"Palpable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sweet rich voices threading through the roar of the ocean like the melody in a grand recitativo; the old men and women crouching like buzzards on the stones, their sharp eyes never closing; enfolding all with an almost palpable touch, the warm voluptuous air. Now and again a bird sang a few notes, a strange sound in the night, or the soft wind murmured like the ocean's ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... inkling of the science. When you ask your scornful questions of me, you know perfectly well that you are putting an inquiry which you yourself can answer as well as I. I am not omnipotent. I have very little more power than you. Given certain conditions and I can produce certain results, palpable, visible, and appreciable to all; but my power, as you know, is itself merely the knowledge of the laws of nature, which Western scientists, in their wisdom, ignore. I can replenish the oil in the lamp, and while there is wick the lamp shall burn—ay, even ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... a standstill, for what could it add to these wonders? Yet the fairyland of which Ludo and I had dreamed was more beautiful and more real than this palpable magnificence of tin and pasteboard; which is, perhaps, one reason why the overexcited imagination of a city child shrinks back and tries to find in reality what a boy brought up in the quiet of the country can conjure ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to Godfrey's face on the instant. This was a palpable insult. What! he, a rich man's son, the only son and heir of Colonel Anthony Preston, with his broad acres and ample bank account—he to be called a blackguard by a low Irish boy. His passion got the better of him, and he ran through the gate, his eyes flashing ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... I suppose, Miss Lovel?" Mr. Granger asked presently, with a palpable effort. He was not an adept in small talk, and though in the course of years of dinner-eating and dinner-giving he had been frequently called upon to address his conversation to young ladies, he never opened his lips to one of the class without a sense of constraint and an obvious difficulty. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... declaring the alien and sedition acts not law, but altogether void and of no force. In December the Virginia Legislature put forth a similar series by Madison, milder in tone and more cautiously expressed, denouncing those acts as "palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution." A year after their first utterance, the Kentucky law-makers further "resolved that the several States who formed (the Constitution), being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... joke." While he was exchanging explanatory yells with his captain, a sudden lowering of the darkness came upon the night, falling before their vision like something palpable. It was as if the masked lights of the world had been turned down. Jukes was uncritically glad to have his captain at hand. It relieved him as though that man had, by simply coming on deck, taken most of the gale's ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... her lion port of majestic tranquillity. But when we distinguish between what is English and what is foreign, it becomes proper that we should say more specifically what it is that we mean by the term "foreign;" what compass we allow to that idea. It is too palpable, and for many reasons, that the French standard of taste has vitiated the general taste of the Continent. How has this arisen? In part from the central position of France; in part from the arrogance of France in every age, as pretending to the precedency ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... then, of the first condition of continued existence in this world, is (a) the development of a Will so powerful as to overcome the hereditary (in a Darwinian sense) tendencies of the atoms composing the "gross" and palpable animal frame, to hurry on at a particular period in a certain course of Kosmic change; and (b) to so weaken the concrete action of that animal frame as to make it more amenable to the power of the Will. To defeat an army, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... broken sunlight, imparting specks of vivid cheerfulness, in contrast with the quiet depth of the prevailing tint. Of all this scene, the slumbering river has a dream- picture in its bosom. Which, after all, was the most real,—the picture, or the original?—the objects palpable to our grosser senses, or their apotheosis in the stream beneath? Surely the disembodied images stand in closer relation to the soul. But both the original and the reflection had here an ideal charm; and, had it been a thought more wild, I could have fancied that this river had strayed forth out ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was about to read Lupin a sermon on smoking (which he indulges in violently) and billiards, but he put on his hat and walked out. Carrie then read ME a long sermon on the palpable inadvisability of treating Lupin as if he were a mere child. I felt she was somewhat right, so in the evening I offered him a cigar. He seemed pleased, but, after a few whiffs, said: "This is a good old tup'ny—try one of mine," and he handed me a cigar as long as it was strong, ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... is a member. But as State officials can command us to no duty unknown to State laws, neither can a Federal officer claim any authority over us in matters not within his constitutional and legal control. A palpable infraction of our written charter of government by our rulers, justifies disobedience upon the part of a citizen as much as lawful orders are entitled to ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... consequent ill health, your grandfather and myself mutually agreed that it would be best for us, by way of lessening our expenses, to sell our furniture, and break up housekeeping for a few years. My health, which had never been good since that severe illness, of which I have spoken, was the palpable cause; for my husband had often expressed a desire to try the effect of rest from the cares and fatigue of housekeeping, and now, that one sister and two of my brothers were married and settled, there was not difficulty in ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... and stopped to catch her breath as if the oppression of the room in which she had immured her darling had infected the sunny air of this glorious day and made free breathing an impossibility. The weights on her feet were so palpable to her that she unconsciously looked down at them. This was how she came to notice the dust on her shoes. Alive to the story it told, she burst the spell which held her and made a bound ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... waters it had thus proscribed or else enter them at their peril. The Government of the United States earnestly protested. It took the position that such a policy could not be pursued without the practical certainty of gross and palpable violations of the law of nations, particularly if submarine craft were to be employed as its instruments, inasmuch as the rules prescribed by that law, rules founded upon principles of humanity and established for the protection of the lives of non-combatants at sea, could not ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... so palpable. Hermia looked from one to the other amusedly. Markham was following Olga's artistic dissertation with the eye of dubiety, ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... the Somnauth gates, a pettier piece of hypercriticism, and a more palpable exhibition of hypocrisy, were never witnessed on a public question. Two things on this point are as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... grotesque in this ruthless Yankee poking in among the revered antiquities of Britain, so that the beef-eating British themselves could not restrain their laughter. They took his jokes in excellent part. The letters on the Tower and Chawsir were palpable hits, and it was generally agreed that Punch had contained nothing better since the days of Yellow-plush. This opinion was not confined to the man in the street. It was shared by the high-brows of the reviews and the appreciative of ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... be able to defend herself. And as in the treaty which Filippo made with the Doge of Genoa, he had acquired Serezana and other places situated on this side the Magra, upon condition that, if he wished to alienate them, they should be given to the Genoese, it was quite palpable that he had broken the treaty; and he had, besides, entered into another treaty with the legate of Bologna, in opposition to his engagement respecting the Panaro. These things disturbed the minds of the citizens, and made them, apprehensive of new troubles, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... my vitals, and, finding no other food, preyed, though with a sickly and dull maw, upon them. This disease came upon me slowly: it was not till the beginning of the second year, from its obvious and palpable commencement, that it grew to the height that I have described. It began with a distaste to all that I had been accustomed to enjoy or to pursue. Music, which I had always passionately loved, though from some defect in the organs of hearing, I was incapable of attaining the smallest ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... get married to backwood Southern girls who haven't a nigger to bless themselves with since the war! No," she continued, lifting her proud little head so promptly after Ford had recovered from his surprise as to make the ruse of emptying her shoe perfectly palpable, "no, that's what we've both allowed, dear, all along. And now, honey, it's near time for me to go. Tell me something good—before I go. Tell me that you love me as you used to—tell me how you felt that night at the ball when you first knew we loved each other. But stop—kiss me first—there, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... replied Piers heavily, with the most palpable feint of carelessness. "He mentioned what of course you know, that Arnold Jacks is not going to be married ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... orders were become a full protection for all enormities. A clerk in Worcestershire, having debauched a gentleman's daughter, had, at this time, proceeded to murder the father: and the general indignation against this crime moved the king to attempt the remedy of an abuse which was become so palpable, and to require that the clerk should be delivered up, and receive condign punishment from the magistrate [m]. Becket insisted on the privileges of the church; confined the criminal in the bishop's prison, lest he should ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... the restoration; that is, upon an apprehension that king James the second had abdicated the government, and that the throne was thereby vacant: which apprehension of theirs was confirmed by their concurrent resolution, when they actually came together. And in such a case as the palpable vacancy of a throne, it follows ex necessitate rei, that the form of the royal writs must be laid aside, otherwise no parliament can ever meet again. For, let us put another possible case, and suppose, for the ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... appointed brigadier-general, resigned, and Mr. Acton, under the law, became president. This political character of the board, so diametrically opposed to the feelings and wishes of the vast majority of the citizens, tested by the ordinary rules and principles of a Republican Government, was unjust; a palpable, deliberate encroachment on the right of self-government. But as we remarked, just now, it was fortunate for the country that such a state of things existed. In the extraordinary, not anticipated, and perilous condition in which we found ourselves, everything ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... was a Wapping man; a lively, impudent young Cockney, who had the most miraculous faculty of telling lies—not only palpable lies, but lies absolutely impossible: yet they were so sublimely told often, and he contrived to lug into them such a quantity of gorgeous tinsel ornament, as, in his happier efforts, decidedly to carry the day against his opponent. The London hand had seen life too, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... of Rumor soon condensed itself into a palpable and terrible whisper,—"Griffith Gaunt hath met ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... suffering, which is more properly the dramatic; but he has all the pathos of sentiment and romance—all that belongs to distant objects of terror, and uncertain, imaginary distress. His strength, in like manner, is not strength of will or action, of bone and muscle, nor is it coarse and palpable—but it assumes a character of vastness and sublimity seen through the same visionary medium, and blended with the appalling associations of preternatural agency. We need only turn, in proof of this, to the Cave of Despair, or the Cave of Mammon, or to the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... admire the judgment than condemn the resolution which steered the country safe among those dangerous shoals. Elizabeth's position is more familiar to us, and is more reasonably appreciated because the danger was more palpable. Henry has been hardly judged because he trampled down the smouldering fire, and never allowed it to assume the form which would have justified him with the foolish and the unthinking. Once and once only the flame blazed out; but it was checked on the instant, and therefore ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... yet even these, no less than others, do practically admit it in their common intercourse with the world. And it cannot be otherwise; for what the Creator has joined must have some affinity, although the palpable signs may elude our cognizance. And that they do elude it, except perhaps in a very slight degree, is actually the case, as is well proved by the signal failure of all attempts to reduce them to a science; for neither diagram nor axiom has ever yet corrected an instinctive impression. But man does ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... Lisbon, that at a reception of mine for the diplomatic body at Belem, the Duke de Palmela, who presented its members (as Minister for Foreign Affairs), asked me to excuse his hurrying through the ceremony, as his Duchess was in the act of bringing her fifteenth child into the world. A palpable proof this, given by the head of its Foreign Office, of the vitality of the Portuguese nation! Some days later the Duke, a diplomatist of the old school, who added to his own considerable wit and cleverness the advantage of having rubbed shoulders with the greatest diplomatists ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... circumstances the hotel would have been closed. A certain royal family had not yet left, and this fact made the arrangements possible. It was now very warm. Dust lay everywhere, on the huge palms, on the withered plants, on the chairs and railings, and swam palpable in the air. Breitmann was nowhere to be found, but he had seen the manager of the hotel and secured rooms facing the bay. Later, perhaps two hours after the arrival, he appeared. In this short time ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... dreamed that to Tyburn I passed in the cart— I dreamed I was married to Adela Chart: From the first I awoke with a palpable start, The second dumbfoundered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... believe that the third part of Christabel, published in Blackwood for June, 1819, vol. v. p. 286., could have either "perplexed the public," or "pleased Coleridge." In the first place, it was avowedly written by "Morgan Odoherty;" and in the next, it is too palpable a parody to have pleased the original author, who could hardly have been satisfied with the raving rhapsodies put into his mouth, or with the treatment of his innocent and virtuous heroine. This will readily be supposed when it is known ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... Florence Delmaine, as Kate Hardcastle, leaves nothing to be desired, and many are the complimentary speeches uttered from time to time by the audience. Arthur Dynecourt too had not overpraised his own powers. It is palpable to every one that he has often trod the boards, and the pathos he throws into his performance astonishes the audience. Is it only acting in the final scene when he makes love to Miss Hardcastle, or is there some ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"
... profitable trade if bankers were not a small number, and depositors in comparison an immense number. But to get a great number of persons to do exactly the same thing is always very difficult, and nothing but a very palpable necessity will make them on a sudden begin to do it. And there is no such palpable necessity in banking. If you take a country town in France, even now, you will not find any such system of banking as ours. Cheque-books ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... of his, you feel as when coming, in a forest, upon what seems a dead lion; perhaps he may not be dead, but only sleeping; nay, perhaps he may not be sleeping, but only shamming. And you have a jealousy, as to Milton, even in the most flagrant case of almost palpable error, that, after all, there may be a plot in it. You may be put down with shame by some man reading the line otherwise, reading it with a different emphasis, a different caesura, or perhaps a different suspension ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... eyes—it is curious, and not necessarily unpleasant, to consider what might be the actual phenomena attending a cometary collision. We know not what comets are composed of, but are certain that they consist of some palpable matter, however diffused, for they observe the rules of motion in their revolutions round the sun. On the whole, the most plausible supposition as to their composition, is that which regards them as watery vapour or cloud, of great tenuity. How like, for example, to the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... I got outside, I felt chilled to the very marrow. It was one of those nights on which the earth seems dead with cold. The frozen air becomes resisting and palpable, such pain does it cause; no breath of wind moves it, it is fixed and motionless; it bites, pierces through you, dries, kills the trees, the plants, the insects, the small birds themselves that fall from the branches onto the hard ground, and become ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... my reach. I began to fear that I should be involved in a maze, and should be disabled from returning. To obviate this danger it was requisite to adhere to the nearest wall, and conform to the direction which it should take, without straying through the palpable obscurity. Whether the ceiling was lofty or low, whether the opposite wall of the passage was distant or near, this I deemed no proper opportunity ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... not have been the "mental and moral giant" that he appears to his admirers (see Professor Johnson in vol. xi., p. 355), but he was an intelligent and able man, quite too clear-headed to be imposed upon by a palpable "ambiguous middle," except for his excitement in the heat of a desperate controversy with the moral sense ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... we will Consult Chymical Experiments, we shall find the Advantages of the Chymical Doctrine above the Peripatetick Title little less then Palpable. For in that Operation that Refiners call Quartation, which they employ to purifie Gold, although three parts of Silver be so exquisitely mingl'd by Fusion with a fourth Part of Gold (whence the Operation is Denominated) that the resulting Mass acquires severall new Qualities, ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... influence will descend with the greatest effect to the great body of the community. In this reading and opulent country, there are no fashions which diffuse themselves so fast, as those of literature and immorality: there is no palpable boundary between the noblesse and the bourgeoisie, as in old France, by which the corruption and intelligence of the former can be prevented from spreading to the latter. All the parts of the mass, act and react upon each other with a powerful ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of what the world is, I could hardly explain to you," she said, with cool rudeness; the sort of insolence that a fine lady can use upon occasion when it suits her. Philip's face flushed, but he would not make the rudeness more palpable ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... witnesses acknowledged that she had sworn falsely, and tried to explain away her testimony in Court, acknowledging that what the girls said was "for sport. They must have some sport." But neither the testimony in their favor from those who had known them through life, nor the palpable and decisive manner in which the evidence against them had been impeached and exposed, could open the eyes of the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... and these in their turn elected the deputies. This was not done by ballot, for Montenegro, like Hungary, had never known the ballot. An absurd outcry was raised by Nikita's band of adventurers and their unhappy dupes in this country; they called the world to witness this most palpable iniquity on the part of the Serbs, whose armed forces had rushed across the mountains, and the moment they arrived in Montenegro had so overawed the population that this pro-Serb, pro-Yugoslav Skup[vs]tina ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... a grammatical double entendre whose application is palpable. Harf al-Jarra particle governing the noun in the genitive or a mode of thrusting ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... from the other Platonic ideas by precisely this attribute, that it must be embodied. What else is the meaning of the statement in the Phaedrus, "This is the privilege of beauty, that, being the loveliest (of the ideas) she is also the most palpable to sight?" [Footnote: Sec. 251.] Now, whatever one's stand on the question of nature versus humanity in art, one must admit that embodying ideals means, in the long run, personifying them. The poet, despising the sordid and unwieldy natures of men, may try, as Wordsworth did, to give us a purer ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... productions. Nowhere does the ancient doctrine that differences or similarities in the various forms of life that inhabit different countries are due to corresponding physical differences or similarities in the countries themselves, meet with so direct and palpable a contradiction. Borneo and New Guinea, as alike physically as two distinct countries can be, are zoologically wide as the poles asunder; while Australia, with its dry winds, its open plains, its stony deserts, and its temperate climate, yet produces birds ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... their passing Harvard or other examinations, but they stand very firmly on their quaintly-shod feet. They are exhaustively "felt," and eminently qualified to attract the opposite sex, which is not the case with ghosts, who, moreover, do not wear the most palpable petticoats of quilted satin, nor sport the most delicate fans, nor take generally the most ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... feelings; her quick imagination tutored her looks and words, taught her the spells to weave about shorn giants. And for a few days she and Amherst lost themselves in this self-evoked cloud of passion, both clinging fast to the visible, the palpable in their relation, as if conscious already that its finer ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... health. It is not the chorea that used to be described, in which there was an irresistible impulse to excessive action, and which was best combated by complete muscular exhaustion; but the foundation of this disease is palpable debility. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... exactly parallel, Mr. Smith," was my reply. "The gouty toe and crushing heel are very palpable and straightforward matters, and a man would be an egregious blockhead to be offended when reminded of the pain he was inflicting. But it would be impossible to make Mrs. Jordon at all conscious of the extent of her ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... both her husbands, who are both dead, the lungs of ribaldry are more exercised than the fine eye of sentiment. We scarcely care to see our Dominie treated thus. His creator had the very lowest opinion of the modern playwright's craft, and probably held that stage humour could not be too palpable and practical. Lockhart writes (v. 130): "What share the novelist himself had in this first specimen of what he used to call 'the art of Terryfying' I cannot exactly say; but his correspondence shows that ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... argument, For this there only have been shown to thee, Throughout these orbs, the mountain, and the deep, Spirits, whom fame hath note of. For the mind Of him, who hears, is loth to acquiesce And fix its faith, unless the instance brought Be palpable, and proof apparent urge." ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Bench. I forget what the proportions used to be, but enormously the other way. It is quite ludicrous to talk to any lawyer about the Chancellor; the ridicule and aversion he has excited are universal. They think he has degraded the profession, and his tricks are so palpable, numerous, and mean, that political partiality can neither screen nor defend them. As to the separation of the judicial from the ministerial duties of his office, it is in great measure accomplished without any legislative act, for nobody ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... flush that glowed through the clear skin. If Mrs Ray Jefferson's admiration was envious, at least it was genuine. She had never really believed in perfect feminine beauty before—beauty that shone supreme without the aid of dress and frippery—but here it was—a glowing and palpable fact. The simple white drapery with its border of scarlet floated with the grace of its own perfect simplicity around that perfect form, and never was royal mantle more splendid than the rippling hair that crowned her head and fell in its luxuriance ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... changes between youth and age, but also, like the human body, with a quotidian life, a periodical recurrence of ebbing and flowing tides. Its old particles daily run to waste, and give place to new. What is hoped among us is, that which has usually been found, that evils will become palpable before they have grown ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... that drive. She continued bitter towards Phoebe, and kept such a watch over her and Sir Bevil, that the jealous surveillance became palpable to both. Sir Bevil really wanted to tell Phoebe the unsatisfactory result of his pleading for Robert; she wanted to tell him of Robert's gratitude for his offered gift; but the exchange of any words in private was out of their power, and each silently felt that it was best to make no ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to be what they are now. The present contented acquiescence of the coloured people in the dominance of the whites, and the absence of resentment at the contempt displayed toward them, cannot be expected from a people whose inferiority, though still real, will be much less palpable. And if trouble comes, the preponderance of numbers on the black side may make it more serious than it could be in the United States, where the Southern whites are the outmost fringe of an enormous white nation. These anxieties ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... the reign of William Rufus. This he hurriedly adapted to include the satirical characters suggested by "Poetaster," and fashioned to convey the satire of his reply. The absurdity of placing Horace in the court of a Norman king is the result. But Dekker's play is not without its palpable hits at the arrogance, the literary pride, and self-righteousness of Jonson-Horace, whose "ningle" or pal, the absurd Asinius Bubo, has recently been shown to figure forth, in all likelihood, Jonson's ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... humility attached to him like a second nature, from his habit of doing as others bid him: the former smacks a voluntarily sweating forehead and throbbing wounds for witness of his claim upon your palpable thankfulness. It is an insult to tell him that he fought for his own satisfaction. Mr. Romfrey still called himself a Whig, though it was Whig mean vengeance on account of his erratic vote and voice on two or three occasions that denied him a peerage and a seat in haven. Thither let your ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... last night," he said, "and owing to the heat she kept the window open. Some one must have waded into the water in the dark and stolen it. Perhaps one of the bandsmen may have noticed the flashing of the diamonds on her wrist and returned to secure the bracelet—there's no saying. The only too palpable fact is that it is gone—it was valued ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... little set of hers at her retreat of the "Hermitage." Persons, even places, have their nicknames. St. Petersburg is the "Duck-pond"; Grimm himself the "Fag," "Souffredouleur," George Dandin, "M. le Baron de Thunder-ten-Tronck." Frederick the Great appears as "Herod" (a palpable hit that!), the diplomats as "Wind-bags," "Pea-soup," "Die Perrueckirte Haeupter;" Maria Theresa becomes "Maman;" Gustavus of Sweden, "Falstaff;" and so on. There is no question here of making a figure; often she has nothing to say; she writes purely to give extravagance an ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... motions, gestures, and expressions. By and by he fancied that the largest of them, an individual of a singularly grave demeanor, seated at the front of the cage, gave him a glance of intelligence. The glance was returned. A palpable wink followed, which also was returned, as were other like signals; and so it went on until his Reverence, having cast an eye around to see that nobody was observing him, leaned forward and said, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... investigation as to its exact nature until the symptoms had practically disappeared, a way was cleared to obtain their complete confidence, and at the same time to overcome any unwillingness to accept a psychical explanation for such palpable physical ills. This latter point is of importance in dealing with uneducated persons. For the most part, they are intensely practical and materialistic, and a mere idea does not seem to them to account for paralysis although, of course, such skepticism is usually accompanied by ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... enter into a quarrel with Germany or any other State, let her people take care that it arises from no obscure issue about which they may disagree among themselves, but from some palpable wrong done by the other Power, some wrong which calls upon them to resist it with all ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... and one palpable enough to any person who has eyes. Just look yonder, and you will ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... liberty, nor his property. They only guard the personality, the liberty, the property of others. They hold themselves on the defensive; they defend the equal right of all. They fulfil a mission whose harmlessness is evident, whose utility is palpable, and whose legitimacy is not to be disputed. This is so true that, as a friend of mine once remarked to me, to say that the aim of the law is to cause justice to reign, is to use an expression which is not rigorously exact. It ought to be said, the aim of the law is to prevent ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... the narrow porch, facing the dark, whispering stream, the night pouring into the deep, still valley. A cold air rose from the surface of the water, and Clare wrapped a worn piece of blanket about her shoulders. At frequent intervals she gazed with palpable delight at her feet, shod in the "real buck." A deep, melancholy chorus of frogs rose from the creek, mingling with the high, metallic shrilling of crickets, the reiterated calling of whippoorwills from ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... women as inferiors and servants—a custom which precluded the possibility of true chivalry and adoration. That sympathy also—and consequently true, altruistic affection—continued to be wanting in their emotional life is indicated by the fact, also pointed out by Rohde, that "the most palpable mark of a higher respect," an education, was withheld from the women to the end of the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... absorbs one in its depths. And with the impression of its solemn beauty was blent a despairing awe of the artist who, of a little coloured earth, had created such a masterpiece of vitality, thrown on to a thin screen of canvas so enduringly palpable, so sumptuous, and so poignantly dominating a reflection of his visions. What a passionate energy of beauty must have been in this man's soul; what a constant fury ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... One of the palpable anomalies of the present practice regarding experts on handwriting is that a person who has seen another write, no matter how ignorant the observer may be, is competent to testify as to whether or not certain writing ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... what you are going to say, slave; for I know the men of your nation. Take care, if the accusation you are making by way of revenge is not supported by visible, palpable, and positive proofs, you shall be punished ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the sad and encourage the weak; to relieve the doubter and console the bereaved; to confirm the old-world traditions regarding bygone spirit intervention and revelation, and supplement our hopes and intuitions with proof palpable. Present day experiences of inspiration and spirit manifestation make credible and acceptable many things in ancient records which must otherwise have been discarded as superstitious and false. Spiritualism redeems the so-called 'supernatural' ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... take my sister Sasha and Dr. Makowicki with him? He could not but know that in their company he would be just as well provided with all the necessaries of life as he would have been at Yasnaya Polyana. It would have been the most palpable self-deception. ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... names of persons and things, as well as of things not material and palpable, but of which we have a conception and knowledge, such as courage, firmness, goodness, strength; and verbs express actions, movements, &c. If the word used signifies that anything has been done, or is being done, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... refuge for incompetence. It was mainly composed of girls of sixteen and seventeen who could not reach the standard of the Sixth, and who went by the nickname of "owls" or "stupids." The prospect of being relegated to such an intellectual backwater spread palpable dismay over Winona's face. Miss Bishop ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... fragrant. Although the sun wanted an hour of setting, yet from the bottom of the vale they could perceive the broad shafts of light which shot from his mild disk through the snowy clouds we have mentioned, like bars of lambent radiance, almost palpable to the touch. Yet, although this delightful silence was so profound, the heart could perceive, beneath its stillest depths, that voiceless harmony of progressing life, which, like the music of a dream, can reach the soul independently of the senses, and pour upon it ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... That dog somehow became mixed up with that old family clock that stood in the corner. I heard him scratching and climbing up among the weights, writhing and twisting his way among the machinery, till there, looking out through the face of that old family clock, distinct and palpable as the sun at noonday, or the moon in a cloudless night, I saw the ogre head of that dog; his great glassy, fishy eyes, his half drooping, half erect ears, his slavering jaws, and as he gazed in a stupid meaningless stare upon me, uttered ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... tyrannously down, the fiercer would the world's recoil against him be, one day. Injustice pays itself with frightful compound interest. I am not sure but he had better lost his best park of artillery, or had his best regiment drowned in the sea, than shot that poor German bookseller, Palm! It was a palpable, tyrannous, murderous injustice, which no man, let him paint an inch thick, could make out to be other. It burnt deep into the hearts of men, it and the like of it; suppressed fire flashed in the eyes of men, as they ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... with emotion that caused his manly frame to vibrate from head to foot, while his dilated eyes appeared spellbound by some familiar apparition which they hardly dared to believe was palpable. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... smothered an adjective to "weather" on a deep sigh. Her wretchedness was palpable. In proportion to it, Adrian waned cheerful and brisk. He divined enough of the business to see that there was some strange intelligence to be fished out of the culprit who sat compressing hysterics before him; and as he was never more ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... seemed so ludicrously devout. She disturbed their devotions, this girl who had betrayed her father, her faith, her class. She ought to repent, of course, and Church was the right place; yet there was something brazen in her repenting there before their very eyes; she was too palpable a flaw in the crystal of the Church's authority, too visible a rent in the raiment of their priest. Her figure focused all the uneasy amazement and heart searchings of these last weeks. Mothers quivered with the knowledge that their daughters could ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... you will be as wise as myself. In the middle watch of this night, our two cats—have I told you that we brought two cats from England with us?—as was their wont, were skylarking and cutting capers on the hammock nettings and davits, when tabby the lesser, instead of jumping on something palpable, made a leap on space with the natural result, for he lighted on water and was rapidly whirled astern by the inky waters of the Tartar gulf. Poor pussy, little did we dream, or you either, that Siberian waters were to ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... that I cannot accept a share in the 'Edinburgh Encyclopaedia.' I am obliged to decline by motives of prudence. I do not know anything of the agreement made by the proprietors, except in the palpable mismanagement of a very exclusive and promising concern. I am therefore fearful to risk my property in an affair ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... object of the poet is to present in a clear, comprehensive and palpable form the sphinx riddle of human existence, his work abounds nevertheless in a variety of interesting data, which throw considerable light upon the philosophical and theological theories in vogue among the thoughtful spirits of the Jewish community. Their "natural ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... to do," he said, "giving them the little house. You will have treated them handsomely, and, whatever happens, you will be glad of it." Mr. Wentworth was liberal, and he knew he was liberal. It gave him pleasure to know it, to feel it, to see it recorded; and this pleasure is the only palpable form of self-indulgence with which the narrator of these incidents will ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... "utilise" Italy, and carry away all her wealth with them, has been the source of innumerable mistakes. From this, and their own ignorance of marine engineering, Spezia has already, without the slightest evidence of a commencement, swallowed up above eight millions of francs—the only palpable results being the disfigurement of a very beautiful road, and the bankruptcy ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... it was a heavy, ghastly blackness, that seemed palpable, so that it frightened her and she looked for relief at the faint light glimmering through the window from a distant street-lamp. She thought the night would never end—the minutes seemed like hours, and she wondered how she should ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... comes down to soothe the weary eyes, Which all the day with ceaseless care have sought The magic gold which from the seeker flies; Ere dreams put on the gown and cap of thought, And make the waking world a world of lies,— Of lies most palpable, uncouth, forlorn, That say life's full of aches and tears and sighs,— Oh, how with more than dreams the soul is torn, Ere sleep comes down to soothe ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... Eutychius was at that time patriarch of Constantinople.[5] This prelate, having suffered for the faith under Justinian, fell at length into an error, importing, that after the general resurrection the glorified bodies of the elect will be no longer palpable, but of a more subtile texture than air. This error he couched in a certain book which he wrote. St. Gregory was alarmed, and held several conferences with the patriarch upon that subject, both in private and ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... couch Of down, and yet, I was most wretched still. My garments were but cumbersome; my couch Could give no rest, and e'en my generous wines Could not remove the crushing weight that sat, Nightmare-like, on my heart, until it grew A palpable and keenly aching pang. There is, one path which yet remains untrod; To be my guide in it, I called thee ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... better lives, and bring forward abler arguments; but their efforts are paralysed by that unsoundness. I see the High Churchman professing to believe in the existence of a church, when the most palpable facts must show him that no such church exists; the "Low" Churchman professing to believe in exceptional interpositions which his philosophy secretly questions; the "Broad" Churchman professing as absolute an attachment to the Established Church as the narrowest could feel, while he is preaching ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... carrying valises, &c., then squander it for liquor. My native comes to me as I sit on the veranda of the Howard House smoking a cigar, and solicits the job of taking my things to the cars next morning. He is intoxicated, and has been fighting, to the palpable detriment of his wearing apparel; for he has only a pair of tattered pantaloons and a very small quantity ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... slavery in Caliban are more palpable, and need not be dwelt on now: though I will notice them also, severally, in their proper places;—the heart of his slavery is in his worship: "That's a brave god, and bears celestial—liquor." But, in illustration ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... same belief to our days. In their nullity and spiritual blindness, men are incapable of conceiving the invisible spiritual bond which unites them to the great Divinity, and this explains why they have always sought for palpable things, which were in the domain of the senses, and by doing which they minimized the divine principle. Nevertheless, they have dared to attribute to their visible and man-made images a divine and eternal existence. We can see the same fact in Brahminism, where man, given to ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... the vaguer conceptions of the Greek mind, there was danger of an escape from them of the free spirit of air, and light, and sky. Hence, all through the history of Greek art, there is a struggle, a Streben, as the Germans say, between the palpable and limited human form, and the floating essence it is to contain. On the one hand, was the teeming, still fluid world, of old beliefs, as we see it reflected in the somewhat formless theogony of Hesiod; a world, the Titanic vastness of ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Some hits sufficiently palpable, however, were recorded for the advantage of posterity. When Lady Clonbrony led her to look at the Chinese pagoda, the lady paused, with her foot on the threshold, as if afraid to enter this porcelain Elysium, as she called it—Fool's Paradise, she would have said; and, ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... instant, and only for an instant, a scene of alarm and consternation overcame us; and we almost instinctively addressed to each other the question, "What can all this mean?" But the meaning was too palpable not to be understood at once. "The thing cannot end here," said we—"a night attack is commencing;" and we made no delay in preparing to meet it. Whilst Charlton remained with the picquet, in readiness to act as the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... dear face, as you sit at the hearth; And I know, by the tender expression I see, I know that my darling is musing of me. Does her thought dim the blaze?—Does it shed through the room A chilly, unseen, and yet palpable gloom? Ah! then we are equal! You share all my pain, And I halve your blessedness with ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston
... fawn, or orange, or pinky light salutes our eyes, as sleep's visionary worlds recede and relapse into airy nothing, and as we know of a certainty that these are real web-and-woof damask curtains, that flock palpable ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... with a portentous negative nod that blended the resigned solicitude of an old and trusted friend with the firmness of a Bismarck. This closed the discussion; with expressions of undying gratitude, and a few remarks as to the palpable advantages to be derived from keeping a public bathing-room permanently locked, I left him to his ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... river. Imagine this forest and jungle in all stages of decay and growth, rain pattering on you every other day of the year; an impure atmosphere with its dread consequences, fever and dysentery; gloom throughout the day and darkness almost palpable throughout the night; and then if you can imagine such a forest extending the entire distance from Plymouth to Peterhead, you will have a fair idea of some of the inconveniences endured by us ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... just within Dane heard snarls, snufflings, bestial growls, the sounds of a struggle. Something thumped against the door and fell away. He heaved to his feet and his hand found the doorknob. But suddenly he was powerless to turn it. Panic tugged at him with almost palpable fingers, drove him to go back to his plane and safety. Almost he fled—but he remembered in time that it was a ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... characteristics ascribed to the Divinity by the metaphysicians, yet bears witness in my opinion, that this world was made and is governed by just such a Being as the Jehovah of the Old Testament; while the palpable fulfillment of predictions contained in that book, and which is so strikingly manifest in the Old World, leaves in my mind no doubt whatever, of the ultimate fulfillment of all that it promises, and all ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... for surprises—for the sudden appearance of a gable-end, which just now was shadow, for the more gradual, but not less curious, formation of a street in what seemed to be space; for the sudden creation of windows in dead walls, for the turning of fantastic shadows into palpable carts, baskets, piles of wood, and the like; and for the discovery of a number of coiled-up dogs (and one or two coiled-up men) who had weathered ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... Double Dealer, however, was not so palpable a hit as the Old Bachelor, but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having fallen foul of it, our "swell" applied the scourge to that presumptuous body, in the Epistle Dedicatory to the "Right Honourable ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... all sure whether the look she gave him was one of astonishment or resentment. At any rate, it was a quick glance, followed by the palpable suppression of words that first came to her lips, and the substitution of a ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... it must not present it pure, but must as a medium make use of a mythical vehicle. Truth may also be compared in this respect to certain chemical stuffs which in themselves are gaseous, but which for official uses, as also for preservation or transmission, must be bound to a firm, palpable base, because they would otherwise volatilise. For example, chlorine is for all such purposes applied only in the form of chlorides. But if truth, pure, abstract, and free from anything of a mythical nature, is always to remain unattainable by us all, philosophers ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... accumulated, they began to consider the revision of the laws, the appointment of a collector of customs and a royal governor, and even the annulment of the charter itself. In short, they determined to bring Massachusetts "under a more palpable declaration of obedience to his Majesty." The general court of the colony, although it had said that "any breach in the wall would endanger the whole," was at last frightened by the news from England and passed an order in October, 1677, that the laws of trade must be strictly observed, and ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... little indeed was known about the wind beyond the palpable facts of its existence, its varied condition, and its tremendous power; and men's observations in regard to it did not extend much beyond the noting of those peculiar and obvious aspects of the sky which experience taught them to regard as evidences of approaching ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... writer, which it is to be supposed the author of the proposals is, otherwise he cannot be equal to the task he has undertaken. But our admirable and sagacious inspector thus addresses the public, 'Tis palpable, 'tis evident, says he, that this man means to tell you, the Saviour of the world did not die upon the cross; that he did not rise from the dead; that he did not work miracles. I shall only observe, that the words Jesus, ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... bonnet tossing softly. Last came Lawrence, slight and elegantly erect, in his city broadcloth and linen, a figure so like his father as to seem almost his double, and yet with a difference beyond that of age, so palpable that a child might see it—a self-spelled word, with a ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... account of this very artificialness. By artificial I do not mean deceitful. I saw nobody but nice people there, smooth, kind, and polite. By artificial I mean wrought up. You don't get at the heart of things. Artificialness spreads and spans all with a crystal barrier,—invisible, but palpable. Nothing was left to grow and go at its own sweet will. The very springs were paved and pavilioned. For green fields and welling fountains and a possibility of brooks, which one expects from the name, you found a Greek temple, and a pleasure-ground, graded and grassed and pathed like a cemetery, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... if the public mind was properly enlightened. It is unnecessary to spend many words in exposing such palpable abuses, or to trace the cause of their existence and continuance. One cause of this is the wilful blindness and silly gasconade of some of those who lead and form public opinion. With South Carolinians, nothing is done in South Carolina that is not greater than ever was done ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... ordinary character; the names of the haberdasher, the hat dealer and the boot maker had been as effectually destroyed. There were no papers of any description in his pockets. His wrist watch bore neither name, date nor initials. Indeed, nothing had been overlooked in his very palpable effort to prevent actual identification, either in ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... pistols. After a while the others came in with two persons to buy me, but on seeing me they remarked that they thought I would run away, and asked me if I had ever run away. Dan sprang to his feet and answered the question for me, by telling one of the most palpable falsehoods that ever came from the lips of a slaveholder. He declared that I had never ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... little distance from him on the end of a sofa. She was bowed as if deeply thinking; and when she heard these words her head only sank a little more, as if a palpable weight had been laid upon her. She ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... professional achievements. I happen to know that he was concerned in some important cases in his time—but he rarely, if ever, mentioned them to me. In fact, I may say, gentlemen," he continued in a palpable burst of confidence, "I may say, between ourselves, that I'd had the honour of Mr. K.'s acquaintance for some time before ever I knew what his line of business had ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... child—some stranger's child. I felt that I might make her afraid of me. I had never before thought that to make love is a coarse thing. But still at high summer when I met Mary again no definite thing had been said between myself and Rachel. But we knew, each of us knew, that somewhere in a world less palpable, in fairyland, in dreamland, we had met and ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... and overcome that very palpable compulsion on the wrong side, the most desperate action of God's servants in all ages has never been found strong enough. Hence there has come about another sort of compulsion, within the souls of all God's messengers. It could not but be more agreeable to flesh and blood ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... Nothing palpable had happened. Nothing had been said openly to convince him that his secret was known and that it was evil. Yet the air about him seemed full of suspicion and suspense and menace. The mere way in which his mother looked ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... me with his name and address I shall be happy to inform him a little before the rest of the world whether his germ has borne any fruit. I feel he is a kindred spirit, and take this opportunity of saying publicly that I was extremely disappointed at the unsatisfactory verdict. The thing was a palpable assassination; an open verdict has a tendency to relax the exertions of Scotland Yard. I hope I shall not be accused of immodesty, or of making personal reflections, when I say that the Department has had several notorious failures of late. It is not what it used to be. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... Steinheimer when the invitation to the ball must have reached the Princess. These facts were so plainly in evidence that the girl was afraid to speak lest some chance word would form the connecting link between the detective's mind and the seemingly palpable facts. At last she looked up, the colour coming and going in her cheeks, as Lord Donal ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... gentler uses of a poet. Not only the Puritan spirit, but every special bias or interest of man seizes on words to appropriate them to itself. Practical men of business transfer such words as "debenture" or "commodity" from debt or comfort in general to the palpable concrete symbols of debt or comfort; and in like manlier doctors, soldiers, lawyers, shipmen,— all whose interest and knowledge are centred on some particular craft or profession, drag words from the general store and adapt them to special uses. Such words are sometimes ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... process of law of his money and peace of mind, yet left with no redress, is humiliating to every person who loves justice. A nation may sometimes err on the side of mercy with safety, but no government can afford to be guilty of a palpable injustice even to one of her ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... without replying, for the remark was so palpable, that it seemed to involve nothing ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... manners. It continually seems that all the outer world's affairs are well judged of, but when he comes to draw conclusions of moral men who have the power of affecting his own interests, there is apparent constraint, or palpable narrow-mindedness. ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Victorians lacked. They would never have subscribed to this palpable truth: that justice is too good for some men, and not good enough for the rest. They cultivated the Cato or Brutus tone; they strove to be stern old Romans—Romans of the sour and imperfect Republic; for the Empire, that golden ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... poor McAllister been more at his wits' end to know how to reply to her bewildering sallies of good-natured badinage. Every vulnerable point of Northern character received her delicate satire. Lane himself did not escape her light shafts. He made no defence, but smiled or laughed at every palpable hit. The girl's pallor troubled him, and something in her eyes that suggested suffering. There came a time when he could scarcely think of that day without tears, believing that no soldier on either side ever displayed more heroism than ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... are like the father that begets them; gross as a mountain, open palpable. Why, thou clay-brained guts; thou knotty-pated fool! thou ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... there is a large apartment which was originally fitted up by a scientific proprietor of the place, for the purpose of microscopic and other experiments, which required a darkness total and complete, such a darkness as seems as if it could be felt—palpable, thick, and obscure as the darkness of the tomb, and ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... With a palpable sigh of relief Barton lighted a cigarette. "You're nice," he said. "I like you!" Conscientiously then ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... either spoke again. The direction first taken by the eyes of the latter was in quest of the neighbouring ship; nor was the look entirely without that unsettled and vague expression which seems to announce a momentary aberration of the faculties. But the vessel of the Rover was in view, in all the palpable and beautiful proportions of her admirable construction Instead of lying in a state of rest, as when he left her, her head-yards had been swung, and, as the sails filled with the breeze, the stately fabric ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... which she did join in, so much to the confusion and surprise of every one of us!—For even thou, Lovelace, so noted for smart wit, repartee, and a vein of raillery, that delighteth all who come near thee, sattest in palpable darkness, and lookedst about thee, as ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... The palpable and criminal intercourse held with the enemy's forces blockading and invading the waters and shores of the United States is, in a military view, an offense of so deep a dye as to call for the vigilant interposition of all the naval officers of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... of success. Still, she could not keep her secret. She tried to be calm and indifferent, but it was a palpable sham. ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... wandring Feet The dark unbottom'd Infinite Abyss, And through the palpable Obscure find out His uncouth way, or spread his airy Flight Upborn with indefatigable Wings ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... violence; with this record against me of threatening the man whom I would be accused of having slain an hour later; with my two only friends compelled to give evidence which would make me out as artfully plotting murder under the shield of a palpable invention—for who ever heard of any one notifying the police that he was going to shoot a dog?—with no family connection or previous good character to build a defence upon: where would have been my chance of escape? What stronger chain of circumstantial evidence could ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... are those which are given by beauty of colour and form, and most of those which arise from smells; those of sound, again, and in general those of which the want is painless and unconscious, and of which the fruition is palpable to sense and pleasant ...
— Philebus • Plato
... rooms or ventured to sleep. At intervals a loud detonation from the volcano shook the air, and the mystery and awe of the enveloping gloom were so palpable as ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... years, scientific men have surpassed previous efforts in close measurement and refined analysis. By means of instruments of exceeding delicacy, processes in nature hitherto unknown, are made palpable to sense. Heat is found in ice, light in seeming darkness, and sound in apparent silence. It seems that physicists and chemists have almost if not quite reached the ultimate atoms of matter. The mechanism must ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... chance, though they cannot think what, might turn up in their favour. It was a mere reflection founded on probabilities still unscrutinised—the last tenacious struggle before hope gives way to utter and palpable despair. Hamersley's words had for an instant cheered them; for the thought of the Indians setting fire to the waggons had not occurred to any of the party. It was a thing unknown to their experience; and, at such a ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... critick[1129].' Johnson, in a tone of displeasure, asked him, 'Why do you praise Anson [1130]?' I did not trouble him by asking his reason for this question. He proceeded, 'Here is an errour, Sir; you have made Genius feminine.' [1131] 'Palpable, Sir; (cried the enthusiast) I know it. But (in a lower tone) it was to pay a compliment to the Duchess of Devonshire, with which her Grace was pleased. She is walking across Coxheath, in the military uniform, and I suppose her to be the Genius of Britain[1132].' JOHNSON. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... crown" lie "uneasy" on a postage stamp. These emblems of sovereignty, taken in conjunction with the Canadian maple leaves in the lower angles, completes a design that for harmony, boldness and simplicity has assuredly not been excelled by any hitherto issued stamps of the British Empire. It is palpable, on analysing the stamp, (1) that the attractiveness of the design has in no way been allowed to militate against its utility, for the country of origin and denomination are clearly expressed; (2) that the boldness of the design has not been detracted from (as is so often the ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... Pali, why should he not have incorporated any facts that were then believed in and had been handed down by tradition from generation to generation? Was he not at liberty—nay, would he not have felt it his duty, to explain apparent difficulties, to remove contradictions, and to correct palpable mistakes? In our time, when even the contemporaneous evidence of Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, or Jornandes is sifted by the most uncompromising scepticism, we must not expect a more merciful treatment for the annals of Buddhism. Scholars engaged in special researches ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... then it dawned upon Fyne that this was just it. The great smash, in the great dust of vanishing millions! Was it possible that they all had vanished to the last penny? Wasn't there, somewhere, something palpable; some fragment of ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... he came home at noon. To add a touch of grace she decided to set a bowl of petunias in front of him. He loved the homely little flowers in their calico finery, like farmers' daughters at a picnic. Their cheap and almost palpable fragrancy delighted him when it powdered the air. She hoped that they would bring a smile to him at noon, for he ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... a child a rainbow is a real thing—substantial and palpable; its limb rests on the side of yonder hill; he believes that he can appropriate it to himself; and when, instead of gems and gold hid in its radiant bow, he finds nothing but damp mist—cold, dreary ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... the second par. of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) by the Representatives of the U.S., which declares, "these truths to be self-evident:—that all men are created equal," etc. It is regretable that so trenchant a state-paper should begin with so gross and palpable a fallacy. Men are not born equal, nor do they become equal before their death-days even in condition, except by artificial levelling; and in republics and limited monarchies, where all are politically equal, the greatest social inequalities ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... to her too munch changed for her to reckon on what remnant of good feeling there might be to appeal to in him. And James, though he was certain not to permit palpable coercion in his presence, or even if he were aware that it was contemplated, seemed to have left the whole management of the affair to Esclairmonde's own guardians; and they would probably avoid driving matters to extremities that would revolt ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time trickled out of the gorge. Its channel was choked with a chaotic confusion of sandstone rock and broken slate, and up through this Aldous carefully picked his way, followed closely by Joanne. The sky continued to darken above them, until at last the sun died out, and a thick and almost palpable gloom began to envelop them. Low thunder rolled through the mountains in sullen, rumbling echoes. He looked back at Joanne, and was amazed to see her eyes shining, and a smile on her lips ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... had in my practice has been due to my habit of boldly basing my theories upon the known character of the parties implicated, and not upon more palpable accidental circumstances. Left to myself now, I speedily resolved this case into a few suppositions, positive to me as facts. The girl had been present at the murder. She was not naturally reticent: was instead an exceptionally confiding, credulous woman. Her motive for ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... beyond the limits of his office to any of his younger brethren. He was generally regarded as having given a bad tone to the room. And then the clerks in this room would not unfrequently be blown up,—with very palpable blowings up,—by an official swell, a certain chief clerk, named Kissing, much higher in standing though younger in age than the gentleman of whom we have before spoken. He would hurry in, out of his own neighbouring chamber, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... difficult character than any work the three American Red Cross girls had yet undertaken. The surroundings were so uncomfortable, the nursing supplies so limited. Worse than anything else, an atmosphere of almost tragic suspense hung like a palpable cloud over every ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... often mentioned in these pages, and who, in all experimental matters, considers my testimony good for nothing without the strongest corroborative evidence. Notice now the unreasoning obstinacy with which people will cling to their prejudices in the face of the most palpable opposing facts. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... distinction, at any rate, which is palpable: the decisions of a supreme authority can be altered; those of an infallible authority cannot. A Borough Council may change its traffic regulations at the next meeting; but the Vicar of Christ, when in certain circumstances ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... our watch came on deck at twelve o'clock, it was as black as Erebus; the studding-sails were all taken in, and the royals furled; not a breath was stirring; the sails hung heavy and motionless from the yards; and the stillness and the darkness, which was almost palpable, were truly appalling. Not a word was spoken, but every one stood as though waiting for something to happen. In a few minutes the mate came forward, and in a low tone, which was almost a whisper, told us to haul down the jib. The fore and mizzen top-gallant sails were taken in in ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... poured below was not the physical abyss over which the natural man must stand with a shudder, but the unfathomed pit of woe and sorrow into which, in nightmare dreams, man has been ever falling yet never destroyed, since the first visions of early childhood. The tower ceased to be a palpable mass of wood and stone, and became human hope and energy, with the clear blue sky of God's providence above, beaten by storms and undermined by fierce currents every moment threatening it with destruction, but standing yet through all. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... appreciable number of seconds, Miss Howe stood leaning over the banisters, her eyes fixed full of speculation on the place where he had stood. She was thinking of a scene—a dinner with an Archdeacon—and of the permanent satisfactions to be got from it; and she renounced almost with a palpable sigh the idea ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan) |
