"Imperceptibly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are instituted so slowly and even imperceptibly, so far as the conforming individual is concerned, that the mass of men submit to control in spite of themselves, and it is therefore always difficult to determine how far the average upright living is the result of external props, until they are suddenly withdrawn. This is especially ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... he continued to smoke his pipe and gaze after the vehicle even when it had become lost to view. Then he re-entered the drawing-room, seated himself upon a chair, and surrendered his mind to the thought that he had shown his guest most excellent entertainment. Next, his mind passed imperceptibly to other matters, until at last it lost itself God only knows where. He thought of the amenities of a life, of friendship, and of how nice it would be to live with a comrade on, say, the bank of some river, and to span the river with a bridge of his own, and to build an enormous mansion with ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... River, penetrates a district of pine lands, and the mouths of nearly all these streams are already occupied with lumbering establishments of greater or less magnitude. Those lumber colonies are the pioneers, and generally attract around them others who engage in agriculture, and thus almost imperceptibly the agricultural interests of the State are spreading and developing in every direction. The want of suitable means of access alone prevents the rapid settlement of large and fertile districts of our State, which are not unknown to the more enterprising and persevering pioneers, who have led the ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... and her father was not now the courtly though somewhat reserved gentleman who had treated her with indulgent kindness until Hallam crossed his path. It was a fine evening, and she sat still on the verandah wondering how the rift had imperceptibly widened between them, until again the blood crept to her forehead as she remembered that it was at his instigation she had detained Alton. Still, though she realized that this could not be wholly forgotten, ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... March afternoon brooded out over the wide meadows, out over the dim woods beyond, and still on to the half-visible hills in the distance, where it merged itself imperceptibly into a low, lead-colored sky. Though the rain was not falling, everything dripped with the damp. In front of the Waring farmhouse the road, wallowing with fat mud, stretched off in a dirty streak under the glistening limbs of the maples. The door of the house ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... an invariable rule that, if there is a delicate subject which we determine beforehand to avoid, this particular one is sure imperceptibly to ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... change was made too late to accomplish its purpose of renewing Gabrielle's enfeebled health. Almost imperceptibly, with slow and kindly footsteps, Death had drawn daily nearer, until at last, quite happily and like a little child that is tired of playing and only wants to rest, Gabrielle slipped out of the world and her ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... markets, and were holding peaceful meetings. They had not, however, forgotten their ancestral habits, their native manners, the life of independence, or the authority given by arms. Hence, while they were unlearning them gradually and imperceptibly, with careful watching, they were not disturbed by the changed conditions of existence, and they were becoming different without knowing it. Finally, Quintilius Varus received the command of Germany and in the discharge of his office strove, in administering the affairs of the people, to introduce ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... course at the farm, and all went on as usual. Mr Prothero spent every spare moment with Netta and his grandchild, who soon forgot that 'grandfather,' as he insisted on her calling him, 'talked loud, and had large, rough hands.' Gladys slipped imperceptibly into her old place, and alternately nursed Netta and helped Mrs Prothero in the dairy. Owen found many opportunities of entreating Gladys to let him speak to his father, but she positively forbade him, as long as ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... night! how effortless and free O'er samite black-though green by day—thou movest! And to the whirring music that thou lovest Thy foot advances imperceptibly. Thus hour by hour thy step doth measure— In tranced self-forgetful pleasure Thou'rt rapt; creation's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... with strangers, speaking French, it is true, but with an accent which, to acute ears, betrayed their origin and made one wonder at their pro-Gallic sentiments. The French and German residents of the town drew imperceptibly apart, grew a little more formal, ceased the exchange of friendly visits. No one knew what was about to happen, but every one felt that a crisis of ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... conclusion inculcated by these doctrines as regards the social progress of great communities? It is that all political institutions—imperceptibly or visibly, spontaneously or purposely—should tend to the improvement and organization of national intellect. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... Moreover, that success had contributed largely to the profits by which he had benefited, and to his renown as editor of the journal which accorded place to this new-found genius. But there was a deeper and more potent cause for sympathy with the success of his fair young contributor. He had imperceptibly glided into love with her,—a love very different from that with which poor Julie Caumartin flattered herself she had inspired the young poet. Isaura was one of those women for whom, even in natures the least chivalric, love, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... could have sworn we had landed on a flat plateau, if indeed the contour had not sloped upward to a cap. How, then, did we come to find ourselves in a depression? Did the grass shift like the sea it resembled? Or—incredible thought—had our weight caused us to sink imperceptibly into a soft and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... went to his head like the scent of her lilies. He had reproduced this radiant, throbbing effect in his picture. It was a head, the delicate oval of the full face relieved against a background of atmospheric gold into which the golden surface tints of the hair faded imperceptibly. The eyebrows were arched a little over the earnest, unfathomable eyes; the lips were parted as if with impetuous breath; the whole head leaned slightly forward, giving prominence to the chin, which in reality retreated, a defect chiefly noticeable ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... the nod of an avowed despotism, has at least the consolation to know that his sufferings bring down upon that despotism the execration of mankind; but he who is entrapped and entangled in the meshes of a crafty and corrupt system of jurisprudence; who is pursued imperceptibly by a law with leaden feet and iron jaws; who is not put upon his trial till the ear of the public has been poisoned, and its heart steeled against him,—falls, at last, without being cheered with a hope of seeing his tyrants execrated even by the warmest ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... Aramis colored imperceptibly. "You disturb me? Oh, quite the contrary, dear friend, I swear; and as a proof of what I say, permit me to declare I am rejoiced to see ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... country for several hundred yards, unable to recover and most decidedly unwilling to fall off on the back of our heads. It must have been a grand sight; and it seemed to endure an hour. Finally, imperceptibly we overcame the opposing ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... It was so carefully wrapped in a black cloak that it was difficult to tell among the other shadows whether it was man or woman, and immediately it became a part of the darkness that hovered close to the entrances along the way. It slid almost imperceptibly from shadow to shadow until it crouched flatly against the wall by the steps of an open door out of which streamed a wide band of light that ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... Herbart and identify myself more particularly with my mental self. It seems to me that I may speak of myself as a circle of thought and experience hung between these two imperfectly understood worlds of the internal and the external and passing imperceptibly into the former. The external world impresses me as being, as a practical fact, common to me and many other creatures similar to myself; the internal, I find similar but not identical with theirs. It is MINE. It seems to me at times no more ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... They could not escape from its influence. It touched them from one side or from another, calling upon them, by every manner of appeal, to lead less sordid lives, and seek the highest good. Whereas in the olden time they seemed to be set in the midst of evil influences, which imperceptibly molded their characters and too often wrecked their lives, their condition was so changed that their environment was now a help and not a hindrance, and so the gospel found easy entrance to their ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... taste. Unhappily, they made all their characters in their own likeness. Their works bear the same relation to the legitimate drama which a transparency bears to a painting. There are no delicate touches, no hues imperceptibly fading into each other: the whole is lighted up with an universal glare. Outlines and tints are forgotten in the common blaze which illuminates all. The flowers and fruits of the intellect abound; but it is the abundance of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Doubtless this will imply changes in our old mode of thinking; but these changes are not forced upon us, they are brought about naturally by the new stand-point from which we now see things. Almost imperceptibly to ourselves we grow into a New Order of Thought which proceeds, not from a knowledge of good and evil, but from the Principle of Life itself. That is what makes the difference between our old thought and our new thought. Our old thought was based upon a ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... came to their ears as the shell quivered, imperceptibly almost, but unmistakeably, at the touch of some ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... and talked, sitting in that room which was made the very sanctum of romance by young blood and moonlight. Eleven o'clock slipped by, and twelve and one; and while the earth slept, watched by a million glistening eyes, and nature moved imperceptibly one step nearer to maturity, this boy and girl made plans for the discovery of a world out of which so many similar explorers have crept with wounds ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... that the dominant opinion in the Society—at any rate it is my opinion—is that great social changes can only come by consent. The Capitalist system cannot be overthrown by a revolution or by a parliamentary majority. Wage slavery will disappear, as serfdom disappeared, not indeed imperceptibly, for the world is now self-conscious, not even so gradually, for the pace of progress is faster than it was in the Middle Ages, but by a change of heart of the community, by a general recognition, already half ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... 'As regards one who lives amid these pursuits and tasks'. — ITA SENSIM etc.: sensim sine sensu (observe the alliteration) is like mentes dementis in 16, where see n. Sensim must have meant at one time 'perceptibly', then 'only just perceptibly', then 'gradually' and almost 'imperceptibly'. ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... all arts,—the art of living in closest human relationship with 'a creature of equal, if of unlike frailties'; an art that must be mastered afresh, year by year: because life, as we know it, is rooted in change; and if a husband and wife are not imperceptibly growing towards one another, they are almost infallibly growing in the other direction. But for the artist woman self-surrender is no natural instinct: it is a talent to be consciously acquired, if she ever acquire ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... generous, compassionate, tender husband; an honest, careful, and most affectionate father. Never was a more virtuous or a happier fireside than his. The influence of his mighty genius shadowed it imperceptibly; his calm good sense, and his angelic sweetness of heart and temper, regulated and softened a strict but paternal discipline. His children, as they grew up, understood by degrees the high privilege of their birth; but the profoundest sense of his greatness never disturbed ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... except when the hook is moved slowly; or if the switchboard is one where the operator is signalled by a little disk which falls over a blank space the disk fails to move down but remains quivering almost imperceptibly in its ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... Harley with the candidate was taken as a matter of course by everybody. Silent, tactful, and strong, he had grown almost imperceptibly into a confidential relationship with the nominee, and Mr. Grayson did not realize how much he relied upon the quiet man who could not make a speech but who was so ready of resource. As for Mr. Heathcote, being an Easterner, ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... up to the neighborhood of the falls, a solemn awe imperceptibly stole over me, and the deep sound of the ever-hurrying rapids prepared my mind for the lofty emotions to be experienced. When I reached the hotel, I felt a strange indifference about seeing the aspiration of my life's ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... began the downward circle; the shadows crept eastward and imperceptibly grew longer; a gray tone settled under the stones at his feet. Sometimes he sang, sometimes he stood dreaming. His fingers were growing sore and sticky and there was a twinge in his back as he shouldered ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... very faint as to be almost no sound at all, came like a response from the girl's lips, and she all but imperceptibly stirred. Her father neither heard nor saw, but Lanfear started forward. He made a sudden clutch at the girl's wrist with the hand that had not left it and then remained motionless. "She will never ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... and vigil, with his head on her lap and her fingers wildly working at his wrists, she vacillated terribly between the hope that life was returning and the fear that it was waning. After other ages she saw his lids flicker almost imperceptibly and then, when anxiety had taken a heavy toll, his eyes looked up in uncomprehending life. Conscience bent her face close to his and there was breath on his lips and nostrils. Eben had been a Machiavelli in spirit only. In effect ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Stanton paused imperceptibly before answering, while his ultrafast mind considered the problem before arriving at a decision. Just how much confidence should he show the colonel? Mannheim was a man with tremendous confidence ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... for my purpose if you could hear the little clear arpeggios of an obsolete music box, the notes as sweet as barley sugar; for then the mood of Rosemary Roselle might steal imperceptibly into your heart. It is made of daguerreotypes blurring on their misted silver; tenebrous lithographs—solemn facades of brick with classic white lanterns lifted against the inky smoke of a burning city; the pages of a lady's book, elegant engravings of hooped and ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... or other secondary schools, teachers' institutes, etc). In the chief foreign countries professional schools of this kind are easily classified by virtue of their administrative relations, but in our own country the different orders of pedagogical training merge into each other almost imperceptibly because they are all based upon the same fundamental conception of the ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... in most other animals that I can now think of, the eyes are so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to produce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar position of the whale's eyes, effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid head, which towers between them like a great mountain separating two lakes in valleys; this, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... episcopal lettering used in the old house of Le Clere, he had Baudelaire's works printed in a large format recalling that of ancient missals, on a very light and spongy Japan paper, soft as elder pith and imperceptibly tinted with a light rose hue through its milky white. This edition, limited to one copy, printed with a velvety black Chinese ink, had been covered outside and then recovered within with a wonderful genuine sow skin, chosen among a thousand, the color of flesh, its surface spotted where the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... count. In a state of nature, man's strength increases until thirty-five years of age. It then remains stationary until forty; and from that time forward, it begins to diminish, but almost imperceptibly, until fifty; then the process becomes quicker and quicker to the day of his death. In our state of civilization, when the body is weakened by excess, cares, and maladies, the failure begins at thirty-five. The time, then, to take nature, is when she is stationary, ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... deliquescence and reconstruction dealt with in the earlier of these anticipations, has an air of being a process independent of any collective or conscious will in man, as being the expression of a greater Will; it is working now, and may work out to its end vastly, and yet at times almost imperceptibly, as some huge secular movement in Nature, the raising of a continent, the crumbling of a mountain-chain, goes on to its appointed culmination. Or one may compare the process to a net that has surrounded, and that is drawn continually closer and closer upon, a great and varied ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... lines; and you remember how feelingly, how daintily, how almost imperceptibly the verses raise up before you, feature by feature, the ideal of a true and perfect woman; and how, as you contemplate the finished marvel, your homage grows into worship of the intellect that could create so ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... knew Maggie Oliphant, but did not know Prissie, was observant of the silent young stranger through all the delights of her pleasant talk. Almost imperceptibly she got Prissie to say a word or two. She paused when she saw a question in Prissie's eyes, and her timid and gentle words were listened to with deference. By slow degrees Maggie was the silent one and Priscilla and Miss Heath held ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... leprosy had caused it to be long since diverted from its original purpose. In 1569, it was pillaged by the Huguenots; and, as no pains were taken to repair the injuries then done, it continued in a state of dilapidation, imperceptibly wasting away, till the period of the revolution, when it was sold, together with the other national property; and even its ruins ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... a misstep or slip would send one down the blue steps where no friendly rope could rescue, and only the rushing water could be heard. To view the solid phalanxes of icy floes, as they fill the mountain fastnesses and imperceptibly march through the ravines and force their way to the sea, fills one with awe indescribable. The knowledge that the ice is moving from beneath one's feet thrills one with a curious sensation hard ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... Nature and of human rights, through them will Man be saved from his Fall, princes and nations will disappear without violence from the earth, the human race will become one family and the world the abode of reasonable men. Morality alone will bring about this change imperceptibly. Every father of a family will be, as formerly Abraham and the patriarchs, the priest and unfettered lord of his family, and Reason will be the only code of Man. This is one ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... withholding them at the very last, as if the touch would burn her. She was almost surprised that it did not. She looked to see if it did not hurt Emilia. But it now seemed as if the slumbering girl enjoyed the caressing contact of the smooth fingers, and turned her head, almost imperceptibly, to meet them. This was more than Hope could bear. It was as if that slight motion were a puncture to relieve her overburdened heart; a thousand thoughts swept over her,—of their father, of her sister's childhood, of her years of absent ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... imperceptibly in Disko's hands. A few seconds later a hissing wave-top slashed diagonally across the boat, smote Uncle Salters between the shoulders, and drenched him from head to foot. He rose sputtering, and went ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... verlaugnen, ehe wolte Ich hier vor Eurer Majestat niderknien, und mir den Kopf abhauen lassen."—"Nit Kop ab, lover Forst, nit Kop ab!" answered Charles in his Flemish-German; "Not head off, dear Furst, not head off!" said the Kaiser, a faint smile enlightening those weighty gray eyes of his, and imperceptibly animating the thick Austrian under-lip. [Rentsch, p. 637. Marheineke, Geschichte der Teutschen Reformation ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... of thinking, his principles, his character, his ruling passions; and then with that familiar grace, that affability, that force and vivacity of expression, which gave so much value and such a charm to his conversations[105], he insinuated himself imperceptibly into your heart, made himself master of your passions, gently excited them, and artfully flattered them: then, displaying at once the magic resources of his genius, he plunged you into intoxication, into admiration, and subdued you so rapidly, so completely, that it seemed the ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... extremely minute and critical inspection of the rhachis and the nerves or ribs of the leaf. Days pass. The ants are there all the time, examining the leaf and communicating with each other whensoever they meet. Imperceptibly the leaf begins to curl. The ants continue to make mesmeric passes over the nerves ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the party had imperceptibly arrived at Falcon's Nest, wherein they had not set foot for ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... column which, physiologists assert, performs three fourths of a man's actions and conditions nine tenths of his volitions— that part of Peter wouldn't consider it. It began to get jumpy and scatter havoc in Peter's thoughts at the mere suggestion of not seeing Cissie. Imperceptibly this radical left wing of his emotions speeded up his meal, again. He caught himself, stopped his knife and fork in the act of rending apart a ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... this point, nor at any other, do we propose to draw an absolute line of demarcation between genuine and spurious writings of Plato. They fade off imperceptibly from one class to another. There may have been degrees of genuineness in the dialogues themselves, as there are certainly degrees of evidence by which they are supported. The traditions of the oral discourses both of Socrates ...
— Menexenus • Plato
... water at dawn, and a thousand shadows from the iron-work of its balustrade had come to rest on it. A breath of wind dispersed them; the stone grew dark again, but, like tamed creatures, they returned; they began, imperceptibly, to grow lighter, and by one of those continuous crescendos, such as, in music, at the end of an overture, carry a single note to the extreme fortissimo, making it pass rapidly through all the intermediate stages, I saw it attain to that fixed, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... elsewhere said, that Sir Henry had arrived at middle age, before one feeling incompatible with his ambitious thoughts arose. It was at Leamington this feeling had imperceptibly sprung up; and to Leamington they were ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... dark head, like mine, seemed to nod imperceptibly above the ghostly grey of my sleeping-suit. It was, in the night, as though I had been faced by my own reflection in the depths of a sombre and ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... homeopathic, very small; atomic, corpuscular, microscopic, molecular, subatomic. mere, simple, sheer, stark, bare; near run. dull, petty, shallow, stolid, ungifted, unintelligent. Adv. to a small extent [in a small degree], on a small scale; a little bit, a wee bit; slightly &c adj.; imperceptibly; miserably, wretchedly; insufficiently &c 640; imperfectly; faintly &c 160; passably, pretty well, well enough. [in a certain or limited degree] partially, in part; in a certain degree, to a certain degree; to a certain extent; comparatively; some, rather in some degree, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... passed imperceptibly to more personal matters. Elaine, keeping to her resolve of the morning, led it in that direction. He learnt that she was an orphan; that her nearest relatives were entirely out of sympathy with her ideas and aspirations, and profoundly distasteful to her; that she took full pride in ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... who had watched, perhaps brought on this change, knew too well not to seize it: he thrust the table imperceptibly from between us, and bringing his chair to face me, he soon began, after preparing me by all the endearments of assurance and protestations, to lay hold of my hands, to kiss me, and once more to make free with my bosom, which, being at full liberty from ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... Almost imperceptibly at first the towering dreadnought in the foreground began to move! Slowly, the water swirling about her, she backed away from her anchor, tightening the curve of the anchor chain! Water quivered about the point of the chain's contact ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... Plymouth, New Bedford, Newburyport, Newport—superannuated centres of the traffic with foreign lands, which have seen their trade carried away from them by the greater cities. As Hawthorne says, their ventures have gone "to swell, needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at New York or Boston." Salem, at the beginning of the present century, played a great part in the Eastern trade; it was the residence of enterprising shipowners who despatched their vessels to Indian and Chinese ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... almost imperceptibly, from the wharf—so slowly, so imperceptibly, that the people on board thought the city was sliding away from them. The merchant saw the solid, trim, beautiful vessel turn her bow southward and outward, and glide gently down the river. ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... altogether consistent with mercy. The President was gradually influenced by Mr. Seward's arguments, though their whole tenor was against his strongest predilections and against his pronounced and public committals to a policy directly the reverse of that to which he was now, almost imperceptibly to himself, yielding assent. The man who had in April avowed himself in favor of "the halter for intelligent, influential traitors," who passionately declared during the interval between the fall of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... her back upon the company at large, for the indulgence of conversing with some particular person: a fashion which to unaccustomed observers seems rude and repulsive, but which, when once adopted, carries with it imperceptibly its own recommendation, in the ease, convenience and freedom ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... bench and enjoyed the soft tropical night. The air was tepid, heavy with unknown perfume, black as a band of velvet across the eyes, musical with the subdued undertones of a thousand thousand night insects. At points overhead the soft blind darkness melted imperceptibly into stars. ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... looked pleased at our being so hard at work. As there was just then a ripple on the water, he ordered the anchor to be got up; and it being now full tide, we began, almost imperceptibly, to glide away from among the other vessels. On the right was the edge of the New Forest, in which William Rufus was killed; although I believe that took place a good way off, near Lyndhurst; and very little of the eastern side of the forest ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... southern slope of the sky, lower and lower, till its extreme limit seemed to mingle with the haze on the horizon. Having thus completed its stupendous sweep, it remained, brightening and paling by turns, for several minutes. Finally, it slowly and imperceptibly faded away, vanishing first at the loftiest point of all, and lingering downward on either side, till all ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... hardly at all. Their Saxon lord lived elsewhere; he was slain or banished, and they came imperceptibly under the Norman rule. But more often, I imagine, particularly on the smaller estates, the lord dwelt in patriarchal intercourse with his tenants, with that freedom of speech and right of judgment, which, in "Ivanhoe," Scott draws in ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... to shudder at the name of Rabelais and take to smelling salts?" queries an editorial colleague. "Are we to be a wholly lady-like nation?" Small danger, brother. Human nature changes imperceptibly, or not at all. The objection to most imitations of Rabelais is that they lack the unforced wit and humor of ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... existing, and bring about a different arrangement. Thus, a stick poised on its lower end is in unstable equilibrium: however exactly it may be placed in a perpendicular position, as soon as it is left to itself it begins, at first imperceptibly and then visibly, to lean on one side, and with increasing rapidity falls into another position. Conversely, a stick suspended from its upper end is in stable equilibrium: however much disturbed, it will return to the same position. Our ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... half-way place between the people of the plains and those of the uplands. Here a ravine is crossed, a hill climbed, and the traveler stands on a plateau not more than half a mile wide but winding for miles toward the big peak Pinatubo and almost imperceptibly increasing in elevation. Low, barren ridges flank it on either side, at the base of each of which flows a good-sized stream. Seven miles of beaten winding path through the cogon grass bring the traveler to the first Negrito rancheria, ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... to Africa, who profess the Mahometan religion; [48] and some vestiges of a similar tradition have been discovered in the remote extremities of Scandinavia. [49] This easy and universal belief, so expressive of the sense of mankind, may be ascribed to the genuine merit of the fable itself. We imperceptibly advance from youth to age, without observing the gradual, but incessant, change of human affairs; and even in our larger experience of history, the imagination is accustomed, by a perpetual series of causes and effects, to unite the most distant ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... tranquillity I have almost destroyed all the energy of my soul, almost rooted out what renders it estimable. Yes, I have damped that enthusiasm of character, which converts the grossest materials into a fuel that imperceptibly feeds hopes which aspire above common enjoyment. Despair, since the birth of my child, has rendered me stupid; soul and body seemed to be fading away before ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... land, and yet will wander the wide world over, a race that loves battle, and yet always falls—whilst doing this, it seemed to me that I was capturing for an instant a beauty that was dying slowly, imperceptibly, but ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... what the admiral said was true, that kings realized themselves as such in France only in so far as they had the 'power of doing harm or good to their subjects and servants, and that this power and management of affairs had slipped imperceptibly into the hands of the queen my mother and mine.' 'This superintendent domination, the admiral told me, might some day be very prejudicial to me and to all my kingdom, and that I should hold it in suspicion ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own. The life of man is a self-evolving circle,[696] which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. For it is the ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... motion, and with the agreeable appearance of the different novelties that met my gaze. The light boat glided almost imperceptibly through the water at every stroke of the oar. Nero lay as still as if his former lesson had taught him the necessity of remaining motionless; and the gannets now and then expressed their satisfaction by a shrill cry or a rapid fluttering of ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Almost imperceptibly a change was coming over Christine, and by degrees Mrs. Murray became aware of it. She grew more silent and fond of being alone. She even went out now and took long, companionless walks, coming home exhausted and preoccupied. ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder
... 'favourite heat,' dashing out the fire, and endangering his indispensable instrument, the bellows; or if the sea was smooth, the smith had often to stand at work knee deep in water, and the tide would rise imperceptibly, first cooling the exterior of the fire-place or hearth, and then quickly blackening and extinguishing the fire from below. Mr. Stevenson describes it as amusing to witness the perplexing anxiety of the smith when coaxing his fire, and endeavouring to avert the effects of the rising tide. ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton
... not unmingled with horror. Her own religious faith had dawned so imperceptibly—at once an instinct and a lesson—that there seemed something awful in this question of an utterly ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... what a man gains when he comes to himself. Some men gain it late, some early; some get it all at once, as if by one distinct act of deliberate accommodation; others get it by degrees and quite imperceptibly. No doubt to most men it comes by slow processes of experience—at each stage of life a little. A college man feels the first shock of it at graduation, when the boy's life has been lived out and the man's life suddenly begins. He has measured himself ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson
... these things. She looked toward her husband, whose eyes were fixed upon her; she would read in his countenance if he were pleased with her words. A smile played upon the lips of the king, and he bowed his head almost imperceptibly as a greeting to ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... praying in Latin. He made no special noise nor movement, but after a while I saw the sweat stand out on his forehead and his face was drawn and pale—and grew paler. Every now and then he'd give a sort of deep sigh and hitch along, almost imperceptibly, on his knees, from fatigue and nervous tension, and after about ten minutes he was almost in the fireplace. With anybody else I could never have stood it, but it was impossible not to respect Father Kelly, and I can tell you that whatever prayers ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... the ketch up where he intended to anchor and called to the stooping white-clad figure in the bow: "Let go!" There was an answering splash, a sudden rasp of hawser, the booms swung idle, and the yacht imperceptibly settled into her berth. The wheel turned impotently; and, absent-minded, John Woolfolk locked it. He dropped his long form on a carpet-covered folding chair near by. He was tired. His sailor, Poul Halvard, moved ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... personality, were predestined to SERVE the others; that is, to labor while the latter rested, and to have no other will than theirs: and from this idea of a natural subordination among men sprang domesticity, which, voluntarily accepted at first, was imperceptibly converted into horrible slavery. Time, making this error more palpable, has brought about justice. Nations have learned at their own cost that the subjection of man to man is a false idea, an erroneous theory, pernicious ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... whose control over the registers is so expert that, when they are called upon to follow a loud, singing, vibrant head tone with a pp effect on the same note, they can accomplish this by imperceptibly changing to falsetto. They can glide from head into falsetto and back again without a break and add the charm of varied tone-color to natural beauty of voice. This is especially true of dramatic tenors. If they can vary the ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... not, or are not, whatever you may say. You—" she hesitated sweetly—"you had been unsteady when you were here before." He twitched again, imperceptibly. "I am thankful to see that you are now more like what you must once have been. I can bear to tell you of my boy. Oh, sir, can you bear ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... made so the schooner continued imperceptibly to right herself, and at length she was so nearly upright that I thought we might set about the attempt to get her afloat. The wind, being now off-shore, was in our favour, as the deepest water was ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... every one gazes at, and admires, and despairs to equal! This is the Eloquence that bends and sways the passions!—this the Eloquence that alarms or sooths them at her pleasure! This is the Eloquence that sometimes tears up all before it like a whirlwind; and, at other times, steals imperceptibly upon the senses, and probes to the bottom of the heart!—the Eloquence which ingrafts opinions that are new, and eradicates the old; but yet is widely different from the two ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... passed on with sunshine and shadows, and, as the hours fled, I saw with regret that stern Time had relentlessly breathed with his withering breath upon my much-loved flower! Gradually and slowly its blossoms pined, the lovely colours faded,—almost imperceptibly, 'tis true, still they faded,—its fresh green crown became less purely bright, and I knew with anguish ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... imperceptibly worse and worse, her father, who did not understand such a lingering complaint, imagined his wife was only grown still more whimsical, and that if she could be prevailed on to exert herself, her health would soon be re-established. In general he treated her with indifference; ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... if overpowered with her own thoughts, the guitar sank upon her lap, and her fingers glided over the chords, so that the tones died away imperceptibly. Her deep-blue eyes gazed pensively in the distance, and the sweet lips repeated softly, "How strangely it causes us to suffer!" Near the garden entrance, through which the odor of sweet flowers and the song of birds was wafted with every gentle zephyr, stood Goethe, looking at ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... the streets were clear of dead and of black powder. It was near South Kensington that I first heard the howling. It crept almost imperceptibly upon my senses. It was a sobbing alternation of two notes, "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," keeping on perpetually. When I passed streets that ran northward it grew in volume, and houses and buildings seemed to deaden and cut it off again. It came in a full tide down Exhibition Road. ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... that had now realized the casus foederis, the case in which they had covenanted themselves to desist from idolatry, were no longer the men who had made that covenant. They had changed profoundly and imperceptibly. So that the very vision of truth was overcast with carnal doubts; the truth itself had retired to a vast distance and shone but feebly for them, and the very will was palsied in ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... Casanova's vision. A smile flitted across her face. Her arms fell to her sides; her lips moved strangely, as if whispering a prayer; once more she looked searchingly across the garden, then nodded almost imperceptibly, and at the instant someone who must hitherto have been crouching at her feet swung across the sill into the open. It was Lorenzi. He flew rather than walked across the gravel into the alley, which he crossed barely ten yards ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... nodded almost imperceptibly. A yawning brave was walking slowly along the bank of the stream, gathering wood for a fire. He passed to a point a few rods below the prisoner, then came back and ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... the tragedies with which Medea anointed the crown and veil which she gave to Creon's daughter. For neither the things themselves, nor the fire could kindle of its own accord, but being prepared for it by the naphtha, they imperceptibly attracted and caught a flame which happened to be brought near them. For the rays and emanations of fire at a distance have no other effect upon some bodies than bare light and heat, but in others, where they meet with airy dryness, and also sufficient rich moisture, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... uncertain whether to take it as a joke or to feel hurt. Mrs. Smith smiled and shook her head almost imperceptibly and Dorothy understood that it was ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... said the baronet, gaily, but with something almost imperceptibly sarcastic in his tone. "Our friend, Marston, is privileged to be as ungallant as he pleases, except where he has the happy privilege to owe allegiance; but I, a gay young bachelor of fifty, am naturally curious. I really do trust that our charming French ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... your uprightness refused to do any thing contrary to your sense of right; but, Wohlfart, I repeat to you what I have said before: any permanent dealings with the weak and wicked bring the best man into danger. Gradually and imperceptibly his standard becomes lowered, and necessity compels him to agree to measures that elsewhere he would have peremptorily rejected. I am convinced that you are still what the world calls an upright man of business, but I do not know whether you have preserved ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... once, as Joyce tells me," Barbara said. "But it must have been imperceptibly joined, for I have looked in vain for the damage. Mr. Carlyle bought it for his first wife, when they were in London, after their marriage. She broke it subsequently here, at East Lynne. You will never do it, Madame Vine, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... position this cicerone's prattle and shopman's empty talk seemed like the petty vexations by which narrow minds destroy a man of genius. But as he must even go through with it, he appeared to listen to his guide, answering him by gestures or monosyllables; but imperceptibly he arrogated the privilege of saying nothing, and gave himself up without hindrance to his closing meditations, which were appalling. He had a poet's temperament, his mind had entered by chance on a vast field; and he ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... are struck at once by the exquisite refinement of mind, the subtleness of association, and the extreme tenuity of the threads of thought, the gossamer filaments yet finally weaving themselves together, and thickening imperceptibly into a strong and expanded web. Mingled with this, and perhaps springing from a similar mental habit, is an occasional dreaminess both in speculation and in narrative, when the mind seems to move vaguely round in vast returning circles. The thoughts catch ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... from the trees in autumn, they do not (if there is no great moisture in the atmosphere) immediately undergo a decomposition, but are first dried and withered; as soon, however, as the rain sets in, fermentation commences, their gaseous products are imperceptibly evolved into the atmosphere, and their fixed remains ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... perhaps he will choose to take a nearer view of the memorable spot. We stand now on the river's brink. It may well be called the Concord,—the river of peace and quietness; for it is certainly the most unexcitable and sluggish stream that ever loitered imperceptibly towards its eternity,—the sea. Positively I had lived three weeks beside it before it grew quite clear to my perception which way the current flowed. It never has a vivacious aspect, except when a northwestern breeze is vexing its surface on a sunshiny day. From the incurable indolence ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are made to land, bordering upon rivers, follow the land, say the civilians, provided it be made by what they call alluvion, that is, insensibly and imperceptibly; which are circumstances, that assist the imagination ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... anything, who had never had anything to conceal. And for four-and-twenty hours he had been silent with a great secret upon his soul. John was too wise to check the outpouring. He listened to everything, assented, soothed, imperceptibly ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... philosophy and art; they are used as symbols on the border-ground of human knowledge; they receive a fresh impress from individual genius, and come with a new force and association to every lively-minded person. They are fixed by the simultaneous utterance of millions, and yet are always imperceptibly changing;—not the inventors of language, but writing and speaking, and particularly great writers, or works which pass into the hearts of nations, Homer, Shakespear, Dante, the German or English Bible, Kant and Hegel, are the makers of them in later ages. They carry with them the ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... too, that although the animal disguises were too transparent to endure a moment's reflection, yet that they were so gracefully worn that such moment's reflection was not to be come at without an effort. Our imagination following the costume did imperceptibly betray our judgment; we admired the human intellect, the ever ready prompt sagacity and presence of mind. We delighted in the satire on the foolishnesses and greedinesses of our own fellow mankind; ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... found Grosse so bearish and difficult before this visit to Como. As a rule Edmund was suavity itself, but this time even his gift of gently, almost imperceptibly, making every woman feel him to be her admirer was failing. How often he had been the life of any party in any class of society, and that not by starting amusements, not by any power of initiation, ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... light, the dark shadow of the other traced in clear outlines on the sail. The swash of the waves against the side of the boat was too slight to sway it; the sheet dipped in the water and swung almost imperceptibly, while now and then a few straws floated against it and caught there. The moon, high in the heavens, gave pearly tints to the clouds that floated near it; the pines on the shore flung dark masses against the oaks and maples, or stood as a Rembrandt ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... of the dusk, when the standard of reality changes and other worlds come close and listen, began to work its subtle spell upon his soul. Imperceptibly the shadows deepened as the veil of night drew silently across the sky. A gentle breathing filled the air; trees and fields were composing themselves to sleep; stars were peeping; wings ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... imperceptibly as she noted that another store building was empty. So the tailor had flitted? She recalled the Western adage concerning towns with no Jews in them and smiled faintly. Two doors below, still another shop was vacant. "To Let" signs were not synonymous with prosperity. Hiram Butefish supported ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... long we were as cosy as two old cronies who have known each other for twenty years. The morning had shown me that the Sergeant was a man of some intelligence, and of much worldly experience; and when I had lowered myself imperceptibly to the level of his intellect, so as to put him more completely at his ease, I had no difficulty in inducing him to talk freely and fully on that one subject which, for the last few hours, has had for me an interest paramount ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... at Pinkey with a scowl that softened imperceptibly into a smile, and then a passionate flame leapt ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... so completely excluded her from the new intimacy into which she had imperceptibly drifted that both suddenly developed a significance from sheer contrast. Who was this girl, then, of whom he had absolutely nothing to say? What was she to him? What could she be to him—an actress, a woman of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... in the creation of novel forms of Beauty. Some peculiarities, either in his early education, or in the nature of his intellect, had tinged with what is termed materialism the whole cast of his ethical speculations; and it was this bias, perhaps, which imperceptibly led him to perceive that the most advantageous, if not the sole legitimate field for the exercise of the poetic sentiment, was to be found in the creation of novel moods of purely physical loveliness. Thus it happened that he became neither musician nor poet; if we use this latter term in its ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... falls tumultuously down in a beautiful cascade into a deep chasm of marble rocks. This fall of their sacred stream the people call the 'Dhuandhar', or 'the smoky fall', from the thick vapour which is always seen rising from it in the morning. From below, the river glides quietly and imperceptibly for a mile and a half along a deep, and, according to popular belief, a fathomless channel of from ten to fifty yards wide, with snow-white marble rocks rising perpendicularly on either side from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet high, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... imperceptibly, as she returned the retort courteous and now it was Rimrock who blushed. Then he laughed and waved the ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... her. I drew for her the pictures in the sand. We became—pals." He smiled with a touch of wistfulness over the word that his English friend had taught him. "We shared our secrets. Once—she was bathing"—his voice softened imperceptibly—"and I took her into my boat and rowed her back. It was then that I knew first that I loved her. Yet we remained comrades. I spoke to her no word of love. She was too young, and I had nothing to offer. I said to myself that I would win her when I had won ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... moved imperceptibly, fatefully onward, a streak of lightning tore them apart. They whirled like tortured smoke and grew suddenly black. Large spots of rain with jagged edges began to fall on the lead ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... looked around we saw that almost imperceptibly we had entered the new canyon and at this camp (33) we were fairly within the embrace of its rugged cliffs which, devoid of all vegetation, rose up four hundred feet, sombre in colour, but picturesque from a tendency ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... he went from Washington, Frank heard echoes of that speech. San Francisco's cause gained new and sudden favor. Frank found the Eastern press, which hitherto had favored New Orleans, was veering almost imperceptibly toward ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... later one of your companions drags out of the alforja something crumpled that resembles in general appearance and texture a rusted five-gallon coal-oil can that has been in a wreck. It is only imperceptibly less stiff and angular ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... world—to have been fused into one common but ineffable emotion. Such, at least, was the impression to which Alison startlingly awoke. All the while she had been conscious of Hodder, from the moment she had heard his voice in the chancel; but somehow this consciousness of him had melted, imperceptibly, into that of the great congregation, once divided against itself, which had now ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... worn down once more into the mere degraded stump of a plateau, the crust underwent innumerable changes, but almost all of them exactly the same in kind, and mostly in degree, as those we still see at work imperceptibly in the world around us. Rain washing down the soil; weather crumbling the solid rock; waves dashing at the foot of the cliffs; rivers forming deltas at their barred mouths; shingle gathering on the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... It was the 15th of August, about eleven o'clock at night; thick clouds, portending a tempest, overspread the heavens, and shrouded every light and prospect underneath their heavy folds. The extremities of the avenues were imperceptibly detached from the copse, by a lighter shadow of opaque gray, which, upon closer examination, became visible in the midst of the obscurity. But the fragrance which ascended from the grass, fresher and more penetrating than that which exhaled from the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... more promising than anything they had met: a truck farm bordered one side; a line of tall willows suggested faintly the country. Just beyond the tracks of a railroad the ground rose almost imperceptibly, and a grove of stunted oaks covered the miniature hill. The bronzed leaves still hanging from the trees made something like shade ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... are made to lands bordering upon rivers, follow the land, say the civilians, provided it be made by what they call alluvion, that is, Insensibly and Imperceptibly; which are circumstances that mightily assist the imagination in the conjunction. Where there Is any considerable portion torn at once from one bank, and joined to another, it becomes not his property, whose land it falls on, till ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... neither so abrupt nor so complete as in that of many others. But his course was still more meandering, skirting the bases of opposite systems, abiding with none. Never a blind adherent or a vehement opponent, he glided almost imperceptibly from camp to camp. He consorted, as we have seen, with legitimists and neo-Catholics, and allowed himself to be reckoned as one of them. Through the columns of the Globe, which had now become the organ of the Saint-Simonians, he invited the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... preponderant attention which it must claim if it is to appear with fit dignity. But it is not thrust forward unseasonably or in exaggeration, nor is it placed in a false opposition to the interests of the aesthetic instincts, which after all shade into the moral more imperceptibly than might be generally allowed. There must be a moral side to all societies, and the Hellenic society, the choicest that the world has seen, the completest, that is, at once in sensibilities and in energies, could not but show the excellence of its sensibilities in ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... the task allotted to him, for, both by precept and example, he so set forth and obeyed the laws of God that the tone of society was imperceptibly elevated. Men came to know, and to act upon the knowledge, that this world was not their rest; that there is a better life beyond, and, in the contemplation of that life, they, somehow, made this life more agreeable to ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... the elements are doing at their leisure. A single ounce of uranium contains about the same amount of energy that could be produced by the combustion of ten tons of coal—but it won't let the energy go. Instead it holds on to it, and the energy leaks slowly, almost imperceptibly, away, like water from a big reservoir tapped only by a tiny pipe. 'Atomic energy' Rutherford calls it. Every element, every substance, has its ready to be touched off and put to use. The chap who can find out how ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... screwed, as if she felt herself in a sick-room with the doctor or the clergyman present. But she was never whimpering; no one had seen her shed tears; she was simply grave and inclined to shake her head and sigh, almost imperceptibly, like a funereal mourner who is not a relation. It seemed surprising that Ben Winthrop, who loved his quart-pot and his joke, got along so well with Dolly; but she took her husband's jokes and joviality as patiently as everything else, considering that "men would ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... as agreeable to him after five years of marriage as in the first surprise of his introduction to them. Mrs. Nimick had kept house jerkily and vociferously; Ella performed the same task silently and imperceptibly, and the results were all in favor of the latter method. Though neither the Governor nor his wife had large means, the household, under Mrs. Mornway's guidance, took on an air of sober luxury as agreeable to her husband as it was exasperating to her sister-in-law. The domestic ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... subjects he is led imperceptibly into a soft melancholy, which peculiar elegance of expression renders extremely agreeable in the end of this poem. There is a fine stroke of this kind in his Ode to Septimus, with whom he was going to fight against the Cantabrians. He figures out a poetical recess for his old ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... points of view is the difference between the friend and the flatterer. Moreover as regards the kind of good service. For the favour done by a friend, as the principal strength of an animal is within, is not for display or ostentation, but frequently as a doctor cures his patient imperceptibly, so a friend benefits by his intervention, or by paying off creditors, or by managing his friend's affairs, even though the person who receives the benefit may not be aware of it. Such was the behaviour of Arcesilaus on various occasions, and ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... shade of annoyance, just as I caught a furtive upward glance that seemed to ask what error she had committed and how it might be repaired, a scratching on the door startled her. She did not, however, venture to disengage herself from the hand which now held her own, but only moved half-imperceptibly aside with a slight questioning look and gesture, as if tacitly asking to be released. As I still held her fast, she was silent, till the unnoticed scratching had been two or three times repeated, and then half-whispered, "Shall I tell them to come in?" When I released her, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... like a lean untidy devil recently escaped from hell with his thick brows, green eyes and lank black hair highlighted intermittently by the leaping flame of the match. He certainly didn't look like a pathologist. She wondered if she was going to like working with him, and shook her head imperceptibly. Possibly, but not probably. It might be difficult being cooped up here with him day after day. Well, she could always quit if things got too tough. At least ...
— Pandemic • Jesse Franklin Bone
... two friends sit watching that rat. They were sportsmen, both by nature and practice, to the backbone. The idiotic owl at their elbow was not more still than they—one point only excepted: Phil's right hand moved imperceptibly, like the hour-hand of a watch, towards a book which lay on the counter. Their patience was rewarded. Supposing, no doubt, that the youths had suddenly died to suit its convenience, the rat advanced a step or two, looked ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... Autumn merged imperceptibly into winter, and the days sped tranquilly on. With the exception of brief absences on business, Graham was mostly at home, for there was no place like his own hearth. His heart, so long denied happiness, was content only at the side of his wife and child. The shadows of the ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... uninterruptedly from the time of the Romans, was the art of the witch(strege).The witch, so long as she limited herself to mere divination, might be innocent enough. were it not that the transition from prophecy to active help could easily, though often imperceptibly, be a fatal downward step. She was credited in such a case not only with the power of exciting love or hatred between man and woman, but also with purely destructive and malignant arts, and was especially charged with the sickness of little children, even when the malady ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... gradually dashed over the fires we had left, and so the rock again became a desert. The wind had now entirely died away, leaving the sea smooth as glass, except a quiet swell, and we could only float along, as the tide bore us, almost imperceptibly. It was as beautiful a night as ever shone,—calm, warm, bright, the moon being at full. On one side of us was Marblehead lighthouse, on the other, Baker's Island; and both, by the influence of the moonlight, had a silvery hue, unlike their ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... [Footnote: See p. 33.] A deep instinct, deeper perhaps than men give any account of to themselves, tells them how far this will go; that multitudes, utterly unable to weigh the arguments on one side or the other, will yet be receptive of the influences which these words are evermore, however imperceptibly, diffusing. By argument they might hope to gain over the reason of a few, but by help of these nicknames they enlist what at first are so much more potent, the prejudices and passions of the many, on their side. Thus when ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... and stood for a little looking down into the black void of the canon into which the stolen cattle had been lowered, from which she and Steve had just climbed. She fancied that the darkness down there was thinning. The dawn was coming up almost imperceptibly over the mountain-tops, filtering wanly into the depths of the canons. The night had rushed by; ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... of spring in the air. We have had some warm, heavy rains lately. The veldt grass, till now dry and dusty and almost white, is beginning to push up tiny green blades, and the green colour is beginning to spread almost imperceptibly over the distant hills. I begin to feel a sort of kindred impulse in myself. The old lethargy, bred of the dull, monotonous marches over the dreary plains, is passing, and I begin to cock an attentive eye at the ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... look of Harriet: She died in Linda's arms, and comforted With all the Church could give of heavenly hope. Slowly and imperceptibly does Time Work out the dreadful problem of our sins! Not often do we see it solved as here In plain results which he who runs may read. Not always is the sinner's punishment Shown in this world. May the Eternal Mercy Cleanse us from secret faults, nor, while we mark ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... Gradually, and imperceptibly to himself; for the thoughts which we have been tracing only came on him at spare times, and were taken up at intervals from the point at which they were laid down. His lectures and other duties of the place, his friends and recreations, were the ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... as has been often seen, was on principle averse to paying for work before it had been done. Some delay occurring, and the secret, thus confided to so many, having floated as it were imperceptibly into the air, Tinoco was arrested on suspicion before he had been able to deliver the letters of Fuentes and Ybarra to Ferrara, for Ferrara, too, had been imprisoned before the arrival of Tinoco. The whole correspondence was discovered, and both Ferrara and Tinoco confessed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the two would fall upon their books together, and the conversation would glide imperceptibly into one of those scenes of half-dramatic impersonation, for which David's relish ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to analyse the causes which give rise to the appearances, we find our old notions gradually falling off from us, until at last we wake up to the fact that we are living in an entirely different world to that we formerly recognized. The old limited mode of thought has imperceptibly slipped away, and we discover that we have stepped out into a new order of things where all is liberty and life. This is the work of an enlightened intelligence resulting from persistent determination to discover what truth really is irrespective of any preconceived notions from whatever ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... he plunged his head into the hole once more. Deeper and deeper still it went, but the blubber was yet three inches from his eager nose. Another shove—no! dislocation alone could accomplish the object. His shoulders slid very imperceptibly into the hole. His nose was within an inch of the prize, and he could actually touch it with his tongue. Away with cowardly prudence! what recked he of the consequences? Up went his hind legs, down went his head, and the tempting bait was gained ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... is well known, leads into Russell Square. In fact the straight line of the Row merges imperceptibly into one side of the Square, whence it continues under the name of Woburn Place, the East side of Tavistock Square, Upper Woburn Place, and Euston Square, losing itself at last in the Northern wilderness of the crowded Euston Road. ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... this winter has not been my own." Rowland assented, ungrudgingly fumbled for the Italian correlative of the adage "Better late than never," begged him to be seated, and offered him a cigar. The Cavaliere sniffed imperceptibly the fragrant weed, and then declared that, if his kind host would allow him, he would reserve it for consumption at another time. He apparently desired to intimate that the solemnity of his errand left him no ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... the others looked blank, but Mike narrowed his eyes imperceptibly. Vaneski was practically echoing Mike's ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... seen while driving in the game. Every time it moved, bodies were crushed, bones broken, and the cries of rage and distress from what seemed a miniature representation of a perdition for animals became imperceptibly diminished by several voices. The muchocho was apparently standing on its hind legs in the bottom of the pit, while the upper part of its body was supported by the creatures that were screaming ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... almost imperceptibly approaching their knoll, but so slowly that Ruth almost doubted if it ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... the world. It seemed like a dream as he recalled it. He was scarcely more than a boy in those days. The ardor and intensity of that distant time had deserted him so gradually, and had vanished so imperceptibly, that he had never missed it until now. Love had come into his life, irradiating and transfiguring everything. Love had led to marriage; four happy children had brought added gladness to his home and fresh contentment to his heart; and he had abandoned ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... make a Great Book out of the pettiest and most uneventful career; but even in honestly transcribing my actual adventures, one by one,—the things I have done, and the Men and Women I have known,—I should imperceptibly swell a Narrative, which was at first meant to attain no great volume, to most deplorable dimensions. And the World will no longer tolerate Huge Chronicles in Folio, whether they relate to History, to Love or Adventure, to ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... nothing; he leaned on the railing of the balcony and gazed a long while into the garden, all fragrant and green, and shining in the rays of the golden sunshine of spring. He was twenty-three years old; how terribly, how imperceptibly quickly those twenty-three years had passed by!... Life ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... Almost imperceptibly his manner had changed. Instinctive misgivings which had assailed her in the coach with him now resolved themselves into assured fears. Something she could not explain had aroused her suspicions before they reached the manor, but his words had ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... increasing cares of the enlarging Mission, with Lieutenant Lindsay gone back to Ireland, and no one to superintend the herding, the successful handling of the deer imperceptibly declined. The tags on the ears were no longer put in; the bells were not replaced in the old localities. The herd was driven, not led as before—was paid for, not loved. These differences at the time were marked by ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... said Burrows, deliberately; "that is so, precisely. We will take no risks; we give our labour and in return the workman must live. Make the consumer pay, or pay yourselves out of your good years"—he turned imperceptibly towards the barrack-like house on the hill. "We don't care a ha'porth which it is!—only don't you come on the man who risks his life, and works like a galley-slave five days a week for a pittance of five-and-twenty shillings, or thereabouts, to pay—for he won't. He's tired of it. Not ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that slow movement which imperceptibly changes a well-filled stage, places a figure now here, now there, shifts the grouping and the lights. Now Judith was one of a knot of younger women. In the phraseology of the period, all were "belles"; ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the Legations tardily bestirring themselves in their own defence, and realising that they must try and forget their private politics if they are even to live, not to say one day to resume their various rivalries and animosities. Imperceptibly we are being impelled to take action; ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale |
