"Irresistibly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I only say that that's the best thing for a woman to be who finds herself irresistibly carried into the practice of the arts; for there her capacity for them has most application and her incapacity for them least. But at the same time I strongly recommend her not to be an artist if she can possibly help it. It's a devil ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... the first to grasp, from those who were worthy to receive them; on the other hand he would not tell the uninstructed what they would interpret as a licence to do whatever they pleased, inasmuch as there was no God. What he did was to point so irresistibly in the right direction, that a reader of any intelligence should be in no doubt as to the road he ought to take, and then to contradict himself so flatly as to reassure those who would be shocked by ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... strong, white teeth into a hot, roasted chestnut, cracked it, and, regarding the halves, said: "This reminds me of the night Prexy lost his head"—and brought down the house with the merriest tale of all. It was so irresistibly absurd that Jeannette, helpless with her mirth, buried her face in her cobweb handkerchief, Stuart rocked upon his knees and made the welkin ring, and Mr. Jefferson laughed in a growling bass that gathered ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... at a normal time, this episode shows little that is comic. But when it happened I was in a state of high tension, and this, combined with the startling realisation that a Hun pilot had saved me and destroyed his friend, seemed irresistibly comic. I cackled with laughter and was annoyed because my pilot did not ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... itself is rhythmic, and, as Malling-Hansen and subsequent observers have found, follows a regular annual course as well as a larger cycle. On the psychic sides attention is rhythmic. We are always irresistibly compelled to impart a rhythm to every succession of sounds, however uniform and monotonous. A familiar example of this is the rhythm we can seldom refrain from hearing in the puffing of an engine. A series of experiments, by Bolton, on thirty ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Club had several songs which they rendered in regular negro minstrel style, and in a way that was irresistibly ludicrous. One of their favorites was "Billy Patterson." All standing up in a ring, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... cry in vain for deliverance, for woman has her work to do, and no one can accomplish it for her. She is bound to rise, to try her strength, to break her bonds;—not with noisy outcry, not with fighting or complaint; but with quiet strength, with gentle dignity, firmly, irresistibly, with a cool determination that never wavers, with a clear insight into her own capacities, let her do her duty, pursue her highest conviction of right, and firmly grasp whatever she ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... marble images to their immolation, her own plastic nature had been moulded in unison with the classic cult. Among the throng of Attic types, an immortal statue of filial devotion and sisterly love had attracted her irresistibly, and to Antigone she rendered the homage of a boundless ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Hugo passed the year 1811 in a Madrid school, fighting childish battles for "the great Emperor," whom his Spanish schoolmates called Napoladron (Napo the robber). Upon both the fact of their connection with the repulse of Napoleon's armies left a profound impression. The former was irresistibly drawn to revisit the country; the latter recalled his impressions in some of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... most matters did interest him. He had grown to have an idea that he could take hold of almost any sort of tangle or enterprise or concern and straighten it out. Probably it was because he was so exceedingly human.... Therefore he was drawn irresistibly to his purchasing department ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... to prevent me?" said Lord William, hastily, almost harshly; for though at the time he felt her kindness, yet, irresistibly under the power of his demon, he said the thing he did not mean: his voice and look expressed the reverse ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... spotless, he wore a flower in the ribbon of the hat carried jauntily in his hand, and about his person in the form of handkerchief and faja were those touches of bright colour by means of which he so irresistibly attracted the eye ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... undermines them is justified, and will prove fruitful. But this critical assurance in its turn seems to rely on a dubious presupposition, namely, that human opinion must always evolve in a single line, dialectically, providentially, and irresistibly. It is at least conceivable that the opposite should sometimes be the case. Some of the primitive presuppositions of human reason might have been correct and inevitable, whilst the tendency to deny ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... me so strangely, so irresistibly that I remained there a long time. Something terrible had happened there to men. I felt that. Something tragic was going on right then—the wearing down, the devastation of the old earth. How plainly that could be seen! Geologically it was more remarkable to me than the Grand Canyon. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... would have been quite unremarkable, but the laughter-loving mouth and pointed chin wholly redeemed it from the commonplace. She was a little brown thing like a woodland creature, and her dainty air and quick ways put Scott irresistibly in mind of ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... formed; she is graceful; she is youthful. She dresses with a taste that must always make her conspicuous wherever she may be. You could not enter a room in which she was without seeing her, for her glance has a strange power that irresistibly draws your glance to it, though her eyes are lambent rather than brilliant, and if large, rarely opened to their full extent. Her complexion is dark; that is, in comparison with her daughter's, which is of a marble-like purity. But it has strange flushes in it, and at times ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... village shopkeepers, and merchants from small towns, all rushed there like the inflowing tide. It made one think of a number of moths blindly fluttering round a candle, or of the magnetic rock of Eastern fairy tales, irresistibly attracting ships to wreck themselves. It recalled to one the stories of California at the time of the gold fever. People's excited imaginations saw a veritable gold-mine in Berlin. The French indemnity flew to people's heads like champagne, and in a kind of drunken frenzy every one imagined ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... supply; and, secondly, in that of those ages in which the lights of knowledge and religion are contending with the gloom of barbarian rudeness. Perhaps there are still two other cases capable of palliation—that of a mind so constituted as to be nothing, if not a mirror of its age, and faithfully and irresistibly reflecting even its vices and pollutions; or that of a mind morbidly in love with the morbidities and the vile passages of human nature. But suppose the case of a writer, sitting under the full blaze of Gospel truth, professedly a believer in the Gospel, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... loss and renunciation, which gives to this movement its very peculiar tone; setting it apart from the large mass of economic movements, placing it rather in a line with those vast religious developments which at the interval of ages have swept across humanity, irresistibly modifying and ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... teaching, knowledge. To take the children and make men of them, to take the men and make citizens of them—intelligent, honest, useful, and happy citizens. Intellectual and moral progress first, and material progress after. The two first, irresistibly and of themselves, bring on the last. What does M. Bonaparte do? He persecutes and stifles instruction everywhere. There is one pariah in our France of the present day, and ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... greatly diverted with the trick put upon that barbarian Sir Jacob. His obstinacy, repentance, and amendment, followed so irresistibly in one half hour, from the happy thought of the excellent lady countess, that I think no plot was ever more fortunate. It was like springing a lucky mine in a siege, that blew up twenty times more than was expected ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... far more common sense than passion in the solid little Frances and her apathetic lover. It is Frances Henri's situation, not her character, that recalls so irresistibly Lucy Snowe. Frances has neither Lucy's temperament, nor Lucy's terrible capacity for suffering. She suffers through her circumstances, not through her temperament. The motives handled in The Professor belong ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... who is often assumed, though somewhat too rashly, to have suggested the tone of Pamela. Into this latter question we shall presently have need to inquire again. It is enough to point out here that when the English novel did suddenly and irresistibly make its appearance, it had little in common with the rococo and coquettish work which had immediately preceded it in France, and which at first, even to judges so penetrating as the poet Gray, was apt to seem more excellent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... without doubt, thou shalt be superior in battle to men and gods, and Rakshasas and Pisachas, and Daityas and Nagas. And thou shalt certainly be able with this to smite all. And, O Madhava, hurled by thee in battle at thy foes, this weapon will irresistibly slay the enemy and again come back into thy hands.' And the lord Varuna, after this, gave unto Krishna a mace, of name Kaumodaki, capable of slaying every Daitya and producing, when hurled, a roar like that of the thunder. Then Arjuna and Achyuta, filled with joy said unto Pavaka, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... stand wear." To his friend, John Campbell Shairp, Arnold wrote, a few days later: "Thyrsis is a very quiet poem, but, I think, solid and sincere. It will not be popular, however. It had long been in my head to connect Clough with that Cumner country, and, when I began, I was carried irresistibly into this form. You say, truly, that there was much in Clough (the whole prophetic side, in fact) which one cannot deal with in this way.... Still, Clough had the idyllic side, too; to deal with this suited my desire to deal again with that Cumner country. Anyway, only so could I treat the ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... thinking over all she had just heard and finding much to interest her in it, because, to her imaginative and enthusiastic nature, there was something irresistibly attractive in the strong, solitary, self-reliant man. Mark watched her for a moment, then asked ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... himself only in glimpses. He attracted her immensely through his subtle impersonality underlying all that was seemingly personal. She could not fathom his depth, nor determine his shallowness—she did not even guess which it might be. She was irresistibly drawn to him; yet she was on her guard, as one who, looking down from a great height, in fear of vertigo clings to the parapet over which he leans. The parapet she clung to was her own good American common ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... surging flood of sea now my spirit flies, O'er the homeland of the whale—hovers then afar O'er the foldings of the earth! Now again it flies to me Full of yearning, greedy! Yells that lonely flier; Whets upon the Whale-way irresistibly my heart, O'er ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Overland was in camp and I whiled away some hours reading it, but time began to hang heavily upon us and we daily longed for the appearance of the rest of the party so that we might push out on the great red flood that moved irresistibly down into the maw of Marble Canyon, and end the uncertainty that lay before us. August the first came and still no message. Fennemore now felt so sick that Jack took him to Lee's with rations in order that he might have vegetables with his meals with the ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... leaders, and supported and aided the mission historically vested in the latter by means of their spiritual superiority. A nod from a beloved leader of any army is sufficient to enkindle anew the courage of the regiment and to lead them irresistibly ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... half a dozen persons, was in the act of putting on his riding-boots. On hearing us, he turned his head with a startled air, and dropped in his confusion one of the ivory cylinders he was using; while his aspect, and that of the persons who stood round him, reminded me irresistibly of a party of schoolboys ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... lord thought with Sterne in Tristram Shandy, though the nexus is not easy to discover, that "there is a strange kind of magic bias, which good or bad names irresistibly impose upon our character and conduct," or perhaps he had misread that controverted passage in Plautus (Aulular. Act II. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... Billy across the hills somewhere by playing the songs he loved the best. And perhaps their echoes would somehow cross the miles to Mark too, by that strange mysterious power that spirit can reach to spirit across space or years or even estrangement, and draw the thoughts irresistibly. So she sat at the organ and played her heart out, ringing all the old sweet songs that Mark used to love when the bells first were new and she was learning to play them; Highland Laddie, Bonnie Bonnie Warld, Mavourneen, Kentucky Home, songs ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... that a wife's devotion is a very strong motive power, Jeffries. It will move irresistibly forward in spite of all the barriers you and I can erect to stay its progress. That may sound like a platitude, but it's ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... formed, and his dress was a matter of extreme study. But it is rather libellous on the memory of this man of taste to suppose, that he at all resembled in this important matter the strutting display which we have seen in later times, and which irresistibly strikes the beholder with surprise, that any man capable of seeing himself in the glass could exhibit so strong a temptation to laughter; while to the more knowing in the affairs of costume, it betrays instantly the secret ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... have been procured, it is exceedingly unwise to allow them to maintain a constant intercourse with their tribe, and be thus subjected to deteriorating influences that must almost irresistibly combat the beneficial effects of their education. But it is needless to dwell further on this subject, as Mr. Eyre has so completely stated the question in his ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... he went over, went into and through, every department of Prussian Business, in that fashion; steadily, warily, irresistibly compelling every item of it, large and little, to take that same character of perfect economy and solidity, of utility pure and simple. Needful work is to be rigorously well done; needless work, and ineffectual or imaginary workers, to be rigorously pitched out of doors. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... when you hear her. She is so serious, so solemn, so convinced that every thing she utters is oracular, and so irascible if she does but so much as smell a doubt concerning the beauty and perfection of her brats, that there is no scene in the world which tickles my imagination so irresistibly as to watch her maternal visage during her eulogiums, while the big-wigs are nodding approbation; or the contortions of her physiognomy, when any cross incident happens to impede the torrent of her fondness. With ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... young man suddenly darted out of the room, followed by Sadie, who seemed irresistibly drawn ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... Experience seems to show that neither of the extreme elements tend, in the one case to elevate, or in the other to debase the battalion. Leading the common life, sharing the common hardships, striving towards common ideals, they inevitably, irresistibly tend to merge themselves in the average. The highest in the scale sink, the lowest rise. The process, as far as the change of soul state is concerned, is infinitely more to the amelioration of the lowest than to the degradation of the highest. The one, also, is more ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... poured down the woman's cheeks as she spoke these last words. The feeling of grief in her soul, arising from quite another cause, burst out irresistibly at these words and thoughts; there was sorrow for herself mingled with pity for others. She laid her hand upon the head of the girl, who, when she saw the woman weeping, also began to weep bitterly; she very likely felt that this was a good soul inclining toward her, and a dawning consciousness ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... circumstance that the Ionian Greeks, who first began to philosophize, commenced their labours by depersonifying the elements, and treating not of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, but of Air, Water, Fire. The destruction of theological conceptions led irresistibly to the destruction of religious practices. To divinities whose existence he denied, the philosopher ceased to pray. Of what use were sacrificial offerings and entreaties directed to phantasms of the imagination? but advantages might accrue from the physical ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... him, and confused ideas again ascended to his brain. As the dawn appeared, yellowishly dirty, like a splash of liquid mud on the window-panes, he started, fancying that he heard a loud voice calling to him from the far end of the studio. Then, irresistibly, despite a few brief hours' forgetfulness, all his old thoughts returned, overflowing and torturing him, hollowing his cheeks and contracting his jaws in the disgust he felt for mankind. Two wrinkles imparted intense bitterness to the expression of his face, which looked like the wasted countenance ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... methods of locomotion on his holidays, he chose going afoot, the most laborious and least satisfying available. Brought to bay by his human need for a woman, he directed his fancy toward George Eliot, probably the most unappetizing woman of his race and time. Drawn irresistibly to music, he avoided the Fifth Symphony and "Tristan und Isolde," and joined a crowd of old maids singing part songs around a cottage piano. John Tyndall saw clearly the effect of all this and protested against it, saying, "He'd be a much nicer fellow ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... carefully concealed from the persecutors. How great a contrast to the glowing sunshine, and the light breezes, which whispered through the vine leaves on the hills outside! God's love and man's hatred! Our thoughts wandered away irresistibly to those times when the Christians lived here like moles underground, until they died, and were laid by the loving and devoted hands of their comrades in these dark shelves of the rock. It is said that there are some seven million bodies buried in these Catacombs. True enough that ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... shocked, yes, shocked, during the course of this debate at expressions which I have heard so often fall from distinguished Senators, and apparently with so little consideration of what the heresy irresistibly leads to, saying in substance that they recognize in this right of franchise only a conventional or political arrangement that may be abrogated at will and taken from any; that it is simply a privilege yielded to you and me and others ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of children hurried on before; stout young labourers in clean round frocks; and buxom girls with healthy, laughing faces, were plentifully sprinkled about in couples, and the whole scene was one of quiet and tranquil contentment, irresistibly captivating. The morning was bright and pleasant, the hedges were green and blooming, and a thousand delicious scents were wafted on the air, from the wild flowers which blossomed on either side of the footpath. The little church was one of those ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... Emmy Lou is irresistibly lovable, because she is so absolutely real. She is just a bewitchingly innocent, hugable little maid. ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... life and color compassed between the four walls of Moorish tiles and arches, Benton felt the magnet of the group irresistibly drawing his eyes ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... France lowering with darkness and portentous storms. The events to which we have alluded in the preceding chapters, and various others of a similar nature, conspired to foment troubles between the French monarch and his subjects, which were steadily and irresistibly increasing. The great mass of the people, ignorant, degraded, and maddened by centuries of oppression, were rising, with delirious energy, to batter down a corrupt church and a despotic throne, and to overwhelm the guilty and the innocent alike in indiscriminate ruin. The ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... hear them, you would think they had an exclusive option on the treasure-troves of the Klondike. Yet, before and behind us, were dozens of similar vessels, bearing just as eager a mob of fortune-hunters, all drawn irresistibly northward ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... in the year 1792, when Sheridan's involvements had begun to thicken around him more rapidly. There is another letter, about the same date, still more characteristic,—where, after beginning in evident anger and distress of mind, the writer breaks off, as if irresistibly, into the old strain ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... unconsciously and irresistibly admiring her. Then, with a little shake of his head, answered her remark. "No, no, he is most nervous always. It is your amateur who knows no stage-fright. Papa," he went on, using the name that to English ears sounds so strangely on grown-up lips, "says he invariably feels as though the audience ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... parks and the theatres had been left desolate. In 1691 at length, for the first time since Henry the Eighth laid siege to Boulogne, an English army appeared on the Continent under the command of an English king. A camp, which was also a court, was irresistibly attractive to many young patricians full of natural intrepidity, and ambitious of the favour which men of distinguished bravery have always found in the eyes of women. To volunteer for Flanders became the rage among the fine gentlemen who combed their flowing wigs and exchanged their richly perfumed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... upon the stupid and the ignorant, is fortified by the reasonings of the intelligent, and has its foundation deepened by every increase of knowledge. It is not merely that the observation of the actions of animals almost irresistibly suggests the attribution to them of mental states, such as those which accompany corresponding actions in men. The minute comparison which has been instituted by anatomists and physiologists between the organs which we know to constitute the apparatus of thought in ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... Adriatic, it might be too late to change the plan of campaign. Perhaps— and, in accordance with Caesar's quick temperament always urging him to decision, we may even say in all probability—he found himself irresistibly tempted by the circumstance that the Epirot coast was still at the moment unoccupied but would certainly be covered in a few days by the enemy, to thwart once more by a bold stroke the whole ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the course of the evening after the scene with the Captain that he joined her, awkwardly, abruptly, irresistibly, on the deck, where she was pacing to and fro alone, the hour being auspiciously mild and the stars remarkably fine. There were scattered talkers and smokers and couples, unrecognisable, that moved quickly through the gloom. The vessel dipped with long regular pulsations; ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... to masquerade, but—truth stranger than fiction!—considerably more ugly. A long tail hangs down to the very heels; a much shorter peak comes down in front; at the sides it is scooped out below, showing a small portion of the light-colored body-garment, which irresistibly suggests a very dirty article of lady-linen whereon the eyes of civilized decorum forbear to look, while an adventurous imagination associates it only with snowy whiteness. The whole is surmounted by an enormous peaked hood, in which now and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... original way of putting a matter sometimes in Scotch people, which is irresistibly comic, although by the persons nothing comic is intended; as for example, when in 1786 Edinburgh was illuminated on account of the recovery of George III. from severe illness. In a house where great preparation was going on for the occasion, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... little above the average height ... with the deep chest and deep voice that always go with the born leader of men; the bigness and strength of the hands ... the clear eye and broad, firm, and expressive mouth, and the massive head that suggests irresistibly a ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... aim here is to trace back the art of needlework to its beginning, without turning my eyes to the right or the left, though I cannot help feeling myself drawn aside almost irresistibly by casual glimpses of architecture, sculpture, and painting, which here and there touch very nearly ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... smiling and voluble Senhora Pondillo, and it immersed Hozier in a tangle of fearsome words which turned out to be the stock in trade of a clothier. The mere male of Maceio decks himself with gay plumage. Philip was hard put to it before he secured some garments which did not irresistibly recall the heroes of certain musical comedies ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... steadily into the distance along the road till the carriage disappeared out of sight. "Perhaps he is right, after all," he thought as he went back into the house; "perhaps I am a loafer." Many of Mihalevitch's words had sunk irresistibly into his heart, though he had disputed and disagreed with him. If a man only has a good heart, no ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... Southampton and his friends, who knew the bumptious self-sufficiency of Shakespeare's living model, and who followed the developing characterisation from play to play, the effect of such bold dramatic strokes must have been irresistibly diverting. ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... of the law against vicious intromission has been very favourably represented by a great master of jurisprudence[575], whose words have been exhibited with unnecessary pomp, and seem to be considered as irresistibly decisive. The great moment of his authority makes it necessary to examine his position. "Some ages ago, (says he,) before the ferocity of the inhabitants of this part of the island was subdued, the utmost severity of the civil law was necessary, to restrain ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... were by the ascending vapors, so easily he mounts the air. His notes are so pure and sweet, and yet so loud and varied withal, that when they first disturb the air of early morning all the other little feathered tenants of the fields and hedgerows seem irresistibly compelled to join him in filling the air with melody. Upwards, ever upwards, he mounts, until like a speck in the highest ether he appears motionless; yet still his notes are heard, lovely in their faintness, now gradually growing louder and louder as he descends, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Miss Trevanion; then, dropping her voice, she added, "why do you desert us so wilfully?" and, leaning her hand on my arm, I was drawn irresistibly into the lobby. The young loungers at the door made way for us, and eyed me, no doubt, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... even been bold enough, when I came across one of them, to hasten straight through as though assured that Cerberus was securely chained; but I found, after a time, what I might indeed have guessed, that the Road, also led irresistibly to the lair of the Old Monster himself, the He-one of the species, where he lies upon the plain, lolling under his ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... this, there is a racy Irving-y flavor from the very beginning, long before the wide world had incorporated Irving into its fraternity of great men, in the details of life, of home travel and of homely incident, as set forth in extracts from his letters, which is irresistibly charming. Full as this portion of the life is, we can not resist the hope that it will be greatly enlarged in subsequent editions, and that more copious extracts will be given from those letters, to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... those words, "a slight attack," which is irresistibly comic to any of us who know the conditions of modern trench war. But they were not ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... middle of the night Sam awoke to find the moon shining in his face through the open door of the tent. He had had a real sleep. He felt better. He was irresistibly drawn to ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... and railway porters to locomotive drivers and fitters, are organized in a single union of the entire industry. There is work enough for many years to some of the old Fabian kind in these directions; and this work will irresistibly reunite the disputants instead of perpetuating a quarrel in which, like most of the quarrels which the Society has survived, there ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... of the essay upon 'Hamalet and Hamlet,' the thought of the brass-rubbings, the kneecaps and mittens, came before me in an irresistibly humorous light, and I could not repress a smile. Then arose upon me the remembrance of the misery that had fallen upon Winnie and myself from his monomania and what seemed to me his superstitious folly, and I could not withhold an angry scowl. Then came the picture of ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... them with lighter hearts, and a stronger relish for enjoyment. When any of the great festivals of their religion approached, the popular mind, unrepressed by poverty and national dissension, gradually elevated itself to a species of wild and reckless mirth, productive of incidents irresistibly ludicrous, and remarkably characteristic of Irish manners. It is not, however, to be expected, that a people whose love of fighting is so innate a principle in their disposition, should celebrate these festive seasons without an occasional crime, which threw its deep ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... his charm, which the priest gives him while yet a child, and which he renews or gets re-sanctified as occasion requires. To us the circumstance was extremely painful.] to every one except Dolly, who mimicked him in a manner that was irresistibly ludicrous. Whether he had been beaten or threatened we could not make out, nor whether he had heard of some dark fate impending over ourselves—a suspicion which would force itself on our minds; especially as Thoba-sing had coolly suggested ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... though impelled by and not compelling the fleet of white canvas sails. The teams did not hasten, did not abate their speed, but moved in an unagitated advance that gave the massed column something irresistibly ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... manifestly the products of the highest form of art, their subjects were dreary and repulsive beyond description. There was a horrible realism about them which reminded him irresistibly of the awful collection of pictorial horrors in the Musee Wiertz, in Brussels—those works of the brilliant but unhappy genius who was driven into insanity by the sheer exuberance of his ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... might be honored today on our altars, and might have a niche in our temples, side by side with those of Charles Borromeo and Ignatius Loyola; and instead of a divided army of Christians, we should behold today a united Christendom, spreading itself irresistibly from nation to nation, and bringing all kingdoms to ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... With singular scintillations, this vortex of winged life swayed to and fro in the strong sunshine, whirled continually through itself, and would now and again burst asunder and scatter as wide as the lagoon: so that I was irresistibly reminded of what I had read of nebular convulsions. A thin cloud overspread the area of the reef and the adjacent sea—the dust, as I could not but fancy, of earlier explosions. And a little apart, there was yet another ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... island. Off this bay, on the morning of the 21st of June, 1842, the brig Governor Philip was sailing, having brought stores for the use of the penal establishment. It was one of those bright mornings which this hemisphere alone knows, when the air is so elastic that its buoyancy is irresistibly communicated to the spirits. At the foot of the cliff, near a group of huge fragments of rock fallen from the overhanging cliffs, a prisoner was sitting close to the sea preparing food for his companions, who had gone off to the brig the previous evening with ballast, and who were expected ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... his pride; if all the extravagant ghosts and austere shades that were the disastrous familiars of his youth would not let him run away from the block, I, who of course can't be suspected of such familiars, was irresistibly impelled to go and see his head roll off. I wended my way towards the court. I didn't hope to be very much impressed or edified, or interested or even frightened—though, as long as there is any life before one, a jolly good fright now and then is a salutary discipline. But neither ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... received my orders to advance from Sir Henry, and then with one fierce deep-throated roar, with a waving of banners and a wide flashing of steel, the remains of our army took the offensive and began to sweep down, slowly indeed, but irresistibly from the positions they had ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... absurd incident came immediately into his mind and remained in his mind. High Jinks and Low Jinks was comic. No getting over it. Incontestably comic. Stupid, of course, but just the kind of stupid thing that tickled him irresistibly. And she couldn't see it. Absolutely could not see it. But if she were never going to see any of these stupid little things that appealed to him—? And then he wrinkled his brows. "You remember how ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Parliament rising up into the smoky canopy, the thinner substance of which obscured a mass of things, and hovered about the objects that were most distinctly visible,—a glorious and sombre picture, dusky, awful, but irresistibly attractive, like a young man's dream of the great world, foretelling at that distance a grandeur never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... "I glad see you," there was a glow of amiability, an alluring light in her countenance, that drew one irresistibly to her, and her immense, shapely hand enveloped one's own with a pressure and a warmth that were overpowering in their convincement of her ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... to churches, hospitals, to priors, sub-priors, and priests, with the significant request 'ut orent pro me'—a request which, for the sake of the poor soul of the 'moral Gower,' was we trust devoutly obeyed, although we are irresistibly reminded ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... hidden feelings were drawn irresistibly forth from the inmost recesses of my bosom. When I spoke, I seemed to translate her thoughts; when she in turn replied, she paraphrased mine. In less than an hour I learned to know her. She possessed, at the same time, an experimental mind, which could descend ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... Sphinx was simply a colossal magnet. Under the influence of that magnet the iron bands of the Halbrane's boat had been torn out and projected as though by the action of a catapult. This was the occult force that had irresistibly attracted everything made of iron on the Paracuta. And the boat itself would have shared the fate of the Halbrane's boat had a single bit of that metal been employed in its construction. Was it, then, the proximity of the magnetic pole ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... forcibly several times in the space of a hundred yards, and being then brought up by it, remained immoveable, the depth of water under her keel abaft being sixteen feet, or about a foot less than she drew. The Fury, continuing to drive, was now irresistibly carried past us, and we escaped, only by a few feet, the damage invariably occasioned by ships coming in contact under such circumstances. She had, however, scarcely passed us a hundred yards, when it was evident, by the ice pressing ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... jar in the centre of a small table. But it was not these details which interested Tahoser, although the contrast of this concealed luxury with the external poverty of the dwelling had at first somewhat surprised her. Her attention was irresistibly attracted by ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Gryce, laconically; at which I felt so angry, as tending to mislead my handsome young neighbor, that I irresistibly did what I had fully made up my mind not to do, that is, stepped into view and took a part ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... Vaudemont, on the other the governor's son, and directly opposite, Madame de Brissac, an unnamed mystery to them all save Anne. Madame, despite her antagonism and the terror lest she be discovered and unmasked by those remarkable grey eyes, found herself irresistibly drawn toward and fascinated by this remarkable exponent of a past epoch. She forgot the stories she had heard regarding his past, she forgot the sinister shadow he had cast over her own life, she forgot all save ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... to do, the days had gone so rapidly. Margaret alone realised, and she perhaps for the first time, how little they had really seen of the house itself. There was so much to see out of doors, and when indoors she was always drawn irresistibly to the library and its entrancing folios and quartos. Peggy had, one rainy day, proposed to "see if there wasn't a garret or some place where they could have some fun." But Margaret, as she now remembered with a pang, had ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... it spread in all its luxuriance at their feet, like a verdant gem resting on the breast of ocean, it appeared infinitely more beautiful. Not only was the mind charmed by the varied details of grove and bay, thicket and grotto, but the eye was attracted irresistibly to the magnificent trees and shrubs which stood prominent in their individuality—such as the light and elegant aito-tree; the stately apape, with its branchless trunk and light crown of pale green leaves, resembling those of the English ash; the splendid tamanu, an evergreen, ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... to an artist of so quick feeling the details of a mountain foreground should not prove irresistibly attractive, and entice him to greater accuracy of study. There is not a fragment of its living rock, nor a tuft of its heathery herbage, that has not adorable manifestations of God's working thereupon. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... infinitude to the latter can not be overstated. God alone possesses Qualitative Infinity, which is strictly synonymous with absolute perfection; and the neglect of the distinction between this and Quantitative Infinity, leads irresistibly to pantheistic and materialistic notions. Spinozism is possible only by the elevation of 'infinite extension' to the dignity of a divine attribute. Dr. Samuel Clarke's identification of God's immensity with ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Department, by a commission of military officers, composed of Generals Mower, Quincy, Gregg, and Baldy. These officers reported that in their opinion "the whole drift and current of the evidence tend irresistibly to the conclusion that there was among the class of violents known to exist in the State, and among the members of the ex-Confederate associations, a preconcerted plan and purpose of attack upon the convention, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... that she could look at him, the thing she dared not do. His touch was light, almost momentary, but it was too much, it thrilled through her wildly, irresistibly, and she drew back fearing to ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... guide. Not one of those who, like signposts, stretch their wooden arms with pedantic insistence in a given direction, but one, rather, who, after the manner of the heavenly bodies, diffusing warmth and light and cheer, draws the young soul irresistibly to leave its dark jungles of prejudice and ignorance for the promised land of wisdom and freedom." And her students testify enthusiastically to her unusual success. One ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... myself, I remained perfectly still, gazing at his face in mingled surprise and apprehension. For besides its beauty, which was of a marked order, as I have already observed, it had a touching expression which irresistibly aroused both pity and interest in the spectator. This may have been the result of his affliction, or it may have sprung from some deeper cause; but, whatever its source, this look in his face produced a strong impression ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... atmosphere, is said to be highly magnetic; and any ordinary, healthy soul can extract magnetism enough from the very air he breathes to draw at least one other soul. Some people have an amazing power of absorption and retention of this magnetism. You feel irresistibly drawn toward them—and it is all right, for they are noble, true souls. There is a great difference between their attractive force and that kind of 'power of charming' innocence that villainy often has—just as I once saw a cat charm a bird, which circled ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... of the greatest value as to lost stages in the path. We can, as it were, see the actual track through which evolution may have proceeded. "Thus," says Professor Huxley, "if the doctrine of evolution had not existed, palaeontologists must have invented it, so irresistibly is it forced upon the mind by the study of the remains of the Tertiary mammalia which have been brought to light since 1859;" and again, "so far as the animal world is concerned, evolution is no longer a speculation, but a ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Gay far more than the original poaching had done. To be flouted in his own pasture on the subject of his own game by a handsome barbarian, whom he had caught red-handed in the act of stealing, would have appealed irresistibly to his sense of humour, if ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... terrified youth becoming quiet and subdued, clinging wistfully to the spiritual strength of this frail woman, and catching at the end not only her spirit of calm submission, but even something of her exaltation, one is irresistibly reminded of another scene—George Eliot's marvellous description in "Adam Bede" of Dinah's ministry to Hetty in the prison. But this scene is real, that only imagined; and here no third person, but the consoler herself, reveals the meaning of the experience to ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... reformer should not fail to be raised in its most powerful tones, and all his energy exerted to form such political and social combinations as shall effect his purpose. But in those stages which are prominent in every nation's progress, when the tide of public opinion sets full and irresistibly in one direction, sweeping along all thought and energy in its course, against which it were madness to contend until the tempest shall have worn itself out by its own violence—more especially when the great questions involve a mere difference of opinion as to the results of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... instant I was gripped by despair. My pick nearly slipped from my hands. What was the point of this digging if I was to die smothered and crushed by this water turning to stone, a torture undreamed of by even the wildest savages! I felt like I was lying in the jaws of a fearsome monster, jaws irresistibly closing. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... political institutions. It was characteristic of him that in the Massachusetts constitutional convention in 1820 he pleaded strongly for the retention of the property qualification of voters for State senators. But when the tide moved irresistibly ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... satire, and well deserved, on the general style of advertisements. Hoppin is too well known to need laudation. His illustrations are irresistibly comic. What could be happier than the cupids of the brush and comb on the frontispiece? The poor 'krittur which furnished the grease' ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... the endurance of pain and hardship must result in great part from the belief. If I regard myself as irresistibly subject to an automatic Nature, whose wheels may bruise or crush me at any moment, I know not why or how I could be cheerful, even in such precarious health or prosperity as might fall to my lot; and there could certainly be no reassuring aspect to my adverse fortune. ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... the Hauptmann of "Fuhrmann Henschel," or in Hardy, or in Sudermann? (I mean, of course, Sudermann the novelist. Sudermann the dramatist is a mere mechanician.)... The younger men in all countries, in so far as they challenge the current sentimentality at all, seem to move irresistibly toward the same disdainful skepticism. Consider the last words of "Riders to the Sea." Or Gorky's "Nachtasyl." Or Frank Norris' "McTeague." Or Stephen Crane's "The Blue Hotel." Or the ironical fables of Dunsany. Or Dreiser's "Jennie ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... compared with those who have perished! I have heard the confessions of more than 200 priests, and, to say the truth, as God knows it, I must declare that only twenty-one had not to weep over the secret or public sins committed through the irresistibly corrupting influences ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... get over that party at Mrs. Willoughby's. It was all so irresistibly comical. Cousin Sophy thinks she has a genius for choosing chaperons, and so she has, but fate is too strong for men and gods, not to mention saintly and secluded old ladies. I had scarcely more than entered the drawing-room, and taken my ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... little beyond my reach. A step further! There is a yellow bit of gravel that will give a good footing. Intent upon the flight of my flies, I took the step without care. But the yellow patch under the brown water was not gravel; it was the face of a rock polished smoother than glass. Gently, slowly, irresistibly, and with deep indignation I subsided backward into the cold pool. The rubber boots filled with water and the immersion was complete. Then I stood up and got the trout. When I returned to the camp-fire, the others laughed ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... attentions back from Miss Sally to the widow Babcock, who had possessed them first, but, when he tarried in the parsonage, his fears as to what might be going on in the manor-house made his stay in the former intolerable, and led him irresistibly ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... pretext at the bank, took a long walk into the country, and fully considered the different steps and aspects of the case. A pleasant sense of his own importance rendered him the more deliberate: but the issue was from the first not doubtful. His whole carnal man leaned irresistibly towards the five hundred a year, and the strange conditions with which it was burdened; he discovered in his heart an invincible repugnance to the name of Scrymgeour, which he had never hitherto disliked; he began to despise the narrow and unromantic interests of his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... counties in the South were stripped of their colored laborers. The race question, in its political and economic aspects, became less and less sectional, more and more national. The South was drawn into the main stream of national life. The separatist forces which produced the cataclysm of 1861 sank irresistibly ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... epigram which Pope gives to the fourth line is characteristic; and the concluding tag, which is quite unauthorized, reminds us irresistibly of one of the rhymes which an actor always spouted to the audience by way of winding up an act in the contemporary drama. Such embroidery is profusely applied by Pope wherever he thinks that Homer, like Diomed, is slumbering too ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... you the conversation, but it abides in my memory as one of the most dangerous encounters in my career. Nature had bestowed on her all the qualities which, combined, are irresistibly fascinating; she could be pliant and proud by turns, and confiding and coaxing in her manner; she even went so far as to try to subjugate me. It was a failure. As I took my leave of her, I caught a gleam of hate and rage in ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... she entertained at these dinners, was one, young, handsome, elegant, and refined, whose many manly qualities woke in her heart that long-delayed passion which a nature so ardent must sometime feel. This man was Buzot; and he was as irresistibly drawn to this beautiful, brilliant woman as the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... curled upward. Mustangs and burros and sheep browsed on the white patches of grass. Bright-red blankets blazed on the cedar branches. There was slow colorful movement of Indians, passing in and out of their homes. The scene brought irresistibly to Hare the thought of summer, of long warm afternoons, of leisure that ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... with a married woman. The Sub-conscious Personality is no longer faithful exclusively to its natural partner; it is under the control of the Conscious Personality of another; and in the latter case the dictator seems to be irresistibly over-riding for a time all the efforts of the Conscious Personality to recover its authority in ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... through ownership of its means of transportation and of its water power. He wanted to be rich, not for the sake of being rich, but because a great deal of money is, aside from love or hate, the most powerful lever in the world. For five years, now, Scattergood had moved along slowly and irresistibly, buying a bit of timber here, acquiring a dam site there, taking over the stage line to the railroad twenty-four miles away, and establishing a credit and a reputation for shrewdness that were worth much more to him than dollars and cents in ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... long, delicious, sobbing breath. "Why are you so irresistibly, so powerfully strong, Jack? Do you know,—you must know how wicked I have been! If you cast me out, it would only be a proper punishment. I don't mean that my lips or my hands are blurred with other men's ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... in every commission to the governor of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick from 1763 to 1784, and after the treaty of peace of 1783, that the Province of Nova Scotia extended to the southern boundary of the Province of Quebec. It then irresistibly and inevitably follows that a west line from the Bay de Chaleurs, intersecting a due north line from the monument, is the identical northwest angle. Now a line from Mars Hill direct to Cape Rosiers, instead of being ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... Calhoun heard the knell of parting slavery, and on his death-bed he counselled secession. Washington, and Jefferson, and Madison had died despairing of the abolition of slavery; Calhoun died in despair at the growth of freedom. His system rushed irresistibly to its natural development. The death-struggle for California was followed by a short truce; but the new school of politicians, who said that slavery was not evil, but good, soon sought to recover the ground ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... its value; having engaged in a perilous conflict to defend it; having, in a word, devoted the best years of my life to secure its permanent establishment in my own country; my anxious recollections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes, are irresistibly attracted, whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom. But above all, the events of the French revolution have produced the deepest solicitude, as well as the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... been needed to defend this gap and less than 15,000 were available. A similar attack was delivered at the same time between the Meuse and the Vesdre. On both sides miracles of heroism were performed, but the enemy poured on irresistibly. They were able to pass, on the one side, Val Saint Lambert, on the other, between Barchon and the Meuse, between Evegnee and Fleron. Fighting took place well into the night, the enemy being repulsed at Boncelles twice. The following morning I saw pieces of German corpses. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... Duke Rudolph could not be in question, Clemence allowed that, at least in point of beauty, La Goualeuse was worthy of the love of a prince. At the sight of her protectress, whose expression, as we have said, was that of ineffable goodness, Fleur-de-Marie felt herself irresistibly drawn toward her. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... great success. The critics, who already knew something of her literary powers, had with one consent written long and special articles about "Laurels and Thorns," hailing it as a veritable triumph. It was original, and philosophic, and irresistibly pathetic; the style sufficed to mark its author as one of the few novelists whose literary form was irreproachable. Perhaps the praise was here and there extravagant, but it was practically universal. And it ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... with an insolence which must have excited disgust and detestation, if his vulgar rants on the sacred rights of equality, joined to his wild havoc of general grammar no less than of the English language, had not rendered it so irresistibly laughable. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of all three were now directed with a fixed gaze upon the new-comers,—in whose behaviour they observed something irresistibly ludicrous. ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... went for a walk in the woods. He passed a young girl of rare and appealing beauty. Their eyes met; they paused a moment, irresistibly drawn to each other. Then they went their separate ways. He inquired her name and found that she was Barbara Strauss and lived not far away. He sought an introduction, but before it could be brought about he left home to make his ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Dead at the spell of a Magician,—took, as if irresistibly, the hand held out to him. And the scholar, overjoyed, fell on his breast, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an actual belief;—but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... less intelligible if the fictitious narrator had only read the story in the Latin translation, than if we suppose the news of Petrarch's death at Arqua in July 1374 to have closely followed Chaucer to England, and to have cruelly and irresistibly mingled itself with our poet's personal recollections of his great Italian contemporary. Nor must we regard as without significance the manner in which the Clerk is made to distinguish between the "body" of Petrarch's tale, and the fashion in which it was ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... said that every reader of the "Iliad" finds himself irresistibly compelled to take sides with one or other of the great opposing camps, and to be thenceforward either a Greek or a Trojan. In something of the same spirit every student of the reign of the third George becomes perforce a partisan ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... but faintly sketched Mrs. Romer's style. Evelina, who is prudish and thinks her vulgar, refused to laugh, but it came upon me, as the picture of 'your own old husband,' with so irresistibly comic an effect that I was overcome by convulsions of laughter. I do not defend myself. It was as much a fit as any other attack. I did all I could to arrest it. At last, I ran indoors and upstairs to my bedroom and tried hard to become dispossessed. I am sure I was an example of the sufferings ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... upside down in consequence, one might suppose a visiting insect would not choose to alight on it. The pretty club-shaped, vari-colored hairs, which he may mistake for stamens, and which keep his feet from slipping, irresistibly invite him there, however, when, presto! down drops the fringed lip with startling suddenness. Of course, the bee strikes his back against the column when he falls. Now, there are two slightly upturned ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... which it was my purpose to explore pierced it as nearly as might be in its middle, running practically north and south; and even at the first glance I was impressed by the remarkable character of the place. For the ravine irresistibly suggested the idea that at some time in the more or less remote past a giant had taken a shovel measuring about a quarter of a mile in width, and with this gigantic tool had cut a gap right through the range. The most singular feature ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... with its immensity, its mystery, its moods, the danger in it, and the man's work in mastering it, was almost irresistibly ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... affairs of life. That sense of solitude, of being unsheltered in a wide world of relentless and elemental forces which is at the basis of childhood's timidity and which is far from outgrown at fifteen, seized me irresistibly before I could reach the narrow stairs and summon ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... awaited the move. Yet for long, eternally long it seemed to him, there was none. The swift reaction of a passionate nature was on, and as in Bob Manning's store, the suspense of those dragging seconds was torture. Adding thereto, recollection of that former scene, temporarily banished, returned now irresistibly, cumulatively. Struggle as he might against the feeling, a terror of this motionless human at his side grew upon him; a blind, unreasoning, primitive terror. But one impulse possessed him: to be away, to escape the outburst he instinctively ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... saw her again on this late summer's afternoon, could fail to mark the additional charm of her magnetic personality. There was a tenderness in her face as she turned her head to and fro, a joy of living in her eyes that was quite irresistibly fascinating. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... as if an enormous, invisible force had struck him in the chest. It was apparently the same repulsive force that had driven back the waters. The shock was not a violent one. It did not throw him off his feet. It merely pushed him slowly and irresistibly backward. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... cost to her pocket and her ideals, begin to shop again. She has renounced the theatre, she denies herself the teo-rooms, she goes apologetically and furtively (and economically) to concerts—but the swinging doors of the department stores suck her irresistibly into their quicksand ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton |
