes from them below the limit of perceptibility, or to the interposition of absorbing media; if it does not, then the reason why we cannot see them is owing to the absence ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... seem to draw near to you as you look at them steadily, others to recede until they reach the verge of invisibility. Which was Eustace doing? Did his outline become clearer or more blurred? Was he daily more definite or more phantasmal? And the members of her council drew near and whispered their opinions in Winifred's ...
— The Folly Of Eustace - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens

... produce such an effect, well then, one could also infer on seeing old houses ruined in course of time that these ruins were produced by intelligent agents. For these are also effects of which we do not know of any intelligent agent, for both are effects, and the invisibility of the agent is present in both cases. If it is said that the world is such that we have a sense that it has been made by some one, then the question will be, whether you infer the agency of God from this ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... espionage in this country rendered impossible. Such an ideal state of things is, unfortunately out of the question. Quite on the contrary, this country of ours is honeycombed with spies. So it will ever be, as long as we have to work with natural means: at present we have no caps of invisibility or magician's carpets available. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... seemed clear. The wraiths were traveling northward. It could almost be fancied that this was an army, traveling in the borderland of the Unknown. Appearing momentarily as though coming out to scout around and see the contour and the characteristics of our realm; disappearing again into invisibility, to show themselves in an hour or so many ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... the military geography of Verdun. I shall not attempt to repeat it here, but it is the invisibility of warfare, whether examined from the earth or the air, which impresses the civilian. If you go to the trenches you creep through tunnels and cavities until you are permitted to peer through a peephole, and you see yellow dirt some yards away. You may hear bullets over your head, you ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds

... and go each to his own loophole, to weary our eyes upon invisibility. Is some frightful and dismal storm about to break? But that night it did not. At the end of my long wait, with the first streaks of day, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... but those of the child ought to have satisfied the Court and jury that she was either under the power of a delusion or practising an imposture. But, as they were predisposed to find something supernatural in the transaction, their minds seized upon the pretended invisibility of the mouse as conclusive proof ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... no trace of the concealed plant. When he had descended he and his men escorted McMurdo to headquarters. Darkness had fallen, and a keen blizzard was blowing so that the streets were nearly deserted; but a few loiterers followed the group, and emboldened by invisibility shouted imprecations at ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle

... could see that it ended abruptly in a perpendicular cliff. As the sides also were precipitous, it became necessary only to build a fence across the entrance into the main canon to become possessed of a corral completely closed in. Remembering the absolute invisibility of these sunken canons until the rider is almost directly over them, and also the extreme roughness and remoteness of the district, I could see that the spot was ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... Gourmont, in a discussion of the aesthetic element in sexual beauty, considers that the invisibility of the sexual organs is the decisive fact in rendering women more beautiful than men. "Sex, which is sometimes an advantage, is always a burden and always a flaw; it exists for the race and not for the individual. In the human male, and precisely because of his erect attitude, sex is the predominantly ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... they were wounded by a mere touch of his magic ring. Alberich, whom none but he could see, was allowed to lead the van and bear the banner, which seemed to flutter aloft in a fantastic way. The dwarf took advantage of this invisibility to scale the walls of the fortress unseen, and hurled down the ponderous machines used to throw stones, arrows, boiling pitch, and oil. Thus he greatly helped Ortnit, who, in the mean while, was performing unheard-of deeds of valor, which excited the admiration of Princess Sidrat, ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... statement would he gratuitous and conjectural. If it were allowable to suppose such an agency, it might be equally so to refuse admitting it; every one may be amused or not with a pure fiction, an imaginary creation. But do not plead, that the invisibility of diabolical agency is any proof or any presumption of its reality; but simply that it is no objection, that it has no power to neutralize the evidence produced, and that unbelievers have no authority, on this account, to treat the subject with that profane and impertinent ridicule, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... universe as we understand it, it is likely that more than one-half the stars which actually exist are too faint to be seen by human vision, even when armed with the most powerful telescopes. But their invisibility is due only to their distance and the faintness of their intrinsic light, and not to any ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... hullabaloo as soon as he declares himself. A section of his electors agitates for his recall and presently some one else is elected in his stead. But non-partyism is much more than a mere cloak of invisibility for enemies or conditional supporters of the Communists. I know of considerable country districts which, in the face of every kind of agitation, insist on returning exclusively non-party delegates. The local Soviets in these districts are also non-party, and ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... his voice showing more anger. "One weapon or whatever you want to call it. Practical invisibility. But that's enough. An invisible man with a knife is more deadly than a dozen ordinary men with modern armament. Are you sure you know nothing of this, ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett

... the paradox evaporates in translation. Concealment is perhaps not so much actual invisibility (see supra ss. 9) as "showing no sign" of what you mean to do, of the plans that are formed ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... the soul, 520-u. Mysteries taught true ideas in respect to Deity, 208-m. Mysteries, teachings and essence of the, 354-l. Mysteries, the first magistrate of Athens superintended the, 380-u. Mysteries, the Greater of Eleusinia, ceremonies of initiation into the, 394-m. Mysteries: the invisibility, oneness, infinity of God, the first Truth of the, 533-m. Mysteries, the legend of the Master's degree a form of that of the, 375-u. Mysteries, the mythical person uniting the Divine and Human found in all, 356-l. Mysteries: the Soul of Man is immortal, the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... ascending to the Trayastrims'as heaven [1], and there preaching for three months his Law for the benefit of his mother [2]. Buddha had gone up to this heaven by his supernatural power, without letting his disciples know; but seven days before the completion of the three months he laid aside his invisibility, and Anuruddha [3], with his heavenly eyes, saw the World-honored one, and immediately said to the honored one, the great Mugalan, "Do you go and salute the World-honored one," Mugalan forthwith went, and with head and face did homage ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... a dreariness and a dread. There was no ray of sun without, no sort of warmth within. The Matterhorn never reappeared, but seemed the grimmer monster for this sinister invisibility. I gathered that there was real occasion for anxiety, if not for alarm, and I nursed mine chiefly in my own room until I heard the news when I went down for my letters. Bob Evers had walked in as though nothing had happened, and gone ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung

... further the schemes of Mucio, to the exclusion of more urgent business. Noiseless and secret himself, and delighting in clothing so much as to glide, as it were, throughout Europe, wrapped in the mantle of invisibility, he was perpetually provoked by the noise, the bombast, and the bustle, which his less prudent confederates permitted themselves. While Philip for a long time hesitated to confide the secret of the League to Parma, whom it most imported to understand these schemes ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... called Adrune; the fox, Blue-foot, or the Racer of the Woods; the wolf, Gray-foot, or Gold-foot; the bear the Old Man, or Grandfather. The cap of a gnome confers invisibility, and causes one to behold invisible things. Every toad that is baptized must be clad in red or black velvet, a bell on its neck, a bell on its feet. The godfather holds its head, the godmother its hinder parts. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... found her at all. But they remarked among themselves that one seldom seen e'er a sight of Therasa Joyce these times anywheres about. They supposed she was took up wid lookin' after her mother, who wasn't gettin' her health over well this good while back. I think myself that Theresa's invisibility could be only in part accounted for thus, as the explanation does not cover the fact that to slip the wrong side of the dyke, or turn aside among screening hillocks and hollows when she noticed the approach of her acquaintances, was the course she always ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... said he, smiling, "although you have the qualities of Echo, you have not yet pined away to invisibility." ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... from the trees. The longer I walked among them the more I wondered that never was I suffered to see the eyes of any, not even of the little children, not even of the beasts. It was as if ordinance had gone forth that their eyes should be banded with invisibility. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... into loving fellowship with Him. 'How can two walk together except they be agreed?' And if we reflect upon the history of our own feelings and realisation of God's presence with us, we shall see that impurity always drew a membrane over the eye of our souls, or cast a mist of invisibility over the heavens. The smallest sin hides God from us. A very, very little grain of dye stuff will darken miles of a river, and make it incapable of reflecting the blue sky and the sparkling stars. The least evil done ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... by a farmer in his field near Brookline, Massachusetts, shortly after daybreak on the morning of the 11th. Astronomically, the event was recorded by the observatory at Harvard as the sudden appearance of what apparently was a new star, increasing in the short space of a few hours from invisibility to a power beyond that of the first magnitude, and then as rapidly fading again to invisibility. This star was recorded by two of the other great North American observatories, and by one in the Argentine Republic. That it was comparatively small in mass and exceedingly ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... word of explanation had roused Desmond's anxiety. He suspected a fresh supply of tobacco; and this sudden invisibility confirmed his worst fears. He spoke of them to his wife after breakfast: and for all her radiant hopefulness of heart, she had ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... departure from their principles: but, poor men, they lead a Tantalus life of it in consequence, and when they do get a chance of sinning without being found out, they drink down pleasure by the bucketful. Depend on it, if some one would make them a present of Gyges's ring of invisibility, or Hades's cap, they would cut the acquaintance of toil without further ceremony, and elbow their way into the presence of Pleasure; they would all be Dionysiuses then. As long as Dionysius was well, he thought that there was some good in all this talk about endurance; but when ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... transient element in it, but in essence was permanent. The rushing mighty wind and the cloven tongues of fire, and the strange speech in many languages, were all equally transient. The rushing wind swept on, and the house was no more filled with it. The tongues flickered into invisibility and disappeared from the heads. The hubbub of many languages was quickly silent. But that which these things but symbolised is permanent; and we are not to think of Pentecost as if it were a sudden gush from ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... fitt, for at noone the short man mowght be the long mans shadowe and at night the contrary. A sweet dampe (a dislike of moist perfume). Wyld tyme on the grownd hath a sent like a Cypresse chest. Panis lapidosus grytty bread Plutoes Helmett; secrecy Invisibility Laconismus Omnem vocem mittere (from inchantmentes) Tertium caput; (of one ouercharged that hath a burden upon eyther showder and the 3rd. vpon his head). Triceps mercurius (great cunyng). ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... sorceress of the enchanted Isle of Increase Unsought. The white Castle of the Quest, with its three champions and their ladies, Aurea, Atra, and Viridis; the yellow dwarfs, the magic boat, the wicked Red Knight, and his den, the Red Hold; the rings and spells and charms and garments of invisibility are like the wilder parts of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... one of these worlds, and follow a fleet as it starts for their home nebula. Gradually, as they run, I will fade into invisibility, and they will not know that I have dropped back here to complete the work, but will think I am still following. Probably they will run to some other nebula in an effort to throw me off, but they will most certainly ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... for further consideration—one bearing on the possibility of new Law in the spiritual; the other, on the assumed invisibility or inconspicuousness of the old Laws on account of their subordination ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... methods. As a general rule they are supposed to have a knowledge of various magic and medicinal herbs. They are always the possessors of necklaces,[15] to which are attributed such powers as those of imparting invisibility and invulnerability. These peculiar charms, as well as numerous herbs, roots, and other things possessing magic power for good and for evil, are often bound up in the charm collars and can not be seen. Nothing will prevail upon the owner to declare even their names. After ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... taken for granted only by the inexperienced. Without doubt editors love to surround themselves with an atmosphere of mystery, aloofness, and sovereignty, but in truth they are human beings, and may be so treated. The invisibility of editors is mainly a legend. If you call at a newspaper office and, presenting your card, ask in a firm voice to see the editor, the probability is that you will see him, or some one else clothed ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett

... Hervey would have that dim black mass, hovering on the verge of invisibility, to guide him. Traveling a little west of north he might have reached the road at a nearer point. But here the traveling was bad and the danger of getting lost greater. Tom had weighed one thing against another and told Hervey to go ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... Hayes, his favourite villa, scarcely moving except from his armchair to his bed, and from his bed to his armchair, and often employing his wife as his amanuensis in his most confidential correspondence. Some of his detractors whispered that his invisibility was to be ascribed quite as much to affectation as to gout. In truth his character, high and splendid as it was, wanted simplicity. With genius which did not need the aid of stage tricks, and with a spirit which should have been far above them, he had yet been, through life, in the habit of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... but firmly trying to pull Bob's arm from her waist, her distressful difficulty being that in freeing her waist she enslaved her hand, and in getting her hand free she enslaved her waist. Finding the struggle a futile one, owing to the invisibility of her antagonist, and her wish to keep its nature secret from the other two, she arose, and saying that she did not care to see any more, felt her way downstairs. Bob followed, leaving Loveday and his ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... its edge to the hunk of desert that stretched away toward Reno, out behind the motel. The third story, behind me, cut off the neon glare from the Strip and left the place in inky darkness. There was silence and invisibility ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett

... most was the invisibility of the warring armies. On the beaches, certainly, there were tents and stores and men moving. But the rolling countryside beyond seemed bleak and deserted. Only occasionally a high-explosive shell threw up a spout of brown ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... little incident had one effect, it revealed me to my schoolfellows as an existence. From that time forth I lay no longer under the stigma of invisibility; I had produced my material shape and had thrown my shadow for a moment into a legend. But, in other respects, things went on ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... contain Bran, and certain divine people of Elysium who appeared to Fionn had rings "as thick as a three-ox goad."[516] Even the Fians are giants, and the skull of one of them could contain several men. The gods have also the attribute of invisibility, and are only seen by those to whom they wish to disclose themselves, or they have the power of concealing themselves in a magic mist. When they appear to mortals it is usually in mortal guise, sometimes ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... Henry, crossing a marble floor, next entered an enormous marble apartment chiefly populated by easy-chairs and tables. He sat down to a table and fiercely rang a bell which reposed thereon. Several of her menials simultaneously appeared out of invisibility, and one of them hurried obsequiously ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... thief deserve? If any see you, at the least they will take you for a madman; there will be trouble. But have no fear; bear a bold heart. None shall see you while I stalk at your side. I will cover you with the cloak of invisibility,—so that you may come in safety to the house ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... from which no wanderer who may have been blown there ever returned. It is enough to claim for him the merit of discovery in the true sense of the word. The New World was covered from the Old by a veil of distance, of time and space, of absence, invisibility, virtual ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... remained stationary in the mirror of the metacompass, showing that I had escaped from the influence of the Earth's rotation. It was of course impossible to measure the distance traversed during the invisibility of the Earth, but I reckoned that I had made above 500 miles between 1h. and 2h. A.M., and that at 4h. I was not less than 4800 miles from the surface. With this inference the indication of my barycrite substantially ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... the 30th September, 1909, when the region of the desert to the east of Syrtis Major came into view, after its periodic six weeks' invisibility due to the unequal length of the days of the earth and Mars, some long new canals were plainly observed which had not been visible when the region was previously in view. A long and careful investigation of fifteen years' records proved absolutely ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks

... to the conviction that Procyon and Sirius form real binary systems, consisting of a visible and an invisible star. There is no reason to suppose luminosity an essential quality of cosmical bodies. The visibility of countless stars is no argument against the invisibility of countless others." This grand conception led Peters to compute more accurately the orbit, and to assign the place of the invisible companion of Sirius. In 1862 Alvan G. Clark was testing a new 18-inch object-glass (now at Chicago) upon Sirius, and, knowing nothing of these ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... looking forward the length of the schooner, or staring, rather, for his eyes were fixed and unblinking. I was only five feet away and directly in what should have been his line of vision. It was uncanny. I felt myself a ghost, what of my invisibility. I waved my hand back and forth, of course without effect; but when the moving shadow fell across his face I saw at once that he was susceptible to the impression. His face became more expectant and tense as he tried to analyze and identify the impression. He knew that he had responded ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... the east. When the sun rose, its unclouded, level rays paled the dancing barrier of flames almost to invisibility. Refreshed by their few hours' sleep in the vital warmth, Grom and the girl stood erect in the flooding light and scanned the strange landscape. Grom's sagacious eyes noted the fertility of the level lands at a distance from the fire, and of the clefts, ledges ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... TENNYSON'S RESIDENCE.—The residence of the late Laureate is in the neighbourhood between freshwater Gate and Alum Bay, secluded by trees almost to invisibility. The front is covered with greenery, a fine magnolia growing round and over the front door. From under the lateral branches of a fine spreading cedar tree the Poet could look into Freshwater Bay and yet himself not be seen. The ...
— Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight • Various

... thought of putting the inhabitants to death; but the thought in his mind brought the storm again, and his ship went down, and he was drowned. But at last the remnant of them landed, and fought a battle with the Gods, and defeated them; whereafter the Gods put a druid invisibility on themselves, and retired into the hills; and there in their fairy palaces they remain to this day; indeed they do. They went back into the inwardness of things; whence, however, they were always appearing, and again vanishing into it; and all the old literature of Ireland ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... only a platoon became a company for an instant under favorable light refraction. The object of British khaki, French blue and German green is invisibility, but nothing can be designed that will not be visible under certain conditions. A motley such as the "tanks" were painted would be best, but the most utilitarian of generals has not yet dared to suggest motley as a uniform for an army. It occurred to me how distinct the action ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer



Words linked to "Invisibility" :   physical property, inconspicuousness, invisibleness, visibility, invisible



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