"Pervious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... country. Into this cave the troops penetrated with their standards, and, the place being dark, they received many wounds, chiefly from stones thrown. At length the other mouth of the cave being found, for it was pervious, both the openings were filled up with wood, which being set on fire, there perished by means of the smoke and heat, no less than two thousand men; many of whom, at the last, in attempting to make their way out, rushed into the very ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... hindereth not the light of the sun from passing through it, penetrating it, not by bursting or by cutting, but by filling it wholly: so I thought the body not of heaven, air, and sea only, but of the earth too, pervious to Thee, so that in all its parts, the greatest as the smallest, it should admit Thy presence, by a secret inspiration, within and without, directing all things which Thou hast created. So I guessed, only as unable to conceive aught else, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... depths, where in summer our line tempted the pout and perch, and where the stately pickerel lurked in the long corridors formed by the bulrushes. The deep, impenetrable marsh, where the heron waded, and bittern squatted, is made pervious to our swift shoes, as if a thousand railroads had been made into it. With one impulse we are carried to the cabin of the musk-rat, that earliest settler, and see him dart away under the transparent ice, like a furred fish, to his ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... ordinary sources of radiant heat, bisulphide of carbon, both in the liquid and vaporous form, is one of the most diathermanous bodies ever known. I thought it worth while to try whether a body reputed to be analogous to carbonic acid, and so pervious to most kinds of heat, would show any change of deportment when presented to the radiation from hot carbonic acid. Does the analogy between the two substances extend to the vibrating periods of their atoms? If it does, then ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... he pass'd. On eager wing the spoiler came, And searched for crannies in the frame, Urged his attempt on every side, To every pane his trunk applied; But still in vain, the frame was tight, And only pervious to the light: Thus having wasted half the day, He ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... mollusca on the bottom of the stream, plunge both head and neck beneath the surface, so that often, for several seconds, a large part of the body is submerged. Now these birds still have the plumage pervious to water, and so are liable to be drenched and sodden; but they have also the faculty of giving these drenched feathers such a good shaking that flight is practicable a moment after leaving the water. Certainly the water-thrushes (Seiurus ludovicianus, S. auricapillus, and S. noveboracensis) ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... more wonderful than to see these wildernesses penetrated and pervious in every quarter by broad accesses of the best possible construction, and so superior to what the country could have demanded for many centuries for any pacific purpose of commercial intercourse. Thus the traces of war are sometimes happily accommodated ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... woods, except the village sexton of Jabbeke and his wife, who were too old to run. Lurking in the thickets and marshes, the peasants fell upon all stragglers from the army and murdered them without mercy—so difficult is it in times of civil war to make human brains pervious to the light of reason. The stadholder and his soldiers came to liberate their brethren of the same race, and speaking the same language, from abject submission to a foreign despotism. The Flemings had but to speak a word, to lift a finger, and all the Netherlands, self-governed, would coalesce into ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he saw them dance, he heard them sing, he saw them tear their hair, and heard them howl"—diving, soaring, sailing, perching, violently active in their restlessness—stone, brick, slate, tile, transparent to the dreamer's gaze, and pervious to their movements—the bells all the while in an uproar, the great church tower vibrating from parapet to basement! Or, whether—when the Chimes ceased—there came that instantaneous transformation! ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... the information thou requests, I shall have but little to add. Those hints, however, relating to institutions for the poorest class of society, must be applied with some modifications to establishments for persons of different pervious habits, and for whom a greater portion of attendance can be afforded. The great objects, however, which are stated in the hints to be so important for the comfort of lunatics, apply equally to those of all ranks ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... reassumed some of its genial power, I walked in the forest with my family. It was one of those lovely winter-days which assert the capacity of nature to bestow beauty on barrenness. The leafless trees spread their fibrous branches against the pure sky; their intricate and pervious tracery resembled delicate sea-weed; the deer were turning up the snow in search of the hidden grass; the white was made intensely dazzling by the sun, and trunks of the trees, rendered more conspicuous by the loss of preponderating foliage, gathered ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... man was not pervious to ridicule. He had found something new and as he was fond of experimenting and put his soul into all he did, was generally rewarded for his earnestness. He met Mrs. Arthur Vibert at the reception of a ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... made one's shoulders ache to look upon; exposed meantime to every change of temperature, in log-huts, laid down in the very swamp, on a foundation of newly-felled trees, having the water lying stagnant between the floor-logs, whose interstices, together with those of the side-walls, are open, pervious alike to sun or wind, or snow. Here they subsist on the coarsest fare, holding life on a tenure as uncertain as does the leader of a forlorn hope; excluded from all the advantages of civilization; often at the mercy ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... alone would not prevent the country from being inundated; for it is not possible to make them perfectly tight, and even if it were so, the soil beneath them is more or less pervious to water, and thus the water of the sea and of the rivers would slowly press its way through the lower strata, and oozing up into the land beyond, would soon ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... persisteco. Perturb konfuzi, turmenteti. Perturbation turmentado. Peruke peruko. Perusal legado. Peruse legadi, ellegi. Pervade penetri. Perverse obstina, kontrauxa. Pervert malkonverti, malverigi. Perversion malkonverto, malverigo, malverigxo. Pervious penetrebla. Pest pesto. Pester enui, turmenteti. Pestiferous pesta. Pestilence pesto. Pestilential pesta, pestiga. Pestle pistilo. Pet dorloti. Petal florfolieto. Petard petardo. Petition petegi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... scans thy gray worn towers; Thy vaults, where dead of feudal ages sleep; Thy cloisters, pervious to the wintry showers; These, these he views, and views ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... a swamp, cheek by jowl with an alligator, I believe they would not have offered a word of remonstrance. Those Mexican half-breeds, half Indian half Spaniard, with sometimes a dash of the Negro, are themselves so little pervious to the dangers and evils of their soil and climate, that they never seem to remember that Yankee flesh and blood may be rather more susceptible; that niguas[25] and musquittoes, and vomito prieto, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... to two inches broad, infundibuliform, subfibrillose, lurid-brown, pervious to the base, the margin generally wavy, lobed. Hymenium dark cinereous, rugose when moist, the minute crowded irregular folds abundantly anastomosing; nearly even when dry. The stem is short. The spores are broadly elliptical ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... Should he my flight into the plain observe 655 And swift pursuing seize me, then, farewell All hope to scape a miserable death, For he hath strength passing the strength of man. How then—shall I withstand him here before The city? He hath also flesh to steel 660 Pervious, within it but a single life, And men report him mortal, howsoe'er Saturnian Jove lift him to glory now. So saying, he turn'd and stood, his dauntless heart Beating for battle. As the pard springs forth ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... partial to the unfledged, unfostered, and unlucky; but Fortune has knocked me about since: she has even kneaded me with her knuckles, and now I flatter myself I am hard and tough as an India-rubber ball; pervious, though, through a chink or two still, and with one sentient point in the middle of the lump. Yes: does that ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... a portion of Mr. Saul's library—books which he had brought with him from college; and on the ground under this closed window were arranged the others, making a long row, which stretched from the bed to the dressing-table, very pervious, I fear, to the attacks of mice. The big table near the fireplace was covered with books and papers—and, alas, with dust; for he had fallen into that terrible habit which prevails among bachelors, of allowing his work to remain ever open, never finished, always confused—with papers ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope |
